Return to Reason - Chapters 1, 2, 3

 

Roger James Return to Reason, Open Books, Somerset, 1980

Chapter 1

The importance of criticism

'The central mistake is ... the quest for certainty.' 

Popper: O.K.63

Although by no means everybody makes a study of hilosophy in the way that we all study arithmetic,

everybody has what may be called his own philosophy, picked up in much the same way as he picks up his native language. But whereas his language is out in the open and subject to correction, and other people's language is out in the open and available as good or bad example, philosophies

tend to be private and seldom made explicit. This fact, Popper believes, is the main justification for the study of philosophy - because our private, almost unconscious, philosophies are, unless they have been clearly expressed and revised, usually full of errors and mistaken assumptions.

Popper cites a very common mistaken philosophical assumption which he calls the conspiracy theory. This is the assumption that bad things like wars, slumps, unemployment, rising prices etc., are the result of well laid plans by those who stand to gain privately by the public discomfort - armaments manufacturers, employers of cheap labour, profiteers of all kinds. In fact this is not true.

Nearly all those bad things are the unintended consequences of the actions of individuals or firms or

governments with quite other intentions. When you negotiate to buy a house, the last thing you intend is to put up the price of houses in that district. Nevertheless your action has that tendency; and if a number of people enter the market and bid for the same house, a rise of price is certainly the result. The enormous rise in property prices in the early 1970s was not the result of a sinister plot by

those who owned property, but the unforeseen consequence of well-intentioned, if naive, attempts to

enable more people to own their houses by, amongst other things, making available 100 per cent mortgages, without increasing the supply of houses. (We are now preparing to do it again - for `First-time buyers'.) Similarly the high unemployment together with high inflation which we are now experiencing (an impossible combination in a laissez-faire economy) is the result of `good' attemps to

prevent a wage explosion while at the same time providing unemployment - and supplementary - benefits at a level which discourages work for very low wages. Efforts to improve the productivity of industry, to increase the output per man, were not undertaken with the object of creating unemployment, yet unemployment has certainly been one consequence. What looks like conspiracy is more often what I have called tunnel-vision or mere muddle. `T do not wish to imply', Popper writes

that conspiracies never happen. on the contrary, they are typical social phenomena. They become important, for example, whenever people who believe in the conspiracy theory get into power. And people who sincerely believe that they know how to make heaven on earth are most likely to adopt the conspiracy theory, and to get involved in a counter-conspiracy against non-existing conspirators. For the only explanation of their failure to produce their heaven is the evil intention of the Devil,

who has a vested interest in hell.

Conspiracies occur, it must be admitted. But the striking fact which, in spite of their occurrence,

disproves the conspiracy theory is that few of these conspiracies are ultimately successful. (O. S., ii, 95) This is not to deny that there are occasional successful conspiracies. According to Mick Hamer (Wheels within'' Wheels) the strategic motorway network was such a one.

But they are not often successful, certainly not more often than the overt plans of individuals and governments. They are therefore not very important in their consequences – nothing like so important as the unintended consequences of well-meant or rational actions. The analysis and, where

possible, the foreseeing of these unintended `side-effects' is, Popper believes, the main task of the social sciences, not long-range prophecy. (It is only fair to say that Marx was probably the first to state this sort of view; but for a full discussion of this I refer the reader to The Open Society, ii, p. 323, note 11 to Chapter 14.)

The fallacy of the conspiracy theory is the first among  several of Popper's philosophical conclusions which have consequences for the way we think about our private lives and public affairs, and which differ, in some cases rather strikingly, from the philosophical assumptions which underlie what we read in the press, see on television, and hear from public figures both in government and

education.

A second fallacy is a particularly pernicious one: `A man's opinions are always determined by his economic or political interests'. This, Popper says, becomes `If you do not hold the same views as I, you must be dominated by some sinister economic (or political) motives' (Magee, 1971). The evil effect of this belief is that it makes discussion impossible. It diverts attention from the important question of what is the truth, what are the facts, and what can we learn from them, to the comparatively trivial question of motives in asking such questions and interpreting the answers. It

leads to a belief that only people who already share a framework of assumptions can hope to reach agreement in a rational discussion. This sounds plausible and reasonable, but has a terrible divisive effect. It breaks mankind into mutually exclusive ideological groups who cannot discuss with one another, only fight each other. `It ignores the likelihood that our western civilization is itself the result of the confrontation between societies who had no common "framework" - the Greeks and their neighbours, then the Greeks and the Romans, Romans and Jews and Germanic peoples, and later still, Christians and Moslems.'

It rests on a false assumption - that truth can be discovered only by eliminating bias and prejudice. Popper shows that this is impossible. Everybody is biased, prejudiced, and interested (in both senses of the word). The fact that, in scientific discussion, for example, and even in courts of law, we can approximate to the truth, is due to the public nature of the discussions, not to lack of bias in the

participants. It is on the contrary an advocate's job to be biased. We all know how, though knowing ourselves wrong, we can stick to our position in a private argument and just say `well, I don't agree'. But in the presence of several onlookers, even if they play no part in the discussion, it is far more difficult to hold on to a logically losing position. We know that somebody is going to say `It's no good. Admit you are wrong'. Freedom and publicity of discussion, not lack of bias, are the pathways to the truth.

Following on from this and fundamental to Popper's philosophy is the importance of criticism. Some of

Popper's ideas have filtered, often in a somewhat garbled form, into popular thought and have had some influence; but some of the most important remain known only to the few people who have studied his works in detail. The idea of criticism as the source of the growth of knowledge is one of these.

Criticism is one of the functions of language and, in evolutionary terms, probably the most recent. The first two functions - ｅxpression of feeling, alerting calls and signals - are possessed by many animals. For these, even in man, words are not necessary. The chewing of gum or the puffing at a pipe can say: `I am not worried' or `I don't care' and in so saying often tell a lie. A third function, description, is possessed perhaps in rudimentary fashion by some animals. Bees seem to be able to tell each other

where nectar is to be found. This descriptive function introduces the standard: true or false. Criticism is the fourth function and is peculiar to man. It arises from the third. The way to the nectar is disputed or there is more of it over there. This critical function introduces the idea of validity, in argument and it does require words (see O.K. 235). Knowledge grows by criticism, by the weeding out of wrong ideas, just as the species of animals and plants develop by the elimination of maladjusted ones, and skills

by the elimination of useless movements and habits. It is a case of the survival of the fittest - in ideas, organisms, and techniques - as a result of the getting rid of the unfit.

The problem of induction

I must substantiate this view and emphasise its far-reaching consequences for human thought by going back to David Hume and the problem of induction. Until Hume demolished the idea in his Treatise on Human Nature, published in instalments from 1737 to 1740, it was generally' agreed that the rationality of science depended on the process of induction, that is of making generalisations

from a limited number of facts. We observe that the sun rises every morning and we conclude from this that it will rise again tomorrow and every other morning - the more frequent the observation, the more secure the generalisation. Hume showed that the logical process was not valid, that there is no 'reason for generalising in this way; and so scientific laws derived in this way could not be said to be founded on reason and experience.

Having established that because A follows B a hundred times there is no reason to suppose that on the 101st occasion A will again follow B, Hume fell back on a weaker, psychological, theory. It was that, although there is no reason to suppose this, it is in fact what we all do. We observe repetitions and then act on the assumption that they will go on happening. In spite of its logical invalidity, induction is indispensible in practical life. We live by relying on the continuation of repetition. Association strengthened by repetition is the main mechanism of our intellect, by which we live and act.

So we are left with a paradox - even our intellect (not just our emotions or intuition) does not work rationally. The pre-dawn human sacrifices of the Aztecs provide a chilling example of the consequences of an unquestioning belief in association. The sun invariably rose after the sacrifice; the practice therefore had to go on to ensure that it would continue to rise every morning.

