Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Back on the road, the narrator notes how they are traveling the same route as Lewis and Clark, and how fitting this is in relation to the Chautauqua. He then continues pursuing the same ghost that Phaedrus pursued, the ghost of rationality. Though earlier in the day he talked about hierarchies of thought (the system), now he will talk about ways of finding inroads through those hierarchies (logic). The two types of logic used are deductive and inductive logic. Deductive reasoning starts with general knowledge and predicts a specific observation. Inductive reasoning starts with a specific observation and makes a general truth. When something is too difficult for common sense to comprehend, a solution is found through a combination of inductive and deductive inferences, more commonly known as the scientific method. 

Though the narrator has never encountered a problem in motorcycle repair that needed an explanation by using the scientific method, it applies to motorcycle maintenance just as easily as to a scientific discovery. A mechanic, like a scientist, might need to formally write down the issues at hand so as not to double back or forget what he/she has previously done. Also, the same methods of stating a problem, then stating hypotheses for the problem, experimentation of stated hypotheses and making conclusions based on the data work in motorcycle maintenance as well. A mechanic must go through the hierarchy of boxes and find the root of the problem. The narrator also mentions that the purpose of the scientific method is to make sure that nature is not leading one to believe something one does not actually know. In this sense, it is crucial to approach the beginning questions simply, so as not to take a wrong turn or start from a false deduction.

The narrator also mentions how many people associate the experimentation part of the scientific method with science as a whole. The experimentation part is really the easiest part, as the hard work has mostly been done already. What the narrator means by this is that the thinking and theorizing are the parts people never remember about the scientific method. Once those parts are done, all that is left is to put those theories into practice, to experiment and observe the outcome. To the untrained eye, a mechanic fixing a motorcycle might seem like just physical labor. In actuality, it is a process of logic, deduction, and induction.

As the chapter ends, the group is almost hit by a car hauling a trailer. The car is unable to return to its lane after passing, and if the group rides into the shoulder, they will turn over and injure themselves. At the very last minute, however, the car makes it back into its lane. The group pulls off into the next town to eat and ease their nerves. A carton had fallen off of a car, and Sylvia mentions that she thought the carton tumbling on the road was their motorcycle turning over and over on the ground.

With a passage from Albert Einstein as a focal point, the narrator begins to elaborate on Phaedrus and his quest for the ghost of rationality. The passage outlines the differences in those who pursue science. Some pursue science due to ambition and pride, others for a commitment to utilitarian good. There is a small group, however, who pursue science for the pure desire to escape into the rational world. Phaedrus, says the narrator, is in the latter group.

He then goes on to explain how, by age fifteen, Phaedrus had already finished a year of university biochemistry. Instead of becoming stuck and held up by the formation of hypotheses, hypotheses came easy for him, so much so that he became fascinated by them because they did not seem to come from nature or the mind of the scientist. They seemed to exist somewhere else, and were rampant. In this way, the fact that there can always be another hypothesis, an endless array of hypotheses, discredits the entire notion of the scientific method. With the scientific method, a scientist rules out other possibilities and finds the best one. Phaedrus found that phenomena could be explained by an infinite number of hypotheses, thereby eliminating decisive truth. Indeed, the more one conducts research through the scientific method, the more hypotheses arise, and so scientific truths are refuted at an even faster pace than before. In total, using a systematized scientific method makes truth unstable and harder to obtain.

It is this use of the scientific method, its daily application to reason in general, that is the basis for the societal problems that Phaedrus saw arising at the time. With this newfound knowledge, he became disenchanted with the university and was expelled at seventeen. Though he would eventually return to the university in a different capacity, this period of his life was spent “drifting laterally” in search of truth, as Phaedrus could no longer search for truth directly in front of him.