"Heinlein, Robert A - Discovery of the Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)
There’s a way out, there’s something that we can do to protect ourselves, something that would protect the rest of the human race from the sort of things that are happening to them, and are going to happen to them. It’s very simple, and it’s right down our alley: the use of the scientific method.
I’m not talking about the scientific method used in the laboratory. The scientific method can be used to protect ourselves from serious difficulties of other sorts—getting our teeth smashed in—in our everyday life, twenty-four hours of the day.
I should say what I mean by the scientific method. Since I have to define it in terms of words, I can’t be as clear as I might be if I were able to make an extensional definition. But I mean a comparatively simple thing by the scientific method: the ability to look at what goes on around you. Listen to what you hear, observe, note facts, delay your judgment, and make your own predictions. That’s all there is, really, to the scientific method: to be able to distinguish facts from non-facts.
I used the term “fact.” I used it in a technical sense, and I should say what I mean by a fact. A fact is anything that has happened before this moment, on July 4th, 1941. Anything that has already happened before this moment. Anything after this moment is a non-fact. Most people can’t distinguish between them. They regard as a fact that they’re going to get up and have breakfast tomorrow morning. They get the difference between facts and non-facts completely mixed up, and in particular, these days people are getting very mixed up between facts and. theories, isms, ologies and so forth, so-called “laws of nature,” depending on what year you happen to be speaking.
That distinction between fact and fiction, fact and non-fact, is of extreme importance to us now. It has even become a strong issue in the field of science fiction. Without referring to any movement by name, or any person by name, because I wish to make an illustration, I want to invite your attention to the fact that the science fiction field has been very much stirred up by a semipo-litical movement which uses the word “fact” quite extensively. But it uses the word fact with reference to what they are—what they predict will happen in the future, and that’s a non-fact. And any movement, insti-tution, any theory, which does not make a clear and decided distinction between fact and non-fact, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called a scientific movement. It simply is not because it does not use the scientific method. No matter how complicated their terminology may be, or how much they may use the argot of science.
I’m going to have to make an excursion here. I’ve wandered somewhat from the talk I had in mind.
I want to make another comment on science fiction and the fact that you and I have to put up with an awful lot of guff from people because of the orthodox point of view with which it is regarded.
I have never been able to understand quite why it is that the historical novel is the most approved, the most sacred form of literature. The contemporary novel is next so; but the historical novel, if you write an historical novel, that’s literature.
I think that the corniest tripe published in a science fiction magazine (and some of it isn’t too hot, we know that; some of my stuff isn’t so hot) beats all of the Anthony Adverses and Gone With the Winds that were ever published, because at least it does include that one distinctly human-like attempt to predict the fu-ture.
One would think that the literary critics and the professors of English—those who make a business of deciding what is good and what is bad in literature—had some connection in their ancestry with the Fillyloo Bird. I think you know the Fillyboo Bird: he flew backwards because he didn’t care where he was going, but he liked to see where he had been.
I want to mention the fashion in which the scientific method—just the matter of observing what goes on around you—observing it through your own eyes, in-stead of taking other people’s opinions, reserving your judgments until you have enough data on which to make a judgment—can be of real use to you even now, quite aside from any possible worse period in history, in the coming history.
I mentioned that it can keep your teeth from getting knocked in; that’s an important point. It can because you’ll stay out of controversies and out of arguments that you would otherwise get into. If you are talking with a man who obviously does not bother to use the scientific method, or does not know how to use the scientific method in his everyday life, you’ll never get in an argument with him. You’ll know there’s no point in an argument with him, that you cannot possibly convince him. You can listen—and you’ll get some new data from him—and you’ll be better able to predict thereafter, if on no other point than the fact that you’ll be better able to predict what his reactions will be.
