I seem to have plenty on the history of the NSF, but still looking for more works that consider the applied vs theoretical questions. If anyone has any suggestions of discussions or sources on that point, those suggestions would be much appreciated.

I’ve always found it interesting that Kuhn does not apply his own theory to his own theory. He clearly separates ‘the study of science’ from the ‘practice of science’. Throughout the book, Kuhn argues that not only has no scientific theories have been completely correct, but that it is not even possible for a scientific theory to be completely correct. Yet at the same time, he has no such reservations about insisting that his theory represents the only way science can be done. As long as one maintains the distinction between doing science and simply explaining how science is done, this is technically true. But I find a certain weird appeal to the possible argument that Kuhn’s theory of paradigms is really just a temporary paradigm itself.

But after some of our discussions about the difference between science and technology, I’ve been thinking about what Kuhn’s ideas mean when considering that distinction. Reading this too literally could lead one to question why anyone other than scientists should care about science. While a technological innovation could have a direct impact on our lives, Kuhn’s version of science for science’s sake seems to be a game largely for the amusement of the persons involved.

While there are some similarities, the key difference between Gibson’s perspective and that of Darwin is that Gibson has taken the Darwinian idea well past where Darwin was willing or able to go. The controversy over Darwin was largely about humans losing their place at the top of the ladder. Gibson has accepted that as fact.

But even though Darwin insisted on applying his evolutionary theory to humanity’s past, he never seemed to apply the same theory to humanity’s future. Sidestepping a discussion of where consciousness comes from or whether only humans can attain consciousness, Gibson goes right for the issue of how one conscious being will evolve into a new conscious being.

I’ve read some of the other blog posts so I’ll try not to repeat too much. But I do think it’s worth focusing a little more on the rampant drug use in the book. Case experiences several realms of consciousness:

-         his sober, flesh & bone state

-         his drug induced altered states

-         his experiences in the matrix

-         his simstim experiences through Molly’s eyes

In contrast to the matrix and the biotech implants, the drugs are a relatively old school way of altering one’s consciousness. In society today, and even in the book, any significant alterations are temporary. Efforts to maintain a permanent alteration will lead fairly quickly to the deterioration of the body.

What’s new about the world painted by Gibson is the variety of ways you can alter your consciousness. And this variety helps lead to a change in the durability of those alterations. The longer you maintain that altered state, the more it becomes your true environment. And depending on which type of alteration you’re in, different abilities (or adaptive characteristics, if you will) become more important for survival. Thus humans evolve into something new.

The evolutionary aspect is reinforced by the fusing together of the two AI machines into something brand new. When the two are matched together, each ceases to exist. What remains is something that is a product of the two machines, but not a product like the two machines. This is evolution in hyperdrive.

The political activity of the scientist movement after August 1945 illustrates in sharp relief how the notion of being a scientist had broken completely from its pre-modern roots. Once upon a time, the scientist was the natural philosopher; usually the curious aristocrat or someone with a theological background. It would have been considered well within that person’s range to expound on any number of topics, from science to philosophy to politics to religion. But by 1945 this is no longer the case. The formalization and specialization of the modern scientist meant they had become more qualified than ever to discuss their area of expertise. But it also meant that area of expertise had become ever narrower and they were less qualified than ever to pontificate on topics beyond that narrow expertise.

Boyer’s book also highlights the rise of big science and the eagerness of so many scientists to bind themselves to military-industrial-government complex as long as it meant more money for them to pursue their research. I think this represents one of the fundamental reasons that there has been considerable public disaffection with the intellectual class in general (at least in America). The zeal with which the scientists pursued more government funding was matched only by their belief that their opinions should outweigh those of the people who happen to be paying the bills. This is the exact opposite of how most of America has traditionally operated. I think the lack of recognition (and in many cases, the complete lack of any respect) for their unique circumstance has often harmed the efforts of intellectuals in all fields to shape public opinion and policy.

