Home · Book Reports · 2018 · The Scientific Outlook

designates my notes. / designates important.

Thoughts

First off, read this book. Period. Full stop.

Every single page of this book has sentences that will leave most readers slack jawed. Much in the same way as Propaganda, this book (from 1928 and 1931) pulls no punches and is almost laughable at how direct Russell is with his thoughts. He says, point blank, that Hollywood/cinema is used to control the masses by pacifying them while injecting standards they “should” live by.

This was published 4 months before Brave New World, which took 4 months to write, coincidence?

Russell draws an interesting line between the difference in old/Greek way: where through deduction one comes to conclusions taken from obvious truths, to the new/Newton/Galileo way: where through induction one comes to non-obvious truth via observation. I don’t think on is necessarily better than the other, but this delineation in ways of thinking is interesting.

Russell calls much attention to scientists like Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Pavlov, and then also make references to fictional characters like Alice in Wonderland and her Mad Hatter. I find this telling since he also claims that Hollywood (stories) are used to control the masses. Is Alice/Hatter him falling for his own nonsense? Is he using this very work to poison the very well while he explains how to poison the well?

Then he goes on to say that “It is the fashion among intellectuals to regard our age as one of weariness and discouragement … since they have less influence on affairs than they formerly had.” This is right after he claimed that the cinema is more relevant than the church. So which is it? Is the cinema the new arbiter of truth and the intellectuals have fallen to the wayside, or do the “real” intellectuals distribute their messaging via the cinema? Or, when he speaks of intellectuals, does he mean (for example) professors who don’t have much relevance and not the oligarchical intellectuals (like him)?

Russell examines things like productivity, scarcity,competition, and labor in sometimes counterintuitive ways. For example, he states:

“In the absence of competition, the immensely enhanced productivity of labour would enable men to arrive at a just compromise between leisure and goods: they could choose whether they would work six hours a day and be rich, or four hours a day and enjoy only moderate comfort.”

First of all, I ask: how is this not competition? The more you work the more you are rewarded. Second, he later talks about how labor should be bred like horses: for brawn not brain. Does the mule have agency in how it spends it days? Would the future human laborer? No matter how hard the mule works, it will never be rich and certainly not confortable or free.

Then, he essentially extrapolates from controlling individuals (labor) through breeding, punishment, and entertainment to controlling the masses through similar methods at the “organized world state” level.

He claims that this world state will firstly ensure security against war. All of the wasted resources of arms races can be channeled into other, more productive means. Sounds great on paper, but then he immediately reneges on this idea by claiming there would still need to be “a single highly efficient fighting machine, employing mainly aeroplanes and chemical methods of warfare, which will be quite obviously irresistible…” So which is it? And who will this ultra fighting force be fighting against?

This world state will change from time to time via palace revolutions, but the overall state will remain the same. Propaganda of nationalism will become propaganda of the world state. Russell claims that such a state would need only survive for one generation then it would be stable. Later he goes into how those born into the lower class but express intelligence could be elevated to the ruling class if they denouce their old life. If they show devotion to their old life, they must be put to death before they might foment revolution. Literally. If you do as you are told you will be OK, maybe even rewarded. Otherwise? Death.

This seems very ignorant on Russell’s part. Anyone (or at least any-some) of the intelligent “lower class” would recognize the lethality of solidarity to their class and simply hide it. Or even hide their intelligence. Eventually you would have an uprising. Unless of course Russell’s oligarchy was successful in (Brave New World-style) modifying embryos and creating a literally engineered population.

While that might be possible, he belabors the point that the modern world is induced to uniformity via education, the press, and the media. These tools of propaganda, while powerful, will not be able to command the absolute compliance Russell pines for. At least not in my opinion. Look at the world today (2022). While the media (social and legacy) have done a grand job at confusing the masses, setting us against one another, and distracting us from the ugly side of our brave new world, there are still a great many people all over the world that see through the lies. We have simply not found a way to act. We will eventually be pushed too far (a different point for everyone) and reach our breaking point.

When that time comes the reaction could be anything from building a parallel economy/society to exist outside of the oligarchy’s control grid to lashing out in a lone gunman sense, to full out violent revolution.

Books

• Burnham’s Managerial Revolution

• Huxley and Mr. Gladstone debated the truth of the Christian religion in the pages of the “Nineteenth Century”

• Piaget, in his book on “Judgment and Reasoning in the Child”

• Susan Isaacs, The Intellectual Growth in Young Children, 1930.

• Professor B. H. Chamberlain, The Invention of a New Religion, published by the Rationalist Press Association.

Exceptional Excerpts

It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty.

