Reading Assignment
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Chapter 7
- Shop Class as Soulcraft: Chapter 3
In-Class Discussion
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Some valve clatter is normal, the noise just means the tappets are working a bit sloppily.
- A shim is a thin piece of usually softer metal, and is used to fill the gap between other parts, like, for example, the handlebars and the clamp holding it to the motorcycle. Pirsig uses a disagreement between the validity of a beer can as a shim as a springboard for his discussion on the difference between “meaning” and “form.”
- Chain tension can be adjusted by a bolt near the rear axle, but the axle nuts need to be loosened first. You can also just loosen the axle nuts and move the position of the rear wheel manually, but the bolt is more convenient.
- Pirsig distinguishes “classical” versus “romantic” ways of thinking, which correlate well with a “scientific” and “artistic” view of the world. This is the same gap he senses between John and him, since he is a classical thinker, appreciating the underlying form of things, while John is romantic, appreciating the overall appearance of things.
- Pirsig ruminates on analysis, using the motorcycle as an example. He splits the cycle into all of its separate systems, and then even further, creating a hierarchy of function. Yet, this “knife” he uses to cut up the cycle and analyze is cutting arbitrarily; there are countless ways to split up the cycle, he says.
- The connecting rod connects the piston to the crank.
- In a dry sump oil system, oil is stored outside of the engine, using two pumps to take oil into and out of the motor.
Shop Class as Soulcraft
- Crawford rejects Taylorism (or, scientific management), arguing against the divorce of thinking from doing in work, most obviously on display in Ford’s assembly line.
- He sees the rising consumer debt concurrent with new factory work in the early 20th century as a mechanism that kept workers in routinized jobs, out of necessity.
- Using the example of Best Buy, Crawford outlines the idea that the company has been empowering creativity at the bottom end of its hierarchy, but then rejects it. Instead he sees the language of “creativity” as breeding a sense of pseudo-independence; also, he see’s corporate structures like Best Buy’s as a result of managerial positions passing on accountability.
Lab
- Continued disassembly and cleaning; also, work on circuit and getting parts ready to paint.
J.R.