All, Continuing on the trail of the intellect through the social world:
At this point this whole thread turns in my mind into a comic/tragic reality/farce. RMP spends two books tracing the history of the "Church of Reason" criticizing the ongoing consequences of using subject and object as the fundamental underlying premise Western philosophy and science. He proposed rejecting it and many still cling to it. I cannot see how anyone can reject the claim that human knowledge is not somehow tied up in the workings of the human brain, based on individual intelligence, experience, thinking about those experiences, and entering into conversations with other about them. I truly don't know whether to laugh or cry that after 15 years it is still the case with many still are unable or unwilling to accept RMP's rejection of SO premise or accept the most basic premise that experience is a basis for knowledge. Yet whole heartedly accept his quality premise which is predicated of acceptance of these claims. Then someone suggested to me that those most strongly attracted to Pirsig's work identify personally with his saga and view him as this ruggedly individualist "walking wounded" intellectual hero that society has ground down and thwarted at every turn. Whispering to themselves in effect, "Yea just like me!" Unfortunately our claims are true. And maybe in part RMP's are too. But for entirely different reasons. We probably just don't have the intellectual power and background in the first place necessary to tackle these issues on our own. Not that society can be held completely blameless. The whole history (myth in reality) of philosophy and science has been portrayed as the consequences of the thoughts of super smart named individuals like Socrates, Plato, on and on. And RMP bought into that myth pure and simple. Had he early on been to integrate himself into an appropriate group his contributions would probably been earlier and greater. What got me thinking this way was when Krimel (I think) raised the issue of RMP's apparent misunderstanding or lack of consideration in Lila with more recently progress in science particularly evolutionary sciences. While recently listening to the radio broadcasts that Marsha posted I heard the term "Science Wars" for the first time. My ignorance of them, while not excusable, might be understood given my nearly complete day to day focus on the practical matter of building. Given Pirsig's focus, however, that they should have started in 1962 with the publishing of Thomas Kuhn's, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and raged on during the whole time he was writing both his books with no mention is an indication IMHO of his isolation from the reality of what was going on in the fields he was talking about while researching and writing about them, particularly Lila. Why? Because the "Science Wars" were about the very same issues that Pirsig was trying to confront. Questions like "Do values that influence science?, "If so which ones and how?", "Is science and individual or group activity?" "Is theory or experiment more important?" All these and more raised for the first time in a serious way. But we read no mention of this in Lila. Conclusions or insights of these wars? Well they are still going on, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that all scientific and philosophical knowledge is filtered, warped, shaped, informed by social values and there is in fact not some pure form of objective, valueless, intellectual truth the S/O project supposed. That Good is as good as you get. All the broadcasts are good and help expand RMP's insights but this one: Episode 10 - Brian Wynne http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html#episode1 Best covers the history of the "Science Wars" IMHO. Dave > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of KAYE > PALM-LEIS Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2010 1:20 PM To: > [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] Intellect's Symposium 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/