I am not going to give Hume's arguments for rejecting induction because they are intertwined, as was the Aztec reasoning, with ideas about causation; and this complicates the matter. But one can easily imagine how he came to be led towards his conclusion; for, in practice, repetitions do not always occur. Rain may follow the dawn on six days of the week, but this makes it less rather than more likely

that there will be rain on the seventh day. Bertrand Russell (1946) said of Hume that he developed to its logical conclusion the empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley and, by making it `self-consistent, made it incredible'. British empiricist philosophers from then on, according to Russell, preferred to reject Hume's scepticism without ever refuting it, while German philosophers simply ignored it. Hume himself said that his treatise `fell dead-born from the press'. Hume's rational scepticism was ignored and smothered by Rousseau's romantic irrationalism. `Rousseau was mad but influential', was Russell's comment, `Hume was sane but had no followers.'

Nevertheless Hume's success in apparently proving that experience and reason have no necessary connection with one another, that there is no such thing as rational belief, was `an intellectual time-bomb which after sizzling away for two hundred years has only just gone off', according to ord (Kenneth) Clark. If not even science was rational the way was clear for mysticism. To quote Russell again: The growth of unreason throughout the nineteenth century and what has passed of the twentieth is a natural sequel to Hume's destruction of empiricism. It is, therefore, important to discover whether there is an answer to Hume within the framework of a philosophy that is wholly or mainly empirical ... If not, there is no intellectual difference between sanity and insanity, the lunatic who believes he is a poached egg is to be condemned solely on the grounds that he is in a minority. This is a desperate point of view and it must be hoped [my, italics] that there is some way of escaping

from it.

I shall take up in Chapter 6 Hume's psychological theory and give Popper's answer to it. The mistaken quest for certainty was the factor that misled those rationalist philosophers who genuinely sought a solution. Russell (1948) recognised the fact of uncertainty. With a characteristically homely comparison, he put it like this: `All knowledge is in some degree doubtful, and we cannot say what degree of doubtfulness makes it cease to be knowledge, any more that we can say how much loss of

hair makes a man bald.' Possibly he was diverted by the vividness of his own imagery into asking, by implication, the wrong question. For it is not a matter of defining the word knowledge but, as we shall see, of ranking approximations to the truth. The search for a solution within an empirical philosophy was also misleading. The answer is rational but not empirical.

It was when Popper considered the impact made by Einstein on Newton's theory of gravitation that he realised that the solution lay in this very uncertainty about our knowledge of the external world. Newton's theory had been - still is - so astonishingly successful that the problem always seemed to be how to explain man's ability to know about the universe so exactly. The fact that Einstein's totally different theory explained some observations better than did Newton's made Popper realise that both are theories - hypotheses, not facts. This thought then led to Popper's solution of the problem of induction. This was not the disproving of induction. That had already been done by Hume two centuries before, to his and Russell's and many others' satisfaction. It was to explain how ational action is nevertheless possible, how we can be reasonably sure that the man who believes he is a poached egg is wrong.

Popper's solution to this important problem is easily explained. He simply denied that we do act inductively on the assumption that repetitions will go on recurring. We do not act upon the assumption that the future will be the same as the past (when we are behaving ationally) but upon the best-tested theory - the theory for which we have the best reasons for believing that it is the nearest to the truth (O.K.95). It is true that we act upon the assumption that the sun will rise tomorrow; but this is not only because it rose today and yesterday, but because it is the best theory. If we were to believe that another celestial body was going to pass near the earth in such a way as to stop its rotation, then we should act on the assumption that the sun would not rise or not set, whichever the best theory might predict. In fact the sixteenth century mariner exploring uncharted seas did not assume that because he saw no land for twenty days on and that he would never see land again. on the contrary. Bertrand Russell (1946), using one of his favourite food examples, said: `I see an apple, past experience makes me expect that it will taste like an apple, and not like roast beef; but there is no rational justification for this expectation.' Popper's answer to this would be that we expect the apple to taste of apple not only because of past experience but because it is the best theory. Changing to a less fantastic example: if we are told that what looks like a ripe apple is in fact unripe or over-ripe or riddled with maggots we should expect it not to taste like a good ripe apple. Our expectations are certainly not based only on past experience.

This is all there is to it. Popper is saying that we do not act inductively - at any rate when we are using our reason - but on the best available theory whether it involves repetitions or not.

To sum up: the process that looks like induction is really one of choosing the theory that is best supported by reason. It is one of a number of similar conceptual illusions. I have already mentioned tunnel-vision or muddle looking like conspiracy. Another is natural selection, which looks like instruction. It looks as though the giraffe acquired its long neck because its ancestors wanted to

nibble higher branches and taught their young to stretch their necks and they taught their young likewise. What actually happened, we now believe, was that those pre-giraffes with longer than average necks survived better because they could nibble higher; and, where the longer neck was an hereditary variant, their progeny again survived better and so on. I mention two more of these

conceptual illusions in Chapter 6.

The demarcation of science

One of Popper's earliest philosophical innovations was to suggest a line of demarcation between science and non-science or metaphysics. It was that a scientific theory is, in principle, capable of being shown to be false. The impetus that led him to reverse what had hitherto been the generally accepted view that scientific theories could be confirmed by observations was provided by a number of friends of his youth who were admirers of either Marx, Freud, or Adler.

These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. once your eyes were opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus the truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were

clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still `unanalysed' and crying loud for treatment. (C. R.34)

Popper was impressed by his observation that `a Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history' and that Freudian analysts found that their theories were `constantly verified by their "clinical observations"'. He realised that the great appeal of these theories was that they enabled one `to know in advance', as Bryan Magee (1973)

puts it, `that whatever happens one will be able to understand it'. At about the same time, in 1919, he heard that Einstein had said that %bservation failed to show the shift to the red of the lines of the spectrum as he had predicted, `then the general theory of relativity will be untenable'. Einstein would regard his own theory as untenable if it should fail in certain tests. This, Popper realised, was the true attitude of science. (U.Q.38)

In Popper's view all organisms are endowed with propensities, expectations, one could call them rudimentary theories. The newborn child expects to be led and cared for. But the expectations are not necessarily fulfilled and this leads to problems, a gap between theory and practice. We survive by learning to solve problems, and we do this by modifying our conjectures. `The new solution, new

behaviour, new theory, may work; or it may fail. Thus we learn by trial and error, or, more precisely, by tentative solutions and their elimination if they prove erroneous.'

This method is used by even the most primitive of animals; but its theories are its behaviour, and if they are wrong it succumbs. But there is a most important difference between what an amoeba does and what a scientist does. In a radio conversation with Bryan Magee, Popper explained it like this:

On the pre-scientific level we hate the very idea that we may be mistaken. So we cling dogmatically to our conjectures as long as possible. on the scientific level, we systematically search for our mistakes. This is the great thing; we are consciously critical in order to detect our errors. Thus on the pte-scientific level we are often ourselves destroyed, eliminated with our false theories. on the scientific level, we systematically try to eliminate our false theories, we try to let our false theories die in our stead. This is the critical method of error elimination. It is the method of science. It presupposes

that we can look at our theories critically, as something outside ourselves. They are not any longer our subjective beliefs [World 2, see page 25]. They are our objective  conjectures [World 3].

(Modern British Philosophy)

Popper sums up the general picture of science as follows: We choose some interesting problem. We propose a bold theory as a tentative solution. We try our best to criticise the theory; and this means that we try to refute it. If we succeed in our refutation, then we try to produce a new theory, which we shall again criticise, and so on ... The whole procedure can be summed up by the words: bold

conjectures, controlled by severe criticism which includes severe tests. And criticism, and tests, are attempted refutations (Magee, 1971).

Thus a theory cannot be proved, it can only be disproved. But the more it stands up to attempts to refute it, the more secure it becomes, although it can never be regarded as certain. Popper encourages the formulation of theories in such a form as to say: `If such and such experiment were

performed with such and such a result then the theory would fail.' Scientific theories, as it were, forbid certain eventualities; and `the more a theory forbids the more it tells us'. While `a theory which cannot clash with any possible or conceivable event is ... outside science'. (U. Q.41)

To see straight away what is implied by this criterion of demarcation for science, one can look at the continuing controversy on intelligence (measured by I.Q.) and race. Professor Hans Eysenck, prominent among the protagonists, has recently stated, in an article in New Scientist (1979) that the basis of the psychologists' case is `the theory that all cognitive performances are to a variable degree a function of a single underlying ability (intelligence or g) ... ' Now this theory is so imprecise that one cannot conceive of any observation or experiment that could refute it. Yet endless discussion proceeds, looking like scientific argument and involving abstruse mathematics, of what is, by Popper's criterion, metaphysics.

