Beach Haven

Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Vernacular

Among the threads in Tilley’s work is the idea of a linkage of vernacular with goals. In many instances, officials at the Colonial Office and scientists in the various studies documented similar goals. For example, all were trying to understand how to make the best use of soils in agriculture. Depending on the era, they also often agreed on concepts of ecology.

Tilley shares examples of divergent goals as well. In areas of ecology, forestry, anthropology, etc., the scientists were interested in local farming approaches. Colonial officials were sometimes more interested in helping white settlers to succeed in creating cash crops. Native agriculture differed from area to area just as soils differed. Burning, then planting in particular ways, allowing portions of land to lay fallow, all looked like randomness to European farmers who approached farming essentially the same way regardless of environment. Indigenous farms in Rhodesia, for example, remained sustainable. White farms in the same area were initially fruitful, but by year three or four tended to fail as soils became depleted (p. 158). Practices of clearing and tilling by Europeans also led to damaging ground erosion. Homer Shanz referred to such farming approaches as “the tyranny of the plow” (p. 136). He sought to guard against “dogmas that hinder successful agricultural development”.

There was a definite tension within the various studies described with regard to considering local conditions as opposed to scaling up to regional or continental approaches. The larger scale proponents looked to standardization. Localization proponents looked to unique factors in a given area. As movement in the scientific community discussed merits of using ecology as a potential way to connect various fields of science, consideration of factor interrelationships seemed ever more complex, even locally.

Similar to the debate over local vs standard farming approaches, attempts to control trypanosomiasis, or sleeping disease, spread by the tsetse fly were cast in similar language. William Ormsby-Gore noted, “No one form of attack upon the tsetse fly is universally practicable” (p. 177). Note the language of war used around to the time of both world wars.

Just as dogmas noted by Shanz clouded European colonialism in farming, similar language around the people of Africa shaped perspectives toward native populations. Tilley tells us how the language of eugenics and demography “had important effects on conduct and legislation of colonial administrations” (p. 258). She shows a number of examples of scientists and administrators who believed Europeans could learn more from locals about farming techniques. She also gives examples of language in which indigenes are seen as ‘backward’ or somehow 'less'.

​Vernaculars differed throughout the work. Whether the language was political, administrative, scientific, that of the local farmer, or of workers in faraway laboratories, language, perspective, and actions are clearly intertwined.

​EMPERORS OF THE DEEP
By William McKeever
Harper One, 2019, 311 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
This work is subtitled Sharks – The ocean’s most mysterious, most misunderstood, and most important guardians. The author’s major claim is closely associated with that subtitle noting his intent as “an urgent call to protect them, a celebration of sharks as remarkable apex predators, supersensory navigators, and humankind’s greatest ally in nature” (p. 10).
 
Among many examples and justifications, McKeever notes how ecosystem culling by sharks makes marine life stronger and more abundant. For example, in the presence of an apex predator, prey behavior adjusts in ways that ensures the most healthy and adaptive survive to pass on genetic characteristics.
 
The author notes how he makes his arguments in order to “raise awareness about the massacre of sharks around the world” (p. 295). His hope is to appeal to policy makers, fisheries, and sea food consumers to take actions that would curtail bad behavior by people who exacerbate the human and environmental impact of bad practices related to sharks.
 
McKeever shares specific examples that clarify the points he makes. From sports fishing tournaments, to human enslavement on industrial fishing boats, impact by and to humans supplement the argument to the impact to sharks and the larger maritime ecosystem. At times he also seems to praise more radical groups. Such an approach may make it difficult for the policy makers he is hoping to sway. Along with his nod to Greenpeace or scientific organizations such as the South Africa Conservancy, he often points to ‘illegal’ fishing activities without reviewing what regulatory efforts have come about to define what fishing is legal or not. Sharing good efforts in this area as examples could persuade countries less involved to consider similar approaches.
 
For those like me who are interested in areas of science, technology and society there are plenty of examples of how science, technology, policy, economics, and cultural perspective ultimately influence each other around shark-related environmental concerns. McKeever gives both hopeful and discouraging examples from various parts of the world.

​SCIENCE IN ACTION
By Bruno Latour
Harvard University Press, 1987, 274 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
Subtitled How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Latour claims that as scientific ideas become generally accepted they are ‘black boxed’ (taken for granted in future knowledge claims). In what later becomes known as actor-network theory (ANT) his thesis is that knowledge is not linear discovery, but rather the building of supportive relationships among actors (human or otherwise), creating a web of idea dependency among scientific communities. The author seeks to describe the need to follow the closure of scientific controversies in order to understand the nature of knowledge production.
 
