Homeward-bound having been offline for a whole week on a trip to Bilbao via the Brittany Ferries service from Portsmouth. Overall a slower pace of life travelling this way and visiting the sights and tabernas of the Basque capital on foot, except for one longer trip by metro to the coastal resort at Plentzia. Gave me reading time to catch up on four part-read books.
Two from specifically Pirsig-related authors and two from the wider explicit complex adaptive systems space.
Pirsig-Related:
Brandon Mayfield’s (2024) “Grains of Destiny” I part reviewed earlier. I think it will become a topic of discussion for other Pirsig scholars and I won’t attempt a comprehensive review of the whole here.
Jim Ostby’s (2017) “Rat-Tail Curves” I’ve not mentioned previously. His Pirsig influences came much earlier than the rest of us reading his philosophy-infused road-trip (ZMM, 1974) and sailing-trip (Lila, 1991).
As a read Mayfield was engaging. Hard to put down in fact, Brandon has an interesting life-story to tell independent of whether Pirsig’s Montana / Yellowstone road-trip locations mean anything to you. His philosophical musings, are indeed Pirsig-influenced but come from his mid-western plains agricultural origins as well as his theological thread as both a practicing Muslim and as a scholar of the 17th century Iranian mystic (Sufi) philosopher Mulla Sadra – significantly later than the Islamic scholars that had already helped “the West” rediscover the ancient Greeks. Feels like a unique combination to write about. Fascinating in itself and recommended if for no other reason. Intentionally open, philosophically pragmatic and dogma-free.
Jim was a student from the time (1959/61) when Pirsig was an inexperienced and unorthodox English teacher in Bozeman, Montana. The influence is therefore on his writing, which Pirsig himself was moved to compliment in later correspondence with Ostby. Philosophically Jim is self-effacing in terms of his own intellectual grasp of any breadth and depth of the subject, but he’s not short of his own philosophical musings in terms of our collective inadequacy as decision-makers to address the 21st century poly-crises facing us. Primarily the naïve battle between religious-dogmas and science-informed rationality or dumb ignorance of either, plain and simple. The “demise of both rationality and humanity”. Readable and interesting for the Pirsig connection and whilst naturally pragmatic, not ground-breaking in terms of philosophical ideas. However dumb or smart we think we are, we need to care about what’s true and what’s good.
Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS):
Ikujiro Nonaka & Zhichang Zhu’s (2012) “Pragmatic Strategy – Eastern Wisdom, Global Success” was mentioned by in the comment thread discussion with Gerald Midgley on “Confluences” one of my follow-up posts from the Birmingham 2025 ISSS Conference.
Chris Mowles’ (2022) “Complexity, a Key Idea for Business and Society” – I mentioned in “Predictably Unpredictable” relating hearing Mowles for the first time to the rest of my complex adaptive systems agenda.
Both these books fall into the wishful “I could have written this” category. Enormous overlap in terms or sources read and written about and in concepts promoted. Also with that frustration of timing: 2012 and 2022 works on subjects I’ve been researching since 2001 and with shared management education experiences from 1980’s/90’s. A recurring frustration for me having “carried on with the day job” since that education rather than switching to the academic research stream. With hindsight everything I’ve researched and written in the 21st century was at the very least foreshadowed by the (1991) Master’s thesis. That’s 35 years ago! (Of course “CAS” is simply the latest evolving label for the subject area I’d always referred to as Cybernetics from my 2001 Psybertron perspective and dubbed “Psybernetics” more recently.) Anyway, enough about me.
The Jiro (Nonaka) and Zhu (2012) book describes their own convergence and collaboration since only 2007, as well as their comprehensively researched and referenced content. Despite markedly different careers from their different (Japanese and Chinese) “Eastern” origins they both consider themselves “Western” educated. Whilst seemingly leading with Pragmatism in their title, the content is almost exclusively based on the “Eastern” canon (Confucian and Daoist), in relation to “Western” management education and practice. Notably they refer to ‘East’ / ‘the East’ / ‘Eastern’ and ‘West’ / ‘the West’ / ‘Western’ in ‘scare-quotes’ throughout, acknowledging as I do that it’s about traditional origins, not about fixed definitive geo-political differences, imperial or otherwise. Indeed “situated” (I would say “embodied and situated”) is their primary characteristic of wisdom in any real world application.
Comprehensive is the right adjective, too much to summarise in any review. Well-crafted in terms of non-intrusive notes collected at the end as well as both reference bibliography and indexing. Key for me are the unexpected convergences on sources. Even from the 1980’s Master’s days – Pettigrew & Whipp, Argyris & Schon, Burrell & Morgan as well as the great and the good of Pragmatism and Process philosophies, who all recognised ‘Eastern’ influences in contrast to (in addition to) those of Aristotelian objective logic.
Chris Mowles’ (2022) refreshing book I already suggested had all bases covered just in his chapter headings. The read does not disappoint. Like Jiro and Zhu there’s a strong anti-Scientism (anti-Aristotelian) exclusively objective logical rationality thread. Obviously sophisticated science understands there’s more than narrow rationality when it needs to, but its public spokespeople are dishonest with their public, our public, in setting expectations for science in the real world of socio-politics. Again too many common references to list. (One criticism – notes are collated only at the end of each chapter, so their is no comprehensive bibliography of references nor even authors by surname in the general index, so much harder to reference after reading.) MacIntyre, Bergson, James, Peirce, Arendt and unexpectedly Solms …
Onwards and upward.
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