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"In time...six months; five years, perhaps...a change could easily begin to take place. He would become less and less satisfied with a kind of dumb, day-to-day
by logjam 15y ago
"In time...six months; five years, perhaps...a change could easily begin to take place. He would become less and less satisfied with a kind of dumb, day-to-day shopwork. His creative intelligence, stifled by too much theory and too many grades in college, would now become reawakened by the boredom of the shop. Thousands of hours of frustrating mechanical problems would have made him more interested in machine design. He would like to design machinery himself. He'd think he could do a better job. He would try modifying a few engines, meet with success, look for more success, but feel blocked because he didn't have the theoretical information. He would discover that when before he felt stupid because of his lack of interest in theoretical information, he'd now find a brand of theoretical information which he'd have a lot of respect for, namely, mechanical engineering.
"So he would come back to our degreeless and gradeless school, but with a difference. He'd no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors assigned him were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they'd better come up with it.
"Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force, and in the gradeless, degreeless institution where our student would find himself, he wouldn't stop with rote engineering information. Physics and mathematics were going to come within his sphere of interest because he'd see he needed them. Metallurgy and electrical engineering would come up for attention. And, in the process of intellectual maturing that these abstract studies gave him, he would he likely to branch out into other theoretical areas that weren't directly related to machines but had become a part of a newer larger goal. This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing."
-- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- chops 15y agoThank you for that. ZatAoMM (whoa acronym) has always been on my list to read, but this little excerpt has helped to propel it near to the top of my list. So thank you muchly!
- nbashaw 15y agoIt's a wonderful book. I read it before I'd been exposed to too much other philosophy and I thought it was the greatest thing that had ever been written. Then in college I started reading a lot of other philosophy and didn't ever quite reach the same passionate reaction I had with ZAMM. It's both engaging and deep.
- msutherl 15y agoAs somebody who tried to read it _after_ having read some other philosophy, I found it entirely boring and put it down before 100 pages.
- shadowfox 15y agoIt is a lot better in the second half.
- redthrowaway 15y agoWell, yes and no. The story gets much more interesting, and his exposition on The Good is fascinating, but his metaphysical claims of Quality being a fundamental existing thing were somewhat weak.
- klbarry 15y agoI also disliked it and got 3/4 of the way through - I found it very pretentious and not nearly as full of wisdom as the author would like to believe.
- bherms 15y agoFantastic quotes. I'm about 3/4 of the way through this book and can't recommend it highly enough. Really a must read.
- rimantas 15y agoI actually enjoyed "Lila" a bit more.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- phugoid 15y agoAt the risk of arguing with Robert Pirsig, I have a mechanical engineering degree, and I can assure you that no amount of curiosity could motivate someone to get through that curriculum. For instance, your curiosity about boundary value problems will likely be sated around the second lecture.
- levesque 15y agoWhat is the difference between this book and the one by Matthew Crawford, "Shop Class As Soulcraft"? Is it worth reading both?