Hi Glenn, Hamish, Ed, Jon and all:
GLENN:
I find it interesting that you guys keep bringing up examples
showing how scientists and mathematicians used intuition,
creativity, and morals in their work. I keep agreeing and yet you
find more examples and I still keep agreeing. What gives?
What gives is you�re attack on Pirsig for having a �personal
vendetta against science� which is simply untrue. In fact, he
praises science for its built-in recognition of Dynamic Quality:
PIRSIG:
But scientific truth has always contained an overwhelming
difference from theological truth: it is provisional. Science always
contains an eraser, a mechanism whereby new Dynamic insight
could wipe out old static patterns without destroying science itself.
Thus science, unlike orthodox theology, has been capable of
continuous, evolutionary growth . . . That�s the whole thing: to
obtain static and Dynamic Quality simultaneously. If you don�t have
the static patterns of scientific knowledge to build upon you�re
back with the cave man. But if you don�t have the freedom to
change those patterns you�re blocked from any further growth.
(Lila, Chap. 17)
What Pirsig objects to is the attempt by anthropologists (and
intellectuals) to use the scientific paradigm of amoral objectivity to
understand and change society.
PIRSIG:
Objects of scientific study are supposed to hold still. They�re
supposed to follow the laws of cause and effect in such a way that
a given cause will always have a given effect, over and over again.
Man doesn�t do this. (Lila, Chap. 4)
Glenn agrees with Pirsig on this point.
GLENN:
When you move up to studying human cultures, you find they don�t
fit into a petri dish. There are too many variables in a culture, and
you can�t make all of them sit still long enough so you can change
one variable to see the effect it has. (Post of 29 Jul)
Attempting to apply the methods of science to society is where the
trouble began, according to Pirsig. Common moral values are
what holds a society together. But science doesn�t recognize
moral values. Science is objective. Lest there be any doubt about
the moral-free nature of science as held by its practioners, here is
part of a conversation that arose during a panel discussion on
consciousness, as reported on the Web at www.closertotruth.com:
ROBERT (a brain researcher and author, acting as moderator)
But doesn�t your argument confuse morality with reality? My
opinion�which I do give from time to time�is that it doesn�t
matter what science produces. Results are irrelevant; truth is
amoral.
CHARLES (professor of psychology emeritus, University of
California)
You�re putting me in a box where I�m not going to let you put me,
Robert. I have nothing against science, and I don�t attribute bad
things in the world to science�I never have. What people do with
the truths discovered by science is a matter of morality and
intelligence.
Of course, science is no more moral-free than any other
intellectual pattern. (A built-in assumption of any pattern is that it�s
better than another.) But as seen above, if you�re of a scientific
mind, you�ll try like the devil to keep morality and the discovered
truths of science (indeed, reality itself) eternally apart. You must
take umbrage (as Charles does) at the slightest hint that you
might be judgmental.
Little harm was done to society so long as science kept it�s
assumed separation of �morality from reality� restricted to studying
the physical and biological realms. But when amoral scientific
objectivity was used by intellectuals to battle and ultimately defeat
Victorian morality, the result was the whirlwind we are reaping
today.
What �whirlwind?� Funny you should ask , for just yesterday a
syndicated column appeared in our local paper written by Leonard
Pitts, Jr., an African-American liberal pundit:
PITTS, JR:
If it�s true that Elvis� hips represent a victory by the forces of
progress, amity and good rockin� tonight, it�s also perversely true
that we�ve been hobbled by that victory ever since. More to the
point, that victory is part of the reason pop culture fell into the toilet
sometime in the last generation. And that instead of climbing out,
it�s doing the backstroke. Indeed, that it swims proudly in matters
excretory, masturbatory, penile, puerile, bigoted and foul. From the
potty-mouthed tykes of �South Park� to the hateful gay-bashing of
rapper Eminem to the lewd butt worshiping of the music video
channels, it�s become nearly impossible to absorb popular
culture without absorbing slop that would embarrass a pig . . . We
ought to understand by now that taste is, by definition, subjective; I
may draw the line in a different place than you. But here�s the
question: What happens when no one has the guts to draw the
line anywhere? We�re finding the answer now, and it not pretty.
We�ve become a people too cool to take offense, too jaded for
questions of decency and so filled with attitude that we disconnect
from our own feelings, our own barometers of right and wrong. We
took the wrong lessons from Elvis� hips. And we�re getting the pop
culture we deserve.
Mr. Pitts ascribes the cause of the present sorry state of society to
a lack of �guts.� Pirsig attributes the cause to the pervasiveness
of amoral objectivity in our thought patterns, spun off from the
scientific paradigm. Of the two causes, Pirsig�s is by far the more
profound.
I will even go further than Pirsig in saying that there are other
reasons why scientific ideology holds dangers to a free society.
First, science deals in stereotypes. It doesn�t worry about
exceptions and individual cases. In dissecting a frog it cares not a
wit about that frog�s unique qualities. A frog is a frog is a frog.
Second, science favors systems analysis where the system (its
behavior and emergent properties) is far more important than its
individual parts. With science so often promoting the collectivist
view it�s little wonder that socialism appeals to many.
No one, least of Pirsig, argues that science hasn�t been
successful in discovering truths about the physical and biological
worlds and providing for our material wants and needs. But by its
very success, we�ve come to believe it can solve all our problems.
Scientists have become the high priests of our age, telling us
what and what not to believe. All one need do these days to be
taken seriously is to say, �According to a scientific study . . . � Such
unquestioning faith hides the seeds of eventual destruction, as
many previous civilizations learned to their sorrow.
Platt
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