In the name of science we revolutionize industry, undermine family morals, enslave coloured races, and skilfully exterminate each other with poison gases.

indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next

When people think of scientific technique they think primarily of machines. It seems probable that in the near future science will achieve equal triumphs in biological and physiological directions, and will ultimately acquire as much power to change men’s minds as it already has power to deal with our inanimate environment.

Love, parenthood, pleasure, and beauty are of less account to the modern industrialist than to the princely magnates of past times. Manipulation and exploitation are the ruling passions of the typical scientific industrialist. The average man may not share this narrow concentration, but for that very reason he fails to acquire a hold on the sources of power, and leaves the practical government of the world to the fanatics of mechanism.

Fortunately, the modern holders of power are not yet quite aware how much they could do if they chose, but when this knowledge dawns upon them a new era in human tyranny is to be expected.

It is likely that this result [modifying embryos] will only be achieved after a number of unsuccessful experiments leading to the birth of idiots or monstrosities. But would this be too high a price to pay for the discovery of a method by which, within one generation, the whole human race could be rendered intelligent? Perhaps by a suitable choice of chemicals to be injected into the uterus it may

Education has two very different purposes: on the one hand it aims at developing the individual and giving him knowledge which will be useful to him; on the other hand it aims at producing citizens who will be convenient for the State or the Church which is educating them.

children in school are taught to believe what they are told and are punished if they express disbelief. In this way a conditioned reflex is established, leading to a belief in anything said authoritatively

perhaps the most important of all the modern agents of propaganda is the cinema. Where the cinema is concerned, the technical reasons for large-scale organizations leading to almost world-wide uniformity are overwhelming.

The great majority of young people in almost all civilized countries derive their ideas of love, of honour, of the way to make money, and of the importance of good clothes, from the evenings spent in seeing what Hollywood thinks good for them. I doubt whether all the schools and churches combined have as much influence as the cinema upon the opinions of the young in regard to such intimate matters as love and marriage and money-making.

The producers of Hollywood are the high-priests of a new religion. Let us be thankful for the lofty purity of their sentiments. We learn from them that sin is always punished, and virtue is always rewarded.

We know from the cinema that wealth comes to the virtuous, and from real life that old So-and-so has wealth. It follows that old So-and-so is virtuous, and that the people who say he exploits his employees are slanderers and troublemakers. The cinema therefore plays a useful part in safeguarding the rich from the envy of the poor.

any defects in the status quo become known only to those who are willing to spend their leisure time otherwise than in amusement; these are, of course, a small minority, and from a political point of view they are at most times negligible.

What would Western Europeans do if deprived of their nightly drug from Hollywood?

Credit has become an immense force controlling the economic life of all advanced communities, but although its principles are fairly well understood by experts, political difficulties stand in the way of the right utilization of these principles, and the barbaric practice of depending upon actual gold is still a cause of much misery.

The primitive peasant may be almost entirely self-directed; he produces his own food, buys very little, and does not send his children to school. The modern man, even if he happens to be an agriculturist, produces only a small proportion of what he eats … In his buying and selling he depends upon immense organizations which are usually international; his reading is provided by the great newspapers, his amusements by Hollywood, the education of his children by the State, his capital, in part at least, by a bank, his political opinions by his Party, his safety and many of his amenities by the Government to which he pays taxes. Thus in all his most important activities he has ceased to be a separate unit and has become dependent upon some social organization.

In a great many respects national boundaries have become a technical absurdity, and further advance demands that they should be ignored.

I am not anxious to appraise the good or evil in the Soviet system, but merely to point out those elements of deliberate planning which make it so far the most complete example of a scientific society. In the first place, all the major factors of

We must therefore increasingly expect to see government falling into the hands of oligarchies, not of birth but of opinion. In countries long accustomed to democracy, the empire of these oligarchies may be concealed behind democratic forms…

Quite apart from war, an international organization of credit and banking is necessary to the prosperity not only of some countries, but of all.

Economic motives will be employed to regulate population,

Children in excess of the licensed figure will presumably be subjected to infanticide. This would be less cruel than the present method, which is to kill them by war or starvation.

all real power will come to be concentrated in the hands of those who understand the art of scientific manipulation.

On those rare occasions when a boy or girl who has passed the age at which it is usual to determine social status shows such marked ability as to seem the intellectual equal of the rulers, a difficult situation will arise, requiring serious consideration. If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw in his lot whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted, but if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt.

Fathers would, of course, have nothing to do with their own children.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction

Part 1: Scientific Knowledge

• 01: Examples of Scientific Method
• 02: Characteristics of Scientific Method
• 03: Limitations of Scientific Method
• 04: Scientific Metaphysics
• 05: Science and Religion

Part 2: Scientific Technique

• 06: Beginnings of Scientific Technique
• 07: Technique in Inanimate Nature
• 08: Technique in Biology
• 09: Technique in Physiology
• 10: Technique in Psychology
• 11: Technique in Society

Part 3: The Scientific Society

• 12: Artificially Created Societies
• 13: The Individual and the Whole
• 14: Scientific Government
• 15: Education in a Scientific Society
• 16: Scientific Reproduction
• 17: Science and Values

• Pages numbers from the book.