Latour seeks to link himself with scientists, and those who study aspects of science, he himself using the scientific method to study practitioners of the scientific method. In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this is a seminal work as it introduces a link between the philosophical perspective such as the social construction of knowledge, with the practical need for scientists to enlist others for consensus and adaptation. Unfortunately, the idea that knowledge is a function of the strength of actor relationships leaves out the potential of black boxing what at some future point turns out to be untrue.
 
As mentioned above this is foundational STS work as paradigmatically shifted away from the idea of linear knowledge advancement through discovery. ANT takes into account all forces at work in the knowledge creation process, including non-human participants.

LEVIATHAN AND THE AIR-PUMP
HOBBES, BOYLE, AND THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE
By Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer
Princeton University Press, 1985, 391 pages
Review by Michael Beach

This history covers an important time in the history of scientific thought. Many scholars consider the 17th century as the ‘scientific revolution’. Many famous discoveries took place around this time. The history under review here speaks to a major debate of the time. Represented by Robert Boyle were those who believed in experimentation as the basis of knowledge production. Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, questioned experimentation, preferring philosophical debate as the basis for coming to understanding. Boyle argued that we should believe our eyes, yet so much of experimentation is ‘managed’ that even today debate over knowledge construction versus knowledge discovery continues.
 
The reading claims that “many aspects of the programme that he (Boyle) recommended continue to characterize modern scientific activity and philosophies of scientific method” (p. 341).  Yet the pump experiments varied in both makeup and outcome. Theories also varied from pump to pump and outcome to outcome. Did facts created by experiments explain the various theories, or did the various theories serve to explain the facts noted in the experiments? When one interprets facts, are they interpreting whether something is a fact, or are they interpreting the meaning of the fact itself?
 
There also seems to be an interesting power balance issue. Hobbes had a connection with the king. You’d think that would have caused his arguments to carry more weight. Yet Hobbes was not accepted into The Royal Society (a prominent British scientific association). The authors offered a long set of examples of speculation by others as to why that was.  Some of the arguments surrounded Hobbes’ personality, yet Shapin and Schaffer show how some accepted members were perhaps more surly than Hobbes.
 
It may have come down to the fact that Boyle had members of The Royal Society act as witnesses to his air-pump experiments and even sign affidavits to the effect. At the same time Hobbes questioned the need for repeated experiments, or at times any experiments. By questioning the intellectual approach of the use of ingenuity (p. 130), which for Hobbes and his detractors was understood to be a slant, he put himself at odds with what amounted to be much of the collective thought leadership at the time. Reliance on the mechanical ‘tricks’, as he put it, was to denote something less than true philosophy.
 
Hobbes wrote a treatise on knowledge and science published in 1651 which he titled Leviathan. Aside from Hobbes’ negative portrait of experimentalists, most members of the Society looked at Hobbes as too dogmatic, including this publishing.
 
Whatever one believes to be the ultimate issue, the authors clearly state, “The rationalistic production of knowledge threatened that involved in the Royal Society’s experimentalism” (p. 139). Hobbes made an interesting assertion that many would still argue today. He depicted Boyle’s experiments as being based on his own assumptions about the nature of air. Likewise, it’s clear that Hobbes also had preconceived ideas. In fact, both Boyle and Hobbes came to what today would be thought of as false conclusions about what was happening inside the vacuum created by the pump. One could argue Boyle pre-decided the outcome of the experiments, the matters of fact, based on his ideas around the nature of air. Likewise, Hobbes essentially argued to ignore the experiments since the interpretation of the outcome was not proven, only conjectured. Yet Hobbes put more stock in his own ideas without any consideration of any matters of fact. As I see it both were socially constructing their perceptions pre- and post-experimentation.

THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS
4th Edition
By Thomas S. Kuhn
The University of Chicago Press, 2012, 217 pages

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (original 1962) Thomas Kuhn sheds doubt on the cumulative nature of scientific knowledge, and offers an alternative explanation of how scientists’ views change over time. Kuhn describes the source of his inspiration as coming from historiographic cyclical patterns leading up to and following major shifts, or “extraordinary episodes” (p.6), in scientific thought; noting the pattern as normal science, puzzle-solving, an established paradigm, discovery of anomalies, crisis, and revolution. The author’s “most fundamental objective is to urge a change in the perception and evaluation of familiar data” (p. xliii), here he is referring to historiographical data, in order to advocate a “reorientation” (ibid) of how we understand the nature of scientific change.

Kuhn appeals to both historians of science, and communities of scientists, in an effort to show value in both disciplines, and how the ideas of each influences the other. His argument is strengthened through use of multiple specific examples of scientific revolutions (extraordinary episodes both large and small) to show how events followed the proposed historic pattern.

