In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, Robert Pirsig puts everyone in to one of two categories: the classical perspective or the romantic perspective. The classical outlook is very concerned with underyling form; how something works, why it does what it does. It's seeing a clear blue sky and thinking of reflecting light waves. The romantic view is more about emotions and how something is to your senses. The classical view is analogous to science while the romantic view is analogous to art. The author also states that these two views are irreconcilable.
If Mr Pirsig forced me to chose to be in a category, I guess I'd choose classical. I really like knowing how things work. The show "How It's Made" is basically a Dodge clan ritual. I like knowing the background information of authors, painters, photographers, etc. I find computers endlessly frustrating because I have no idea how they work. I'm open to the whole blue sky/light waves train of thought, even on a much harsher scale, like the possibility that love is a chemical reaction instead of the whole Cinderella, sparks flying shebang.
But I take two issues with Robert Pirsig's way of categorizing people. One, humans just don't split like that. No one is all one way 100% of the time, not because we're each individual and unique snowflakes or whatever, we're just not consistent like that. It's the whole "Can people be all good or all evil?" conversation. I just don't think so. There's a reason why shades of gray exist, why things like the Likert scale (the questionnaire, 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree') and Kinsey scale (sexual orientation scale) exist. Very few people completely fit into a category.
Two, rather than thinking that the views are irreconcilable, I think they depend on each other. I belly dance and while dance leans towards the romantic view point, the steps, which would be classical, are just as important to the beauty of the dance as my costume or the vibe I'm giving off when I dance. Yeah, rainbows are refracted light. They're still beautiful. I don't think understanding the science behind something takes away from it's beauty.
Also, I think you can find asthetic, romantic beauty in classical things like science and vice versa. For example, in Chemistry we learned about Benzene this year. Benzene is an organic compound, C6H6. And to be honest, I don't understand anything from that class but I think the structure of benzene (it's a symmetrical ring of alternating double and single bonds, it looks like this: http://www.chemgapedia.de/vsengine/media/vsc/en/ch/12/oc/aromaten/aromaten/struktur/benzolschreibweisegif.gif) is really, really pretty. It looks like a snowflake to me. An even better, more universal example of this is this article, http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/alcohol-is-microscopically-beautiful-bif, titled "Alcohol is Microscopically beautiful" and it has pictures of what alcohol looks like under a microscope and it is beautiful.
So I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but my point is that people don't classify like Mr Pirsig thinks they do and the two categories that he deems "irreconcilable" actually have a lot in common.
I really like your thinking on this concept. I agree with you on almost all of the points you've made. I hadn't thought of the two realms as co-dependent, and your bringing that up made me delve deeper into my thought process and how I think the two ways of thinking work. I also hadn't though of measuring people on things like the Kinsey or Likert scale and your mentionning those also broadened my views on the subject. However, I disagree with your saying that the categories have a lot in common. I think that the fact that they seem to contradict each other is what gives that middle ground (non-existent to Pirsig) prevalence.
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