Back in the 16th, 17th and 18th Century, there were a lot of intellectual “cross-trainers” around: educated people who applied their minds to a variety of subjects including philosophy, mathematics, science, commerce and government. Ben Franklin<\/b> is a good example, but you also had Thomas Jefferson, Rene Descartes, Leonardo DaVinci, etc. Today, of course, you don’t find many people like that. There’s so much knowledge out there now, you need to specialize in order to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n
That’s too bad. There are still a few thinkers left who cross boundaries, who try to weave science and humane thought together. But they aren’t too common anymore. Rarer still are those who know what they’re talking about. In the 20th Century there was C.P. Snow<\/b> and Jacob Bronowski,<\/b> and we still have Robert Pirsig. I am currently picking through Pirsig’s second book Lila.<\/b> Despite the fact that Lila doesn’t possess the charm of Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance (it’s actually a rather strange book), there are occasional brilliant insights in that book. It’s like rooting around a garbage dump, looking for diamonds — and occasionally finding some. The garbage dump is Pirsig’s grandiose “Metaphysics of Quality” and his blather about “values”, and the diamonds are found when Pirsig sucessfully melds philosophical and scientific insight, such as his comparison of the various levels of functioning within a computer with the idea of a mind existing within a mechanistic human brain, and the idea of a society existing amidst a host of independent, non-cooperative human egos.<\/p>\n