jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) (01/11/88)
An interesting passage from Alan Watts:
"I have sometimes thought that all philosophical disputes could be
reduced to an argument between the partisans of 'prickles' and the
partisans of 'goo'. The prickly people are tough-minded, rigorous,
and precise, and like to stress differences and division between
things. They prefer particles to waves, and discontinuity to
continuity. The gooey people are tender-minded romanticists who love
wide generalizations and grand syntheses. They stress the underlying
unities, and are inclined to pantheism and mysticism. Waves suit
them much better than particles as the ultimate constituents of
matter, and discontinuities jar their teeth like a compressed-air
drill. Prickly philosophers consider the gooey ones rather
disgusting -- undisciplined, vague dreamers who slide over hard
facts like an intellectual slime which threatens to engulf the
whole universe in an "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum"
(courtesy of Prof. F.S.C. Northrop). But gooey philosophers think
of their prickly colleagues as animated skeletons that rattle and
click without any flesh or vital juices, as dry and dessicated
mechanisms bereft of all finer feelings. Either party would be
hopelessly lost without the other, because there would be nothing to
argue about, no one would know what his position was, and the whole
course of philosophy would come to an end."
<end quote>
Fortunately, this was written before the concepts of left and right
brain specialization were popularized, so Watts chose much more
colorful terms than he might have if he wrote this today.
As a prickly person by nature who is becoming gooier as he gets
older, I thought I'd cross-post this to the group created exclusively
for prickly philosophy (post goo to talk.philosophy.misc :-) and to
the gooiest group on the net, to see if I can get a good chemical
reaction going.
Comments? Is there something to learn from the other side?
--
- Joe Buck {uunet,ucbvax,sun,<smart-site>}!epimass.epi.com!jbuck
Old Internet mailers: jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net
Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them. -- Richard Bachfirth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) (01/12/88)
In article <1832@epimass.EPI.COM> jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes: >An interesting passage from Alan Watts: > >"I have sometimes thought that all philosophical disputes could be >reduced to an argument between the partisans of 'prickles' and the >partisans of 'goo'... Joe, you might find this book useful Isiah Berlin: The Fox and the Hedgehog "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing" It is ostensibly an essay on Tolstoy's view of history, but most of its insights address exactly this division between categorists and syncretists, whom Berlin refers to as Foxes and Hedgehogs May your prickles never grow less...
romkey@kaos.UUCP (John Romkey) (01/12/88)
In article <1832@epimass.EPI.COM> jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes: >An interesting passage from Alan Watts: (passage deleted) This dichotomy between the prickly and gooey philosophers is something that Robert Pirsig talks a lot about in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", a book that I expect is pretty well known at least in the newage newsgroup... -- - john romkey ...harvard!spdcc!kaos!romkey romkey@kaos.uucp romkey@xx.lcs.mit.edu
rjf@eagle.ukc.ac.uk (Robin Faichney) (01/13/88)
In article <1832@epimass.EPI.COM> jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes: >An interesting passage from Alan Watts: > >..the partisans of 'prickles' and the partisans of 'goo'.. C G Jung originated the categories of `extraversion' and `introversion'. According to Jung, everyone exhibits characteristics of both categories, but almost (or perhaps absolutely, I can't check now) everyone is biased one way or the other. The extravert is biased towards objectivity -- the external world -- and the introvert towards subjectivity -- the internal world. Seems to me that this aligns with Watts categories, the pricklies being the extraverts (lots of things out there!), and the gooies, intro- verts (I love to feel harmonious!). I don't know enough about bi-lateral (a)symmetry to be sure, but I don't think that this one aligns with that dichotomy. On the other hand, this one does does align with the classic division of philosophers: into emp- iricists and rationalists. It also seems in accord with the nature ver- sus nurture controversy. (Of course these are extremely abstract, though not necessarily vague groupings.) Wouldn't it be nice to get a liberal/ conservative tie-up? A recent theory I came across is that Conservatives are unconsciously greedy, while socialists are unconsciously envious. I am consciously lazy, or else I'd provide the reference. While Jung might not have been too hostile to such an analysis, making it fit with extra/ introversion might take a bit of thought! Robin (What are Reply-To: and Path: lines for? ;-)
ronse@prlb2.UUCP (Christian Ronse) (01/21/88)
In article <4142@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>, rjf@eagle.ukc.ac.uk (Robin Faichney) writes: > C G Jung originated the categories of `extraversion' and `introversion'. [...] > Seems to me that this aligns with Watts categories, the pricklies > being the extraverts (lots of things out there!), and the gooies, intro- > verts (I love to feel harmonious!). > > I don't know enough about bi-lateral (a)symmetry to be sure, but I don't > think that this one aligns with that dichotomy. On the other hand, this > one does does align with the classic division of philosophers: into emp- > iricists and rationalists. It also seems in accord with the nature ver- > sus nurture controversy. Not quite. Besides the introvert/extrovert polarity, Jung classified personalities according to the relative importance of 4 features forming a cross, that is a pair of polarities: intuition/sensation (way of grasping the world) and thought/feeling (way of judging things). For example I am I F T S intuition top, thought right hand. One might say that intuition is syncretist and sensation is categorist, but the polarity thought/feeling has nothing to do with syncretism/categoricism. A layman discussion on the two cerebral hemispheres is given in Carl Sagan's book ``The Dragons of Eden''. I found in a 1953 book of neuropsychology the following quote at the beginning of a chapter on hemispheric lateralization of the brain: ``There is one principal and as it were radical distinction between different minds ... that some minds are stronger and apter to mark the differences of things, others to mark their resemblances. The steady and acute mind can fix its contemplations and dwell and fasten on the subtlest distinctions; the lofty and discursive mind recognizes and puts together the finest and most general resemblances. Both kinds, however easily err in excess, by catching the one at gradations and the other at shadows.'' Francis Bacon Christian Ronse maldoror@prlb2.UUCP {uunet|philabs|mcvax|...}!prlb2!{maldoror|ronse}