EricCWelch

I read this book about 35 years ago (really scary thought) when I was in library school and it was all the rage. Recently I read a piece in Skeptic Magazine (http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-04-28/#feature) that has me rethinking my originally positive view of Pirsig and his work. Chris Edwards proposes that Pirsig was one of the first writers to “rework old religious beliefs” which laid the foundation for such New Age gurus as Deepak Chopra.

In his introduction to the 1999 edition of ZAMM (!) Pirsig talks about his own struggle with schizophrenia or a form of multiple personality disorder. Edwards defines schizophrenia as someone who cannot “distinguish between the images in his head and the images in the world. When the condition is chronic it is defined as a mental disorder. When it is selective we call it faith.” Edwards suggests that Pirsig falls into the first category. Edwards castigates Pirsig for his attacks on “scientific materialism”, i.e. atheism.

Edwards goes to great lengths to parse Pirsig’s misunderstanding of mathematics and the ostensible conflict between two types of geometry and his lack of historical knowledge of the development of thinking about zero as a concept.

Edwards argues that Pirsig turned “Quality” into “a kind of creator god.” It funny how a book can shape our thinking at one age (and selectively pull what we want from it.) Interesting if unconvincing argument.