Jorge You seem to be missing the point of ZMM. Somewhere at the beginning RP talks about the the underlying form of the underlying form of science. MOQ is a study of the structure on which science/western thought is built. Whatever advances in science that you talk about are more in the nature of the tree of science developing new branches and consequently those fruits.
MOQ attacks the very root of the tree of science and its main objective is to try and free it from being a prisoner to the psuedo-mystical immersion in a blind belief in empirical verities. Thats to put it badly. :-) Sunfever On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 1:07 AM, Jorge Goldfarb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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 particles… Classical Mechanics all over the place. > Forces of cohesion, of adhesion, osmotic forces, > surface forces (tensions). Ubiquitous forces and > energies and 'tendencies'… 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. > > > > > __________________________________________________________ > Sent from Yahoo! Mail. > The World's Favourite Email http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ > -- Abey John | +91 98840 15642 http://ascomp.com Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
