Hard Thinking
In 1512 Niccolo Machiavelli defined politics as the struggle for power. During that same era, science became defined as the quest for knowledge. For more than five centuries now this gap between politics and science – what C.P. Snow famously called “the two cultures” – has steadily widened. Now, Herbert E. Meyer – journalist, author, former top-level Reagan Administration intelligence official – argues that as we move through the 21st century our survival requires that we fuse the two cultures; that we transform politics itself from the struggle for power to the quest for knowledge about how we can best organize and manage our public affairs.
The first time a routine business trip changed my life was when I chanced to meet the woman who is now my wife. The second time was when business took me to a country I had never been to before — had never even thought about visiting — but which utterly captured my fancy.
Of course I hadn't enough time to explore the new country properly, so after returning home I did the only sensible thing: I found some excuse to make another visit. This second visit left me even more intrigued. How was it that a country so absolutely fascinating — successful, vibrant, extraordinarily literate — received so little attention in my own land? As best I could tell, none of my friends or business associates had ever been there. Or if they had, the country apparently had made little impression on them because they never thought it worth talking about.
I set out to learn everything I could about this newly discovered land: its history, its geography, its people, above all its culture. I scoured new and used bookstores for anything published about the country, and was amazed to find so many good books available; obviously they had always been there but I just hadn't noticed them. I began to learn the language, then subscribed to the country's leading magazines. Despite my language problems these magazines were a joy to read; articles were clear, insightful, on average vastly better written than articles in my own country's leading publications. Soon I was inventing excuses to return. With each trip I spent longer on the ground, always delaying my return voyage home to the last possible moment.
Now, when a man loses interest in going home there is usually a reason for it. In this case the trouble at home wasn't personal but public. Everything seemed to be going wrong at once: our economy was stagnant, our education system was a shambles, racial tensions were rising, our cities were crumbling, our health care system was collapsing, our technological base had atrophied, our commercial vitality had drained out.
But, as serious as they were, these problems were dwarfed by a vastly more serious problem: we had lost our national talent for solving problems. Not that we were ignoring them; quite the opposite, in fact. Newspapers, magazines, television shows and radio broadcasts were devoting more space and time to public affairs than ever before. Indeed, we were fairly bombarded by articles and discussions of each specific national ailment. Here and there, to be fair about it, some elected official, interest-group spokesperson, scholar or commentator would put forth an important fact, a new idea, an analysis that provided a clear perspective, even a deep insight that pointed the way toward a workable solution.
But now, more than ever before, these facts, ideas, analyses and insights were buried beneath an avalanche of nonsense, baloney, ideological posturing and outright lies. The result was a form of national confusion that came from being unable to see any problem clearly: to understand its causes, to evaluate its present condition, to identify its indicators and to tell if they were pointing up or down, to judge whether any particular situation was growing worse or getting better. In short order this confusion — this unprecedented, impenetrable intellectual fog — had disoriented us so completely that our sense of national direction was utterly gone. We began to wander aimlessly, which only made our problems grow worse. The national mood became clinically depressed, even dangerous. Appallingly but not surprisingly, more and more people came to conclude that our country's day was done; that after so many extraordinary national triumphs we had become caught in a downward, perhaps irreversible national spiral.
To be sure, the other country I had discovered also had its problems, and they were every bit as complex and as serious as those at home. But — and this is what had so captured and held my fancy — this other country had developed an approach to solving its problems that really worked. It was an orderly, rational approach that made our own efforts look chaotic and even childish. Indeed, the more I watched this other country move forward, the more painful and frustrating it was to watch my own country spin its wheels and go nowhere.
As my trips abroad became ever more frequent, my friends and business associates began to notice that my mind was now on something, or rather some place, else. How could they not have noticed? My attendance at professional conferences and seminars became less frequent, and when I did show up I tended to blather on about the way our counterparts in the other country were coping with their problems. My colleagues listened politely, but it was clear they had no idea what I was talking about and little interest in learning.
Before long I had become a drop-out, not in the sense of growing a beard and making a living by selling herbal teas or birds carved from driftwood, but in the sense of ceasing to play the role that my professional credentials and status allowed and instead going off in a wholly different direction. But even this wasn't enough. My frustration with our way of working things out — or, rather, of not working things out — finally reached the point where I began to toy with the idea of getting out entirely, of emigrating from my country to the other one. Of course, this was an absolutely crazy idea. I could barely speak the language, despite my efforts to learn it. My professional credentials weren't at all transferable, so the prospect of ever reaching my current professional status — or my current income — was virtually non-existent. Yet the less practical sense it made to emigrate the more I found myself thinking about it. I couldn't help myself. Increasingly, I had begun to feel like a foreigner in my own country, while more and more the new one felt like home.
This new country does not belong to the United Nations, and you won't find it on any map. That's because it isn't a geographic place at all, but an intellectual world. It is Science, and it is as real and remarkable a place as I have ever been. And instead of “emigrating” I have decided to remain where I am — in the intellectual world of politics, if you will — and to help change this intellectual world by importing what is best in the other world's culture, specifically its approach to solving problems and resolving contentious issues.
More precisely, I believe that the business of our public affairs can be put back on track — not only here in the United States, but throughout the world — by adopting key aspects of the scientific culture. Indeed, I believe that adoption of the scientific culture is vital if we are to cope with the global public problems and issues that confront us right now, and with the ones that will confront us in the years and decades that lie ahead.
Praise for Hard Thinking:
“Every scientist interested in public affairs should read this book. So should every politician.”
Jonas Salk
Developer of the polio vaccine and Founding Director of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies
“Delightful! To infuse the spirit, the methods, and the fundamental good will of science into politics would indeed be a giant step forward.”
Edward O. Wilson
Harvard University Professor of Entomology and founder of the school of sociobiology
“Hard thinking is thinking about particulars or thinking in terms or language that can convey a clear and precise meaning to other people; putting forward ideas which can be tested, which can be the subject of critical examination; statements that make an intellectual appeal as opposed to a visceral appeal—if you admit the distinction. Soft thinking is thinking that makes an appeal to or through the emotions; which gives one a nice cozy feeling inside; which attempts to persuade one of what ought to be intellectual truths by non-intellectual means.”
Peter Medawar
My Life in Science (1966)
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