dancing wu li masters an overview of the new physics

It’s probably even more dramatic these days, which stand decades away from the freewheeling tone of the ’70s. Pirsig, aware of the tunnel vision that is getting ever-tighter in the modern age of specialization and technology, extolled the merits of “lateral” thinking, an outlook that can heed both the objective and the subjective in its sweep. I make a point of mentioning the book from time to time since it is a good fit for the CNMI’s professional class.Īfter all, many CNMI professionals have a wider scope of thinking than you’re likely to encounter in the broader corporate world. The author of the latter work, Robert Pirsig, passed away earlier this year. The Dancing Wu Li Masters hit the stands about five years after the philosophical blockbuster Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance did.

Here, his pen hits the juncture of the objective and the subjective, a longstanding bone of contention among the philosophical set. “The point of view that we can be without a point of view is a point of view,” writes Zukav. Unable to see, or even conceptualize, the actual workings of this net, we’re pretty much reduced to noting what goes into a situation, noting what’s coming out of it, and then reckoning how these elements seem to be correlated.Īnd if we think that we’re objective observers, well, that might just be an illusion. What strikes us as a straightforward world of cause-and-effect is really a dynamic net of interrelated relationships and probabilities. Our very act of observation is what crystallizes the difference between the realm of mere possibility and the realm of actualized reality. One line of thought here, and in many other works that address this topic, is that we are not separate from the world that we observe.

Addressing the weird way that subatomic particles behave, it says: “The new physics sounds very much like old Eastern mysticism.” The outlook can be neatly summarized in 10 words.

Dancing wu li masters an overview of the new physics