[MD] The SOL-ution

[MarshaV]

At 01:34 PM 1/12/2007, you wrote:
>Hi Marsha (S.A.) --
>
>
>  On 1/12 Ham wrote:
> > Unless we're talking abstractly, all objects are either organic
> > or inorganic.  Pirsig calls them "objective levels".  Both kinds
> > are made of atoms and molecules, behave according to the
> > laws of nature, and exhibit experiencable properties.
>
>Marsha said:
> > I am trying to be quiet, but I can't help asking about:  "Unless
> > we're talking abstractly,".  Isn't this understood as the base
> > to all this talk.  It's all abstraction?  Isn't the MOQ an abstract
> > construct?
>
>You raise an interesting point.  If I had not qualified "objects" at all in
>this sentence, would you have accepted the description?   I inserted this
>phrase as an afterthought, realizing that "objects" are sometimes construed
>to mean goals or ends, symbols (i.e., words, names, results), or --
>alliteratively -- as in "the object of my affection."

I had been thinking about the Intellectual Level and its activity, 
abstract thought.  Your statement just struck me as weird.  I'm 
probably going to screw this up, but I was thinking that from the 
"undifferentiated aesthetic continuum"/Quality, RPG abstracted 
Dynamic Quality and Static Quality.  From Static Quality he 
abstracted four distinct evolutionary levels.  To me that is abstract 
thinking of the most original kind.


>While I believe you're right that the MOQ is an "abstract construct", I
>don't think a philosophy has to be, especially if it's a cosmology.  No
>doubt a theory is an "intellectual construct", and to arrive at it requires
>some abstractive thought processes; but is the theory itself necessarily an
>abstraction?   For example, when Copernicus hypothesized that the earth and
>planets revolve around the sun, was this an abstraction?   When Galileo
>later provided scientific proof (using a telescope and astronomical
>measurements), was he confirming an abstraction or a theory?

It seems to me that it is all based on abstract thought.  I'm 
assuming that Copernicus built (abstracted) his hypothesis on 
observation.  If Galileo scientifically proved Copernicus' 
hypothesis, it was abstracted from astronomical measurements using 
the telescope.  That it is common knowledge and considered true is 
socially learned.

I think now would be a good time to go back to being quiet.

m