[MD] Is Quality Value?

[Hampday, Vales Page editor]

Arlo --

> To your other question about Darwin, I'm not exactly sure what you're
asking.
> Could you restate, please?

My point was that evolution, as interpreted by Darwin's theory, is not a
streamlined progression of events from the single-cell organism to Homo
sapiens.  If you look at a biological "family tree" showing the pedigree of
various species, the branches are irregular with a sporadic time-base of
changes.  The extinction of the dinosaurs is thought to be a result of their
unsuitability to the environment.  There are many other examples of
creatures whose anatomical design was unwieldy or inappropriate and that
died out as a consequence.  When considered as the implementation of a life
plan leading to man, the survival of the fittest appears to be a
trial-and-error approach on the part of Nature.  Why should any evolutionary
error occur if, as you seem to suggest, Pirsig's MOQ is an absolutely moral
system?

> I think (and this is just me) that "natural evolution" is an intellectual
> pattern used to describe aggregate biological patterns of value, or
perhaps
> better said, to describe the historical path of biological patterns of
value.

One would think that an absolutely moral Quality would have held to an
absolutely efficient scheme for creation.  Apart from the appearance of life
and the adaptive capacity of genetic tissue, the whole process might have
simply come about by chance, as Darwin and his defenders eventually came to
believe.  In other words, how do you, or Pirsig, account for the erratic
course of evolution considering its absolutely moral source?

Or, do you think that these irregularities are human artifacts in an
"intellectual pattern" called evolution?

Regards,
Ham