Jonathan B. Marder (marder@agri.huji.ac.il)
Fri, 15 May 1998 00:39:49 +0100
Hi Squad,
I'm a newcomer to the group. I've held back for a few days to see
what's going on in this discussion. I've read the archive on SOM (up to
20th April), and have received the postings of the last few days.
However, I'm missing anything which came in between. I hope therefore my
impatience isn't getting the better of me by my
jumping in here and hope my contribution is of VALUE.
Reality in science is established by collection of data. Reality is
represented IN the data. The data tell us all we ever know about
reality, so actually ARE reality. Sometimes reality doesn't appear to
make sense and we have to go out and collect some more reality!
Subject-Object metaphysics is based on the premise that there is one
reality (truth) which can be established by collecting enough data.
There are some real scientific problems with this:-
1. The data collection itself causes a disturbance. This is a
fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. Perhaps more obvious to the
layman is a consideration of Diane Fossey's observations of mountain
gorillas. Does it tell us about the normal behaviour of mountain
gorillas or about their behaviour in the presence of a sympathetic human
(specifically Diane Fossey)?
2. Einstein tells us that the space-time co-ordinates of the observer
also affect the observation. Thus the data are not determined entirely
by the "object".
3. Data is SELECTED. Only data WORTH collecting are collected.
I just saw the following quotation in Horse's footer:-
> "Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
> It was what got written down.
> It was as simple as that!"
> Sir Sam Vimes.
The same goes for science!
Data comes into being by a physical change in the detector. An event
which causes no change is ignored - never becomes data. This is Pirsig's
Dynamic Quality. The event has to MEAN something, to register. Later on,
secondary observers EVALUATE the data and summarise it in a way which
means something to them. Actually, I much prefer the term MEANING to
Pirsig's use of the word QUALITY.
"Does Lila have quality?"
The question should be "Does Lila have meaning?"
The answer is obvious. She means something to Phaedrus. She registers -
she causes him to change, to do things differently.
So what's wrong with subject-object metaphysics? Well nothing really. It
does tend to play down this business of data evaluation, but good
scientists know this and judge data on clearly defined criteria.
There are much bigger problems when "scientific method" is extended
beyond the hard sciences (e.g. to anthropology), where the criteria for
selecting relevant data become increasingly arbitrary.
Pirsig's contribution to this is understanding the relationship between
information (data) and meaning (quality). This topic crops up not
infrequently in scientific discussions.
Jonathan B. Marder <MARDER@agri.huji.ac.il>
Department of Agricultural Botany, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Faculty of Agriculture, P.O.Box 12, Rehovot 76100, ISRAEL
Phone: +972 8 9481918 Fax: +972 8 9467763
Web page: http://www.agri.huji.ac.il/~marder
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