Steelhead Full o' Sh*t

[Steelhead]

Adam Thornton asked me to forward this intriguing post on Norbert Wiener to
the p-list. I'll respond, but not for awhile. I'm not shirking by
obligation to be obtsreperous (Geeze, now that Diana's vamoosed I'll have
to do double-duty), I've got real work to do.

Steely

From: "Adam J. Thornton" <adam at phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fabricated Planet
To: sitka at teleport.com (Steelhead)
Date:    Wed, 5 Mar 1997 20:09:46 -0500 (EST)


> Second, many of the passages Bump cites raise as many questions as they
> answer. For example, Wiener titles, in the "second volume" of his
> autobiography, "I am a mathematician" with an innocent aire that utterly
> belies the untold miseries unleashed upon the planet by this occupation. He
> also shows a chilling indifference toward the homocidal purpose of the
> Manhattan Project.

I will confess that I have read no Wiener.  However, for reasons of my own,
I'm reading David Noble's book _Forces of Production: A Social History of
Industrial Automation_.  For those of you who don't know Noble's work, he
writes Marxist cultural history of technology.  He is one of the few
leftists working in the history of technology as well as one of the few
historians willing to really come to grips with the cultural and social
implications of technology.  Thus, none of the Wiener quotations are
fact-checked.  However, in my experience with his book _America By Design_,
Noble is pretty reliable when it comes to citation, although I do not buy
his ideology.

I was quite surprised to find that pages 71-76 of _Forces of Production_ is
essentially an impassioned defense of Wiener.

> I will take issue with two of Bump's assertions. First that Wiener had
> nothing to do with the development of nuclear power. This is false.
>
> According to records from the former Atomic Energy Commission, Norbert
> Wiener had two contracts with the federal government to work on the
> development of nuclear power from 1953 through 1957. One of the contracts
> was with the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington.  Wiener's
> task was to help develop the fast-flux reactor at Hanford designed *solely*
> to generate plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Noble reports that "Wiener after the war adopted a consistent and
conscientious policly of non-cooperation, which excluded him henceforth
from the circles of power." (72)  And I quote Noble quoting Wiener on the
use of the atomic bomb: "Wiener did not think that the use of the bomb on
Japan, on Orientals, was without significance.  'I was acquainted with more
than one of these popes and cardinals of applied science, and I knew very
well how they underrated aliens of all sorts, particularly those not of the
European race.'" (73)

> The fast-flux breeder reactor was envisioned for the production of hydrogen
> class weapons of unimaginable destructiveness.

Noble does not speak about the fast-flux breeder reactor, and thus I, not
having read Wiener's work or looked at the contract, cannot speak about it.
However, I do note the following from page 74:

"'I do not expect to publish any future work of mine which may do damage in
the hands of irresponsible militarists,' Wiener declared.  'I realize, of
course,' he explained, 'that I am acting as a censor of my own ideas, and
it may sound arbitrary, but I will not accept a censorship in which I do
not participate.'  The 'practical use of guided missiles can only be to
kill foreign civilians indiscriminately.  If therefore I do not desire to
participate in the bombing or poisoning of defenseless peoples--and I most
certainly do not--I muyst take a serious responsibility as to those to whom
I disclose my scientific ideas.'"  The Wiener quotations are from "A
Scientist Rebels" in the January 1947 _Atlantic Monthly_.  Further there is
a footnote: "True to his word, Wiener refused to participate in any
military research, this despite the fact that MIT had become in effect a
military research establishment, receiving over 90 percent of its research
support from the Department of Defense.  Wiener did not give up science,
however, but turned his attention to medicine and, in particular, to the
development of prosthetic devices, hoping in this way to turn swords into
plowshares.  His professional colleagues, steeped in military research and
development, continued to profess their admiration for Wiener, but
dismessed his social writings as amateurish 'philosophizing,' a careless
overstepping of the bounds of his scientific expertise and, to some, a sure
sign of his approaching senility."

years later.  My initial hypothesis would be that Wiener saw the fast-flux
breeder reactor (a technology of which I am ignorant) as a means towards
the peaceful employment of nuclear power, and further my guess would be as
a step towards a fusion, rather than fission, power plant, which could in
theory (and, in the 1950s, a belief in its eventual efficacy seemed much
less lunatic than today) produce clean and abundant power cheaply.  But
again, I do not know; I am merely, as a historian of technology without
much training in 20th century physics, guessing.  If Wiener did indeed
accept the project knowing full well that he was building a plant purely
for the purpose of producing weapons-grade plutonium, then David Noble has
been lying about Wiener's later career.