Popper cannot identify the process whereby we get the hunches, or whatever, that form the theories that have to be tested- `New ideas have a striking similarity to genetic mutations' (S.B.54) - but he does suggest that they are not arrived at by induction. This is because the observation of repetitions is the result not the cause of the theory. We make a guess that A may be followed by B and then we

watch out and see if it is so. We do not go and observe with a blank mind. We have expectations and then we observe to see whether they are confirmed.

A good example of the contrast between the inductive approach and the Popperian view of science is provided by the attitudes of Francis Bacon" and Galileo in the seventeenth century. Bacon taught that men must rid their minds of prejudices (theories) and just go and observe and, as it were, `read the open book of Nature'. Galileo realised that all is interpretation, that we have to arrive at the correct interpretation of what we appear to see. He was full of admiration for the astronomers Copernicus and

Kepler because they refused to believe what they saw. Their eyes told them that the sun goes round the earth. Anybody can see it. You just go and look. Copernicus preferred to believe his reason which told him that this was an illusion.

The distinguished neuro-physiologist, Sir John Eccles (co-author with Popper of The Self and Its Brain), has recorded his personal experience of conversion to the Popperian view of science. At the time when he first met Popper, he was in a state of depression, desperately clinging to a theory he had proposed about the mechanism of nervous transmission which, in his heart of hearts, he had begun to suspect was wrong. Popper persuaded him that it was no disgrace to have one's hypotheses refuted. Indeed this was the means by which science advances. Encouraged by this view, he proceeded to join the `killing' of his own `brain-child' and to assist in the advancement of the theory of his rivals. `It was in this most personal manner', Eccles wrote, `that I experienced the great

liberating power of Popper's teachings on scientific method.' (The Philosophy of Karl Popper)

This story contrasts strongly with what happens in politics where the behaviour of politicians, civil servants, and political parties resembles much more the amoeba than the Popperian scientist. They can seldom admit themselves to have been wrong and they tend to bind themselves to ";particular solutions rather than to solving problems.

Richard Grossman relates in his diaries how he asked Mr Callaghan, then Home Secretary, why it was that he was now in April (1969) proposing an obviously sensible reform in respect of immigration which he had himself opposed in the previous October. What had made the difference? The answer was that the chief immigration officer had been shifted. Similarly, in his analysis of the way in which three municipal authorities dealt with their transport problems, John Grant showed how only by getting rid of the leading participants - in one case by defeat at the polls, in another by the death of the City Engineer - could the policy be changed. In the third case, where both party and leading actors survived, the road-building ambitions of the 1960s were only chipped away bit by bit.

Popper's great innovation, then, is that human knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, depends upon criticism for its advances. This idea is linked with another, which is also contrary to a popular saw - that you can never prove a negative. on the contrary, if you are talking about general propositions and theories, negatives are the only things you can prove. (The confusion arises from the fact that the opposite is true of singular events.) As Popper puts it: `No number of sightings of white swans can establish the theory that all swans are white; but the first observation of a black swan can refute it' - assuming of course that the total number of swans in the world is, not known.

I think it is fair to say that Popper's formulation of the process of growth of scientific knowledge is now generally accepted by natural scientists themselves. It is interesting to compare it with what had immediately preceded it, the theory held by the logical positivists that any theory that could not in principle be confirmed, was not just non-science but nonsense. In Popper's view what is non-science, as defined by his subtly different criterion, is not necessarily nonsense. Metaphysical ideas can, with the growth of knowledge, become scientific theories. To take a fantastic example, a century ago the theory that the moon was made of green cheese was metaphysical. There was no possible way of proving it false. Now it could be considered a scientific theory that has been conclusively disproved.

Or, as a realistic example, take the recently publicised theory that anorexia nervosa (complete loss of appetite and consequent severe loss of weight, usually in adolescent girls or young women) is caused by a fear of reaching maturity.  Now this may or may not be true; but it would be difficult to put this hypothesis into a form such that it, or its logical consequences, could be refuted. I do not deny

that it may be a helpful idea to have in one's mind when dealiig with a particular case. But there is a great danger in believing it to be a fact. For such a belief will tend to make one disregard other evidence, especially any statements by the patient herself, which appear to contradict it.

Science is not necessarily connected with microscopes and electronic machinery. It is a method of acquiring knowledge. What is called scientific knowledge has been laboriously built up over the years and thoroughly tested but is not certain. It includes social as well as physical science. Theories which are not testable and, therefore, do not belong to science on Popper's criterion, may be

interesting and fruitful - as for example Marxism and psychoanalysis - but cannot command a degree of reliance in any way approaching that commanded by scientific theories that have stood up to tests.

In concluding this chapter I must emphasise the fact that the growth of scientific knowledge depends on the publication of theories and on freedom of speech in criticising them. Technology may thrive in secrecy and under tyranny but science cannot. Two groups of people are required for the growth of knowledge: those putting forward the theories and the critics, who may or may not be experts of some sort themselves, trying to find fault with the theories.

Chapter 2

Three Worlds

This chapter is devoted to another Popper innovation - a more recent one - which has far-reaching implications for psychology and all aspects of human behaviour. Hitherto controversy has ranged around the mind-body problems with such questions as: Is mind something separate from body? Does mind control body or vice versa? Or is mind an illusion, an epiphenomenon, something like the locomotive's whistle that has no effect on the working of he body-machine? (The analogy is T. H. Huxley's and represents what he believed to be the case.) In tackling this question, Popper distinguishes between two problems which have tended to be telescoped into one.

The first he called Descartes's problem, and he stated it like this:

"How can it be that such things as states of mind - volitions, feelings, expectations - influence or control the physical movements of our limbs?" (O.K. 231)

The second he called Compton's problem because it had first caught his attention in a published lecture by the American physicist-philosopher, Arthur Holly Compton. Unlike Descartes's problem, it had not been appreciated by philosophers of the past, Popper says. If they saw it at all, they saw it only dimly. He stated this general problem in terms of the specific problem Compton himself had posed, namely how to explain the faith of his Yale audience that he would return from Italy to lecture to them at the time and date advertised, bearing in mind that, viewed as a physical event, it was a fantastically improbable one. So the problem, as Popper puts it, is this:

"There are such things as letters accepting a proposal to lecture, and public announcements of intentions; publicly declared aims and purposes; general moral rules. Each of these ... has a certain content or meaning, which remains invariant if we translate it or reformulate it. Thus this content or meaning is quite abstract. Yet it can control - perhaps by way of a short cryptic entry in a diary - the

physical movements of a man in such a way as to steer him back from Italy to Connecticut. How can this be?" (O.K. 230)

Popper not only affirms the separate existence (and power) of mind, but points out the existence of a third reality, the world of the products of the human mind. He is thus not merely a dualist but a pluralist. World I, in his scheme of things, is the material world which includes brains and also physical forces such as magnetism and gravitation. World 2 is the world of consciousness, or mental events. Descartes's problem is the problem of how World 2 acts on World 1. In addition there is World 3, consisting of art, music, moral obligations, ideas, problems, theories (true and false), which have been published or spoken or written down - objective as opposed to subjective knowledge. Compton's

problem is thus the question of how World 3 acts upon World 1. Although produced by human . minds, World 3 is no longer `within' minds. Popper is making the distinction between thoughts (World 2) and the externalised results of thoughts (World 3). (O.K. 153 and S.B. 38) His tentative solution to both the problems he defines is given in a paper called `Of Clouds and Clocks' (O.K. 206).

I cannot even sketch it here. I raise the matter only to emphasise the reality and the power in all our lives of World 3. In the form of theories, proposals, and plans, World 3 items will loom large in the rest of this book.

It is Popper's conjecture that World 3 developed hand in hand with World 2, and it was language that made both possible. There is no mind, no consciousness, he conjectures, or at any rate no self-consciousness, without the products of mind.