· Preface

page vii:

• [Bertrand’s] stand against conscription during the First World War, and his consequent imprisonment

page xv:

• The universe could still have occurred without a cause,

page xviii:

• Russell distinguishes sharply between science as a source of metaphysical insight, and science as a generator of techniques for manipulating the world. It may be limited in the former role, but in Russell’s view there are few bounds to what it can achieve in the latter.

page xix:

• He writes with enthusiasm about communal child-rearing, economic planning in place of capitalism, and the formation of a world government.

• However, as Russell develops his theme, it metamorphoses into something much darker. The communitarian idyll turns inexorably into

1984. Dissent is suppressed, workers are forcibly sterilized, individuals are tortured in the name of scientific research.

page xx:

• For Russell, the arch empiricist, we could not know anything about the world except via the direct acquaintance of sense-perception, and theoretical science failed this test. But sense-perception no longer plays this central role in the theory of knowledge, and philosophers now allow that there may be other routes to genuine knowledge, including theoretical inferences in science.

· Introduction

page xxiv:

• One hundred and fifty years of science have proved more explosive than five thousand years of prescientific culture.

• One may suppose that a new equilibrium will ultimately be reached, either when so much is known that a lifetime is not sufficient to reach the frontiers of knowledge, and therefore further discovery must await some considerable increase of longevity, or when men become bored with the new toy, become weary of the strenuousness required in the making of scientific advances, and become content to enjoy the fruits of former labours,

Part 1: Scientific Knowledge

· 01: Examples of Scientific Method

page 25:

• Aristotle, it should be said, has been one of the great misfortunes of the human race. To this day the teaching of logic in most universities is full of nonsense for which he is responsible.

page 28:

• there can be little doubt that mechanistic theories of evolution will prevail completely before long.

page 32:

• He [Pavlov] had a dog to whom he always showed a circular patch of bright light before giving him food, and an elliptical patch before giving him an electric shock. The dog learned to distinguish clearly between circles and ellipses, rejoicing in the former, and avoiding the latter with dismay. Pavlov then gradually diminished the eccentricity of the ellipse, making it more and more nearly resemble a circle. For a long time the dog continued to distinguish clearly: As the form of the ellipse was brought closer and closer to that of the circle, we obtained more or less quickly an increasingly delicate differentiation. But when we used an ellipse whose two axes were as 9:8, i.e. an ellipse which was nearly circular, all this was changed. We obtained a new delicate differentiation, which always remained imperfect, lasted two or three weeks, and afterwards not only disappeared spontaneously, but caused the loss of all earlier differentiations, including even the less delicate ones. The dog which formerly stood quietly on his bench, now was constantly struggling and howling. It was necessary to elaborate anew all the differentiations and the most unrefined now demanded much more time than at first. On attempting to obtain the final differentiation the old story was repeated, i.e. all the differentiations disappeared and the dog fell again into a state of excitation.5

• I am afraid a similar procedure is habitual in schools, and accounts for the apparent stupidity of many of the scholars.

page 34:

• “We are now coming,” he [Pavlov] says, “to think of the mind, the soul, and matter as all one, and with this view there will be no necessity for a choice between them.”

• As a human being, Pavlov has the simplicity and regularity of learned men of an earlier time, such as Immanuel Kant.

page 36:

• Professor Hogben says: “In our generation, the work of Pavlov’s school has successfully tackled, for the first time in history, the problem of what Dr. Haldane calls “conscious behaviour” in non-teleological terms. It has reduced it to the investigation of the conditions under which new reflex systems are brought into being.“10

· 02: Characteristics of Scientific Method

page 37:

• In arriving at a scientific law there are three main stages: the first consists in observing the significant facts; the second in arriving at a hypothesis, which, if it is true, would account for these facts; the third in deducing from this hypothesis consequences which can be tested by observation.

page 38:

• Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, travelling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.

• In text-books the deductive order will be adopted, but in the laboratory the inductive order.

page 42:

• Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.

page 43:

• Who ever heard of a theologian prefacing his creed, or a politician concluding his speeches, with a statement as to the probable error in his opinions? It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty. The less reason a man has to suppose himself in the right, the more vehemently he asserts that there is no doubt whatever that he is exactly right. It is a practice of theologians to laugh at science because it changes. “Look at us”, they say. “What we asserted at the Council of Nicea we still assert; whereas what the scientists asserted only two or three years ago is already forgotten and antiquated.”

