Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

The party makes its way through the Yellowstone Valley. The narrator begins a Chautauqua that explains the two types of logic: inductive and deductive. Inductive logic extends particular observations to form general truths, and deductive logic does the reverse by using general laws to make conclusions about particular cases. Some problems are so complicated that solving them requires a disciplined interweaving of induction and deduction called the scientific method.

The narrator enumerates the steps of the scientific method and explains that its primary role is to eliminate any mistaken preconceptions that evaded notice before. The most important—and least visible—part of the scientific method is devising hypotheses that can be suitably tested to explain a phenomenon. For this reason, mechanics’ most important work is not physical labor, but rather the analysis of the underlying forms of a motorcycle.

On the road, a car with a trailer can’t get out of the passing lane and nearly collides head-on with the motorcyclists. Shaken, the narrator and his companions rest at a bar.