The above paragraph may be dismissed as metaphysics. There is no conceivable way of proving these conjectures false. But it is not hard to show that World 3 objects exist. They are abstract but real. That they are abstract is shown by the fact that they have no location in space. `Where is the

English language?' is a meaningless question. Their reality is demonstrated by their power, by way of World 2, to influence World I. Popper exemplifies this by postulating two variants of a hypothetical disaster, for example nuclear holocaust. In both all adult humans die and just a few children survive. The difference is that in one case the libraries survive and in the other all human artefacts are

destroyed. In the first case, one can imagine that in a few generations civilisation might be rebuilt; in the second the human race must be set back 30,000 years. It makes no difference what material form the recorded knowledge takes. Instead of libraries it could be magnetic tapes with the appropriate means of reproducing them. All that matters is that they should be intelligible to the survivors.

Or take a less hypothetical example of the power of a message, the public notice of a theatrical performance, pop concert, or football match. Those printed words in newspaper or poster will in a real sense cause the movement of hundreds or thousands of people from their homes to the place named. The effect is independent of the physical ink and paper, being the same whether printed in capitals or lower case, English or French, broadcast by radio or public address, provided only that the minds (World 2) can grasp it.

Two points must be emphasised. (1) Abstract ideas have this power to change the material world only when they become objective, World 3, public knowledge as opposed to private thoughts; and (2) their power to affect World I is exerted only via World 2. World 3 objects, the products of human minds, have to be grasped again by human minds before they can produce results in World 1. A book is of

itself a powerless World I object. But if its message (World 3) is grasped in the mind (World 2) of a reader (World I) that reader may in consequence take action which he would not otherwise have taken. That action is therefore caused or partly caused by a World 3 object.

It is worth pointing out the reality of World 3 objects as compared to something like a corporate spirit. A group of people, it can be a committee or a team, may be said to have a life over and above the lives of its members. But that life or spirit depends on its members being alive. Shoot them all and there is nothing left of the spirit. But, though Shakespeare is very long dead, his plays live on and influence us to this day.

Philosophers are well known to be obsessed with Plato and at the drop of a hat will quote Whitehead's defeatest view that the most anybody can hope to do is to write `footnotes to Plato'. Inevitably therefore Popper's World 3 has been written off in some academic circles as a re-hash of Plato's forms, which were conceived as a kind of pure essence or distillation of crude impure realities. They were of divine origin and changeless. Popper's World 3 objects are man-made and constantly being modified, corrected, added to. Furthermore Plato's forms were powerless in the physical world; Popper's World 3 has changed the face of the earth. (I am referring to the fact that the immense

physical changes brought about by man have been the consequence of theorising and grasping of theories and of the growth of human knowledge.) Finally Popper, points out, World 3 is to some extent autonomous. Man invented the natural numbers 1, 2, 3 etc., but he did not decide that the sequence of numbers should contain an irregular number of prime numbers nor that every even number should be the sum of two primes. Similarly a theory often contains within itself implications that were unintended by its author. A theory, as it were, generates its own sub-theories.

Nevertheless, Popper has to justify his pluralism against conventional monist theories such as the one that mental events are brain processes which would take place anyway whether conscious or not. This implies that the fact of their being conscious has no material effect. Popper's argument is in essence an evolutionary one and this is what makes the footnotes-to-Plato school look a bit silly. For 'centuries philosophers laboured under what H. G. Wells called `that fantastically precise misconception' that the world had been created quite suddenly in the year 4004 B.C. (although it

was uncertain whether in the spring or the autumn of that year). Plato's misconception would have been less precise; but he would not have taken into account a world without life. We with our vastly wider horizon have to consider the advantages of each change, in particular the change from unconscious life to consciousness.

The biological function of World 2, in Popper's view, lies in its ability to 'produce theories and conscious anticipations of impending events' and to grasp World 3. That is, the biological function of conscious minds (as opposed to unconscious brain processes) is to seek, select, interpret, and understand the ideas first formed in other people's minds and then by some means made publicly

available, and to add to them. It is the main biological function of World 3 to make it possible for these ideas to be rejected - `to let our theories die in our stead' (S. B. 138).

Language made it possible for World 2 ideas to be externalised, made objective, and thus shared, built on, and criticised. We have already seen how knowledge grows by criticism. You cannot criticise an idea in somebody else's mind until it has been transformed from a mental event (World 2) into a public World 3 object, by being spoken or written down. It is not even very easy to criticise an idea in one's own mind, as most of us discover when we come to explain to somebody else or to defend what, up to that moment, had seemed to be a good idea. As Popper says: `the very small difference between thinking (in the sense of acting on the assumption) "today is Saturday" and saying "today is Saturday" makes a tremendous difference from the point of view of the possibility of criticism' (S.B. 451). In the long run, therefore, the biological advantage of consciousness is that it makes possible the cumulative growth of knowledge.

The two groups of psychological theory which have had the greatest impact on human thought in this century (and form the subjects of Chapters 5 and 6) tend to discount the importance of consciousness, assuming almost that `the true mind of man is in the unconscious, as if man were most absent-minded when he is most attentive', as Arthur Little put it. Because they discount consciousness, they necessarily ignore the question of its function, and of the biological advantage conferred by it. The importance of Popper's World 3 concept is that it draws attention to this major

power in our lives that popular psychologies leave totally out of account, the stuff that consciousness works on.

A few bacteria inoculated into a suitable culture medium may increase in numbers to 3 or 400 million organisms per millilitre of medium in some twelve hours. After a further forty-eight hours they may all be dead, having used up all the nourishment and poisoned their own environment. In the absence of periodic wars and pestilences the same sort of fate may threaten the human race. Bacteria can respond only to `routine' stimuli; but our consciousness and ability to theorize offer at least a hope that we may escape the otherwise inevitable. Toynbee stressed that it was our ability to learn from history that might prevent our civilization from going the way of its predecessors; but in more precise, Popperian terms, this ability to learn from history is an aspect of our ability to `grasp World 3'. It

depends on the reality of Worlds 2 and 3.

In The Self and Its Brain (p. 549) Popper gives what amounts to a proof that World 1, the material world, cannot be all that there is, that no material object could achieve what the mind does achieve. He uses Euclid's proof that the series of prime numbers is infinite and shows how such a proof must belong solely to Worlds 2 and 3, essentially because you cannot make a material model of infinity.

I end this chapter, in a parallel vein, with a kind of mathematical demonstration both of the superiority of conscious reasoning over unconscious, genetic, programming, and of the importance of institutions. It amounts also to a refutation of what some ethologists are always telling us, if not in so many words, that we should do what chimpanzees do. It comes from Richard Dawkins's most important book The Selfish Gene. His dominating theme is that natural selection operates at the level of the gene (or at any rate a short section of DNA) rather than on, the individual, group, or species, because the gene is the thing that is replicated. `This is not a theory; it is not even an observed fact; it is a tautology', he says. It amounts to saying that what survives best survives best.

Dawkins combines this idea with the concept, invented by Professor John Maynard Smith, of evolutionary stable strategy (ESS), which is best explained by the simplest example Dawkins quotes. He supposes an animal which inherits a tendency to behave either as a `hawk' or a `dove'. When an asset such as a piece of territory or a female is in dispute, a `hawk' will attack, retreating only if seriously hurt, while a `dove' will stand and stare, never hurting his opponent and, if attacked, he will retreat before he himself is hurt. Maynard Smith allots scores, pay-offs, for each kind of confrontation, based on an assessment of the numbers of the animals' genes- that are likely to survive (in itself and its relatives). Winning a fight scores +50 and serious injury costs - 100. There is also a cost, - 10, for wasting time, trying to stare out the opponent (which, for example for a small bird in a cold climate, might be lethal to itself or its offspring waiting to be fed). A dove that wins therefore scores 40 (+50 -10). Now if all are doves there is an unstable situation, because one mutant or invading hawk has a huge initial advantage. Hawk genes then spread rapidly at first until there is a good chance of any one hawk having to fight another. Similar considerations apply to all-hawk populations, because a lone dove, although he scores zero in any encounter, does much better than the average hawk who loses one to every one that he wins (his average score is a half of +50 -100 = -25). Maynard Smith's idea is that a stable population in respect of this one characteristic will ultimately evolve. Simple arithmetic shows that it will have 7 hawks to every 5 doves (on these scores). In such an ESS the average pay-off per confrontation is 614.

