baseball, control

[Brian D. McCary]

> Date: Fri, 01 Sep 1995 16:20 -0500 (EST)
> From: "Gillies, Lindsay" <Lindsay.Gillies at FMR.Com>

> I'd like to pose a larger question.  Clearly TRP is fascinated by and 
> knowledgeable about systems, mathematics, thermodynamic, etc.  But isn't he 
> using systems as an expository device?  If so, what is he getting at---I'm 
> proposing that its not systems per se.

I agree.  It has always seemed to me that within his work, TRP is 
attempting to create or propose a contemporary belief system, with an
accompanying mythology, which bears a strong resembalance to a religion.

If one supposes that the framers of older religions took "natural law"
and built their religions around them, then one can search for 
their perceptions of natural law within the religion.  For instance, 
sacrifice of first fruits or first born could be based on the perception,
right or wrong, that doing so increaced the yeild of their crops or flocks.
Naturally, the framers may also have had more cynical purposes in mind,
but some level of belief that one thing followed another (I believe) had
to have existed.

TRP seems to be accepting and working with the premis that whatever the 
greater powers (or forces, as you wish) which affect our lives may be, 
they must behave according to the observable natural laws.  Their natures, as
it were, are perceptable through the actions of the world around us.  A
contemporary proposition about them must account for contemporary observations
about the world, and systems and system theory were probably the most
important advances in our perception of the natural world (at least from
a technological standpoint) during the twentieth century.

OK, that got wordy.  Briefly, I believe TRP is trying to construct a godhead
rooted in the twentieth century, and he is operating on the principle that
the new godhead must obey the rules we observe for systems, so by studying
systems, we can understead the nature of the beast.  Of course, the execution
is much more complicated than that, which just makes his writing that much more
interesting.

Or, at least, that has been my take on him for the last half a life

Brian McCary