MDers,
The following three quotes from Lila are representative of
Pirsig's sceptical view of the independence of science from society. I've
lifted the quotes from posts by Rick and David B, where they appeared.
I'll look more closely at these quotes and explain that this independence,
or lack thereof, can be confusing if we don't make a distinction between
society's role in enabling science to function, and society's role in
deriving scientific results. Also the validity of applying these claims
to all areas of science is questioned, as well as Pirsig's justification
for putting science at the intellectual level if he really believes
what he says here.
1)"Once this political battle is resolved, the MOQ can then go back and re-ask
the question, just exactly how independent is science, in fact, from
society? The answer it gives is, 'not at all'. A science in which social
patterns are of no account is as unreal and absurd as a society in which
biological patterns are of no account. It's an impossibility." P299
2)"Our scientific description of nature is always culturally derived." ... "If
Descartes had said, 'The 17th century French culture exists, therefore I
think, therefore I am,' he would have been correct." P299
3)"The intellectual level of patterns... has tended to invent a myth of
independence from the social level for its own benefit. Science and reason,
this myth goes, come only from the objective world, never the social world.
The world of objects imposes itself upon the mind with no social mediation
whatsoever. It is easy to see the historic reasons for this myth of
independence. Science might never have survived without it. But a close
examination shows it isn't so (p179)."
In quote 1, Pirsig says that, according to the MOQ, science is completely
dependent on society. Then he says that if science took no account of
social patterns, science would not exist. This is true in the sense that
for the institution of science to function, it depends on a healthy,
advanced society. It depends on the social pattern of funding for research
and a socially agreed upon pattern called honesty (so you don't fudge the
data). It means that science could not function well in a hand-to-mouth
society where you don't have any free time to think rationally and explore
the natural world. So the 'means' of science depend on society. There is
nothing earth-shaking or controversial about this. But do the 'ends' of
science depend on society or culture? Are the laws of physics derived from
culture?
In quote 2, Pirsig says yes, they always are. To back this up he claims
that Descartes could not have thought properly without 17th century French
culture. I object to this argument, not because I think this statement is
false (though it may be), but because it's irrelevent to the point he's
trying to make. Here he's only particularizing the valid point he made
in quote 1: that French culture is an enabler for rational thought. This argument isn't compelling enough to show that the 'ends' of science are
culturally derived, which is what he claims. Descartes did important work
in analytic geometry, for example. Does this mean analytic geometry has a
certain Frenchness about it? Has another society come up with a competing
variety of analytic geometry that is more derivative of its culture? No.
In quote 3, as with quote 2, Pirsig is again talking about scientific
conclusions being derived by or mediated from the social level.
He says science's independence from the social world is a myth. A close
examination, he says, shows the independence is false and he hints that
the myth was perpetuated by scientists as a conspiratorial survival ploy.
Pirsig's close examination amounts to arguing that all the objects in
the universe, from the moon to dinosaur bones, have to first be 'socially
mediated' and that therefore, presumably, scientific objectivity is
impossible.
This is a postmodern attitude that doesn't apply equally to all domains
of science. It certainly applies to fields like anthropology but hardly
at all, or not at all, to physics and chemistry. What possible social
pattern could be at work that would mediate our observations of water
molecules, for example? None I can think of. Pirsig offers no salient
examples. Luckily there are a few people in the world who not only
believe scientific descriptions of nature are culturally derived, but
will give an example and tell you why. Consider what Luce Irigaray, the
French feminist pomo intellectual, has to say about Einstein's famous
equation in an essay she wrote in 1987:
Is E=mc^2 a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis
that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other
speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate
the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by
nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest..."
Irigaray apparently thinks Einstein bowed to a gender-motivated
consideration and chose the fastest speed available for his
equation because men have a sexual fixation about speed (fast cars,
fast women). One gets the impression from Irigaray that a more sensible,
everyday speed would have been chosen for the equation if a woman had
derived it (with the happy side-effect that less terrible bombs would
be fashioned by its application). I'm not necessarily saying Pirsig has
the same level of ignorance about physics as Irigaray, but I wonder about
it.
I also wonder about Pirsig's justification for putting science at the
intellectual level if he really believes what he says in these quotes.
Pirsig says that patterns in a level depend on patterns that reside in
levels below it, and that the higher level patterns got to be where they
are because they grew away from their lower level patterns and took on
independent purposes. It strikes me as odd then that he would put science
in the intellectual level, the penultimate level of static existence, and
then implicitly argue that its place there is unjustified. Why do I say
this?
Pirsig, as I've tried to show above, argues that science depends on the
social level not only for its 'means' but also for its 'ends'. All
patterns depend on its lower level for its 'means', but Pirsig mentions
no pattern depending on its lower level patterns for its 'ends', except
science. How could science depend on lower level patterns for its 'ends'
and still be called a higher level pattern? How could a science based on
a socially derived choice for 'c' in E=mc^2 (if you could believe that) be
justified as intellectual, as breaking away from the social? I don't think
it could. If Pirsig justifies science at the intellectual level because
he thinks at least *some* data and evidence come from the objective world
or can be reasonably objectively obtained, he doesn't say.
Glenn
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