There are other advantages, in the way of keeping yourself cooled down, so you can be a little happier. For example, a man who uses the scientific method cannot possibly be anti-Semitic. I have made that an illustration because it has caused a lot of trouble in the world lately. Why can’t he be anti-Semitic? For a very simple reason: he doesn’t have enough data, consequently he hasn’t formed an opinion. No matter how long he lives he can’t hate all Jews, and unless he knows all Jews, he can’t hate all Jews, because he doesn’t form an opinion unless he has data. It is possible for him to hate an individual Jew as it’s possible for him to hate an individual Irishman or Rotarian or man or woman.
But he can’t possibly be anti-Semitic. He can’t hate all capitalists, he can’t hate all unions, he can’t hate all women—you can’t be a woman-hater, not if you use the scientific method. You can’t possibly: you don’t know all women. You don’t even know a large enough percentage of the group to be able to form an opinion on what the whole group may be!
By the same reasoning, it’s very difficult for him to hate at all; and if you can just manage to keep hate out of your life (or a good portion of it—I can’t keep it all out of my life myself. I’ve got to sit down and whip myself about the head and shoulders to get myself calmed down at times—but you can help yourself with this method)—if you can keep hate out of your life, you can keep from; getting your teeth knocked in. You can keep out of a lot of difficulties and take care of yourself in a better fashion.
A man who uses the scientific method cannot possibly believe that all politicians are crooks, for he knows that one datum destroys the generalization. I’ll give you one datum on that point: Senator George Norris, whether you like him or not, is a saint on earth. Whether you agree with his opinions or not, he’s not a bad man.
And because he’s never entirely certain of his own opinions on any subject, a man using the scientific method stays out of arguments, keeps himself from the emotional upsets that cause you to lose sleep and upset your stomach. You get such things as herpes—oh, I’m not an M.D., but there are plenty of functional disorders that a man can avoid, can very well avoid.
Here’s a rough picture of the scientific man in every-day life. Such a man stands a better chance of living through our period to a ripe and-happy old age, in my opinion. But I wish to make plain that the use of the scientific method does not depend on any formal educa-tion in science. It is an attitude and point of view and not a body of information. You need have no formal educa-tion at all to use the scientific method in your everyday life. I am not disparaging the body of scientific informa-tion that has been gathered by specialists or the equally enormous body of historical and sociological data that is available. Unfortunately, we can’t get very much of it. But you can still use the scientific method, whether you’ve bad a lot of education or not, whether you’ve had time to gather a lot of personal data or not.
With respect to the acquisition of scientific training, I’ve heard people around fan clubs remark, “I wish I knew something about mathematics,” or “I wish I under-stood something about physics.” Complaints that they’re not fully appreciating some of the stories because they don’t have enough specialized information. Some sub-ject was too hard, or they weren’t able to go far enough in school. I greatly sympathize with that.
I’m not trying to play it down or anything of the sort. It’s very much of a regret to me that I’m not at least twins and preferably triplets, so that I could have time to study the various things that I’m interested in. And I know that a lot of you have felt the same way—that life is just too—not too short, but too narrow—we don’t have room enough, time enough, to get around and learn all the things that we want to, and it is almost impossible for us to get a full picture of the world.
Surprising, that the data actually is available. God knows that no one can even hope to cover even a small corner of the scientific world these days. I think there’s a way out of the dilemma, however, a fair one for us, and a better one for our children. It’s the creation of a new technique to cover just that purpose. Men who might be considered encyclopedists, or interpreter-synthesists, I like to call them, men who make it their business to find out what it is the specialists have learned, and then apply it to the rest of us in consolidated form so that we can have, if not the details of the picture, at least the broad I outlines of the enormous, incredibly enormous, mass of data that the human race has gathered. The facts behind us, the things that have happened before this moment, so that we can be better able to predict for ourselves, plan our lives after this moment.
