[MD] Quantum Physics, Amerindians, Zen, the woods, beyond SOM

[Platt Holden]

Hi SA:

I wonder how all written below differs from good, old fashioned "animism," 
defined as 1 : a doctrine that the vital principle of organic development 
is immaterial spirit; 2 : attribution of conscious life to objects in and 
phenomena of nature, or to inanimate objects. (Merriam-Webster. Also see 
Wikipedia). I doubt if Pirsig would be happy to have his metaphysics 
considered inhabited by spirits, or that he  would approve of the efficacy 
of dancing around in circles to make rain.

But, I could be wrong. After all, I've been an advocate of 
panexperientialism -- the evolution of mind from elemental beginnings in 
the electron.  

Regards,
Platt  

> Hello Robert and All,
> 
>      I have lots of quotes, but find this book I bring
> up here fitting into what Pirsig mentioned as and I
> paraphrase, 'eventually it all comes back to the
> Indian.'  If it comes down to having standards of
> static quality, a measure of excellence, of quality,
> then here's a stab, a shot in the dark.
> 
>      [Robert]
>      What other folks does this group propose...??
> 
> 
>      You mentioned Bergson.  I have another book that
> even uses dynamic in the way of MoQ.  Here's a quote
> from "The Way of the Human Being" by Calvin Martin as
> follows:
>      "...'creativity' and 'imagination' are themselves
> lame words.  Nor will 'pantomime' work, either.  None
> of them tells us the true nature of the dynamic here;
> none of them - art, creativity, pantomime, mimicry -
> realizes that there is a field of force already
> contained within the thing observed."
>      Here's some other quotes that have quality:
> 
>      "...one must 'see the life' in something,
> implying, of course, that it has 'being' already. 
> Implying as well that the craftsman is not entirely
> responsible for the final outcome.  The final outcome
> is a joint accomplishment, and is not even final, of
> course.  The substrate, the object, has being - a
> voice, a story, a personality, a face.  The driftwood
> that John Kailukiak finds on the beach... carves into
> his wondrous masks:  is it using him to assume a
> different shape?>  Does the wood find him just as he
> is finding it?  For the Yup'ik Eskimos know that there
> is a Spirit of the Driftwood; they carve its face,
> too.  What kind of mutual intercourse, mutual
> perception is happening here?"
> 
>      "The issue is ontological (literally, belonging
> to the 'study of being, of reality')... Not only do
> kass'aqs (whitemen - actually generalized from the
> Russians that first came to Alaska) not 'think' like
> Yup'ik; we don't blend with the atomic structure of
> the earth in the way they do."
> 
>      "How could an electron passing through a hole,"
> wondered Einstein in the 1930's, puzzling over a
> slightly different version of the experiment,
> "possibly know that another hole has been made some
> distance away?"  The answer, apparently - and it is a
> most disturbing one - is that the experimenter know
> it.  'In some strange sense, this is a participatory
> universe, ' reminds Einstein's colleague John
> Archibald Wheeler... Wheeler tells us, in the presence
> of ' a mysterious new entrant on the stage of
> physics,' something that ' may someday turn out to be
> the fundamental building unit of all that is, more
> basic even than particles or fields of force or space
> and time themselves.'  Wheeler christens it the
> 'elementary quantum phenomenon'; most physicists now
> refer to it as 'superposition.'  Here at the very
> heart of what is real, the deepest question one can
> pose to the universe, we are ushered into the presence
> of a smiling, sublime paradox:  'No elementary quantum
> phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered
> phenomenon - that is to say, brought to a close by an
> irreversible act of amplification such as the
> triggering of a photodetector or the initiation of an
> avalanche of electrons in a geiger counter... or the
> word spoken or written, of a sentient observer.  'When
> we change the observing equipment,' cautions Wheeler,
> 'we do not learn more about that phenomenon.  We have
> instead a phenomenon that is new and different.  The
> observer's choice of what he shall look for has an
> inescapable consequence for what he will find.'
> 
>      "The beautiful thing about superposition and
> nonlocality is their  uncompromising insistence that
