Hidden Pirsig Influences

Having started this blog in 2001 (a couple of days after 9/11) I’ve freely acknowledged and made many references to the fact that reading Robert Pirsig shortly after that in January 2002, was a game changer for me in terms of the direction of my research thinking, reading and writing.

I’d started the research blog because I was already seeing gaps – nagging doubts – in overly scientistic models of the world in systems of organisation & operation of businesses & governments. Doubts that stretch back to my doing an MBA (1988-1991) with a focus on “cultural” aspects of managing organisational change, but I hadn’t really considered the global seriousness of such gaps, beyond parochial business interest, until 9/11 “woke the world”, as I put it. So without knowing it, I already had a large part of Pirsig’s thesis in my head before I’d ever heard of him.

Actually making my connection to Pirsig came from physicist Bryan Josephson (of Josephson-junction Nobel prize fame) in early 2002 whose work with Henry Stapp very explicitly suggested the conclusion that “Eastern thought was in some sense more fundamental than physics itself“. My mind was blown by that: that a physicist, a physics Nobel prize-winning Cambridge don no less, might conclude such a thing. It instantly put me in mind of that meme of a book title “Zen and the Art …” that my memory recalled as associated with systems & engineering management on reading-lists where I’d previously ignored it – because of it’s weird title.

So unlike most people, who read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) earlier in life, who found it intriguing, but difficult, requiring several re-reads before they “got it”, when I read ZMM (and almost immediately his 1991 follow-up Lila) I was “Yes, yes, yes!” at almost every paragraph first time through. That naiveté has of course evolved since, but it put me on that philosophical track.

If the serious Physics<>Zen connection had blown my mind, reading a rhetorical novel full of such wisdom, opened and expanded a second half of my brain that I’d clearly never used before. Previously a user of only technical texts by choice, I became a born-again reader of any and all kinds of literature. And philosophy. From seeing ontology as simply the taxonomic (classification) structures of the physical world I’d previously been dealing with I became exposed to the widest range of philosophies and metaphysics, and now had a name for the subject I was researching, namely Epistemology. “What, Why and How do we Know?” as I’d subtitled my blog before I’d known there was a name for it.

The rest as they say is history.

From 2002 to around 2010/11 I’d been very actively using and referencing Pirsig in my own work, and engaging in much discourse with others about Pirsig’s work. From then until 2017 I considered his work pretty much internalised in my own evolving theses and was referencing many other sources, old and new, rather than Pirsig explicitly. Pirsig was my road into philosophy, but no one philosopher is the last word on any topic.

There was a significant blip in interest in Pirsig following his death in 2017: people following-up old links with questions and dialogue and; since 2022, a growing “Robert Pirsig Association” interest and traffic leading-up to the 50th anniversary of ZMM this year in 2024.

My life, thinking and writing are full of Pirsig references again. I fully acknowledge Pirsig’s influence on my own thought journey and happy to provide appropriate academic references alongside others. More to the point I’d recommend ZMM to anyone as an introduction to philosophy, especially those who can’t quite see or believe the limits to science. It’s a culture-bearing book, of its time. The post-hippie reaction to the oppressive technology of the military-industrial-machine (say), but others who also acknowledge the influence of Pirsig on their own work, have also written to show us that the ideas are just as true for the technologies of our time, with ubiquitous ICT and electronic media technologies distorting our understanding of the world we inhabit in the 21st Century.

That much above, I’ve written, presented and summarised many different ways previously. I’m posting today, because a current agenda of mine is to capture others whose work was significantly influenced by Pirsig’s introduction to the philosophy of living, who have publicly acknowledged such connections even if they make relatively few explicit references in their ongoing work.

[To be continued …]

Dave Snowden, Ben Taylor, Al MacIntyre, Matt Kundert, Salman Rushdie,
ISSS, Gary Smith Eastern thinking follow-up. Thinking not doing (medicine)
The BBC 50th doc.

“Excellence” management fashion – Peters and Waterman

“Quality” management fashion.