From: Jonathan B. Marder (jonathan.marder@newmail.net)
Date: Thu Nov 14 2002 - 14:48:55 GMT
Hi Sam,
SAM (quoting Pirsig)
No objective scientific instrument can distinguish a President of the
U.S. from anyone
else....
IMHO this is quite wrong. The simplest "scientific instrument" is human
observation. The are observable differences between the behaviour of
different bees in the beehive, nothing unscientific about that.
There are also observable differences in the behaviour of the alpha male
and other males in a group of apes.
Furthermore, if you were to film the US President with a group of
advisors, but blank out all the faces, I think that there would be still
be clear signs of which one was the President.
I think that Pirsig is falling for his own trap, by suggesting that
these differences are unscientific and not objective. You could probably
program a computer to find the President, which would thus make the
computer an "objective scientific instrument". However, I think this is
a red herring. As I first said in an essay on the forum (now rather
old), when we talk about scientific objectivity, in practice we mean
reproducibility. As long as the result is reproducible, it doesn't
matter if the detector is an instrument or a human observer.
Jonathan
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