[MD] Intellectual Level

[david buchanan]

Marsha asked:
How are feelings, passions and other modes of consciousness included back into rationality?   How are they included back into science?  How are then included back into mathematics?  How?


Pirsig wrote:

"I want to show that that classic pattern of rationality can be tremendously improved, expanded and made far more effective through the formal recognition of Quality in its operation." (ZAMM, p. 278) 


"I think that it will be found that a formal acknowledgment of the role of Quality in the scientific process doesn't destroy the empirical vision at all.  It expands it, strengthens it and brings it far closer to actual scientific practice." (ZAMM, p. 282) 


"But the Metaphysics of Quality also says that Dynamic Quality - the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experiment over a confusing, inconclusive one - is another matter altogether.  Dynamic Quality is a higher moral order than static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try to suppress Dynamic Quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method.  Dynamic value is an integral part of science.  It is the cutting edge of scientific progress itself." (LILA, p. 366)


"Now it's time to further an understanding of nature's order by reassimilating those passions which were originally fled from. The passions, the emotions, the affective domain of man's consciousness, are a part of nature's order too. The central part."  (ZAMM p. 294)