From: Nicholas Humphrey
Date: 4.9.02

I have major problems with the essay. In particular, I don't find the identification of Science and Optimism at all convincing—on either of your two counts.

1. I don't think scientists do or should expect an exponential Moore's-Law like expansion of interesting problems. In fact, just the opposite: I think we are—or soon will be—exhausting the mine of deep and interesting problems. We'll have a "theory of everything", we'll have proved "Riemann's hypothesis", we'll have got to the bottom of consciousness, etc. This is indeed the Golden Age of Science. But it has to be self-closing, at least so far as the "big", "the hard", problems are concerned. I wrote about just this issue in my essay "Scientific Shakespeare." The point I made there is that the "arts" continue to have opportunities that the "sciences" soon will not have. I think we scientists had better be prepared for—and even humble in the face of—the next phase of human culture, which may well revert to the traditional province of the arts.

2. I don't think scientific discoveries can be counted on, necessarily, to bring about a net increase in human happiness—either through what they reveal about the course of nature or through the tools they potentially give us with which to intervene in it. Many scientists, from Bertrand Russell to Jacques Monod to Martin Rees, have been and are deeply pessimistic about what science tells us about the way the world is headed. And, as a separate issue, many still have anxieties about the use to which scientific discoveries will be put—from weapons of mass destruction, to eugenics, to thought-control.

This isn't to question your main point that, today, "science is the only game in town." I do of course agree there's more hope in science than there is in anything else. I spelt out my position on this at the end of my Amnesty Lecture, "What Shall We Tell the Children.". But, the problem, as I see, for this Essay, is that you already made this point years ago as convincingly as could be in your introduction to The Third Culture, and it really doesn't need making again. In fact, if I were you, I would now adopt a totally different tack.

Instead of repeating your attack on the Bloomsbury-obsessed intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century, I think you should be drawing attention to the way they have already become marginalised—partly through your own, I mean John Brockman's, efforts. The evidence for the triumph of science in the intellectual culture is all around. In literature—eg Ian McEwan's "Enduring Love", in film—eg "A Beautiful Mind,", in theatre—eg Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen", and so on: what we're seeing is an astonishing turnaround from the old values to the new. Even Bill Clinton, in The New York Times (2nd March 2002), when asked what he wished he knew more about, replied "biochemistry"!

Your Essay, as it is, is curiously paranoid. You no longer need to be! You've largely won. But the next task is to provide a sober assessment of the nature of the victory. "Double Optimism" seems much too simplistic.

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY is a theoretical psychologist at LSE and The New School and author of The Mind Made Flesh. [more....]

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