· 03: Limitations of Scientific Method

page 49:

• if you are going to believe anything outside your own experience, you should have some reason for believing it. Usually the reason is authority.

• we all know how often authority has been proved mistaken. It is true that most of us must inevitably depend upon it for most of our knowledge.

• Did Pythagoras exist? Probably. Did Romulus exist? Probably not. Did Remus exist? Almost certainly not.

page 50:

• in theory, a hot globe of molten metal could be hung up in such a position that, to a given observer, it would seem just like the sun.

• Nevertheless, since it is the theoretical goal of every science to be absorbed in physics, we are not likely to go astray if we apply to science in general the doubts and difficulties which have become obvious in the sphere of physics.

page 52:

• Farthing Hume’s theory, Inferences to What is Not Experienced.

page 56:

• our faith in the external world must be merely animal faith.

page 58:

• The cultivator, who knows every corner of his farm, has a concrete knowledge of wheat, and makes very little money; the railway which carries his wheat views it in a slightly more abstract way, and makes rather more money; the stock exchange manipulator, who knows it only in its purely abstract aspect of something which may go up or down, is, in his way, as remote from concrete reality as the physicist, and he, of all those concerned in the economic sphere, makes the most money and has the most power. So it is with science, though the power which the man of science seeks is more remote and impersonal than that which is sought on the stock exchange.

• Such a sad state of affairs we’ve come to. The producer is rewarded much less than the manipulator.

• The power of using abstractions is the essence of intellect, and with every increase in abstraction the intellectual triumphs of science are enhanced.

· 04: Scientific Metaphysics

page 67;

But now the sun is nothing but waves of probability. If you ask what it is that is probable, or in what ocean the waves travel, the physicist, like the Mad Hatter, replies: “I have had enough of this; suppose we change the subject.”

page 68:

• science is threatened by Bolshevism; but religion is also threatened by Bolshevism; therefore religion and science are allies.

• Merging science and religion under the cover of a common (contrived) enemy?

page 69:

• In metaphysics my creed is short and simple. I think that the external world may be an illusion, but if it exists, it consists of events, short, small and haphazard.

· 05: Science and Religion

page 75:

• The velocity and position of a particle are declared by the Principle to be undetermined in the sense that they cannot be accurately measured. This is a physical fact causally connected with the fact that the measuring is a physical process which has a physical effect upon what is measured. There is nothing whatever in the Principle of Indeterminacy to show that any physical event is uncaused. As Turner says: “Every argument that, since some change cannot be ‘determined’ in the sense of ‘ascertained,’ it is therefore not ‘determined’ in the absolutely different sense of ‘caused,’ is a fallacy of equivocation.”

• The argument that the world must have had a beginning in time is set forth with great clearness by Kant, who, however, supplements it by an equally powerful argument to prove that the world had no beginning in time.

page 93:

• Lloyd Morgan’s Emergent Evolution (1923) and Life, Mind and Spirit (1926). Lloyd Morgan believes that there is a Divine Purpose underlying the course of evolution, more particularly of what he calls “emergent evolution”. The definition of emergent evolution, if I understand it rightly, is as follows: it sometimes happens that a collection of objects arranged in a suitable pattern will have a new property which does not belong to the objects singly, and which cannot, so far as we can see, be deduced from their several properties together with the way in which they are arranged. He considers that there are examples of the same kind of thing even in the inorganic realm. The atom, the molecule, and the crystal will all have properties which, if I understand Lloyd Morgan aright, he regards as not deducible from the properties of their constituents.

• Emergent phenomenon, “Out of Control”, cybernetics, general systems theory.

page 94:

• In the name of science we revolutionize industry, undermine family morals, enslave coloured races, and skilfully exterminate each other with poison gases.

Part 2: Scientific Technique

· 06: Beginnings of Scientific Technique

page 100:

• By sanitation and hygiene the scientific nations have put an end to typhus and plague and a host of other diseases which still flourish in the East and formerly afflicted Western Europe.

• Not vaccines.

page 101:

• Comparison of Lao-Tze and Rousseau.

page 102:

• “Return to nature” means, in practice, return to those conditions to which the writer in question was accustomed in his youth.

page 105:

• indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next

· 07: Technique in Inanimate Nature

page 106:

• When people think of scientific technique they think primarily of machines. It seems probable that in the near future science will achieve equal triumphs in biological and physiological directions, and will ultimately acquire as much power to change men’s minds as it already has power to deal with our inanimate environment.

page 109:

• The supply of oil in the world is limited, and the consumption of oil is continually and rapidly increasing. It will probably not be very long before the world’s supply is practically exhausted —unless indeed the wars which will take place for its possession are sufficiently destructive to reduce the level of civilization to a point where oil will no longer be needed.

