From: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
A machine example: “…. pistons and wheels and gears all moving at once, massive and coordinated”
Phaedrus: “He was a knower of logic, the classical system-of-the-system which describes the rules and procedures of systematic thought by which analytic knowledge may be structured and interrelated.”
“That is induction: reasoning from particular experiences to general truths.”
“Deductive inferences do the reverse. They start with general knowledge and predict a specific observation.”
The scientific method: “(1) statement of the problem, (2) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem, (3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis, (4) predicted results of the experiments, (5) observed results of the experiments and (6) conclusions from the results of the experiments.”
“Logic presumes a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom.”
“‘Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial, really,’ I expound. ‘It’s the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. ….'”
“Quality … you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is.”
Church of the Minorities by Lyonel Feininger
“Definitions are the foundation of reason.”
“A thing exists if a world without it can’t function normally.”
“Does this undefined ‘quality’ of yours exist in the things we observe?”
“Or is it subjective, existing only in the observer?”
“… then he knifed it into two smaller groups which he called scientific materialism and classic formalism”
“Scientific materialism holds that what is composed of matter and energy and is measurable by instruments of science is real.”
“… classic formalism insists that what is understood intellectually isn’t understood at all.”
“Quality is not objective, he said. It does not reside in the material world.”
“Quality is not subjective, he said. It does not reside merely in the mind.”
“It is a third entity which is independent of the two.”
After Poincare … “It was hardly guessed by anyone that within a few decades there would be no more absolute space, absolute time, absolute substance, or even absolute magnitude; that classical physics, the scientific rock of ages, would become ‘approximate’; that the soberest and most respected astronomers would be telling mankind that if it looked long enough through a telescope powerful enough, what it would see was the back of its own head!”
“I think it is important to tie care to Quality by pointing out that care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing.”
“To put it in more concrete terms: If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, then classical, structured, dualistic, subject-object knowledge, although necessary isn’t enough. You have to have a sense of what’s good. That is what carries you forward.”
“Peace of mind isn’t at all superficial to technical work. It’s the whole thing.”
“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
“I like the word ‘gumption’ …. I like it … because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.”
“Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going.”
“Ego isn’t entirely separate from value rigidity but one of the many causes of it.”
“If you have a high valuation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.”
“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You’re so sure that you’ll do everything wrong you’re afraid to do anything at all.”
“Boredom is the next gumption trap that comes to mind. This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems. …. Boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else gets done.”
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From: Shop Class as Soulcraft:
“A washing machine, for example, surely exists to serve our needs, but in contending with one that is broken, you have to ask what it needs.”
“The repairman has to begin each job by getting outside his own head and noticing things: he has to look carefully and listen to the ailing machine.”
“The surgeon’s judgement is simultaneously technical and deliberative, and that mix is a source of power. This could be said of any manual skill that is diagnostic, including motorcycle repair.”
“My purpose in this book is to elaborate the potential for human flourishing in the manual trades – their rich cognitive challenges and psychic nourishment – rather than stake out policy positions or make factual claims about the economy.”
“Often this sense making entails not so much problem solving as problem finding.”
According to Winslow Taylor (“Principles of Scientific Management”) … “All possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning or laying-out department ….”
To correct the loss of workers from the assembly line “… Ford was forced to double the daily wage of his workers to keep the line staffed.” Ford comments that … “one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made.”
“The habituation of workers to the assembly line was thus perhaps made easier by another innovation of the early twentieth century: consumer debt.”
“Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking.”
“The stereo as a device contrasts with the instrument as a thing. …. A thing requires practice while a device invites consumption.”
“A good diamond cutter has a different disposition than a good dog trainer, one is careful, and the other is commanding. Different kinds of work attract different human types, and we are lucky if we find work that is fitting.”
“I believe that the mechanical arts have a special significance for our time because they cultivate not creativity, but the less glamorous virtue of attentiveness.”
“Aristotle can help here. He expanded on the idea of an art, or techne, to include those cases where our efforts are less than fully effective.”
“Any discipline that deals with an authoritative, independent reality requires honesty and humility.”
“When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: All human beings by nature desire to know.”
“How is being part of a ‘crew’ different than being part of a ‘team’.”
“The educational goal of self-esteem seems to habituate young people to work that lacks objective standards and revolves instead around group dynamics.”
“The current educational regime is based on a certain view about what kind of knowledge is important: ‘knowing that,’ as opposed to ‘knowing how.’ This corresponds roughly to universal knowledge versus the kind that comes from individual experience.”
“This is what the speed shop offers; it is a community of making and fixing that is embedded within a community of use.”
“The kind of self-reliance I have in mind is essentially different from the cult of the sovereign self, and it requires some further reflection on the idea of agency. The concept of agency is often understood with reference to activity that is self directed rather than dictated by another.”
“A carpenter faces the accusation of his level, the electrician must answer the question of whether the lights are in fact on, a speed shop engine builder sees his results in a quarter-mile time slip.”
“In this conversation lies the potential of work to bring some measure of coherence to our lives”