Putting Descartes Before the Horse —James Burke, The Paper, Oct, 1990

PUTTING DESCARTES BEFORE THE HORSE

By Maureen Hurley (The PAPER, Oct. 1990)

Popular television commentator and author James Burke will make a rare northern California appearance at Sonoma State University, Friday, Oct. 5. Burke, who lives in London, is one of Great Britian’s formost commentators on science and technology. He is presently circumnavigating the globe shooting footage for an upcoming BBC television documentary series. But he will briefly touch down in Rohnert Park for a dinner/reception fundraiser for a PBS KRCB/Channel 22; this lecture promises to give us a lively glimpse of his newest creation entitled, Goodbye Descartes: Information and Change, which focuses on ecological issues including the rainforest and the ozone layer.

Affectionately dubbed as one of the most lively and ereudite “talking heads” in television history, the 54-year-old Burke is better known to PBS viewers as the host of the internationally acclaimed award-winning BBC documentary series (and companion books), The Day the Universe Changed, and Connections. “His shows are aired in over thirty countries, and continue to be some of the most popular programs on television world-wide,” says KRCB Special Events Coordinator and Auction Manager, Terry Hochmuth.

During Burke’s tenure as BBC’s chief reporter for the Apollo missions to the moon, he developed the some of the ideas that led to the popular television series, for which he received the Royal Television Society Gold Medal in 1974; the previous year he received the Silver Medal.

In his book, The Day the Universe Changed, Burke writes: “Thought, in the form of critical doubt, was the only tool that the scientist could trust.” In 1637, the philosopher Descartes stated the only thing certain was thought itself. His famous dictum: “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo, sum) marked the beginnings of the scientific revolution and of modern thought. God and the church was no longer central to man’s existence. According to Burke, when Descartes applied his “Cartesian doubt” to the behavior of the universe, it became “a cold, empty, mechanical place.”

When Burke, the Oxford educated scholar visited SSU last year, the event sold-out; over 2,000 spellbound listeners crowded onto the sagging gym bleachers to listen to the witty author, educator, and master storyteller untangle and weave unlikely ideas and connections: how the popularity of underwear in the twelvth century led to the invention of the printing press, and how the mill waterwheel evolved into the computer (with an unlikely immigrant stop at Ellis Island, New York).

Burke launched into a delightful diatribe which included the role of Irish grandmothers for the development of divergent thinking skills; to how science and technology have changed the deep structure of our lives by “altering society’s perceptions.” Our brains forge associative pathways which explore new and complex relationships between data and ideas. “Take these words: oil, Arab, sand, castle, night, day, sun, daughter—this is why we write poetry,” said Burke. “It’s a trick of putting things together in new combinations that leads to new ideas.”

Burke stated the mechanism for change is not always smooth: models shift when unexpected change occurs. Burke asked: “Why does change happen at all? Today, we live according to the latest version of how the universe functions. Should we move to a more flexible model? Suppose we could recognize there is no pattern to the universe? How should we prepare for change?” Accidents of time, circumstance, and place gave birth to ideas, inventions, and coincidences that led to technological achievements (or disasters) of the modern world. Said Burke, the gathering of knowledge should include the study of structure itself.

“A generalist straddles disciplines,” said Burke. “The key task for the future is not more new things. The problem is second-guessing the social effects of change. In the ‘50s, who’d have thought deodorant would make holes in the ozone layer?” Burke envisions a more contextual model: we need to make sure tomorrow’s world is better than today’s. He said, “We ordinary human beings have the power. Science and technology should enrich our intellectual lives, not just our material lives.”

Tickets available at SSU Box Office (664-2382), Bass outlets, and at the door. KRCB/Channel 22 fundraiser will feature gourmet Italian cuisine; proceeds to support local public television. Call 585-8522 for reservations.


(This is one of the few articles where I have the electronic draft. Most went missing, or were grossly corrupted, the finished article is always different. I liked to keep two copies, the draft I turned in, and the finished piece, which I corrected, so that I learned what the copy editor, Leisel, wanted. She was absolutely brilliant—and would explain why she made the changes. I learned so much from her. Nick also brilliantly edited my pieces. When the Paper was sold, Jim Carroll became editor, I learned a lot about the bones of writing from these folks. I knew nothing about writing when I began this process. I am forever endebted to them. —MH 10/9/2016)

Thinking Laterally with James Burke 11/88 (photo)

CONNECTIONS/22 THINKING LATERALLY WITH JAMES BURKE

By Maureen Hurley (The PAPER, Nov. 1988, +photo)

Sonoma State University Lecture Series broke an all-time attendance record Oct. 28; over 2,000 people paid ten bucks a head to hear British author and commentator James Burke expound on unforeseen connections between such unlikely things such as underwear and the printer’s press. Burke, better known to PBS viewers as the host of the acclaimed award-winning BBC television series and best-selling companion books, Connections, and The Day the Universe Changed, wittily untangled the threads of interconnecting events, accidents of time, circumstance, and place which gave rise to ideas: inventions and coincidences which led to technological achievements (or, as he so glibly put it—messes) of today. Burke also offered advice and models for survival in the future.

