[MD] S/O and Morality

[Jorge Goldfarb]

   A personal note on critical reading:
   
     My digests in this thread may have given the impression that I am unduly critical of Pirsig's views on the role of objectivity in advancing knowledge. That was not my intention and this note is an attempt to clarify my position. 
   
      When critically reading books like Z&AMM and Lila one should try to avoid considering isolated paragraphs as 'parts' but to attempt to consider them as 'components' of a whole or unity, conformed by the books and opinions that the writer may have expressed elsewhere. 
   
        Taken as isolated, paragraphs like:
   
  "Subject-object science is only concerned with 
  facts. Morals have no objective reality. You can look through a microscope 
  or telescope or oscilloscope for the rest of your life and you will never 
  find a single moral. There aren't any there." 
  "From the perspective of a subject-object science, the world is a 
  completely purposeless, valueless place. There is no point in anything. 
  Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Everything just functions, like machinery"
   
      may appear as a gross distortion of subject-object Science and nothing wrong in trying to straighten it.  Objectivity in Science has proved itself as a right attitude for enquiry into the physical world and is responsible, in no small part, for the colossal (no other word for it) achievements of Science in the last hundred years. But to infer from this successful application of the S/O distinction,  that it is is the best approach for enquiring into Everything is totally unwarranted. In my reading of Pirsig's books it looks like paragraphs like the above and others of the sort  represent a reaction against that unwarranted extension to other fields of enquiry, in particular the so-called "Social Sciences". 
   
        An objective consideration of  phenomena observed in, say, polymer solutions, appears to be the proper attitude when doing scientific research and, as said, has proved itself as such. But to think that this is also the proper and only attitude when considering 'phenomena' in school children's behaviour or the mores of Amazonian tribes is groundless thinking. 
   
      Reading about Pirsig's indignation about the turn taken by American Anthropology under the influence of Boas and his disciples  his attacks on the role of objectivity in Science are seen in another light. Perhaps he over-generalises and his wording is too strong, but this could be forgiven in writers coming out against what they consider threatening trends in their culture;  carefully worded sentences do not easily impact the public at large which is what the writer may intend. 
   
         "The trouble with the objective approach --Dusenberry said-- is that you don't learn much that way" 
   
     which taken as isolated, out of context, might look ludicrous because in Science we have learnt quite a lot 'that way' . But Dusenberry wasn't talking about Chemistry or Biology, he was talking about Anthropology and in this he seemed to be right indeed. Not only in Anthropology, but also in Sociology or Psychology and the rest of the "Social Sciences", to use Dusenberry's  wording, we "haven't learnt much" and the objective approach is in no small measure responsible for the  present muddle in those fields. 
   
          One cannot, of course, be sure that, by considering the Observer as part of a system instead of out of it, those disciplines may have done more progress. However, looking in retrospect, what we have learnt in, say,  Psychology from the 'objective' study of behaviour of white mice in controlled laboratory conditions is insignificant compared to what we learnt from such 'unscientific' approaches as those of Freud or Jung. (And similar examples abound).
   
       I cannot claim to be familiar with the American scene but, from what I've been told, the trend that Pirsig attempted to chastise has entrenched itself firmly in academic institutions and especially so during the present Administration. Studies such as those of O.Lewis on the Culture of Poverty would have been dismissed today as not being 'scientific' enough and, surely, old C. Castaneda would be condemned to teach in an out of the way prep school.
    Viewed in the context of the whole, objectivity is indeed objectionable when considered as the only, exclusive, attitude in learning about man in society but, because of  the role it has played in other fields of enquiry, it doesn't deserve to be thrown overboard. 

       
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