> Second, Wiener was a scientist, not a humanitarian. Perhaps, these two
> categories are occasionally compatible. But not in Wiener's case. His
> vision is of a cold world dominated by human machines, and machine humans,
> where nature has been eliminated and replaced with human constructions. A
> fabricated planet run by a society of automatons, designed to function with
> a machine-like efficiency. Slothful oddballs need not apply.

However, if I can trust David Noble at all--and I think I can--Steelhead
is, here, just plain wrong.

To quote from Weiner, in his correspondence, in the MIT archives, in a
letter to Walter Reuther of July 26, 1950:

"the preparation for war and its expenditures mean at least a slowing up of
social progress, and perhaps a reversal in its tide.  We must not forget
that there are elements in this country which regard this slowing up, and
this reversal, with sardonic glee.  It is the chance of a certain type of
businessman and a certain type of military man to get rid once and for all
of the labor unions, of all forms of socialization, and of all restrictions
to individual profiteering.  It is a trend that may easily be turned into
fascism."

To further quote Wiener, from his August 13, 1949 letter to Reuther:

"I do not wish personally to be responsible for any such state of affairs
[the replacement of humans with machines in factories].  I have, therefore,
turned down unconditionally the request of the industrial company which has
tried to consult me.
"I do not wish to contribute in any way to selling labor down the river,
and I am quite aware that any labor which is in competition with slave
labor, whether the slaves are human or mechanical, must accept the
conditions of work of slave labor.  For me merely to remain aloof is to
make sure that the development of these ideas will go into other hands
which will probably be much less friendly to organized labor.  I know of no
group which has at the same time a sufficient honesty of purpose to be
entrusted with these developments and a sufficiently firm economic and
social position to be able to hold these results substantially in their own
hands."

These are hardly the words of a man who would embrace "a fabricated planet
run by a society of automatons."  Wiener claimed that, as a journalist
covering the Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strikes, he had "developed a
sympathy for the labor Movement." (Noble, p. 74)  His contempt for
precisely what Steelhead seems to be accusing him of is evident in the
following quotation from _I Am A Mathematician_: "The whole idea of
push-button warfare has an enormous temptation for those who are confident
of their power of invention and have a deep distrust of human beings.  I
have seen such people and have a very good idea of what makes them tick."

Wiener seems to demonstrate neither innocence of the motives of many in the
scientific establishment nor an indifference towards the goals of the
Manhattan Project.  In fact, he seems to me to be explicitly recognizing
and repudiating both.

In short, Steely, either you or David Noble are full of shit.  Having read
_America By Design_ carefully, and, while disagreeing with it thoroughly,
being forced to concede that at least his factual research is extremely
solid, my money is on the proposition that it is you who are full of shit.
There are certainly scientists--put the word in scare quotes if it makes
you feel better--deserving of your ire.  I myself would start with Edward
Teller, whom I once watched speak for an hour on why scientists have no
moral responsibility whatsoever for their creations (then again, had I
invented the hydrogen bomb, telling myself that might well be the only way
I could ever sleep again).  For all I know, Wiener too may be deserving of
your ire.  But not for this.

> For Wiener, and many other "scientists," nuclear power was the new Dynamo
> that would keep the species (though likely dramatically mutated) running
> for, as he puts it, millions of years. Why this is a good idea, natch, is
> never addressed.

Perhaps it would have been, in Wiener's mind, preferable to starvation?  To
slowly drowning in a thick sea of half-burnt hydrocarbons?  I believe your
initial Wiener quotation included words along the lines of "if it can be
achieved without nasty byproducts."  There is, I think, still no reason in
theory that a clean fusion (nota bene, not fission) reactor could not be
constructed; fusing hydrogen isotopes does not lead to the embarassing
proliferation of radioactive heavy metals characteristic of fission
reactions.  In the positivist atmosphere of the 1950s it is hardly
surprising that the problem of not immediately being able to magnetically
contain a fusion reaction would have been seen as a temporary and doubtless
soon-to-be fixed condition..  In short, particularly for the times and the
culture, it was not an insane or irresponsible statement.

I assume that it is "a good idea" insofar as one assumes that being alive
is, in general, better than being dead.  I have no problem with this
assumption.  If you do, I'd prefer you test your theory on yourself first,
rather than me, or, indeed, any third party.

Adam
--
"I'd buy me a used car lot, and | adam at princeton.edu | As B/4 | Save the choad!
I'd never sell any of 'em, just | "Skippy, you little fool, you are off on an-
drive me a different car every day | other of your senseless and retrograde
depending on how I feel.":Tom Waits| little journeys.": Thomas Pynchon | 64,928