The important thing is that this pay-off is less than the average score (15) which would be obtained by an, albeit unstable, all-dove population. Thus the blind, unconscious forces achieve a stability which is by no means the best of all possible worlds. Conscious calculation can arrive at a better solution and all that is needed is an institution to enforce it, namely the outlawing of hawkishness. Interestingly enough, it can even tolerate a little law-breaking. For an occasional outburst of hawkishness results in an even better average score, 163 for one hawk to every 5 doves!

 

 

Chapter Three

Forms of Unreason

'Socrates's great equalitarian and liberating idea that it is possible to reason with a slave, and that there is an intellectual link between man and man, a medium of universal understanding, namely, "reason".'

O.S., i, 132 

My favourite chapter in the whole of Popper's writing is the last but one in The Open Society where he explores the kind of borderland between reason and faith in reason, in a way which I have found of lasting value and comfort. The chapter begins with the observation that Marx was a rationalist, but that the consequence of his work and influence has been an undermining of belief in reason. Rationalism has been assaulted both from the Left - by the Marxist doctrine that opinions are determined by class interest - and also from the Right by Hegel's doctrine that ideas are determined by national interest. `This is why', says Popper, `the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism has become the most important intellectual, and perhaps even moral, issue of our time' (O. S., ii, 224).

Rationalism in Popper's sense implies an attitude of reasonableness, of `I may be wrong and you may be right, and by an effort we may get nearer the truth'. He is at pains to emphasise that this attitude cannot itself be justified by reason, it cannot be proved. It is more akin to a moral attitude. `For the question whether to adopt rationalism or irrationalism will deeply affect our whole attitude to other men, and towards the problems of social life.' (O.S.,ii, 232). He proceeds to justify his choice of rationalism mainly by looking at its opposite. What he calls `irrationalism' is the attitude of those who insist that 'human nature' is not rational. They may recognise reason and scientific method as useful tools to serve certain ends; but these very ends will  be irrational because the `deep motives' of human action are emotional and not amenable to reason. Further, because of this and because so few people are capable of serious argument, the majority, they say, can only be tackled by an appeal to their emotions and passions rather than to their reason.

Irrationalism, since it is not bound by any rules or consistency, may be combined with any kind of belief including a belief in the brotherhood of man; but the irrationalist's belief that emotions and passions rather than reason are the mainspring of human action tend to lead to an appeal to violence and brute force as the ultimate arbiter in any dispute. Bertrand Russell had written: `Rationality ... is of supreme importance ... not only in ages in which it easily prevails, but even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.' With what he calls a harmless test case Popper shows that even the most constructive emotion, love, is usually unable to decide a conflict. Tom likes the theatre and Dick likes dancing. Tom lovingly insists on going to a dance while Dick wants, for Tom's sake, to go to the theatre (O.S., ii, 236).

‘Starvation lunches' organised to help the underfed millions in the poorest countries of the world are probably a case in point. The idea that we should fast for this purpose is founded on generous emotions but bad reason. If the amount we eat has anything to do with providing more for Bangladesh, we would be more likely to help by eating more. For it is increased demand for their exports, rather than reduced demand, that is most likely to help them.

The adoption of rationalism implies, Popper says, a commitment to a common language of reason, and establishes a kind of moral obligation to use it with clarity and in such a way that it retain its function as a vehicle of argument. He inveighs against the tendency to regard language as a means of self-ｅxpression rather than a means of communication, and sees this misuse as part of the revolt against reason.

As a short digression to emphasise the point of clarity of language, here is Richard Asher, a medical lecturer of genius, talking to a meeting of psychiatrists (a profession not renowned for clarity):

“If for a moment we consider the dynamic formulation of both objective and subjective thought-fantasy, the cognitive functions can easily become projected into an integrated but psychically barren wish-fulfilment.”

The reader will be relieved to know that he went on:

“That last high-sounding sentence, as I hope you noticed, has no meaning whatsoever and is pure nonsense; but I wrote it to demonstrate that, with the aid of abstract terms, it is easy to parade such a brave show of words in front of one's thoughts that it is extremely difficult to see if there is any idea behind them; and it is equally easy to take a small idea and wrap around it such a mantle of language that it can dazzle the unwary into applause.”

That was a spoof; but here is a definition, quoted by June Lait and given, apparently in all seriousness, by the British Association of Social Workers:

“Social work is the purposeful and ethical application of personal skills in interpersonal relationships directed towards enhancing the personal and social functioning of an individual, family, group, or neighbourhood, which necessarily involves using evidence obtained from practice to help create a social environment conducive to the well being of all.”

Because the roots of reason lie in discussion and dialogue, there is implicit in rationalism a recognition of a common humanity. A cat can look at a king. An ignorant non-intellectual may put his finger on a professor's mistake. Criticism is the source of the advance of knowledge, and it can come from anybody. In his fascinating book on why things don't fall down, Professor J. E. Gordon tells how he `spent a whole evening in Cambridge trying to explain to two scientists of really shattering eminence and world-wide fame the basic difference between stress and strain and strength and stiffness' (A-level physics) in connection with a project about which they were advising the government. And he was not certain how far he was successful. I mention this not to jeer at the ignorance of our betters, but to emphasise that nobody knows everything, even about the subject he is supposed to be expert in, and so everybody needs to be subject to criticism.

The tendency of rationalism is thus anti-authoritarian, anti-elitist (to use the modern ｅxpression, though there is a regrettable tendency for this to mean anti-anybody with any kind of skill), and non-divisive. It is also equalitarian in the sense in which we talk of equality before the law. As Popper says: `It cannot be denied that human individuals are ... in very many respects unequal, nor ... that this inequality is in many respects highly desirable.' But this has nothing to do with political rights, with how you decide to treat people. `Equality before the law is not a fact but a political demand based upon a moral decision; and it is quite independent of the theory - which is probably false - that "all men are born equal"' (O.S., ii, 234). Individual irrationalists may adopt these attitudes which are consequences of rationalist faith; but rationalists, if they are consistent, must adopt them.

Rationalism in Popper's sense combines reason in the sense of argument and discussion - what is sometimes called `intellectualism' - with observation of the real world, learning by experience - empiricism. (But he is a follower of Immanuel Kant to the extent that he rejects `naive empiricism', what he calls the bucket theory, of mind, which sees the mind as a passive collector of perceptions.) Rationalism has to be distinguished, he says, from `pseudo-rationalism' as typified by Plato's remark in the Timaeus that `reason is shared only by the gods and by very few men'. Popper denounces this attitude as: `This authoritarian intellectualism, this belief in the possession of an infallible instrument of discovery ... this failure to distinguish between a man's intellectual powers and his indebtedness to others for all he can possibly know or understand' (O.S., ii, 227). His view is that `We not only owe our reason to others, but we can never excel others in our reasonableness in a way that would establish a claim to authority' (ibid., 226).

The rest of this chapter is devoted to three particular departures from reason which have a powerful influence on modern thought.

Holism

What Popper calls holism is the theory that the proper way of carrying out reforms is to treat the thing reformed - whether nation, segment of society, large area of city, or even (I would add) human patient - as a whole and change it as a whole. one alternative, if not the only one, is the theory he made explicit more than thirty years ago and called (perhaps rather unhappily) `piecemeal social engineering'. Here the method is: first to identify the problem, to state preferably in writing (so that it can be objectively criticised) what is the abuse or unfairness or inefficiency to be corrected and what is the object to be achieved; then to suggest a tentative solution - a `theory' - followed by attempts to guess in advance what will be the undesirable consequences of putting the solution into practice and the finding of ways of preventing or minimising them. The piecemeal planner is modest in his approach. `Like Socrates, he knows how little he knows.' He knows that we can learn only from our mistakes. He lays down criteria in advance for the judging of success or failure and takes steps to look out for unanticipated, but inevitable, snags or `side effects'. He will be careful not to make simultaneously more changes than he can hope to keep track of, in order to be sure that when things go wrong (as he must expect they will) he can know what is causing what.

