[David M commenting to Jorge] I think that it would be quite right to argue that the SOM and positivist dominated science of the early/mid 20th century has eased off and is now less open to Pirsig's criticisms, but it is only less so and not completely so. For example, on-going ideas of value-free objective science still hints at a denial of metaphysics as per positivism and a SOM dismissing of values as somehow subjective and contaminating science, whereas values are always present even if unacknowledged.
But some scientists are more free of these particular prejudices than others. Other prejudice is the idea that higher level must be reducible to lower ones, for which there is little evidence for as the philosopher of science John Dupre argues in 'The Disorder of Things'. [Krimel] I agree on the whole with Jorge and have said or at least hinted at the same points many times. Even if you look at anthropology the field Pirsig attacks most directly you see that Dussenbury, his archetypal outcast, did get his degree and did get published. I have a copy of his dissertation on the Montana Cree. Also about the time ZMM was published Castaneda's pseudo-science was being accepted as the real deal in anthropological circles. Even though it turned out to be a hoax, it did have an impact on the practice of participant observation in the field. Poor anthropology, even Margret Mead's work turns out to be based on a hoax. Those guys got lots of 'splainin' to do. I see Jorge and I are finally synced up on our time frame which is good. The point is that materialism is not what it once was. Determinism is probabilistic not absolute. I think in ZMM Pirsig was a bit ahead of the curve in trying to reconcile the classic and romantic worldviews. I read this as an injunction for the romantics to get over themselves and understand science as a form of creativity. It is hard to understand how he fell behind in Lila. I do not agree with Jorge that specialization within a particular discipline is an antidote for missing what is going on. Rather I think it contributes to the problem when experts confine themselves to narrow fields of study. I am heartened by what seems to be a growing tendency toward interdisciplinary studies such as the collaboration of computer scientists, psychologists and philosophers of mind in the cognitive sciences. Also I disagree with David M in our usually yeah, but... sort of way. To my way of think the scientific view is not so much "value-free" as "regardless of value". Scientists are attempting to isolate patterns of value that hold regardless of what the observer thinks. In other words certain outputs are likely to result from certain inputs whether we like it or not. The cautions of positivism against the interjection of personal values into research are not without foundation. I have noted Castaneda and Meade and would add the 'intelligent design' crew to highlight to negative impact of finding what we want to find. While it is true that scientists of necessity adopt some point of view it strikes me as more of a meta-point of view or perhaps a provisional point of view than as a critical fault. I also disagree that reductionism is a problem since it seems rather central to the whole enterprise of looking for a set (ideally a set of one) principles that underlie and unify our understanding. I tend to see reduction as the flip side of emergence in that, complex relationships and patterns emerge from underlying simplicity. In other words, balance at lower, simpler levels allows more subtle relationships to emerge. I would add that I think that in the end a theory of everything is more likely to come from evolutionary theory and or information theory, than from physics. Jorge hints at this in his comments where it has been shown that thermodynamics is a special case of information theory and that information entropy is identical with thermodynamic entropy. 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/
