ZAMM chapters 18 and 19
Bill Becker is here
Wheels team: laced the wheels
Bottom end: put the flywheel in
Chapter 18:
No motorcycle references
Content:
Quality:
- In the beginning of the book the narrator had a strictly classical view
- Now he sees himself in Chris (his son)
- Does he (narrator) really want to achieve all those goals or does he want to be in the moment?
- Squareness: when you take away quality the only things that is left is rationale
- Professor Littman disagrees: if you do a math proof, you can do it in a long and elegant way or a short and to the point way
- Chris is having trouble scaling the mountain:
- Metaphorical piece of his arguments improving and he is getting higher up the mountain
- Parker: relating classic and romantic to subjective and objective
- Narrator says objectively a scientific proof is right or wrong no matter how you get there
- Diego: doesn’t think anything is constant
- Distinction between quality and rationality:
- Quality is fluid
- Hard science is binary
- Preston: Do you think that we are square?
- Squareness: defined as “an inability to see quality before its been intellectually defined”
- Ali thinks quality is a societal construction
- Quality is subjective
- Hudson: there is no answer
- Hudson: humans are always trying to quantify things to figure out quality
- Art should elicit an emotional reaction
- Jamie: wealthy people are the ones who end up defining quality
Chapter 19: leader is Hudson
- Narrator trying to dodge the horns of objectivity and subjectivity of Quality
- Can’t choose between two horns so he goes in the middle and hits the bull in the face
- A combination of subjectivity and objectivity
- Digression of the word Just:
-
- Why is there the phrase: “this is just what i like” ?
- What influences what we like? What social forces play a part in determining what we like?
- Like fashion trends
- Is true objectivity possible?
- Would we follow the rules if they weren’t engrained in society?
- Parker: more important to think of his understanding of Quality as a lense through which people see things around them through
- aesthetics and the idea of quality
- Main point of this chapter:
- Climbing the mountain at the end of this chapter
- Phaedrus is coming out of the narrator
- When the subject becomes aware of an object
- Without an object, the subject can’t be aware of itself
What does it mean to do a quality job on our motorcycle?:
- It should look better
- If it works
- If we all value and understand what we brought to the motorcycle
- Can develop our own analysis as to what actually is a quality motorcycle
- What are mistakes in the motorcycle?
- Bill Becker thinks the art is finished: it was done by some british designer
- We bring to it our own analysis of it in order to improve it
- Having the confidence to repair motorcycles in the future
- Bill Becker thinks that there is no art in restoration
- Sometimes he creates new bikes from old parts: that is art
- What is the relationship between aesthetics and art?
- Professor littman restores old radios
- Hudson thinks that you can’t create a spectrum of restoration versus creating art