Pirsig’s ZMM in Environmental Engineering & Science Newsletter

Vol 36 No.3 Presidents Letter September 2001

[QUOTE]
The historical bifurcation of technical and liberal education may result in technological “advances” that are not always well-informed or in the long-term, best interest of society. Pirsig in the neo-classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, points to a possible cause, “What’s wrong with technology is that it’s not connected in any real way with matters of the spirit and of the heart. And so it does blind, ugly things quite by accident and gets hated for that.”

Historically we have “trained” engineers in very narrow vocationally oriented disciplines ready to be “productive” on the job as soon as they graduate. Indeed, Woodrow Wilson relegated the “skilful servant of society along mechanical lines” to the non-ruling class. “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class to forgo the privilege of a liberal education.”

Fortunately, history is not destiny and Pirsig provides a ray of hope. “The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.”
[UNQUOTE]

Domenico Grasso, President AEE&S, Sept 2001

Fortunately, history is not destiny
and Pirsig provides a ray of hope.

(Another engineer sees Pirsig as a ray of hope. See my plea about the “engineering” skills needed to get a planeload of anthropologists airborne in my review of Dawkins’ Devil’s Chaplain too.)

Quality – Truth and Beauty ?

Quality – Truth and Beauty ? Interesting exchange here started when Ray Kurzweil initiated a Mind eXchange thread in Jan 2002 on “Why is beauty making a comeback”. Someone points out that Pirsig’s “quality” is what they are talking about, whilst another (ironically fortunately) suggests that neither is on-topic for a thread on AI. Many a true word spoken in irony.

Thinking out of the box

Struck by this quote from Salman Rushdie’s Ground Beneath Her Feet, 1999 [Quote] But Sir Darius Xerxes Cama wasn’t listening. He was standing at the great window of the library, staring out at the Arabian Sea. “The only people who see the whole picture,” he murmured, “are the ones who step out of the frame.” [Unquote]. Via Jonathan Marder writing in MOQ Focus.

The reason it struck me is Pirsig has a similar liking of stepping out of the frame too [Quote from ZAMM Chapter 1] In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. [Unquote] See also my comment on Paul Kelly’s blog about the fact that I drive a convertible car !

Zen Driving Technique

Blogged earlier about Gimbo driving over the second Severn river crossing “in a zen-like state”. Robbie just reminded me that DNA’s Holistic Detective Dirk Gently used the Zen driving technique – following the driver in front on the assumption that he knew where he was going and that it was probably a place worth going to. (The catch being that if there is no one in front you must apply the rule to the person behind ?)

That Baloney Generator

That Baloney Generator – This was one of the items I also picked out in my review of Pinker. This link is to Searchlight an interesting Blog by cmac (?) at Chicago Uni. (Recently recommended list includes Lila !) David Gurteen also commented on the baloney generator. In Pinker’s words [Quote] The conscious mind — the self or soul — is a spin doctor, not the commander in chief.[Unquote]

Avoiding the Charybdis of Scientific Fundamentalism

Avoiding the Charybdis of Scientific Fundamentalism – A paper from Dr James Willis given to an audience of medical practitioners last year. Those of you following my blog will notice I’m working my way through James’ work and find that he voices the need to avoid the extremes of scientific fundamentalism as he calls it (hyper-rationalism as I’ve said) with a passion and humour born of hard-bitten experience. In our context here – don’t ever assume knowledge can be represented by some fixed ontology backed with numbers. (I’ve just obtained another of his books, Friend’s in Low Places.)

Where Has Quantum Computing Got To ?

I last rounded up on this stuff back here. And just before this I linked to the abstracts from Quantum Mind 2003 held in Tuscon, Arizona in March this year.

The original BCS Cybernetics Group stuff I linked to earlier is being taken forward in the CASYS’03 conference in Liege, Belgium in August under the title “The Universe, The Nothing That Is”. Sounds like the BCS emphasis is on Information Processing (QIP) in the sense of how the mind actually works, as opposed to the David Deutsch / Oxford-led commercial QuBit quest for creating computing devices based on Quantum effects, though this too seems to have expanded again in collaboration with Cambridge.

The title of one paper from John Wood (?) includes the words Quantum, Synergy and Quality – could that be quality in the monist Pirsig MOQ sense ?