(this is the fourth in a series of essays which will carry the same title so that you can follow along easily if you should so choose.)
In the previous installment of this series, I posited that change is the natural state of our existence. Indeed, James Burke has spent a lifetime studying the history of change, and made an interesting discovery along the way. Every technological discovery or invention was originally created with one intent, yet its coming into existence created conditions, if only by the very fact that it did indeed exist, that lead to another and yet another advance. And chance was one of the most important factors in fueling the ongoing chain of discovery. In every case, the historical father of the discovery had no inkling what was to become of what they had wrought. For example, in episode 5 of his 1978 BBC series:
"The Wheel of Fortune" traces astrological knowledge in ancient Greek manuscripts from Baghdad's founder, Caliph Al-Mansur, via the Muslim monastery/medical school at Gundeshapur, to the medieval Church's need for alarm clocks (the water horologium and the verge and foliot clock). The clock mainspring gave way to the pendulum clock, but the latter could not be used by mariners, thus the need for precision machining by way of Huntsman's improved steel (1797) and Maudslay's use (1800) of Ramsden's idea of using a screw to better measure (which he took from the turner's trade). This process made a better mainspring and was also used by the Royal Navy to make better blocks. Le Blanc mentioned this same basic idea to Thomas Jefferson, who transmitted this "American system of manufactures" – precision machine-tooling of musket parts for interchangeability – to New Englanders Eli Whitney, John Hall, and Simeon North. The American efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth and his psychologist wife later improved the whole new system of the modern production line.
wikipedia
You may have already made the quantum leap before you got to the end of the chain of events: The described trail leading from Caliph Al-Mansur to Frank Gilbreth was only one of many different trails that led out from those ancient manuscripts. I picked the image of the deck of a pinball machine because it seemed a good fit for Burke’s chain of events theory of change. That and the fact that all too many hours of a mis-spent youth were spent trying to master flipper catches, back flips, nerfing techniques to deaden bumpers or to spin the ball off-center in a kickout hole that was aimed at the flipper gap. Burke, however, uses the pinball metaphor to express the interactions between discovery, technological advances and invention to emphasize the role that chance plays in the advancement of knowledge. And as in that bowling alley game, every active bumper/chance relationship adds more energy to the path of the ball or speed to the advance of technology. And as technology speeds forward, it is branching out, like some pinball machine of the damned wherein the ball splits to become two with every bumper strike. Is there a danger wherein the pace and scope of change surpasses any possibility of guidance and becomes a mastitis upon human civilization? Will any and all sense of control simply vanish under the shear volume of possibilities? Will we become the servants of that we which we created to serve us?
The question that arises is, if we can’t look into the future, and we can only look back, how can we possibly predict what the outcomes will be of the decisions we make when we set out to “change the world”? How do we take into account the unpredictable nature of change? The answer may come from a conversation I had with a former dean of the school where I work. We were deep in the weeds trying to manage the introduction of a new technology, when she stated, “Oh, you’re one of those ‘process people’.” After I got my jaw back up out of my lap, I replied, “Is there any other kind? Isn't life itself a process?”
Jacob Bronowski was the ultimate "process person." Born in Poland and educated in England, he was one of the first western witnesses to the existential threat that the advancement of science and technology could be to the survival of the human race. Because of his work in operations research during World War 2 for the UK's Ministry of Home Security, Bronowski was one of the first from the west to enter Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped. For much of his life after that event, his most important work were his lectures and writings on the scientific process and the social and ethical framework within which the scientific community works. He focused on the scientific method as it developed from Galileo through the twentieth century. Bronowski also wrote at length of the scientific community and how it provides support to its members in their work. He observed that there was a principle that was essential to the maintenance of that community which may offer a key to how we may be able to "even the odds against the house." Within the community of science it is permissible to be wrong, for indeed if all of Albert Einstein predecessors had been correct, there would have been nothing for Albert to add to our body of knowledge. This understanding that science is always looking at the edge of what we know also inhibits the "confidence of knowing" that can become dogma. And so within the scientific community, you can be wrong, indeed the question always lives on. But most important of all, you must not set out with the intention to deceive. As Jacob Bronowski pointed out long ago, "Science doesn't just suggest an ethical system, it is and has been an ethical system all along. It is based on the premise that we will take every precaution not to deceive ourselves, and the promise that we will not intentionally deceive others." ( physicshead.blogspot.com/...) That is why adherence to the scientific method is central to that community. It is a community based in facts, on processes that are veritable and repeatable. The ethic that Bronowski described is essential because science builds it's understanding of the universe upon the work of those who went before, and must be able to trust that earlier work. That work will be found to be insufficent, that is why we continue to discover. But discovery is halted when a body of work is founded on a lie.
There have been significant deviations from that ideal since Bronowski laid out those principles the 1950's... the petroleum industry scientist's defense of lead additives to gasoline, the tobacco industry scientists' defense of the "safety" of their product, etc. But these deviations from the norm expressed by Bronowski were the result of the corrupting influence of our other social and political institutions in the last half century, and as such, are the proof of the need for broad adherence to those norms. Rather than outside institutions separating the scientific community from their historical ethical culture, we should wonder, "What if that principles of the scientific community could be inculcated into all our institutions." Could we avoid that which Bronowski most feared?
The next installment is titled, ”Where to From Here: Reflections on the Nature of Change: (Clear Intention/Sound Process)"
(please feel free to suggest tags in the comments, I am not sure how many interrelationships with ongoing discussions there might be as I go forward.)
The previous postings in this series are, in order: