William James on the Beeb

This was an excellent In Our Time … a discussion on William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience”. Elevating James to the position of the only philosopher that Wittgenstein looked up to.

Telling I feel, how Melvyn struggles when asking the god question, questions within questions, in this religious context.

Loved the caricature at the end in discussing Wittgenstein’s love of James, of seeing the 20th century struggle between the dominance of logic (Russell) winning out over something more than logic (James), yet being signs of a revival of the latter. And earlier the idea of scientists being in the grip of scientistic dogma.

I often wonder if Russell ever got Wittgenstein, but I digress. Time for James and the US pragmatists.

Dave Buchanan over on MoQ-Discuss:

I’m gonna listen to it again. Damn! I thought I was an enthusiast but the guests really have me pumped up now. Did I hear that right? The greatest American philosopher ever? Is that what he said?

I’d like the future of philosophy to revolve around one crucial question for the next few centuries: Who was the greatest, Pirsig or James?

James said something like, “the most important thing about a philosopher is his vision”. He was talking about one’s whole way of seeing, of taking life rather than positions on this or that particular thing. In that sense, I think Pirsig and James offer the same vision.

Something more than logic. James knew his way of doing things would mean of loss of rigor and exactitude, and that’s not the price we pay for what he wanted so much as part of what he wanted. He and Pirsig both think rationality is hollow and brittle without some soul in it, some feeling. Not pasted on but in the roots of our conceptions. Pirsig is making his case against the backdrop of a technological society but James was living in the age of Darwin and positivism. They both began in the sciences and then turned to philosophy.

Cameron Egoistic Start

Yeah, great Mr Cameron, man of the people, dispense with outriders – brilliant – be the hero yourself, tighten “your” belt.

It’s not about you, you bloody dipstick, it’s about the Prime Minister, the institution of the head of the UK government, we’ d like it to get where we need it when we need it and not lose it (and innocent bystanders as collateral damage) before the next election.

Bloody ego. What a start. What do they teach people at Eton ? I thought these people were groomed to lead ? Still chinless wonders after all.

Pirsig Connection

I don’t read any more than coincidence into this, but spooky none-the-less,

I’ve been in Oslo, around 20 months so far, and have been aware, from mentions by colleagues, of a bar on the other side of town, Grønland on the east side, we live in Majorstua on the west side. The place is Olympen (or Lompa to its friends) … originally a traditional Oslo Brun Cafe, but famous for keeping a great selection of Norwegian and imported beers – hundreds of them, though only a handful on draft. I’ve even walked past the place a handful of times, visting the ethnic shops in Grønland for spices, teas, etc, but visited the place only very recently, 3 times the last week or ten days. (Does great food too.)

Anyway, I was talking to an(other) engineer / project manager at the bar, discussing the engineering / ingenuity / quality angle – she was bemoaning male prejudice and the irony of the classical objectivity impression that engineering has. And the (Brit / brewer) barman having worked out what I liked – by trial and error, you understand – brought up a bottled beer and said, “Here, try this one.”

It was Red Seal Ale from the North Coast Brewery in Mendocino Co, CA (!) Of course I said instantly, that’s weird, do you guys know Pirsig ? (They didn’t as it happens, so I had to explain the significance of the climactic scenes on the Mendocino bluff / cliff-tops. In fact that particular brewery is about as close to the scene as it’s possible for a brewery to be, alongside Fort Bragg, just north of Caspar, now that is spooky.)

Anyway probably because of that I picked-up my first-edition / first-impression copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM) on Sunday and started an umpteenth re-read from the beginning – never actually “read” this particular copy – I have several.

Monday morning Christof sends me a link to his design/engineering and quality lecture video (never even been aware of it before now) – I post the link below.  This morning, Tuesday, on the way to work I’m reading towards the end of Part One of ZMM, about the never ending possibility of subdividing the classes of things in the world we perceive – Pirsig using his physical / functional / systematic breakdown of the eponymous motorcycle and Aristotle’s analytic knife to illustrate the dangerous illusion that creates.

This same morning a US colleague sends me a link overnight to a database of (tens of thousands of) distinct piping material components – as if to prove the point, part of our day job – and Bob (Pirsig) responds to yesterday’s post – a very rare event. My colleague here in Oslo, who overheard my exclamation (something less polite than “Good Heavens”), now wants to borrow the book. He’d not heard of it either. Dilemma – to loan the prized first edition … or bring in another copy tomorrow ? … but he’s on holiday after today for almost two weeks ….. aaagghh!

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Post Note : And ….

the brand of beer the travellers refresh themselves with early in Part 2 … Olympia

Hailstorm Kills Hundreds

Stop press (1200 years ago) … never heard of this before. (via Rivets)

And with Rivets one is never enough, so this is nice too, if completely different.

Oh, and I couldn’t resist this one, chemical weapons in the bedroom !

