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fb9378f
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classically as well as romantically ugly because it means the cylinder is getting too much gas and not enough air.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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47cdd9d
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the competence of a speaker has no relevance to the truth
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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51f0344
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Fedro era molto isolato. Non mi risulta che avesse amici intimi. Viaggiava da solo. Sempre. Era solo anche in mezzo agli altri. La gente a volte se ne accorgeva e si sentiva respinta, per cui non provava simpatia per lui, ma questo non lo toccava. I suoi familiari furono i primi a soffrire per il suo carattere. Sua moglie dice che chi cercasse di vincere il suo riserbo si trovava di fronte un muro. La mia impressione e che la sua famiglia f..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f6abc65
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In laboratorio, quando tutte le ipotesi si sfasciano e risultati inattesi ti impediscono di andare sia avanti sia indietro, incominci a guardare ai lati. In seguito Fedro uso l'espressione 'collaterale' per descrivere una crescita del sapere che non procede in avanti come una freccia in volo, ma si espande lateralmente, come una freccia che si allargasse in volo. O come l'arciere che ha colpito il bersaglio e vinto il premio, ma scopre di a..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8095507
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Dato che non ci siamo abituati, di solito non ci accorgiamo che esiste un terzo termine logico possibile equivalente al si e al no, il quale e in grado di espandere la nostra conoscenza in una direzione non riconosciuta. Non esiste nemmeno il termine per indicarlo, per cui dovro usare la parola giapponese mu. Mu significa <>. Come <>, mu punta il dito fuori dal processo di discriminazione dualistica, dicendo semplicem..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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7492be0
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You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something. "All" --
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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c2fc9a7
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I don't want to own these prairies, or photograph them, or change them, or even stop or even keep going. We are just moving down the empty road. 5
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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e5ff2ae
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I started to roll over for more sleep but heard a rooster crowing and then became aware we are on vacation and there is no point in sleeping.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ad00fc6
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I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. Classics read well this way.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3eda0bb
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To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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39ab080
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Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6798e1b
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Stuckness. That's what I want to talk about today. Back
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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6dcec47
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but it can't tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination--"unstuckness," in other words--are completely outside its domain. We"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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03676a6
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The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ee1b17e
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It's an old split. Like the one between art and art history. One does it and the other talks about how it's done and the talk about how it's done never seems to match how one does it. DeWeese
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8877e49
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I feel happy to be here, and still a little sad to be here too. Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive. 11
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ed8ee79
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Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock loo..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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00d129a
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What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f12341b
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When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly, with the same attitude I remember was present just before I found that sheared pin. It was that attitude that found it, nothing else.
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don-t-hurry
don-t-rush
slow-and-steady
take-it-easy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0d8c0c1
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The nature of our culture is such that if you were to look for instruction in how to do any of these jobs, the instruction would always give only one understanding of Quality, the classic. It would tell you how to hold the blade when sharpening the knife, or how to use a sewing machine, or how to mix and apply glue with the presumption that once these underlying methods were applied, "good" would naturally follow. The ability to see directl..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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36add77
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institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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64b9ed7
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Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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86e7783
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Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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0fde10c
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You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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93c2fcb
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If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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1669007
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Phaedrus wrote a letter from India about a pilgrimage to holy Mount Kailas, the source of the Ganges and the abode of Shiva, high in the Himalayas, in the company of a holy man and his adherents. He never reached the mountain. After the third day he gave up, exhausted, and the pilgrimage went on without him. He said he had the physical strength but that physical strength wasn't enough. He had the intellectual motivation but that wasn't enou..
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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ee86016
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Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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033162c
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People entered the park and became polite and cozy and fakey to each other because the atmosphere of the park made them that way. In the entire time he had lived within a hundred miles of it he had visited it only once or twice.
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observations-on-humanity
tourism
travel
wild-west
yellowstone
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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f4fba48
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That's extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he'd given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.
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give-up
grow-up
let-go
move-on
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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3b1023e
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I suppose you could call that a personality. Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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9760295
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This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no point at which these visions of reality are unified. And
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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22ab642
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We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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42160a1
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The student's biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and- whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don't whip me, I won't work." He didn't get whipped. He didn't work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him. This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civiliza..
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free-man
free-will
mentality
schooling
status-quo
students
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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17440d7
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The fact that they were there as students presumed they did not know what was good or bad. That was his job as instructor...to tell them what was good or bad. The whole idea of individual creativity and expression in the classroom was really basically opposed to the whole idea of the University.
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education
learning
schools
self-expression
teaching
university
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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19c5486
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He'd no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors assigned him were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they'd bet..
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learning
motivation
students
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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d19887f
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This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing.
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education
higher-learning
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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4c0c4e3
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No da se unishchozhi edna fabrika ili da se v'stane sreshchu edno pravitelstvo, ili da ne se popravi edin mototsiklet, zashchoto e sistema, oznachava da se atakuvat sledstviiata, a ne prichinite; i dokato borbata e sreshchu sledstviiata, nikakva promiana ne e v'zmozhna.
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philosophy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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aaa7931
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This divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural. It's just that it's gone on so long you have to be an archeologist to find out where the two separated. Rotisserie assembly is actually a long-lost branch of sculpture, so divorced from its roots by centuries of intellectual wrong turns that just to associate the two sounds ludicrous." They're"
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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b775d44
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This book offers another, more serious alternative to material success. It's not so much an alternative as an expansion of the meaning of "success" to something larger than just getting a good job and staying out of trouble. And also something larger than mere freedom. It gives a positive goal to work toward that does not confine."
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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a54939e
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What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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2d09eca
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Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to see.
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strike-at-the-root
zen
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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8478231
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We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you already know, you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you already know. Everyone'..
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evolution
expansion
philosophy
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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78e357a
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This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that's what it is. Blind
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Robert M. Pirsig |
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20931dd
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Perche, ad esempio, un gruppo di composti semplici e stabili di carbonio, idrogeno, ossigeno e azoto avrebbero dovuto lottare per miliardi di anni allo scopo di organizzarsi, mettiamo, in un professore di chimica? Che cosa li ha spinti? Se questo professore noi lo lasciamo esposto su uno scoglio al sole per un tempo sufficientemente lungo, le forze della natura lo ridurranno a una serie di composti di carbonio, ossigeno, idrogeno e azoto, p..
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Robert M. Pirsig |