The author points to weaknesses in his argument in a postscript added to the 1969 edition, having ignored other influences on paradigms (which he referred to as a 'disciplinary matrix') such as metaphysics, values, and shared commitment (p. 185-186). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become canon in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), as it raises significant questions in history, sociology, philosophy, and policy; all core concerns in the STS discipline.

SPACESHIP IN THE DESERT
ENERGY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND URBAN DESIGN IN ABU DHABI
By Gökçe Günel
Duke University Press, 2019, 256 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach

Success or Failure?


This book recounts the history of an entire community created in the deserts of Abu Dhabi based on renewable energy approaches. The idea was to create a campus in which new energy technologies could develop to help the country become less dependent on petroleum revenue. The name of the new city is Masdar.

Günel notes how Bruno Latour referred to technology as a system (p.139). Where most of us see only the portion we interact with, that portion is supported by an entire network of interconnected parts. For example, at Masdar people in general noted the pod cars of the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system as if they were one and the same (p.142). In fact, the pod cars are of no worth without the supporting system known as the undercroft, the controlling software, and an army of maintenance crew, often made up of workers from Asia. These workers were not allowed to live in the city, nor even use the pod cars once up and running.


How does one describe project success or failure? Exactly! The fact that this is even a question points to how criteria (official and unofficial) varies with every beholder’s eye. 


The PRT was not successful in that it could not handle large numbers of passengers efficiently. It was not cost effective. The undercroft requirement caused increased indirect expenses for the buildings which had to be lifted by 20 feet to accommodate the required space. One could simply walk the short distance the PRT served. It went not faster than a bicycle. Eventually, when a new executive took over the Masdar facility, the PRT was cancelled.


Despite the pessimistic view, others saw how people who came to visit the facility lined up to ride the PRT despite the availability of a shuttle bus during large events. Even jaded academics who pointed out issues still used the system because it was fun, making functionality a secondary consideration (p.142).


Günel makes the point of how the Masdar PRT is just one in a string of PRT projects that all end essentially the same. Although the system in West Virginia is still in use, it does so with a $120M price tag and an annual cost of $5M, and has stayed essentially small scale. It only goes between  West Virginia University (WVU) campuses and downtown Morgantown. 


In his 1994 book  The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Jame Ferguson argues whether or not original project goals are realized, something is accomplished. The project goals represent an entry point of development efforts, but whatever effect comes about, stakeholders think of some outcomes as desirable, and others as undesirable. 

THE SYNTHETIC AGE
OUTDESIGNING EVOLUTION, RESURRECTING SPECIES, AND REENGINEERING OUR WORLD
By Christopher J. Preston
The MIT Press, 2018, 195 pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach

The Singularity

Among the many threads in The Synthetic Age, Christopher Preston refers to a book by Ray Kurzweil. In The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil defines this event as when artificial intelligence (AI) gets ahead of human intellect. Preston characterizes results of this theoretical event as “a future in which artificially intelligent machines gain a runaway intellect that exceeds anything the human brain can counter” (157).

This theme is a common thread for Preston. Earlier in the book he expresses concerns over other synthetic proposals run amuck. Nanobots that self-replicate, biobots acting as bacteria, genetically created bacteria acting as bacteria, and unforeseen effects of approaches to cooling the earth are some of the examples Preston points to where technical solutions to natural concerns carry their own risks.

Why the ethical backlash to the idea of genetically-created humans, for instance? Dubbed the Human Genome Project 2, some organizations want to take technical lessons learned with genetic recreation of simpler life forms and apply them to the more complex genetic sequences of humans (154). The singularity of AI described by Kurzwail considers software as a servant of humanity, even if the risk of so many sci-fi movies of the machine taking over exists. Creating human life synthetically for purposes such as harvesting organs or experimentation raises reasonably grave concerns. For instance, would a genetically created human be a human? If so, then human rights would apply to them, and would preclude their use as test subjects or organ farms. If not human, then one could argue the ‘experiment’ would have failed. This ethical area hearkens back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

One of Preston’s base arguments shows how concern over human interference with nature is not avoidable. In fact, humans have always interfered with nature. Preston points out how some argue that humans are a product of nature so human acts are acts of nature. The difference between human acts and natural acts gets blurry when humans intervene in natural processes as simple as moving butterflies north in England to help them migrate fast enough to avoid perceived global warming effects, or as complicated as seeding sulfuric acid in the stratosphere to lower sunlight penetration. Human history and natural history begin to merge (149).

EBOLA: HOW A PEOPLE'S SCIENCE HELPED END AN EPIDEMIC
By Paul Richards
Zed Books, 2016, 180 pages
Review by Michael Beach

Just the Facts?

Among the arguments Richards makes, I'd like to examine the area of messages originating from official channels.