A nice example of the best laid plans of men going wrong in the most unexpected way is provided by a case quoted by Professor Geoffrey Broadbent of some efficient planning of a new law court building. There was a gross reduction in space `wasted' on corridors and stairways and thus in the distances which people had to walk. But the consequence of ,the lack of dim corners where informal conferences and settlements can take place meant that many more cases came to trial ... and the court calendars became overloaded'.

The holist disparages the piecemeal method as lacking  boldness. In his view society is usually at fault `from its roots'. A radical solution is needed and this must involve changing things as a whole. The first difficulty arises here. For while it is easy for people to agree on what the problems are - what the wrongs are that need righting - it i, virtually impossible for people to agree on the ideal of how things should be. Each has his own idea of Utopia and one man's meat is truly another's poison.

It may sometimes seem that there is only a theoretical difference between the two methods. For the scope of a piecemeal reform may be very great and that of the holist-in-spirit will usually be less than total. The holist can hardly change the language of a society, nor can he immediately change the make-up of its built environment, or the knowledge and skills of its members, three of the most important things in determining how a society functions. Nevertheless the difference in attitude of the two types of reformers makes a profound difference to the outcome. In the first place the holist is committed in principle to the largest possible scope, while the piecemeal planner limits his scope to the minimum necessary. He expects snags and is poised to adjust to them. The holist is committed to the execution of his plan in total. Snags must be brushed aside, a deaf ear turned to complaints. But the bigger the scheme the bigger the snags, and some will be so big as to make the working of the scheme imposible. So impromptu, piecemeal, changes will have to be made - `the notorious phenomenon of unplanned planning', as Popper calls it.

As examples of this one may cite the numerous ad hoc changes that have made nonsense of attempts to plan the national economy as a whole: the planned reduction in staffs to economise on public expenditure and then the job-creation scheme to cope with the unemployment it caused; the orders to local authorities to cut their capital expenditure and then the sudden offers to counties (of £5M in, the case of Hampshire in 1976/7) to be spent in a hurry on public works (which had just been cancelled) in order to help the resulting unemployment. The sustained campaign to drive small businesses and the self-employed to the wall and now, like Dr Johnson's patron, the encumbering of the survivors with help.

In fact the holist method turns out to be impossible (P.H., Section 24). The reason is that the whole idea depends on regarding human society as an assemblage of machines whose functions and inter-relationships can be known and planned for. But this is false. As Popper says:

“The holistic planner overlooks the fact that it is easy to centralize power but impossible to centralize all that knowledge which is distributed over many individual minds, and whose centralization would be necessary for the wise wielding of centralized power. (P. H., 90)”

The critics (and there are many doctors among them), who think that doctors should treat the whole man and not just his illness, make a similar mistake. What they usually mean is that the doctor should take into consideration other aspects, together with the physical. The ones they tend to think of are the psychological, social, and sexual aspects. But these do not make up the whole man, and for any list that might be produced one could always think of an item omitted. The conventional and rational medical attitude, which is that of the piecemeal planner, is first to see if there is a problem at all (is this abnormal or not?), if so, to make a diagnosis, a theory as to what is wrong, to be ready to correct this diagnosis as the case proceeds, to decide whether any treatment is possible or desirable and in deciding on the kind of treatment to take account of all those aspects that seem to be relevant. As

Richard Asher put it:

“Any reasonable doctor when managing a patient takes into account what his home is like, what sort of family he has, and whether he is rich or poor. If Mr Jones lives in one room with five children, two cats, and a drunken slatternly wife, any sensible doctor would not order him to rest at home with two-hourly feeds of steamed custard. Nobody would be the slightest bit impressed if anyone explained the obvious thing in a plain way, but if you follow my instructions and `consider the patient as a psycho-dynamic whole, viewed as a socio-economic unit integrated within the cultural framework of his environmental and psychobiological relationships' then everybody will be deeply impressed ... The use of these key words lends an impressive but nebulous air of humane profundity to your utterances and conveys that ordinary doctors are unsympathetic and remote beings with no, interest in: their patients' feelings.”

In a case of acute appendicitis or strangulated hernia, surgical operation must be carried out at once and all other considerations set aside, except for the fitness of the patient for operation. This is one extreme. At the other are the middle-aged ladies who throng G.P.s' surgeries complaining of dizzy turns. Here the doctor has to cast his net wide and often bring in outside help. The difference is that in the first, case the patient is not seeking to have his whole life delved into or changed. He only wants the blockage in his guts put right. In the dizzy turn case it is likely that a lot of factors are involved, many of them non-medical, and it is possible that her way of life may need some substantial change. It is clearly silly to assume from the start that every patient needs a radical change, any more than a car with a flat tyre needs a complete overhaul. It is well known among doctors that enthusiasts for the whole-man approach are the first to demand specialists when they themselves or their children are ill. Whole man-ism is for other people.

Perhaps the first difference between holism and the piecemeal approach - the fact that the piecemeal planner begins by formulating as accurately as possible what the problem is, while the holist begins with a pre-conceived `blue-print' of how things should be - is in practice the most important. To take a comparatively trivial but typical recent example; the change to reporting rainfall in centimetres. The holist approach clearly was: our aim is a clean-sweep. Away with these archaic measures, let us adopt throughout the whole range the system of measurements in use on the continent of Europe. He might have gone as far as to enquire whether there would be any snags in changing from inches, but would be easily persuaded that there would be negligible difficulty. The conversion from one scale to the other is after all a simple ratio. The piecemeal planner on the other hand would start by asking whether there was any problem in continuing to report rainfall in inches. It is inconceivable that he would have found any demand at all for the change. No problem, he would think, means no solution needed; and he would make no change.

I would emphasize that here, as in the case of so many holist-inspired schemes, it is the general public who are put to inconvenience for the sake of trivial advantage to a few experts or bureaucrats. While the continental meteorologist, mapping rainfalls around the world, would equip himself with a ready means of converting inches or any other local measure to centimetres, the British amateur who is casually interested to see whether this has been a wetter year than 1970 is put to some trouble. The same, of course, applies, only more so, to the many other measurements that have been gratuitously changed. one of the factors which led to the swift and almost debate-less making of these changes was the discounting, which is necessary for holists, of individual private knowledge. It is easy, for example, to remember that the normal body temperature, 98.4° on the Fahrenheit scale, is equivalent to 36.6° on the Centigrade (now re-named Celsius) scale. But the individual doctor will have mental pictures of variations from the normal. He will know that in acute appendicitis the temperature is usually a little over 99° F and that if it is as high as 101° F another diagnosis should be suspected. It is not so easy without pencil and paper to translate this kind of knowledge. Similarly with such rules of thumb as 1° F rise in temperature is accompanied, other things being equal, by a rise of pulse rate of about 10 per minute.

It is ironical too that while hurrying to rid us of inches and pounds, which everybody understands, our masters still make us buy our gas in therms, a highly parochial British measure which practically nobody understands. Yet there is an international metric measure of energy which even British people do understand - the kilowatt-hour, the unit by which electricity is sold, the heat given out by the standard one-bar electric fire in one hour. (One therm equals about 29.4 kilowatt-hours). Here is a change which would actually help ordinary people. It would make it much easier then to see whether gas or electricity is the best buy in any particular case.

The holist attitude very readily leads to what I have called solutioneering, a kind of problem shift. Because he does not believe in first considering the question; `what is the problem to be solved?' he quickly substitutes for the real problem the problem of the implementing of his solution. Let us say there is a traffic problem, not clearly formulated. The holist traffic engineer (they usually are holists - their training has taught them that the solution to all traffic problems is to build a new road) plans to build a new road, and the problem becomes how to get it built against the opposition to it, or which is the best route for it. The original problem of what is the best way to deal with the traffic never gets discussed at all.

As I write this (1979) my fellow city councillors and I are being invited by Hampshire County Council to choose between five alternative road schemes ranging in price from £41 million to £8 million. The problem we are trying to solve is nowhere spelt out in the report. It is just implied that now is the time to do something about the roads in a particular area of the city. one might reasonably assume that we are trying to eliminate bottlenecks and prevent some of the traffic delays which at present do occur. But the causes of the delays are not identified and the five alternatives are not presented as alternative solutions to problems. The one recommended to us retains a roundabout, which is in fact the biggest single obstruction to traffic flow, and it adds two new ones. There is thus a real possibility, which is not considered in the report, needless to say, that the result of spending some £6 million will be that traffic flows even more sluggishly.