I’m not sure what it says about our society that there are still significant disagreements over whether the use of the atomic bombs was justified. Maybe it doesn’t really say much about society and just means that it’s a tricky question. One thing I’ve wondered is whether you could make the case that dropping the two bombs on Japan at the very end of WWII might have been the best way to ensure that they weren’t used again in Korea or some other conflict that might have quickly followed WWII. As a contemporary example, the use of poison gas was one of the more horrific aspects of WWI. In the interwar years, research on those weapons continued and when WWII broke out, everyone on both sides assumed it was only a matter of time before the gas was used. But it never happened. The horror of the gas attacks during the first war had built up a resistance among the leaders to using it again and they basically adopted the notion of ‘if you don’t use it, we won’t use it’. If no atomic bombs had been dropped during WWII and if there had been no significant public testing over the next few years, how much more willing would Truman have been to use a bomb in Korea? Could he have justified not using a weapon that would help win that war if the public hadn’t already seen the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The range of topics in Boyer’s book is rather astounding, especially given the short time frame in which he is dealing. But personally I wish he would’ve extended the time frame a little further to incorporate some of the fantastic sci-fi movies of the 1950’s. Any study of the bomb’s effect on American culture that doesn’t include “Them!” just can’t be considered complete.

A Minor Miracle: An Informal History of the National Science Foundation, by Milton Lomask, 1976

Decision Making in National Science Policy, Edited by Anthony De Reuk, Maurice Smith, and Julie Knight, 1968

The Case against the National Science Foundation – Executive Committee, Inter-Society Committee - Science, New Series, Vol. 111, No. 2878 (Feb. 24, 1950), pp. 208-210

Item Information Page of First Match PDF Export this Citation – A National Science Foundation? Philip N. Powers - Science, New Series, Vol. 104, No. 2713 (Dec. 27, 1946), pp. 614-619

A National Science Foundation A National Science Foundation - William C. Foster - Science, New Series, Vol. 105, No. 2725 (Mar. 21, 1947), pp. 297-299

A National Science Foundation A National Science Foundation - Vannevar Bush - Science, New Series, Vol. 105, No. 2725 (Mar. 21, 1947), pp. 302-305

Modern Times is set during the Great Depression and this shapes the imagery to a certain extent. But I don’t think it is strictly a depression-era film. Its story really is a modern one, hence the obvious title. The confusing, repetitive, and maddening nature of the factory is a common theme in the modern industrialized era. Similarly, Chaplin’s desire to remain in prison expresses the yearning for security over freedom. Throughout the modern era, up to and including today, people all over the world have been willing to make the same trade. Freedom can be a scary thing. This is where Taylor comes in.

Taylorism is often associated with capitalism because it originated in America. But it’s not about capitalism, at least not entirely. It’s about science and the security of knowledge. It’s about being able to systematize all aspects of life, providing clear guidelines and best practices at all times.

One argument that Taylorism is about modernism more so than capitalism is that people like Lenin and Trotsky were big fans. If we make a brief checklist of Taylor’s ideas, it’s easy to see why. Briefly put,

-         Taylorism claims to be a provable scientific theory

-         Taylorism insists that most workers will not be able to understand all the science involved and would need to follow the instructions from the vanguard of management until they are properly educated

-         Taylorism claims to be a guide not just to a particular industry, but a principle upon which every aspect of your life can be reorganized

-         While not completely dismissing inborn differences in ability, Taylorism puts a premium on training and cultivation to improve all persons as much as possible

-         Taylorism advocates standardization of all tools, methods, and results

Exchanging “Marxism-Leninism” for “Taylorism” doesn’t change the truthfulness of any of those statements.

My point is not to argue that Taylorism = Communism. It doesn’t. But Taylorism is not about any one political or economic system. It is about the ability of science to answer any and all questions, to provide the ‘proper’ way forward for solving any problem, to provide the optimum solution to any question.

Modern Times though, is a distinctively American and distinctively anti-Taylorist view of the modern world. I say it is distinctively American primarily because of the ending; no matter how bad things get, you can always pack up, hit the open road and try for a fresh start somewhere else. It is distinctively anti-Taylorist because there is little rational thought behind most of the decisions made by the protagonists; particularly the girl who runs away from the authorities after her father dies. Her choice of freedom over security is exactly the opposite of the choice that Chaplin considered making earlier. Likewise, she quickly convinces Chaplin to make the same choice for himself.