As BBC’s chief reporter on the Apollo missions to the moon, Burke developed ideas that led to the two popular series for which he received a Royal Television Society silver medal in 1973, and a gold in 1974. For the past year, he has been working on a new series, funded by PBS. “So far, I don’t know what it’s about yet,” he said. The tall, dapper 52-year-old Londoner began his lecture with examples of how science and technology have changed the deep structure of our lives by “altering our society’s perceptions.” He animatedly claimed our concepts of knowledge were “an awful lot of manure.” This irreverent train of thought developed into a lively tale of how horsedung led to the discovery of saltpetre, nitric acid and gunpowder, which led to world models and how they differ.

Burke said, “the model you use controls the universe you believe in.” In other words, “in an Omlet model, you look for the yolk. Black holes don’t fit the model, and are disregarded.” Science has a tendency to “shoehorn the universe into theories to fit the current model,” Burke said, citing the hoax of the Piltdown Man. He asked, “Why does change happen at all? Today, we live according to the latest version of how the universe functions.” He examined these moments of change and how it pertains to modern life—the implications of this approach to knowledge and what it means to our future.

For examples of changing models, he spun wild and witty tales of how the popularity of underwear in the twelfth century led to the invention of the printing press, the Reformation, and the computer. And how studies of “bad smell maps” (aka mal-aria—Italian for “bad air” because people were dying off like flies), led to the invention of air-conditioning, refrigeration, beer-making, guns, rocket fuel and landing on the moon. And the fellow who was trying to invent synthetic quinine from coal tar to combat that pesky malaria problem goofed and got aniline dyes instead (which led to the invention of aspirin, and eventually, the cure for malaria ). Incidentally, those dyes took the Paris fashion world by storm, but that’s a whole other story.

Burke stated the mechanism for change is not always smooth. Models are shifted when unexpected change occurs. Take the canal builder of England who discovered fossils of extinct species (and we know what theory evolved from that discovery). no fossil people were discovered. Suddenly, Man was a pile of chemicals and not God-made. Burke said it’s a “trick of putting things together in new combinations” that leads to new ideas. Quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity are models of a universe that’s not absolute.

Our brain works with associative pathways always making new relationships between facts and data. This associative process handles complex changes rather than the single model system. Burke ticked off examples of “single rigid models gone seriously awry—institutions, ie., the IRS and modern government,” to a wildly cheering audience.

Burke asked, “should we move to a more flexible model? Suppose we could recognize there is no pattern to the universe? How should we prepare for change?” He envisions a more contextual model.”We need to make sure tomorrow’s world is better than today’s. We ordinary human beings have power. We need a pluralist model rather than a single model because we need an infrastructure that is more flexible.” He added, “in children’s education we should teach them to think for themselves, not memorize facts.”

He envisions a world politically pluralist to the extreme; pragmatic, socialistic, culturally varied—what he calls “a balanced anarchy.” Science and technology should enrich our intellectual lives, not just our material lives. The key task for the future is not more new things. The problem is second-guessing the social effects of change. In the ‘50’s, who’d have thought deodorant would make holes in the ozone layer?

“Nothing compares with our brain,” said Burke. A generalist straddles disciplines. We need new information systems, to enfranchise the public to allow us to tap the innovative pool, teach people to think laterally, to daydream, to free people from the drudgery. Our brains are waiting to do this.”

Notes on James Burke

James Burke reading the back blurb of my kid poetry book

I loved the PBS series, The Day the Universe Changed, by James Burke. So I was pretty excited to learn that James was coming to town to do a KCRB PBS benefit, but also to speak at Sonoma State. By the time I found out about it, the event was sold out, so I asked if I could do a story on it, so that I could get in sans ticket, which was extraordinary because I also got to hang out with Ja at the end as well. Drinks with James and no canaries were harmed in the process.

James lecture was the singlemost largest attended lecture in Sonoma State University history. As I transcribe these notes to the electronic format, a reminder this is a rereading of my rough notes—reread, I might add, decades after the fact. Since I had to write an article, most of the, ahem, original connections, were lost. Maybe you might just want to stick to the finished story: Thinking Laterally with James Burke. But I am interested in what gets lost in "translation."  Warning: these are my raw working notes.

James Burke kicks off: In the real world the right thing never happens at the right place, the right time. It’s up to journalists to rectify this. I'm condensing 22 years of science and technology into an hour. Hold onto your seats. He explains, We are always second-guessing the future. Looking at the other end of the horse, concepts of knowledge creates an awful lot of horse manure. 

Science and technology have changed the deep structure of our lives. Once we understand how technology works, it means that it’s obsolete. It means the psychotic at the beach is having a wonderful time. Ask why. 

James talks about constraints and contextualism, how constraints are composed imposed upon us. Take me for example, he says, points to his eye. The oral and the physical of what about scratching your ass? What is it that makes this perceptual itch, and then there’s the cognitive model the recognition system of our neurons and the genetic ZIP code, the basic matrix of neurons  and /vs. the physical model. 

And then James talks about how world views are radically different—for example, in the United States is that white is for brides but in China, white is for corpses. And when Greek girls nod yes, it's not yes, it's no. Now that could get a man into trouble. We guffaw.

Then he rolled into paradoxical aphorisms. Italy is not a country, it’s a disease for which there is no cure. English are desperate but not hopeless. The Irish are hopeless but not desperate. He delves further into the Irish-English behavioral models. Turns out his grandmother was Irish. That explains much.