Holism has inspired the following recent changes in our national life: the reorganisation of the National Health Service with an additional tier of management (see Chapter 10); the reorganisation of local government with its additional administrative tier, obliteration of historic names and boundaries, and creation of new non-communities; the reorganisation of the social. services (on the recommendations of the Seebohm report), diluting the skills of children's officers and mental welfare officers by making them take on each others' jobs; the reorganisation of the nursing service (Salmon report), surreptitiously substituting administration for nursing advancement as the reward of a nurse's ambitions; decimalisation and metrication of measurements and money; comprehensive reorganisation of secondary education in a blaze of publicity but simultaneously confused with a stealthy introduction of new and largely untested teaching methods and the quiet dropping of such unifying traditions as the learning of poetry and songs and of Euclidean geometry, that unique discipline combining logic with the appreciation of shape and form; the comprehensive redevelopment of cities (of which more anon) and the building of the motorway network. These are not all complete disasters, perhaps, although all have had very damaging consequences. Had it been generally realised that part of the steam behind all of them was holism, a logically impossible ideal, then the schemes might have been quite different or not carried out at all. Leslie Chapman's Your Disobedient Servant must make one suspect that at least part of the enthusiasm in the civil service for reorganisations is related to the fact that they make investigation of past mistakes that much more difficult. A department that has ceased to exist can hardly be brought to book.

It is worth pointing out that none of these schemes was introduced as a result of popular demand. Probably only comprehensive schooling figured in any of the political parties' manifestos. In some cases the schemes went directly against what was well known to be the general wish of the people. Comprehensive urban redevelopment has amounted, almost always, to rebuilding with flats, even if not very high ones. It was well known that almost everybody wanted a house with a garden and this was precisely what most of the destroyed areas consisted of. There was an element of ruthlessness in these schemes - the brainchildren of `experts' - in that they were foisted on an unwilling country, in some instances without the cases for and against ever being squarely argued in Parliament, and in others (e.g. the abandonment of formal teaching, comprehensive urban 'development, and the motorway network) without any prior authorisation by Parliament at all.

Occupying a sort of half-way house between holism and what I have called white-swanning is centralisation, that great panacea of our time. Its advantages are obvious at the start, but its disadvantages, which become obvious later, are usually ignored until too late. A nice instance was revealed to me when I was a governor of a comprehensive school. A new classroom block had just been completed; but one room which was intended for the showing of films and television was still lacking its blinds. These had had to be ordered through `central supply' at county headquarters thirty miles away. The clerk there had looked through his list and found that the cheapest blinds were those obtainable from France. He duly ordered them. They arrived a little late and, not very surprisingly, did not fit the windows. They were sent back and the second lot did not fit either. Less than a mile from the school was a factory for blinds which had hitherto supplied the needs of the area and fitted them with, so far as I was aware, complete satisfaction. In a flash I understood the need for all those juggernauts - to deliver from as far away as possible things that don't fit and take them back again!

Historicism

Often closely allied with holism as an irrational influence in public and private decisions is the theory known as historicism, roughly what is also known as historical inevitability. This is the idea that there is a `tide of history', that `history' moves under laws analogous to those that keep the moon and the planets on their inevitable courses. The theory is the basis of innumerable myths, of the idea of the chosen people, the second coming, the master race, of peoples and classes carrying out their historic missions. We are actors in a play written by God, or swimmers in the great current of history.

In Marx's view the change from one state of social organisation to the other was inevitable, from feudalism to capitalism to socialism. The most that human action could do was to assist it on its inevitable course, give it a push on its way, as it were. The imagery he used was of the midwife. `When a society has discovered the natural law that determines its own movement, even then it can neither overleap the natural phases of its evolution, nor shuffle them out of the world by a stroke of the pen. But this much it can do: it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.' (From preface to Das Capital.) Popper comments that this excellently represents the historicist position. `Although it teaches neither inactivity nor real fatalism, historicism teaches the futility of any attempt to alter impending changes; a peculiar variety of fatalism, a fatalism in regard to the trends of history, as it were.'

Popper draws attention to a broad distinction between two kinds of prediction in the natural sciences, made from, on the one hand, astronomy and meteorology and, on the other, physics. The first two sciences on the whole enable one to make predictions which, although they may have practical use, do not suggest any action other than evasion. They predict the motions of the heavenly bodies or the weather but there is nothing we can do to change them. The typical prediction from physics, on the other hand, is of the form `if you do so and so then the result will be of such a kind'. It is broadly speaking the sciences which rely on observation which make prophecies, while those that rely principally on experiment make these technological predictions.

Historicists, for reasons which are explained in The Poverty of Historicism, tend to believe that sociological experiments are impractical and so the main task of the social sciences is prediction. The historicist thus tends to the notion that the task of the social sciences is similar to astronomy, namely to discover what the laws are and thus to make historical prophecies. Popper believes, on the contrary, that sociological experiment is not only possible but is all the time being carried out, that social science is more akin to physics. The setting up of the National Health Service, the launching of a new kind of insurance policy, even the opening of a hyper-market, are all sociological experiments. The conditions are less easy to control than they are in a physics laboratory; but even in a laboratory control is not by any means complete. Social scientists should be looking for laws, Popper thinks, analogous with physical laws, which forbid things, show what is impossible. The second law of thermo-dynamics in effect says `You cannot build a machine which is 100 per cent efficient'. Analogous laws of social science might be, he suggests, `You cannot have a full employment policy without inflation', and `You cannot, without increasing productivity, raise the real income of the working population', and thirdly `You cannot equalise real incomes and at the same time raise productivity' (C.R., 343). Have these `laws' been disproved? It would be nice to know whether we have been trying to lift ourselves by our own bootlaces.

Quite apart from its influence on Marxists, who espouse it openly, historicism exerts an unconscious influence on people of many different political persuasions who do not acknowledge the assumptions they are making. It is one of the great unconscious philosophies alluded to in Chapter 1. It is the source of the feeling that people have that `we must move with the times' and `keep up to date', that such and such `is not good enough for the 1970s, and that we must `prepare for the 1980s', etc. Above all it inspires the use of the word `modern' in such a way as to extol uncritically whatever is being advocated that is new and to disparage whatever is old, however satisfactory. Historicism is there in the background, all the time justifying change for change's sake: e.g. yards to metres (although metres are two centuries old), as opposed to change in order to remove injustice or inefficiency or because something better has been found. For example, the Portsmouth road scheme, mentioned earlier in this chapter, is being sold to councillors as one `to take the city into the mid-1990s'. The implication is that it is not enough to cure the existing bottlenecks and provide adequately for today's traffic. We must plan on an altogether bigger scale for the traffic of fifteen years ahead, although nobody can say where the petrol will come from, and the only evidence we have is to the effect that there was already a slight reduction in traffic flows in the year preceding the recent sharp increase in petrol prices.

Historicism is a less explicit and less coherent doctrine than holism - so much so that Popper found it necessary first to build up a good case for it before demolishing it. His arguments against historicism are, as usual, numerous. Here I shall state just two of them. He shows that the course of history is closely associated with the growth of knowledge, and strongly influenced by just such ideas as historicism and even more obviously by inventions - by World 3 in general. Such ideas and inventions are inherently unpredictable. `For he who could predict today by scientific means our discoveries of tomorrow could make them today; which would mean that there would be an end to the growth of knowledge' (O.K., 298).

Secondly, the concept of society as a `whole', as something that can move as a whole, whose course can be charted, however attractive it may be, is untenable. To illustrate its absurdity, Popper quotes the American historian, Henry Adams, who seriously hoped to determine the course of history by fixing two points on its track - one in the thirteenth century and the other in his own lifetime - and `with the help of these two points ... to project lines forward and backward' (P.H., 114).

Those who try to defend the idea of society moving `as a whole' tend to do so by pointing to unmistakable trends. But trends are not necessarily irreversible. In the 1960s there was a trend for brick houses to be replaced with concrete flats and for central heating systems to be powered by electricity, etc. It is not now difficult to imagine a contrary trend. Laws cannot be reversed. A law asserts that something is impossible.