By contrast, the 1920’s were a time of peace and post-WWI prosperity. And Darwinism had largely triumphed in academic circles and only now posed a serious threat. The fight against Darwinism also needs to be placed in proper context as part of a larger movement of do-gooding (for lack of a better term) through political coercion. See prohibition as a prime example of another well intentioned, but not so well thought out plan of the same period.

Aside from the issues mentioned above, there is a key difference in the civic cultures of the U.S. and Europe that helps explain why the showdown in Dayton took place in the manner and time that it did. Larson touches on this towards the end when he explains that “Despite their traditionalism, American Catholics did not join Bryan’s antievolution crusade, in part because they already had their own parochial schools and colleges” (p. 262). He also describes how after the 1920’s fundamentalist protestants often followed the examples of the Catholics and withdrew from the public school system, creating their own parallel communities and private education systems. While I don’t claim to be an expert on European primary and secondary education systems, this seems to be the kind of thing that most Europeans would never consider. Or if they considered it, it would be much harder to pull off. The open and decentralized nature of American civic society provided more of an opportunity for dissenters to withdraw. While this allows each side to claim victory and move on with their lives, the downside is that the process of reaching a final consensus is much slower.

As part of the more decentralized state of affairs under the American federal system, it should be remembered that Americans have traditionally had a different sense of the citizen-state relationship, insisting that the state works for the citizen, not the other way around. In the case of the Scopes trial, there was only a legal issue insofar as the schools were funded by taxpayer money and run by the government. With those conditions in mind, it seemed a very reasonable and logical argument that the citizens (through the elected legislature) could decide what could and could not be taught. Without those conditions, there may still have been a moral and cultural debate. But even Bryan would’ve been forced to admit that local civilian ownership over the government system provided the only basis for a legal challenge.

- Both are both pushing the bounds of science.

- Both are doing so with no apparent reason why, with no philosophical thoughts.

- Both are pushing merely to see how far they can push, asking only if they can and never whether they should.

But one of the differences that I found most interesting is that Frankenstein was actually creating life. Moreau was not creating anything, merely altering existing life. In this vision, Man has been demoted, along with God. On Moreau’s island the Law (the clear proxy for religion) is merely a man made concept. Since the world envisioned by Wells is one where God is not real, it stands to reason that a man pretending to be God would have no real, lasting authority. He cannot create; he can only alter that which nature has created. And even these alterations will not last. Nature cannot be tamed.  

Frankenstein is largely an argument to live within nature’s predetermined boundaries. Don’t take on experiments and create things that you don’t understand and can’t control. Don’t venture to places you don’t belong, like the North Pole, in search of fleeting fame and glory. Respect nature and it will respect you. Nurture it and it will nurture you.

The Island of Dr. Moreau represents a view that has discovered the harsher side of nature. It is a view that has studied the hard laws of where nature will take you and has recoiled in fear.

Pendrick fancies himself as a modern man, a man who understands and sympathizes with modern science even if he himself is not on the cutting edge. He does not understand why vivisecting animals is anything to be ashamed of, though he understands that those who are uneducated have to be placated (at least until their ignorance can be corrected). But when he starts to believe that Moreau is vivisecting humans, his conscience revolts. He clearly is at peace with the general idea of evolution and has no love for religion, yet when he sees humanity actually being blended into animals, he is appalled. This conflict is clearly a common one at the time. As new scientific theories are appearing to shoot down the old institutions and moral codes, many people were confused and concerned about what would take their place.

I do know that in later years Wells was a big fan of the power of governments to enforce these moral codes and provide meaning to people’s lives; the more expansive and coercive the government, the better. I’m not sure how far along he was along this path of reasoning when he wrote this. I can see some germs of this thinking, such as Pendrick coming to the conclusion that ‘nonsense’ like the Law was necessary for the superior (himself) to keep control over the savages. But it seems too easy to draw too many such conclusions.

But while I get the sense that Huxley was not above casting a wolf’s argument in a sheep’s words, I do get the sense that he himself had genuine conflicts over the meaning of evolution. This speaks to what a jolt this entire argument must have been to all those involved and to the society around them. I find myself having to remind myself of that often during these readings.

