Mary and Squad:
Mary: Its just before you face the humanists on Sunday. I hope to take a
stab at the SOM part of your presentation. You asked for some examples
of SOM problems and that's just about where my "sermon" left off.
Thanks for suggesting this as a topic, by the way. It has produced some
really great stuff.
But where's Bodvar? I miss Bodvar.
The Copernican revolution is more than just a good analogy for Pirsig's
metaphysical revolution. Pirsig sort of "hunts down" the SOM problem and
its origins by taking a survey of philosophy through history, but the
SOM problem can be illustrated by the scientific revolution. It tells
the story of what went wrong in common-sense terms. I think Copernicus
is a real turn on for most humanists. Many already have an at-home alter
that's centered around a large black-light poster of Copernicus - in the
nude. Or at least they've heard of him. :-)
Pirsig is critical of the scientific world-view that has come to
dominate Western societies, but not as some irrational member of the
Flat Earth Society. His criticism is as a philosopher of science. He
refers to technology quite often in ZMM. These references are
essentially about how individuals and society are effected by the
present scientific world-view. For our purposes, this dominant
scientific view can be seen as synonymous with the SOM view. For the
sake of simplicity, this way of explaining SOM leaves the Ontological
and Epistemological discussions for later, focusing on the Cosmology
instead.
In 1473, when Copernicus was born, literate Europeans had a completely
different conception of the universe. Earth, water, air and fire were
the four elements and our planet was at the center of the universe. The
stars moved on crystalline spheres and the entire cosmos was a much,
much smaller place.
If you compare the 15th century view with Newton's or Einstein's
universe in strictly scientific terms, there's no contest. The was no
such thing as the scientific method or the scientific world view in the
time of Copernicus. He was astrologer to the King and wasn't even trying
to be "scientific".
All doctrines and philosophy of the time were products of the Church and
its wishes, not rational or empirical investigation. The world view of
the Middle Ages was forged by monks and preists, not scientists. In
spite of strict control by the church, the intellectual independence of
the ancient philosophers was admired and help up as an ideal. Under the
Church's guidence, the age of scholasticism produced an entire cosmology
based on Aristotelian logic and physics and Christian theology. This
synthesis of physics and theology was an elaborate house of cards,
carefully developed over hundreds of years.
The discoveries of astrologers had the effect of pulling out the most
crucial card. Its no accident that the scientific revolution and
industrail revolutions were accompanied by disaster (dis-aster means
"bad star" in latin) in the social realm. The church has lost its
authority in every realm, except the theological and science has
construed all "legitimate" human knowledge as amoral and objective.
In an attempt to free the intellect from superstition and prejudice, the
scientific method was not only rational and empirical, it was designed
to be entirely free of social controls. The scientific method was to be
"objective" and free of all "subjective" beliefs. Seemed like a great
idea at the time. And people really started believeing in science more
as they saw all the wealth and progress it seemed to produce. Today we
take the scientific world view for granted. We're very used to thinking
of reality as an infinite number of objects and they can be
scientifically described. This is fine as long as the object under
scientific examination has no subjective qualities, like a rock or a
star, or a rock star. But can we be amoral and objective if were are
interested in the social sciences? Can we conduct a value free
investigation of morals and ethics? Can a doctor simply put on a white
lab coat and pretend to be emotionally detached from the suffering of
the patient?
Amoral objectivity has produced the hydrogen bomb, murder on an
industrial scale and countless other insanities. The human intellect was
freed by the scientific revolution and our understanding has increased
as a result, but out intellect has so few social controls that it has
lost touch with that part of reality. The SOM intellect has wandered so
far from home that she's forgotten she ever had one.
Mary: I've disappointed myself with this one and am out of time. But
will send it anyway just in case.
David B.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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