[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[David Thomas]

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


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