It will be better in the future. Nevertheless, it was great work, the fact that he did it, that he tried at all. A wonderful work. Because he had done that kind of work, that he tried to do that kind of work for the rest of us, is the reason, to my mind why his scientific fantasies are more nearly accurate in their predictions than those of, oh, myself, and various other commercial writers in the field. I don’t know as much as H. G. Wells: I probably never will know as much as H. U. Wells—my predictions can’t be as accurate.
But, after considering H. G. Wells’ trilogy, it occurred to me that it would be amusing, to me at least, and I hope to you, for me to mention some books by assorted writers that, to a certain extent, help to fill in the gaps in the picture. And—to a certain extent, help to make up the lack of a broad comprehensive scientific education, which no one, not even Sc.D.s and Ph.D.s, can really have.
For example, in mathematics, is there one book which will help the non-mathematician, the person who hasn’t specialized in it and made it his life work, to appreciate what mathematics is for? I’ve run across such a book; it’s called Mathematics and the Imagination by Kasner and Newman. You don’t have to have any mathematical edu-cation to read it. To my mind, it’s a very stimulating book, a very interesting book, and when you’ve finished reading it, you at least know what the mathematicians are doing and why.
Among other things, you will discover—and this runs entirely contrary to our orthodox credos—that mathe-matics is not a science. Mathematics is not a science at all—it’s an aspect of symbology, along with the alpha-bet. That there is no such thing as discovering mathe-matics, for example. Mathematics is invented; it’s an invented art, and has nothing directly to do with science at all, except as a tool. And yet you will hear the ordinary layman speaking time and again of mathematics as a science. It just plain is not because it has no data in it; purely inventions, every bit of it, even the multiplication tables. Yes, 2 x 2 is 4 is an invention in mathematics, not a fact.
There are other such books. In physics, there is Eddington’s Nature of the Physical World, I think one of the most charming books ever written, one of the most lucidly and brilliantly written books. It gives a beautiful background to modern physics. It’s approximately fif-teen years old, so in order to cover a lot of the things that are currently being used for fiction in the science fiction field, you would need to supplement that. The book I got for my own purpose to supplement it—because, you see, I’m not a professional physicist, I’m an engineer—to help to bring it up to date, is White’s Classical and Modern Physics, published in 1940. It is about the latest book-bound thing on modern physics that I know of.
There are later things in such publications as Physical Review and Nature, but this goes up to and including the fission of uranium. It includes nuclear physics, and it delighted me to find the thought that, very likely when we got around to it, we’d find life on other planets. A very stimulating thing to get from a professional scientist, particularly in the field of physical sciences. I picked that book because White is an associate of Lawrence in the nuclear laboratory at Berkeley. In other words, he is in on the ground floor, he knows what he’s talking about. It’s modern physics, 1940, the best up to that time.
So far as astronomy is concerned, I’ve never seen anything that surpassed, for a popular notion of the broad outlines of the kind of physical world we live in, than John Campbell’s series that appeared in Astound-ing. They started in 1936, and ran on for fifteen or sixteen issues, his articles on the solar system. I’ve always been sorry that Campbell did not go on from there and cover stellar astronomy, galactic astronomy, and some of the other side fields. But, even at that, anybody who has read through that series by Campbell on the solar system will never again have a flat-world attitude, which most people do have. Not in the science fiction field, of course—I mean not among fans of science fiction.
(I speak many times as if the human race were divided into two parts, as it may be; people who love science fiction, and people who don’t. I think you will be able to keep sorted out which ones I’m talking about. I hope so.)
In the field of economics, an incomplete science, but nevertheless one that you can’t possibly ignore, I think the most illuminating book I’ve ever, read is one by Maurice Colburn, called Economic Nationalism. The title won’t give any suggestion of what the contents are, but that is simply the tag by which it is known.
Jim Fancy’s Behind the Ballots is probably as nice a job of recording actual data in politics as I’ve ever seen; however, politics—I’d never recommend that people read books in the political field.
Go out and take a look yourself Everything else you hear is guff.