page 110:

• There are those who say that if a breakwater some twenty miles long were constructed at a suitable point on the Eastern coast of Canada, it would completely transform the climate of South-East Canada and New England, since it would cause the cold current which now flows along their shores to sink to the bottom of the sea, leaving the surface to be replenished by warm water from the South. I do not vouch for the truth of this idea, but it serves to illustrate possibilities which may in future be realized.

page 111:

• Love, parenthood, pleasure, and beauty are of less account to the modern industrialist than to the princely magnates of past times. Manipulation and exploitation are the ruling passions of the typical scientific industrialist. The average man may not share this narrow concentration, but for that very reason he fails to acquire a hold on the sources of power, and leaves the practical government of the world to the fanatics of mechanism.

• The power of producing changes in the world which is possessed by the leaders of big business in the present age far exceeds the power ever possessed by individuals in the past. They may not be as free to cut off heads as were Nero or Jenghiz Khan, but they can settle who shall starve and who shall become rich, they can divert the course of rivers, and decree the fall of governments. All history shows that great power is intoxicating. Fortunately, the modern holders of power are not yet quite aware how much they could do if they chose, but when this knowledge dawns upon them a new era in human tyranny is to be expected.

· 08: Technique in Biology

page 120:

• Men will acquire power to alter themselves, and will inevitably use this power.

· 09: Technique in Physiology

page 123:

• The changes in the death-rate in England and Wales since 1870 have been as follows:

1870 .. 22.9 per thousand
1929 .. 13.4 per thousand

• the birth-rate has been declining, as the following figures show:

1870 .. 35.3 per thousand
1929 .. 16.3 per thousand

• there is ceasing to be any natural increase of population in civilized countries, and that there may before long be an actual diminution. The other is that there are fewer young people and more old people.

• This, however, may be counteracted by a prolongation of physiological youth.

page 124:

• Artificial prevention of impregnation is not the only change brought about by modern technique in this respect, though so far it has been the most important. It is also possible to cause impregnation artificially. So far, this process has not been much used, but when it has been perfected it may be a source of very important changes in connection with eugenics and the family.

page 125:

• The only method that has been suggested for improving the human stock has been that of eugenics.

• So far, no experiments have been made to test the effect of X-rays on the human embryo. I imagine that such experiments would be illegal, in common with many others that might make valuable additions to our knowledge. Sooner or later, however, probably in Russia, such experiments will be made.

page 126:

• It is likely that this result [modifying embryos] will only be achieved after a number of unsuccessful experiments leading to the birth of idiots or monstrosities. But would this be too high a price to pay for the discovery of a method by which, within one generation, the whole human race could be rendered intelligent? Perhaps by a suitable choice of chemicals to be injected into the uterus it may become possible to turn a child into a mathematician, a poet, a biologist, or even a politician, and to ensure that all his posterity shall do likewise unless prevented by counter-irritant chemicals.

· 10: Technique in Psychology

page 131:

• I suppose that for practical purposes “phantasy” is what the patient believes, and “reality” is what the analyst believes.

page 135:

• There is, however no a priori reason why drugs should not be discovered which have a wholly beneficial effect.

• It is possible also that psychological marvels may become possible through pre-natal treatment.

• Education used to begin at eight years old with the learning of the Latin declensions; now, under the influence of psycho-analysis, it begins at birth. It is to be expected that with the advance of experimental embryology the important part of education will be found to be pre-natal. This is already the case with fishes and newts, but in regard to them the scientist is not hampered by education authorities.

· 11: Technique in Society

page 138:

• Advertisements tend, therefore, as the technique becomes perfected, to be less and less argumentative, and more and more merely striking. So long as an impression is made, the desired result is achieved.

• For the purposes of studying society rather than individuals, advertisements are therefore invaluable.

page 139:

• the subject of education, which is the second great method of public propaganda. Education has two very different purposes: on the one hand it aims at developing the individual and giving him knowledge which will be useful to him; on the other hand it aims at producing citizens who will be convenient for the State or the Church which is educating them.

page 140:

• children in school are taught to believe what they are told and are punished if they express disbelief. In this way a conditioned reflex is established, leading to a belief in anything said authoritatively

• The purpose in question is that of producing social coherence.

• Modern inventions and modern technique have had a powerful influence in promoting uniformity of opinion and making men less individual than they used to be.

page 141:

• in the modern world there are three great sources of uniformity in addition to education: these are the Press, the cinema, and the radio.

page 142:

• perhaps the most important of all the modern agents of propaganda is the cinema. Where the cinema is concerned, the technical reasons for large-scale organizations leading to almost world-wide uniformity are overwhelming.