I do wonder if Darwin, Huxley, and their supporters during this period ever gave thought the possible extinction of humanity. If the evolution of humanity was purely a natural phenomenon, then humanity would be subject to the same possibility of decline, decay, and extinction as every other species. Surely our higher intelligence and consciousness would make this process more difficult. But if evolution is nothing more than a law of nature (as opposed to a divinely inspired natural process), then the possibility of extinction can only be lowered, not eliminated. Did Darwin or Huxley consider this? Did it trouble them?

And I still find their rationalization of human sympathy for the disabled and ‘less fit’ to be unsatisfactory. Huxley proposes an “evolution of ethics” in that as we evolve and as society evolves, so too our ethics evolve. As he puts it

“Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically best.”

But evolution means not only inter-species competition, but also intra-species competition. So regardless of whether different races of humans constitute different species, if two sub-species of humans (i.e. two different civilizations) exist simultaneously at different positions of this “ethical process”, they are then subject to two different meanings of “survival of the fittest”. The civilization that is further along in the ethical process would consist, according to Huxley, of those who are “ethically best”, but not necessarily those who are “fittest” for the existing environmental conditions. The other civilization will contain only those members who are fittest for the existing environment, since they have no use as yet for concern over who is ethically best. This would seem to give the latter civilization an advantage in a head to head struggle for survival. If so, while this may not lead to extinction, it would have to be considered at least as a regression. Did Darwin and Huxley consider regression possible (or inevitable) in humans?

But while his scientific evidence has mostly been verified or refuted over the last century, the moral and ethical implications of Darwin’s ideas represent a more enduring dilemma. In particular, Darwin’s “morality” is an entirely amoral concept.

Darwin spends a good portion of Chapter 3 discussing the concept of human morality. And he returns to this subject again in Chapter 5. In these chapters, he posits a few different ways in which morality has evolved as a construct in the human mind and discusses the differences/similarities between humans and animals in this regard. According to Darwin, morality has evolved primarily as part of mankind’s social instincts. At a basic, perhaps over simplified level, first man figured out that it was in his interests to live socially with other men. Then he figured out that by doing favors for his fellow man, he might expect favors in return. Then gradually man developed sympathy for an ever-expanding circle of other humans and eventually modern morality became so ingrained in the human mind that many people assume it is hardwired in us.

But lacking from Darwin’s concept of morality is the simple concept of right and wrong. Though he uses the terms, he strips them of meaning. We don’t do what’s right because it is right. We do it because it serves other instincts within us; the social instinct or fear of punishment from the group, as just two examples. Darwin does try feebly to explain seemingly selfless acts but again, he does so by assuming that these acts are not truly selfless. They merely serve other, less obvious purposes. He describes the phenomenon of a mother bird who abandons her young to their fate because her motherly instinct to care for her offspring is temporarily overwhelmed by the migratory instinct. Darwin argues that the reasons civilized humans don’t routinely do things like this is because our increased intellectual capacity would cause us to reflect on our actions after the migratory impulse has been satisfied. According to this theory, it is only this constant replaying of the event in the mother’s mind, the constant intrusion of her intellect to remind her that abandoning her young was a transgression against her lingering social instinct and past habits that would cause the mother to regret the action. But by breaking down such actions and explaining them as a result merely of a slightly stronger instinct lingering after the transient instinct has been satisfied, Darwin’s theory removes any value judgment from the equation. Just as he argues that no one form of life should be considered “better” than another, so no one set of actions and instincts can be right and no set of instincts can be wrong. They merely exist.

Darwin also tries, again feebly, to lighten the blow of this logic but arguing that civilization has led humans to expand the circle of those to whom they are sympathetic, and that this is likely to continue. But in making such assumptions, Darwin was falling prey to the habit of assuming that progress can be seen and can be expected to continue. This is a bad habit which he spends much of Chapter 5 urging others to avoid. Either Darwin did not believe his own reassurances on this matter or he failed to recognize the logical inconsistency apparent in this section of his work.