From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 05 2003 - 04:28:11 GMT
Glenn, Horse,
I thought of something that might help elaborate on what I think is happening.
We all agree that criticism of science is good. Sure, fairly trivial
claim. Glenn continues the thought with saying that Pirsig "belittles"
science, something different from criticism. Horse wants evidence. Well,
Horse, I have to be fairly inclined to agree with Glenn, in the way that
from the standpoint of scientism, Pirsig does belittle science (i.e. takes
down a peg or two, makes its cultural ego smaller so its the same size as
other disciplines) for all the reasons I gave in my post from before (e.g.
Pirsig's attack on logical positivism). That is the way it looks from his
position. I think the best thing we can do, Horse, as sympathizers of
Pirsig and romanticized, Kuhnian science, is to redescribe what this
belittlement translates into once we adopt Pirsig's viewpoint. It turns
into cultural ego adjustment.
I would like to think of this case between Glenn and Pirsig as another case
of recontextualization. The only thing Glenn or Pirsig sympathizers can do
to make their case look better is to describe why their view will be more
beneficial, better. Horse and I are betting on Pirsig. Glenn's betting on
scientism. (Granted, scientism is a perjorative, but I haven't picked up
anything else to call Glenn's position. I have others at my disposal
(Husserl's project, Russell's, Carnap's, to name a few), but I don't know
how Glenn would feel about that and he might get the wrong idea.) But I
don't see as though argumentation is going to see us through this. Just
redescriptions.
Matt
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