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Picked-up from an anonymous hit on the blog, I found this link between Rorty and Pirsig. Including the following from Rorty [Quote] At fifteen I escaped … by going off to the so-called “Hutchins College” of the University of Chicago. (This was the institution immortalized by A. J. Liebling as “the biggest collection juvenile neurotics since the Childrens’ Crusade.”) … I was very confused, but reasonably sure that at Chicago I would find out how grown-ups managed to work the trick I had in mind. When I got to Chicago (in 1946), I found that Hutchins, together with his friends Mortimer Adler and Richard McKeon (the villain of Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [ZAMM]), had enveloped the University of Chicago in a neo-Aristotelian mystique. The most frequent target of their sneers was John Dewey’s pragmatism. [Unquote] From a 1993 essay by Rorty entitled “Wild Orchids and Trotsky”. Seems McKeon’s group was already notorious, as Pirsig discovers while researching and contemplating choosing philosophy as his Chicago PhD subject in the mountains of Montana during the summer of 1961. [“at fifteen” ?? does that make Rorty another child prodigy ? Still haven’t finished The Mirror of Nature yet BTW. Enjoying William James at present.]

Without detracting from the power of ZAMM it does tend to re-inforce critics of Pirsig’s narrow view of philosophies available to him at the time. Evidence is that not until after ZAMM did he discover or at least consider pragmatists, through Williams James, much influenced by Peirce and Dewey, not to mention Nietzsche and the existentialists. Clearly the skewed environment he found himself in at Chicago locked him into that ancient greek debate between the Socratic rhetorical and Aristotelian logical views.

Unless Pirsig set out to deceive us with his apparent ignorance of philosophers which had in fact influenced him, it makes his original thoughts in ZAMM and Lila all the more impressive.

Don’t ask.

Google Toolbar Installed – Neat little toolbar from Google, now includes BlogThis from Blogger.

BTW Blogger is improving rapidly since acquisition by Google. Features are still behind heavyweights like Moveable Type, Radio and Drupal, but the convenience and responsiveness of support is dare I say quite impressive. Keep it up EvHead and the guys.

Pirsig Pages Update – I’ve added a significant update to my Pirsig pages to include a link to my new map of the ZAMM route. (It’s a frames page, to enable a changing information panel as you move across each of the points en-route, but I think I’ve done the decent thing and ensured all links spawn new browsers so no-one should get trapped.)

Incidentally I’ve spent a good deal of time recovering from MS-Office version 9, which adds a tremendous amount of redundant garbage to simple web pages if you make the mistake of editing a page using (say) Word. It appears Office-XP shows some real promise of intelligent use of XML with reference schemas et al, but in this current form it really would be better manners if it checked with the user if this MS controlled schema and style-sheeting stuff were actually required.

Tell us something we didn’t know. This just in – politics is a cynical business apparently. A review in the Grauniad of Mark Curtis “Web of Deceit“. [via Jorn] Documented evidence is always handy though.

More evidence of the power of metaphor too, linking this to the current WMD spat between government spin-doctor Campbell and the BBC ? It is no coincidence that spin and web both speak of deception. Web’s are spun to trap the unwary – the antidote is not to be outraged at the spin, but to be aware of the web.

Story of the Alexandria Library – A pet interest of mine, blogged earlier. [via Jorn]

Rhiz-O-Mat and Post-Modernists – On-line resource on Deleuze and Guattari’s “Anti-Oedipus”. [via Rivets] Also this “Everything Post-Modern“site on Post-Modernist resources.

Intentional Metaphors Mislead – Eureka Alert [via Jorn]. Naive story, but useful documented evidence of (a) metaphors are all there is, (b) anthropomorphic metaphors can be particularly misleading, and (c) no-one ever said anything without intent anyway, not even a “scientist”, whatever one of those is.

The Future’s Bright #2 – Hands up if you’re glad to be bright, wave if you’re happy you’re right, hey !

Are you a “Bright” ? Not sure about this one yet, but an interesting concept none-the-less. [via Dawkins in the Grauniad] [via Rivets].

Two quotes from the Columbia Dictionary of Quotations via Quantonics earlier this year …

Theodore Roosevelt in 1917 (after Victoria – I know) “The things that will destroy [us] are: prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first ….”

Walter Bagehot in 1872 “The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards. A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy . . . is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.”