Priori Knowledge Zen and the Art of the Motorcycle Maintenance

Book notes on "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig

These are my notes on Zen & the Fine art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

Not an Information technology volume only a philosophy one.

A fellow developer had recommended information technology, and finding the following snippet:

If a factory is town downwardly only the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce some other manufacturing plant. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that authorities are left intact, and then those patterns volition repeat themselves … There'due south so much talk about the system. And so picayune agreement.

in the Thinking in Systems book convinced me to read it, and was a good use of my time.

Someone recommended reading the continuation Lila to fully understand Pirsig's Quality concept.

Key Insights

• When y'all want to hurry something, that ways you no longer care virtually it.
• Some things you miss because they're so tiny you overlook tem. Merely other things you lot don't encounter because they're and so huge.
  • Familiarity can bullheaded yous besides.
• The formation of hypothesis is the nigh mysterious of all the categories of scientific method.
  • They should be the hardest office, but information technology is the easiest.
• The more scientific activeness, the shorter the life-span of scientific truths.
• The current modes of rationality do non work anymore because the demand for food, shelter and clothing is not longer dominant.
• When people are fanatically dedicated to faiths or goals, it is considering these faits or goals are in doubt.

How exercise yous know all that?

It is obvious.

Well then, why didn't I see information technology?

You accept to have some familiarity.

Then information technology is not obvious, is it?

• To alive just for some future goals is shallow.
• Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon united states to create the world in which nosotros live. All of it.
• Any effort that has self-glorification equally the final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
• You go stuck when you are trying to practise besides many things at once.
• Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real agreement.
• Technology ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness.
• The place to improve the globe is first in i's ain heart and caput and hands, and then piece of work outwards from there.
• Gumption traps:
  1. Internal:
     1. Truth traps:
        • Missing the "mu" (aka. nothing/nix) as a possible answer.
  2. Value traps:
     • Block affective understanding.
     • Largest and most dangerous.
     • Subgroups:
       • Ego: if you have a high evaluation of yourself so your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
• With all the scientific ability, we have lost the understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of information technology.

Part I

1

• We want to make good time, measure with accent on "good" rather than "time".

ii

• Bad service: mechanics were involved in the chore, but not in such a way every bit to care.
• When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it.

four

• If someone'south ungrateful, and you tell him he is ungrateful, you've called him a name. Only you haven't solved annihilation.
• Interested in what things mean versus what they are.
• Some things yous miss considering they're so tiny you overlook tem. But other things y'all don't see because they're then huge.
  • Familiarity can blind you lot as well.
• Dichotomy:

Fine art	Science
Feelings	Facts
Frivolous/irrational/erratic	Wearisome/awkward/ugly
Parasite/pleasure seeking	Oppressive/grayness/death force
Advent	Belittling/Underlying form

• Analytical backdrop:
  • Impossible to sympathize, unless you know how one works.
  • Observer is missing, is not part of the system.
  • No "skilful" or "bad".
  • Divide into components: the divide is capricious, depending on who splits it, and then it fits their view/purpose.

7

• The process of selection of information mutates what is perceived. What is and what nosotros perceive is non the same.
• Ghost of mod rationality: One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.

Part Two

8

• Thinking in System quote.
• The real/truthful organisation is our present construction of systematic thought itself.

nine

• Scientific method:
  • Mixing long strings of inductive and deductive logic.
  • The existent purpose is to make sure Nature hasn't misled you into thinking you know something you don't actually know.
  • Steps:
    1. Problem argument: state absolutely no more than than you lot are positive yous know.
    2. Hypothesis.
    3. Experiments:
       • An experiment is but a failure when it fails to exam the hypothesis in question, when the data information technology produces don't prove anything 1 way or some other.
    4. Conclusions: state no more than than the experiment has proven.

x

• The formation of hypothesis is the almost mysterious of all the categories of scientific method.
  • Einstein: there is no logical path; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of feel.
  • They should be the hardest part, but information technology is the easiest.
    • The more data/fact/information, the more hypothesis.
    • If number of hypothesis grows faster than the experimental method tin can handle, then non all hypothesis tin be tested, hence any experiment is inconclusive, and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven cognition.
• The more scientific activity, the shorter the life-span of scientific truths.
  • Instead of selecting 1 truthful between a multitude, it increases the multitude.
• The cause of our current social crisis is a genetic defect within the nature of reason itself.
  • The current modes of rationality do non work anymore because the demand for food, shelter and clothing is not longer dominant.
    • Seen equally what information technology really is: hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty.
• Sometimes it is ameliorate to travel than to go far.