• The great majority of young people in almost all civilized countries derive their ideas of love, of honour, of the way to make money, and of the importance of good clothes, from the evenings spent in seeing what Hollywood thinks good for them. I doubt whether all the schools and churches combined have as much influence as the cinema upon the opinions of the young in regard to such intimate matters as love and marriage and money-making.

page 143:

• The producers of Hollywood are the high-priests of a new religion. Let us be thankful for the lofty purity of their sentiments. We learn from them that sin is always punished, and virtue is always rewarded.

• We know from the cinema that wealth comes to the virtuous, and from real life that old So-and-so has wealth. It follows that old So-and-so is virtuous, and that the people who say he exploits his employees are slanderers and troublemakers. The cinema therefore plays a useful part in safeguarding the rich from the envy of the poor.

• any defects in the status quo become known only to those who are willing to spend their leisure time otherwise than in amusement; these are, of course, a small minority, and from a political point of view they are at most times negligible.

• Because most are hypnotized by entertainment, film in particular.

• What would Western Europeans do if deprived of their nightly drug from Hollywood?

• In the American imperialism of the future it may turn out that the producers of cinemas have been the pioneers.

page 144:

• It is the fashion among intellectuals to regard our age as one of weariness and discouragement; to them, no doubt, it is so, since they have less influence on affairs than they formerly had

• But he just got done saying that cinema is more relevant than the church…

page 145:

• Credit has become an immense force controlling the economic life of all advanced communities, but although its principles are fairly well understood by experts, political difficulties stand in the way of the right utilization of these principles, and the barbaric practice of depending upon actual gold is still a cause of much misery.

• The primitive peasant may be almost entirely self-directed; he produces his own food, buys very little, and does not send his children to school. The modern man, even if he happens to be an agriculturist, produces only a small proportion of what he eats … In his buying and selling he depends upon immense organizations which are usually international; his reading is provided by the great newspapers, his amusements by Hollywood, the education of his children by the State, his capital, in part at least, by a bank, his political opinions by his Party, his safety and many of his amenities by the Government to which he pays taxes. Thus in all his most important activities he has ceased to be a separate unit and has become dependent upon some social organization.

page 146:

• In a great many respects national boundaries have become a technical absurdity, and further advance demands that they should be ignored.

Part 3: The Scientific Society

· 12: Artificially Created Societies

page 149:

• The scientific society, as I conceive it, is one which employs the best scientific technique in production, in education, and in propaganda.

• No society can be regarded as fully scientific unless it has been created deliberately with a certain structure in order to fulfil certain purposes.

• Centrally planned.

page 150:

• Science first taught us to create machines; it is now teaching us by Mendelian breeding and experimental embryology to create new plants and animals. There can be little doubt that similar methods will before long give us power, within wide limits, to create new human individuals differing in predetermined ways from the individuals produced by unaided nature. And by means of psychological and economic technique it is becoming possible to create societies as artificial as the steam engine…

page 151:

• So long as the technique for creating a new type of society exists there will be men seeking to employ this technique. They are likely to suppose themselves actuated by some idealistic motive, and it is possible that such motives may play a part in determining what sort of society they shall aim at creating. But the desire to create is not itself idealistic, since it is a form of the love of power, and while the power to create exists there will be men desirous of using this power even if unaided nature would produce a better result than any that can be brought about by deliberate intention.

page 154:

• I am not anxious to appraise the good or evil in the Soviet system, but merely to point out those elements of deliberate planning which make it so far the most complete example of a scientific society. In the first place, all the major factors of production and distribution are controlled by the State; in the second place, all education is designed to stimulate activity in support of the official experiment; in the third place, the State does what it can to substitute its religion for the various traditional beliefs which have existed within the territory of the U.S.S.R.; in the fourth place, literature and the Press are controlled by the Government, and are such as are thought likely to help it in its constructive purposes; in the fifth place, the family, in so far as it represents a loyalty which competes with loyalty to the State, is being gradually weakened; in the sixth place, the Government, so far as war and external policy permit, is bending the whole constructive energies of the nation to the realization of a certain economic balance and productive efficiency, by means of which it is hoped that a sufficient degree of material comfort will be secured for everyone.

page 155:

• We must therefore increasingly expect to see government falling into the hands of oligarchies, not of birth but of opinion. In countries long accustomed to democracy, the empire of these oligarchies may be concealed behind democratic forms…

• If there is to be scientific experimentation in the construction of new kinds of societies, the rule of an oligarchy of opinion is essential. It may be expected that there will be conflicts between different oligarchies, but that ultimately some one oligarchy will acquire world dominion, and will produce a world-wide organization as complete and elaborate as that now existing in the U.S.S.R.

• Quite apart from war, an international organization of credit and banking is necessary to the prosperity not only of some countries, but of all.

