[MD] Intellectual activity

[Ant McWatt]

[Platt to Ham]
No doubt in my mind that the aesthetic experience includes intellectual and
emotional reactions. But, I think it’s something more.

Arlo commented on this May 7th:

Yes. What that “something more” is, I’d argue, is the entry point for DQ. It 
is
where, in Peircian terms, abductive inference arises. It is where, for 
Pirsig,
hypothesis originates.

Pirsig: “The formation of hypotheses is the most mysterious of all the
categories of scientific method. Where they come from, no one knows. A 
person
is sitting somewhere, minding his own business, and suddenly...flash!...he
understands something he didn’t understand before. Until it’s tested the
hypothesis isn’t truth. For the tests aren’t its source. Its source is 
somewhere else.”

Ant McWatt comments:

Pirsig’s account of the Dynamic flash of insight regarding hypothesises 
reminds me of John Lennon’s similar account of how the Beatles song “Across 
The Universe” was written:

“The words stand, luckily, by themselves.  They were purely inspirational 
and were given to me as boom!!!  I don’t own it, you know; it came through 
like that.  I don’t know where it came from... it wrote itself.  It drove me 
out of bed.  I didn’t want to write it, I was just slightly irritable and I 
went downstairs and I couldn’t get to sleep until I put it on paper, and 
then I went to sleep.  It’s like being possessed; like a psychic or a 
medium.”

(John Lennon, Playboy interview, November 1980)


P.S. here are the lyrics:

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe.
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai Guru Deva Om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind
Inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai Guru Deva Om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter, shades of earth are ringing
Through my open views inciting and inviting me.
Limitless, undying love which shines around me like a million suns,
It calls me on and on across the universe,
Jai Guru Deva Om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my world.


(N.B. Jai Guru Dev is a phrase Transcendental Meditators often use to greet 
each other.  Guru Dev was the teacher of the infamous Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 
the founder of TM and subject of another Lennon song “Sexy Sadie”.)


.

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