[MD] Oui and Pirsig

[MarshaV]

SA,

It's from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance.  It's waiting for something.


"In a stunned state Phædrus began a long series 
of lateral drifts that led him into a far orbit 
of the mind, but he eventually returned along a 
route we are now following, to the doors of the 
University itself. Tomorrow I'll try to start on that route. (ZMM, Chapter 10)


"At first the truths Phædrus began to pursue were 
lateral truths; no longer the frontal truths of 
science, those toward which the discipline 
pointed, but the kind of truth you see laterally, 
out of the corner of your eye. In a laboratory 
situation, when your whole procedure goes 
haywire, when everything goes wrong or is 
indeterminate or is so screwed up by unexpected 
results you can't make head or tail out of 
anything, you start looking laterally. That's a 
word he later used to describe a growth of 
knowledge that doesn't move forward like an arrow 
in flight, but expands sideways, like an arrow 
enlarging in flight, or like the archer, 
discovering that although he has hit the bull's 
eye and won the prize, his head is on a pillow 
and the sun is coming in the window. Lateral 
knowledge is knowledge that's from a wholly 
unexpected direction, from a direction that's not 
even understood as a direction until the 
knowledge forces itself upon one. Lateral truths 
point to the falseness of axioms and postulates 
underlying one's existing system of getting at truth."  (ZMM. Chapter 11)


"I settle back in the grass and rest again. Maybe 
it's not having answers that's Lateral defeating 
both of us. I don't want to go ahead because it 
doesn't look like any answers ahead. None behind 
either. Just lateral drift. That's what it is 
between me and him. drift, waiting for something."  (ZMM, Chapter 18)


Marsha








At 01:40 PM 9/8/2007, you wrote:

>      [Marsha]
> > I had forgotten about lateral drift. Wonderful,
> > beautiful lateral
> > drift.  We are, indeed, in agreement.
>
>
>     What's lateral drift again?  If anybody has the
>link for Lila so I can upload it again I would
>appreciate it.  I had it, I believe Ian gave me a link
>to upload it before, but it accidentially got trashed
>when my wife was cleaning up the computer uploads.
>Then I could search for this concept myself, and see
>it in the context derived in Lila.



>thanks.
>SA
>
>
>
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