> humans are fundamental participants in creating the
> event.  Nor will it do to hide behind our
> consciousness, claiming for it the sovereign power of
> detached observation, and so saving ourselves from
> tumbling into the Event.  No, responds the spectral
> voice of superposition, we are participants before
> consciousness is even awakened - we have no choice in
> the matter."
> 
>      These quotes speak of dynamic quality,
> "...participants before consciousness is even
> awakened...".  Dq before static patterns may
> eventually emerge, thus, dq and the code of art
> flashing in our experience and if need be, we may
> apply static patterns to further latch our experience.
>  Yet, it all begins with "superposition.  Does the
> answer to all of reality lie within its ghostly,
> cosmic ganglia that are somehow our own?  Wheeler,
> following on Bohr and his group, clearly thought so. 
> And are we to believe that this quantum reality is the
> invisible glue of our everyday, common relationships
> and experience, the deceptively straightforward realm
> of tables and chairs, of trees and mountains?  Or of
> bears, say - or beavers?"  Thus, the hardness of an
> electron isn't known until the observer provides an
> opinion, a belief about the hardness of the electron,
> participating and constraining the outcome of the
> hardness of the electron by the questions asked, thus,
> in superposition it isn't right to say the detector is
> "...pointing to 'hard,' and it isn't right to say that
> Martha believes that the pointer is pointing to
> 'soft,' and it isn't right to say that she has both of
> those beliefs (whatever that might mean), and it isn't
> right to say that she has neither of those beliefs.' 
> In fact, it isn't until the observer specifies in some
> definitive, concrete fashion her belief in where the
> pointer is pointing that the event is actually born as
> an outcome."
> 
>      So, we have dynamic quality, unknown, thus,
> pre-intellectual.  We have superposition in quantum
> mechanics, thus, unknowings about particles, until
> according to what we believe or have opinion about
> what is to be measured - the outcome, the intellect
> has answers based on the specifics we define by our
> questions.  Also, "Nalungiaq, the Eskimo, offered an
> explanation for all this metaphysic by saying that 'in
> the very first times,' when 'both people and animals
> lived on the earth,... a person could become an
> animal, and an animal could become a human being....
> Sometimes they were people and other times animals,
> and there was no difference....   All spoke the same
> tongue...."  This reality is still present when the
> stories are understood by those that still listen to
> the stories, "Here, in this strange, fantastic
> universe of the subatomic particle, we approach the
> reality spoken of in the myths, - that reality invoked
> by an old Yup'ik man who somehow knew that moose
> surely hear us, of the hunter quietly telling his wife
> that he saw 'something dark' in the bush today, the
> world of an old woman dancing an oyster into the shape
> of a whale."
> 
>      It is not that we learn something new, it is a
> shift in how we participate with the world.  The world
> can be of kinship, we can live with the world, and we
> create the world - it comes down to perception.  So,
> once the world is participated and is not separated
> from us, the outcome is a totally different story of
> this universe.  In a separated universe, "Gone is the
> Power of 'something'; in its place are rigidly
> measured shapes:  poplar bark, beaver, beaver lodge,
> with no room for being anything other.  A great cosmic
> door has slammed shut; reality itself has moved over a
> notch.  A beaver is now a beaver is but a beaver.  Our
> hunter is now thinking as an empiricist; he has
> doubted his role in the 'participatory universe'.  In
> sum... that's exactly why the Micmac, the real people,
> tell these didactic stories:  to maintain a grip on
> true reality."
> 
>      It not only comes back to the Indians, as Pirsig
> stated, but it comes back to our living here together
> as stories weave something that Aristotle follied. 
> The Paleolithic times in Europe and everywhere around
> the world.  The traditions that still speak the
> stories now when we take a walk in the woods, live
> Zen, notice beyond SOM.
> 
> Thanks,
> SA   
> 
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