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• In the absence of competition, the immensely enhanced productivity of labour would enable men to arrive at a just compromise between leisure and goods: they could choose whether they would work six hours a day and be rich, or four hours a day and enjoy only moderate comfort.

• How is this not competition? The more you work the more you are rewarded.

• The advantages to be derived from an organized world State are great and obvious. There will be, in the first place, security against war and a saving of almost the whole effort and expense now devoted to competitive armaments: there will be, one must suppose, a single highly efficient fighting machine, employing mainly aeroplanes and chemical methods of warfare, which will be quite obviously irresistible, and will therefore not be resisted.2 The central government may be changed from time to time by a palace revolution, but this will only alter the organization of government. The central government will, of course, forbid the propaganda of nationalism, by means of which at present anarchy is maintained, and will put in its place a propaganda of loyalty to the world State. It follows that such an organization, if it can subsist for a generation, will be stable.

• If there is no war, who is this ultra fighting force fighting? If we aren’t developing arms, what are their weapons? If it is so great, why the need to promote it via propaganda?

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• every man willing to work will be kept in comfort, and every man unwilling to work will be kept in prison.

• Economic motives will be employed to regulate population,

• Isn’t this essentially what we have now? Babies/children are expensive; they used to be economic boons, now huge burdens. Population control via guile.

• Whether men will be happy in this Paradise I do not know. Perhaps biochemistry will show us how to make any man happy, provided he has the necessaries of life; perhaps dangerous sports will be organized for those whom boredom would otherwise turn into anarchists; perhaps sport will take over the cruelty which will have been banished from politics; perhaps football will be replaced by play battles in the air in which death will be the penalty of defeat. It may be that so long as men are allowed to seek death, they will not mind having to seek it in a trivial cause: to fall through the air before a million spectators may come to be thought a glorious death even if it has no purpose but the amusement of a holiday crowd. It may be that in some such way a safety valve can be provided for the anarchic and violent forces in human nature; or again, it may be that by wise education and suitable diet men may be cured of all their unruly impulses, and all life may become as quiet as a Sunday school.

• There will, of course, be a universal language, which will be either Esperanto or pidgin-English. The literature of the past will for the most part not be translated into this language, since its outlook and emotional background will be considered unsettling: serious students of history will be able to obtain a permit from the Government to study such works as Hamlet and Othello, but the general public will be forbidden access to them on the ground that they glorify private murder; boys will not be allowed to read books about pirates or Red Indians; love themes will be discouraged on the ground that love, being anarchic, is silly, if not wicked. All this will make life very pleasant for the virtuous.

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• If a scientific world is to survive, it is therefore necessary that men should become tamer than they have been.

· 13: The Individual and the Whole

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• Children in excess of the licensed figure will presumably be subjected to infanticide. This would be less cruel than the present method, which is to kill them by war or starvation.

• Quality as well as quantity of population is likely to become a matter for public regulation. Already in many States of America it is permissible to sterilize the mentally defective, and a similar proposal in England is in the domain of practical politics. This is only the first step.

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• scientific technique is likely to lead to a governmental tyranny which may in time prove disastrous.

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• The scientific society will be just as oligarchic under socialism or communism as under capitalism, for even where the forms of democracy exist they cannot supply the ordinary voter with the requisite knowledge, nor enable him to be on the spot at the crucial moment.

· 14: Scientific Government

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• Eugenics, except in the form of sterilization of the feeble-minded, is not yet practical politics, but may become so within the next fifty years. As we have already seen, it may be superseded, when embryology is more advanced, by direct methods of operating upon the fetus.

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• It is clear that the next world war, if it does not end in a draw, will give world supremacy to either Russia or the United States.

• The society of experts will control propaganda and education. It will teach loyalty to the world government, and make nationalism high treason. The government, being an oligarchy, will instil submissiveness into the great bulk of the population, confining initiative and the habit of command to its own members. It is possible that it may invent ingenious ways of concealing its own power, leaving the forms of democracy intact, and allowing the plutocrats or politicians to imagine that they are cleverly controlling these forms.

• all real power will come to be concentrated in the hands of those who understand the art of scientific manipulation.

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• civilization could not be expected to survive the shock of yet another world war. In such circumstances, the most important force on the side of civilization will be the desire of American investors to find safe investments in the devastated countries of the old world.

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• For entirely inferior work negroes will be employed wherever possible.

· 15: Education in a Scientific Society

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• They will spend much time in the open air, and will be given no more book- learning than is absolutely necessary.

• Upon the temperament so formed, docility will be imposed by the methods of the drill- sergeant, or perhaps by the softer methods employed upon Boy Scouts. All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called “co-operative”, i.e. to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them.

• Those children, on the other hand, who are destined to become members of the governing class will have a very different education.