Historicism is a powerful and pervasive doctrine largely because it is so deeply unconscious. We disparage something as being out of date with barely a thought as to the basis of our disparagement. Especially does this attitude show in the polarisation towards tradition. Some are instantly hostile to tradition, others want blindly to uphold it. Obviously the rational attitude is that traditions are good or bad according to whether their effects are beneficial or harmful, something that is totally apart from age. Democracy itself is under attack as being out of date, the implication being that its admitted shortcomings are to be ascribed to the fact that the origins of it are ancient. It should not need to be said that the age of an idea has nothing to do with its validity.

Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist philosopher who had a vogue with students in the late 1960s, attempted to take Popper to task on the subject of his rejection of historicism and to ridicule his way of proceeding: `What a strange method: to build up a position really worth attacking and then to attack it! ... against what is he arguing? Who has actually maintained what he is so effectively destroying?' The answer to the second question is nobody; but in asking this question Marcuse shows that he fails to grasp two points which, as we have seen, are to Popper the main justification of philosophy as a discipline. First, that philosophical arguments are not directed against people, but against statements, or theories, or other arguments. Although these have been proposed by people, they stand in their own right and are true or false regardless of the personality or character or reliability of their authors. They are World 3 objects. Secondly, that much of what we do is based on tacit assumptions, philosophical positions that we have adopted without actually stating them and certainly without criticising them. Marcuse does not seem to realise the power of an unformulated theory, or how the clear formulation of it may be the first step to its rebuttal, or even how ideas that seem sensible in our minds sometimes look silly when we try to state them clearly in words.

Another of Popper's critics is a romantic, Paul Feyerabend, who, in a book which in essence is an attack on rationalism, compares Popper unfavourably with John Stuart Mill. `Popper's philosophy, which some people would like to lay on us as the one and only humanitarian rationalism in existence today is but a pale reflection of Mill . . . it is . . . elitist, and is quite devoid of the concern for individual happiness that is such a characteristic feature of Mill.'

Elitism I have mentioned above; and as to concern for individual happiness, Popper answered that criticism thirty years before it was made in this passage, which deserves quotation in full:

“Of all political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of `higher' values upon others, in order to make them realise what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams. And no doubt, there would be heaven on earth if we could all love one another. But ... the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious laws, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition.”

He believes that it is based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties:

“It is our duty to help those who need our help: but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions. The political demand for piecemeal (as opposed to Utopian) methods corresponds to the decision that the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right to care for the happiness of others might be considered a privilege confined to the close circle of their friends. In their case, we may perhaps have a certain right to try to impose our scale of values - our preferences regarding music, for example. This right of ours exists only if, and because, they can get rid of us; because friendships can be ended. But the use of political means for imposing our scale of values upon others is a very different matter. Pain, suffering, injustice, and their prevention, these are the eternal problems of public morals, the `agenda' of public policy (as Bentham would have said). The `higher' values should very largely be considered as `non-agenda' and should be left to the realm of laissez-faire. (O.S., ii, 237)”

Disagreeing with the slogan of the utilitarians `the greatest happiness for the greatest number', Popper suggests `One should demand, more modestly, the least amount of suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering - such as hunger in times of unavoidable shortage of food - should be distributed as equally as possible.'

He mentions elsewhere the extreme difficulty experienced by Christians over the centuries in following the famous injunction to `love your enemies' ('especially if they happen to be atheists or heretics'!). Sympathising with this difficulty he updates (to use an ｅxpression which he might condemn as historicist) this commandment to: `Help your enemies; assist those in distress, even if they hate you; but love only your friends' (O.S., ii, 237).

Romantics have always attacked rationalists and realists as being cold and calculating, and have shown comparatively little interest in whether what they say is true. Typically, from this point of view, Feyerabend in upholding Mill as against Popper makes no mention of the fact that Popper has completely refuted the doctrine of psychologism (see page 72) which formed a central part of Mill's philosophy. And although part of the continuing importance of The Open Society in our day is its demolition of Marxism as science, Popper goes out of his way on this point to agree with Marx against Mill.

Feyerabend, in disparaging Popper vis-a-vis Mill, accuses Popper and most of his followers of `unrelenting puritanism'. I invite the reader to judge that charge even on the many quotations from Popper in this book. Is it not likely that the puritans were in the forefront of his mind as an awful lesson when he wrote the passage just quoted about heaven or hell on earth? Feyerabend's disparagement amounts to little more than name-calling, the last resort of those whose arguments do not stand up.

The sociology of knowledge

The principal current opposition to the attitude of reasonableness rests on what is called the sociology of knowledge. This is the idea that truth is relative, that what is true for one historical period or social class is not necessarily true for another. It leads to such absurdities as there being things called proletarian science, bourgeois logic, and Jewish physics.

Here are two examples from current politics, one left and one right, of the depreciating effect of these ideas upon standards of truth and matters of fact. In their report on productivity in car factories, the Central Policy Review Staff (Think Tank) compared, among other things, the number of car doors turned out per hour by means of identical machinery in Ford's factories at Dagenham and at Genk in Belgium - 110 at Dagenham and 240 at Genk. Sunday Times reporters who visited the two factories and interviewed managers and workers, broadly confirmed these figures. But Mr Jack Jones, then General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, was concerned only to attack the report rather than to investigate the truth of it and the reasons behind the disparity. one of his associates summed up his attitude, saying `The Think Tank report? It was an attack on the British working man, wasn't it?' one is reminded of the old joke about the smoker who was so shocked by what he read about the dangers of smoking that he gave up reading.

On the other side, the Conservative council who have landed themselves in an absurd road-planning muddle described on page 99 discount the perfectly rational protests against the scheme because the most-organised protesters are known to be supporters of the Labour Party.

The idea underlying the relativity of truth is the misconception of scientific objectivity which I touched on page 13. This is that the objectivity of science depends upon the freedom from bias of the scientist. In fact it depends upon its public nature. A paper in a scientific journal is a World 3 object. If other scientists find that they cannot  reproduce the results described, they will write and say so. advance towards truth and as the only alternative to Perhaps the original author will reply that they have violence; and the belief in the unity of mankind in the sense misunderstood him. The experiments must be performed that all men have something to contribute to human knowledge this and not like that. Ultimately, as the result of ledge and to the general well-being, and that there is no criticism and counter-criticism, a consensus will emerge. In natural barrier against co-operation and friendship. the first place, the new theory proposed may well attract attention because of the reputation or character of its proposer; but in the end it will become accepted as part of science only if it has stood up to criticism, and because of this alone. `The objectivity of science', says Popper, `is not a matter of individual scientists but rather the social result of their mutual criticism, of the friendly-hostile division of labour among scientists, of their co-operation and also their competition.' He sums it up with the aphorism `What the sociology of knowledge misses is nothing less than the sociology of knowledge itself' (P.H., 155). Objectivity depends on such social ideas as competition between individual scientists and schools of thought, the critical tradition, publication in competing journals and through competing publishers, discussion at congresses, and the power of the state in tolerating free discussion.

The sociology of knowledge belongs to a group of modern philosophies whose tendency, Popper points out, is to unveil our hidden motives (O.S., 215). It is associated in this respect with psychoanalysis, Marxism, and the philosophy of meaning. They are popular for the reasons given on page 18. It is such fun to see through the follies of the unenlightened. They are very harmful because they destroy the intellectual basis of any discussion by establishing what he calls a reinforced dogmatism, because any attack against them rebounds on the attacker and shows him as a victim of his own complexes, social bias, meaningless ideas, etc. These philosophies are death to the ethic of reasonableness.

To summarise: rationalism cannot be proved; it is a kind of faith. The main ideas that are implied and embraced by it are the concept of truth as an absolute standard; the importance of language as communication and as clear ｅxpression of meaning rather than as means of clouding issues, and of discussion and criticism as means for the advance towards truth and as the only alternative to violence, and the belief in the unity of mankind in the sense that all men have something to contribute to human knowledge and to the general well-being, and that there is no natural barrier against co-operation and friendship.