Quality of Engineering

Very interesting talk from Christof Bartneck at TU/e (Technical University of Eindhoven) explaining Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ) in simple design and engineering terms.

As an engineer I might have used the word engineering as much as he used the word design, (and he says in the Q&A session he doesn’t make a real distinction here) but I like the simplified common terminology (in parenthesis) and the venn diagram showing design in the same space as quality overlapping people and artefacts. Love the defence of engineers at the end … creativity in solving problems is the essence … in the root of the word “ingenious”, and the ingenuity means that the creativity is not necessarily visibly obvious to the naked eye.

Like the use of the word “explore” too … really brings out the qualitative / direct participation aspect so much better than generalizing the word research beyond specific scientific methodologies.

Also like the focus on the qualitative choices ahead of scientific methods … wonder if Nick Maxwell, philosopher of science, is on his radar ?

Working With Your Hands

Interesting to see Matthew Crawford’s “Shop Class as Soulcraft” published in Europe as “The Case for Working with your Hands”, and reviewed here in The Irish Times.

It was the working with your hands lyric from Lamb Lies Down on Broadway that came to mind when I reviewed the US edition just about a year ago. (And followed-up on later reading.)

Thanks to Henry for forwarding the link.

Where were you ?

When you first heard Nessun Dorma ? Nope, not the world cup / championships / olympics / whatever, watching The Killing Fields, that’s where. Nice touch where Sydney just turns up the volume to bring it from incidental background to explicit foreground.

Rewatched on DVD over the weekend. Don’t know whether it was a director’s extended cut, but the balance was quite different to my earlier recollection. The killing-fields sequences are actually quite brief – enough to shock – but most of the film is the interpersonal responsibility and cameraderie of the groups of multi-national  journalists helping each other out, and later Pran taking care of the young son of one of the Khmer’s factional leaders as he escapes.

In fact the words trust and (nothing to) forgive stuck in the later episodes, even the US engagement in Cambodia is treated as a pragmatic tactic of war. The naive doctrine of the Khmer – anyone old enough to remember pre-revolutionary life is part of the problem – is clear and briefly dealt with. The cheesiest moment has to be the irony of being helped by the young guy who remembers being given the iconic Mercedes star. John Malkovic (great character BTW) returns to voice Sydney’s responsibilty.

And, I didn’t even recall the somewhat cheesey use of Lennon’s Imagine in the closing scenes. Maturing with age, the viewer that is.

Faith in the Golden Rule

Do as you would be done by.

I don’t think Karen Armstrong actually mentions “god” in this 20 minute prizewinning TED talk from 2008 (with 2009 updates) on the Abrahamic monotheistic religions.  The resultant charter and a promotional film. Passed me by in real time, but very interesting and positive.

Looked up Karen Armstrong as a result of (Third Wave) Dave Thomas reference to her 1994 book “A History of God – The 4000 year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam“. Must add that to Jo Campbell’s “Masks of God” which I’ve still not read yet.

[Post Note – re-watching this, I recall the particular application of the golden rule to others, to strangers, to “know” strangers – reminded me of the Greek/Homeric tradition described in Boyd’s “Origin of Stories” …. and in fact Armstrong mentions “The Illiad” in this talk.]

Plaque Honours Pirsig

Here’s one for those Pirsig Pilgrims. I heard today from Montana State University that a commemorative plaque has been installed right outside the President’s office in Montana Hall, where Pirsig taught from ’59 to ’61. Some ceremony is anticipated later in the year.

What a Disaster

At so many levels ? For the industry and for BP, not to mention the dead and injured as well as the obvious environmental effects. Deepwater Horizon was ABS classified.

What I can’t figure is why, if the leak is so well defined at the sea bed, and sufficiently concentrated to be corralled at the surface (to burn it) why it can’t be sucked-up, or captured in huge floating “bags” – like filling a hot-air ballon by natural convection (?) then the water-oil mix shipped away to be separated ? Must be scope for better future emergency devices. Do BOP’s ever work when you need them ?  Not my specialist area, but …

(BTW that’s actually Alabama, Mobile Bay, where Florida is indicated on the map.)

Post Note : And more leaks / five times worse than originally believed.

Still glad to see the engineers are working on better solutions – similar to my suggestion above … a dome over the top and … suck. Better late than never, and there’s always the next time.

Engineers are believed to be working on a dome-like device to cover oil rising to the surface and pump it to container vessels but it may be weeks before this is in place.

[Post Note : these junk-shots and top-hats are of course not new approaches to such sub-sea blow-outs. They are normal early attempts until proper intercept relief wells can be drilled, but these take time. Thanks to Alex for the old news links. Remember the disaster has already occurred at this point, not just a blow-out but a failure of multiple BOP’s, both preventable. There was in fact a much more recent and even more similar well blow-out in the North Sea only months before Deepwater – documented in the later reports – also inexplicably not communicated to the Macondo crew and management.]