Jorge,
What I've been waiting for on this forum for ca. 2
years, is for somebody to discuss science. I've heard
quite a bit on how the moq and science can fit. I
haven't heard the details that you provide below
though, and I welcome this approach. Krimel and at
times Ian, will point out some specifics in science,
but what is lacking is a full-fledged discussion about
the science of the day. People discuss, in this
forum, about how science does or does not fit in with
the moq, the whole moral issue and how the physical
sciences find no place for the human. The latter is
correct, from my ca. 5 year ago experience in the
university. The humanities and science were far away
from each other, and the philosophy department was
looking for ways to attract students again.
Philosophy lost its' application when science departed
over 100 years ago, it would seem. Philosophers are
constantly helping scientists develop their theories.
>From reading Stephen Gould's works, especially the
'The Structure of Evolutionary Theory', I didn't
realize the depth that scientists depend on good
philosophers in the complicated abstractions found in
theories. It would definitely help if you would talk
about science, and what science does today, and if you
have to, forget about the moq and how the moq fits in
with science, etc... Mention the science, in this
forum, provide some insight into what's happening.
Maybe we could all learn something. If you want to
discuss a certain theory, or experiment, or the
cutting edge in what science is up to, it would bring
a perspective into this forum that would be by in
large tremendous. So, instead of what the moq is
trying to do for science or science years ago, which
is interesting, undoubtly interesting, this forum
could use some science. Not that art, zen, and
politics isn't important, for I love to discuss the
former two and browse the latter, but it would be nice
to hear the science that you are referring to that the
moq should leave alone.
Comments?
SA
Jorge:
> I had a sort of insight about Science and the
> MOQ,
> or rather "Science, Pirsig, MOQ and History" that
> I'd
> like to share with you as a hypothesis for
> discussion.
>
> Ever since I read Z&AMM I've been puzzled
> about
> Pirsig's views on Science; later, in the course of
> discussions in this Forum, I realized that his views
> had been adopted by many of the people here. What
> puzzled me more is that the last version of Z&AMM
> was
> finished about 1972, close to the end of the 20th
> century and yet Pirsig's views seem to me closer to
> Science as presented in the first decades of that
> century. How come? Considering how radically Science
> changed in those 50 or 60 years, that's quite a gap.
>
>
> The other day I was rereading Norbert Wiener's
> book 'Cybernetics'. The book was first published in
> 1948; Claude Shannon's papers on "A Mathematical
> Theory of Communication" also date from that year.
> Wiener's ideas had been making inroads, mainly in
> Biology, some years before that. By the 1960's the
> concepts behind "Control and Communication in the
> Animal and the Machine", as Wiener subtitled his
> book,
> were the darling baby of both Science and pseudo
> Science; everyone busy working out how Wiener's,
> Shannon's (and Prigogine's) ideas and, what became
> later known as Informatics, could modify their
> particular fields. Not to mention that statistical
> treatments for most of Physic's theories were
> already
> firmly in place by, say, the 1910's.
>
> All the above conformed a true revolution in
> our understanding of the external world of Science
> and
> yet, hardly a word about it in Pirsig's books. His
> views on Science seemed to have stayed frozen as
> those
> prevalent before the 30's.
>
> The hypothesis I offer for discussion is roughly
> this: Pirsig's formative years in Science were
> precisely the 1930's. Now, one can have his
> formative
> years of a discipline in one period and continuously
> modify what was learnt, 'provided' (and that's an
> important proviso) one keeps himself close to that
> discipline; otherwise one's conceptions remain sort
> of
> frozen in time.
>
> With the help of Ian Glendinning's "R.
> Pirsig's Biographical Timeline" I tried to retrace
> what might have happened. Pirsig studied Chemistry
> at
> the University of Minnesota in 1944. I have no idea
> what Minnesota's Freshman's courses were like then,
> but a safe bet was the Science they taught was
> pretty
> much that of 10 or 20 years before (nothing
> particularly wrong with Minnesota, 'that was the way
> it was' in most Universities then). In 1946 he joins
> the Army and since then, till the time he wrote
> Z&AMM,
> there's no indication in the above timeline that he
> ever came close to Science again.
>
> I browsed in the Library through some
> Physical
> Chemistry textbooks for undergrads published about
> the
> 40's and surely, there it was: - forces and energies
> and particlesÂ… Classical Mechanics all over the
> place.
> Forces of cohesion, of adhesion, osmotic forces,
> surface forces (tensions). Ubiquitous forces and
> energies and 'tendencies'Â… Ever wondered where
> language expressions such as "the forces of cohesion
> that hold a society together" came from?
>
> All the former should not be taken to imply
> that
> Pirsig was "Wrong" about Science; he was Right in
> the
> criticism of Science as he knew it. As I said,
> unless
> you keep very much inside one discipline, it is easy
> to loose track of innovations. This, needless to
> say,
> is no excuse for the younger set of members here
> that
> seemed to have adopted Pirsig's views on Science
> quite
> uncritically.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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