11

• Philosophy is the highest echelon of the unabridged hierarchy of knowledge.
  • Science is just a branch of Philosophy.
  • "What does information technology all mean? What is the purpose of all this?"
• David Hume: Empiricist: All cognition is derived exclusively from teh senses.
  • Scientific method experimentation is advisedly controlled empiricism.
• Kant: But though all our knowledge begins with experience, is does not follow that it all arises from feel.
  • A priori knowledge. Time as an example.

12

• The range of human cognition today is so great that nosotros're all specialists, and the distance between specializations has go and so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them near has to forego closeness with the people around him.

How do you know all that?

It is obvious.

Well then, why didn't I come across it?

Yous have to have some familiarity.

Then it is non obvious, is it?

• When people are fanatically defended to faiths or goals, it is because these faits or goals are in incertitude.
• What is quality?

Part Three

xvi

• Schools teach to imitate.

17

• To live only for some future goals is shallow.
• Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a non-thinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined. But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is.
  • This argument is completely irrational.
  • If yous can't ascertain something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you actually tell anyone else what it is.
  • At that place is no formal deviation between inability to define and stupidity.
• Any effort that has cocky-glorification as the final endpoint is jump to end in disaster.
  • You lot will discover yourself forever probing yourself to fill up a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.

18

• Quality is what splits classic (technological) vs romantic (humanistic).
• Quality is also what it can unite them.
• Qualityless world:
  • No arts, no comedy, no flavours, no sports.
  • Only pure science, math, philosophy and particularly logic would be unchanged.
  • Life would be then dull to be hardly worth living.
• A real understanding of Quality captures the Organization, tames it, and puts it to work for one'southward ain personal apply, while leaving one completely free to fulfill his inner destiny.

19

• Quality is the continuing stimulus which our environment puts upon us to create the world in which we live. All of it.
• Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu.

24

• Yous go stuck when you are trying to do too many things at once.
  • Like thinking what to say and what to say showtime at the same time.
    • Make a list of things to say, and subsequently order them.
• The departure betwixt a skillful mechanic/mathematician and a bad i, is the power to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to intendance!
• Quality is what carries you forward.
  • Looking for something better.
• Stuckness shouldn't exist avoided. Information technology's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.

25

• Identity is what modern applied science lacks.
  • The creator/possessor/user feels no particular sense of identity with it.
• Technology ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness.
• Inner peace of listen is what produces skilful work and destroys bad work.
  • Is a prerequisite for a perception of that Quality that is beyond romantic Quality and archetype Quality and which unites the ii.
• Self-awareness != self-consciousness.
• Inned peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding:
• Physical quietness.
• Mental quietness: no wandering thoughts.
• Value quietness: no wandering desire.
• The identify to improve the earth is get-go in one'due south own eye and head and easily, and so work outwards from at that place.

26

• Gumption traps:

1. Externals:
   • Out of sequence reassembly.
   • Intermittent failure.
   • Parts setback.
2. Internal:
   1. Truth traps:
      • Cake cognitive understanding.
      • The aye-no logic.
      • Missing the "mu" (aka. nada/null) as a possible answer.
      • Information technology is a smashing mistake, a kind of dishonesty, to sweep Nature's "mu" answers under the carpet.
   2. Muscle traps:
      • Cake psychomotor behaviour.
      • Bad tools.
      • Uncomfort.
   3. Value traps:
      • Block affective understanding.
      • Largest and virtually dangerous.
      • Subgroups:
      • Value rigidity: disability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values.
      • Ego: if you have a high evaluation of yourself and so your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
      • Feet: you lot're and so sure you lot'ill practise everything wrong you are afraid to practise annihilation at all.
      • Boredom: You lot accept lost your "beginner'southward mind".
      • Impatience: comes from an underestimation of the corporeality of time the task volition take.

Part Iv

29

• The ghost of reason: to exercise what is "reasonable" even when it isn't whatever expert.

Areté implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself. Kitto in The Greeks

• With all the scientific power, nosotros have lost the understanding of what it is to be a part of the globe, and not an enemy of it.

You never gain something but that you lot lose something. Henry David Thoreau

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