I saved for the last on that list of the books that have greatly affected me, that to my mind are key books, of the stuff I’ve plowed through, a book which should head the list on the must list. I wish that everyone could read the book. There aren’t many copies of it, and everyone can’t, nor could everyone read this particular book. All of you could—you’ve got the imagination for it. It’s Science and Sanity by Count Alfred Korzybski, one of the greatest Polish mathematicians when he went into the subject of symbology and started finding out what made us tick, and then worked up in strictly experimen-tal and observational form from the preliminary work of E. T. Bell.
A rigor of epistemology based on E. T. Bell [break in transcript here—some words lost]. . . symbology of epistemology. The book refers to the subject of seman-tics. I know from conversation with a lot of you that the words epistemology and semantics are not unfamiliar to you. But because they may be unfamiliar to some, I’m going to stop and give definitions of those words.
Semantics is simply a study of the symbols we use to communicate. General Semantics is an extension of that study to investigate how we evaluate the use of those symbols. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Maybe that doesn’t sound exciting. It is exciting, it’s very exciting. To be able to delve back into your own mind and investigate what it is you know, what it is you can know, and what it is that you cannot possibly know, is, from a standpoint of intellectual adventure, I think, possibly- the greatest adventure that a person can indulge in. Beats spaceships.
Incidentally, any of you who are going to be in Denver in the next five or six weeks will have an opportunity, one of the last opportunities, to hear Alfred Korzybski speak in person. He will be here at a meeting (similar to this) of semanticians from all over the world; McLean from Los Angeles, and Johnson from Iowa, and Reisser from Mills College and Kendig and probably Hayakawa from up in Canada—the leading semanticians of the world—to hear Korzybski speak.
It is much better to hear him speak than it is to read his books. He’s limited by the fact that he’s got to stick to the typewriter, to the printed word, but when he talks, when he talks, it’s another matter! He gestures, he’s not tied down with his hands to the desk the way I am, he walks, stumps all around the stage, and waves his hands, and when he’s putting quotation marks on a word, he puts them on…[illustrates, audience laughs]. And you real-ly gather what he means. Incidentally, he looks like Conan Doyle’s description of Professor Challenger if Professor Challenger had shaved his beard. Dynamic character.
You may not like him personally, but he’s at least as great a man as Einstein, at least, because his field is broader. The same kind of work that Einstein did, the same kind of work using the same methods, but in a much broader field, much closer to human relationships. I hope that some of you will be able to hear him. I said that this will be one of the last chances, because the old man’s well over seventy now. As he puts it, “I vill coagulate someday, I vill someday soon, I vill coagu-late,” which is the term he uses for dying.
He speaks in terms of colloidal chemistry. Properly, it’s appropriate. He won’t last much longer. In the meantime, he’s done a monumental piece of work that H. G. Wells did in the matter of description, and the two together are giants in our intellectual horizon, our intellectual matrix today, that stick up over the rest like the Empire State Building.
I started out to talk primarily about science fiction and I got off on some of my own hobbies. It’s a luxury to me not to be held down by a plot and a set of characters. Here I can say anything I like and not be bothered.
I myself have been reading science fiction since Gernsback started putting it out in the Electrical Experimenter. Then I read it in Argosy and I dug up all that I could out of the Kansas City Public Library. Every member of my family had a library card; there were seven of us, so I could bring home quite a number of books at one time. I wear glasses now as a result. I never had any particular notion of writing it until about two years ago when a concatenation of peculiar circum-stances started me writing. I happened to hit the jackpot on the first one, so I continued writing. It amazed me to discover that people gave money away for doing things like that—it beats working.
It’s likely that I won’t be writing very much longer. With the way things are shaping up, I’ll probably have other things I’ll have to do, as will others here, whether we like it or not. But I hope to be a fan of science fiction for at least fifty years if I can hold myself together that long and keep from getting my teeth kicked in.
All I really want to do is to hang around as long as I can, watch the world unfold, see some of the changes—what they really are—that suits me.
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