Is it possible to be factually correct and still misunderstand? Perhaps it is if one only has (or shares) some facts, or if the facts come too late to have any real meaning. In his book on how ‘people’s science’ helped end Ebola in three countries, Paul Richards makes this case in terms of messaging by international and state organizations attempting to ‘educate’ residents in upper west Africa. Richards does not make the case for or against Ebola origination through eating or handling of ‘bush meat’ (zoonotic spillover). He does make the case that once transmission was obviously moving person-to-person (nosocomial and family care), continued public messages about bush meat did more to increase mistrust than to curb the disease (25).


People in the forest border area were particularly targeted with bush meat messages. Likely this would be due to assumptions that these areas were where hunting was most likely to occur. Despite this, even when Ebola moved along roads and began to display in urban areas messaging was slow to change. Villagers, and later urbanites, quickly lost faith in messages coming from official sources in part due to this dissonance. As messages shifted toward person-to-person transmission, highlighting danger in caring for the sick and handling of bodies, mistrust was still lingering. Facts about people not adopting safe practices lead to untrue assumptions by official decision makers about culture as a route cause of Ebola spread (51).


People in affected areas had already figured out on their own health how care and body handling were risky behaviors, but again the messaging from official sources was dissonant. Authorities offered centralized care and body removal, but were often not available when actually called. People were not able to see their family once removed either for care or burial. Many decided if death was inevitable it would be better to just die at home among family. Despite assumptions that locals were unreasonably resistive, growing cries to train people, supply the tools, and allow for more dispersed care and body removal using ‘safe burial’ practices resulted in a quicker drop off of cases. Once people understood the disease (transfer limited to contact with body fluids, hydration focus) many figured out how to improvise protective gear through use of things like trash bags and raincoats. One might ask the question, is unfamiliar different than uninformed?


As regular people and respected local leaders understood the nature of Ebola, use of those facts lead to incorporation of new social adoption of care and burial. Once local trusted social leaders incorporated relevant facts to actual experience, the link of science and society, ‘people’s science’, all three countries reviewed in the book became strong examples of effective disease control.

HIV EXCEPTIONALISM
By Adia Benton
University of Minnesota Press, 2015, 176 pages
Review by Michael Beach

Kabuki Theater?

Benton sums up the heart of her findings as “…the aggregate of HIV programming techniques has given rise to new forms of social relations based on biological status and further entrenched AIDS as having exceptional status” (143). Among many supportive threads of this summation one link to other similar published works is the concern over aid colonialism (139).

A number of behaviors and attitudes link HIV/AIDS development in Sierra Leone to colonial perspectives similar to other forms of global development efforts. In general, infected among the poor are most dependent on the healthcare and food aid offered through sponsored support groups. These programs prescribed patient behaviors based on models used in other parts of Africa for the good of the people. HIV-positive people who have independent means were not subject to the demands of such groups and ultimately received the best care.

For example, patients were often grouped into program-prescribed identities such as “HIV-positive,” “former combatant,” “vulnerable woman,” “bush wife,” and “traumatized” among others (140). Within these roles, infected people are expected to display behaviors which are sometimes contradictory in order to show they are deserving of assistance. How does one demonstrate vulnerability and self-sufficiency at the same time?  One should look good to show the effectiveness of treatment. In this case looking good is equated with looking well. At the same time, if one does not seem vulnerable then perception may be that the person does not need the help. The help recipient must then navigate a sort of theater that requires shifting appearance based on circumstances and audience.

Benton points to how the poor must be accountable to development agencies. Metrics such as showing up on time to group events, participating in public events such as marches or parades, making public acknowledgement of their status of being HIV-positive show complicity.

Not only development agencies expect compliance. So does the state. Government leadership want to appear competent to those same development agencies to keep the funding coming in. One approach is an appeal to moral conformance in the most private of human activities. Benton raises the issue of ownership of patient bodies. Clarifying the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’ she notes how the state expects people to abstain or practice ‘safer sex’ in an effort for both care for the state and care of the state. The more extreme version of this argument depicts personal sexuality as a resource of the state (130), the argument being some behaviors lead to the spread of illness and an increased demand on healthcare resources. This seems not unlike how actors’ behavior is prescribed to complete a successful Kabuki performance, but with play directors changing throughout.

​THE PHILOSOPHER’S TOOLKIT
By Julian Baggini & Peter S. Fosl
Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 284 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
The subtitle for this work is A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods. The authors have organized philosophical ideas in a dictionary-like format. The ideas are explained, along with how philosophers tend to use each idea in practical argument. Some philosophies also accompany a short history of the given idea. The authors do not approach the discipline comprehensively, rather they narrow philosophical argument to areas associated with science and technology.
 
The reader will find the work both academic for contemplation, and practical if engaging in debate. If one studies science and technology, perspective and clarity of thought behind various approaches of areas of discipline are informed by understanding major movements in scientific thought.