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• Except for the one matter of loyalty to the world State and to their own order, members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative. It will be recognized that it is their business to improve scientific technique, and to keep the manual workers contented by means of continual new amusements.

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• As for the manual workers, they will be discouraged from serious thought: they will be made as comfortable as possible,

• As soon as working hours are over, amusements will be provided, of a sort calculated to cause wholesome mirth, and to prevent any thoughts of discontent

• On those rare occasions when a boy or girl who has passed the age at which it is usual to determine social status shows such marked ability as to seem the intellectual equal of the rulers, a difficult situation will arise, requiring serious consideration. If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw in his lot whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted, but if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt.

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• In this way the gulf between the two classes as regards native intelligence may become continually wider and wider. This will not lead to the abolition of the less intelligent class, since the rulers will not wish to undertake uninteresting manual work, or to be deprived of the opportunity for exercising benevolence and public spirit which they derive from the management of the manual workers.

· 16: Scientific Reproduction

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• We may, I think, assume that both the quantity and the quality of the population will be carefully regulated by the State, but that sexual intercourse apart from children will be regarded as a private matter so long as it is not allowed to interfere with work.

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• It is probable that there will be certain kinds of labour mainly per- formed by negroes, and that manual workers in general will be bred for patience and muscle rather than for brains. The governors and experts, on the contrary, will be bred chiefly for their intellectual powers and their strength of character. Assuming that both kinds of breeding are scientifically carried out, there will come to be an increasing divergence between the two types, making them in the end almost different species.

page 189:

• If the simultaneous regulation of quantity and quality is taken seriously in the future, we may expect that in each generation some 25 per cent. of women and some 5 per cent. of men will be selected to be the parents of the next generation, while the remainder of the population will be sterilized…

• The women who are selected for breeding will have to have eight or nine children each, but will not be expected to perform any other work except the suckling

• Perhaps it will be found that artificial impregnation is more certain and less embarrassing, since it will obviate the need of any personal contact between the father and mother of the prospective child.

• impregnation will be regarded in an entirely different manner, more in the light of a surgical operation, so that it will be thought not ladylike to have it performed in the natural manner.

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• It is probable, however, that as time goes on the period of gestation will be shortened, and the later months of fetal development will take place in an incubator.

• Fathers would, of course, have nothing to do with their own children.

• The sentiment of paternity would thus disappear completely.

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• all private sentiments would be viewed with suspicion. A man and woman who showed any ardent devotion to each other would be regarded as they are at present regarded by moralists when they are not married.

• Children who showed any special affection for a particular adult would be separated from that adult.

• The Church sanctioned certain kinds of love while condemning others, but the modern ascetic is more thorough- going, and condemns all kinds of love equally as mere folly and waste of time.

• The manual workers may, I think, be fairly happy. One may assume that the rulers will be successful in making the manual workers foolish and frivolous; work will not be too severe, and there will be endless amusements of a trivial sort.

• In this way a life of easygoing and frivolous pleasure may be provided for the manual workers, combined of course with a superstitious reverence for the governors instilled in childhood and prolonged by the propaganda to which adults will be exposed.

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• The advancement of knowledge will be held to justify much torture of individuals by surgeons, biochemists, and experimental psychologists. As time goes on the amount of added knowledge required to justify a given amount of pain will diminish, and the number of governors attracted to the kinds of research necessitating cruel experiments will increase. Just as the sun worship of the Aztecs demanded the painful death of thousands of human beings annually, so the new scientific religion will demand its holocausts of sacred victims. Gradually the world will grow more dark and more terrible.

• In the end such a system must break down either in an orgy of bloodshed or in the rediscovery of joy.

• Perhaps by means of injections and drugs and chemicals the population could be induced to bear whatever its scientific masters may decide to be for its good. New forms of drunkenness involving no subsequent headache may be discovered, and new forms of intoxication may be invented so delicious that for their sakes men are willing to pass their sober hours in misery.

· 17: Science and Values

• The scientific society which has been sketched in the chapters of this Part is, of course, not to be taken altogether as serious prophecy.

• In hindsight, it WAS prophetic in may regards.

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• The lover of nature has been baffled, the tyrant over nature has been rewarded.

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• As soon as the failure of science considered as metaphysics is realized, the power conferred by science as a technique is only obtainable by something analogous to the worship of Satan, that is to say, by the renunciation of love.

• The scientific society in its pure form, which is what we have been trying to depict, is incompatible with the pursuit of truth, with love, with art, with science and values spontaneous delight, with every ideal that men have hitherto cherished, with the sole exception of ascetic renunciation.

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• Men in the past were often parochial in space, but the dominant men of our age are parochial in time. They feel for the past a contempt that it does not deserve, and for the present a respect that it deserves still less.