Dr Leach's instant New Jerusalem

PERSONAL COLUMN ANGUS MAUDE

My wife put her head round my study door one Sunday evening not so long ago and said, in a voice vibrant with indignation, 'You must come

and listen to this man. He's talking absolute twaddle.' This splendid non sequitur drew me

unprotesting from my work, and I found myself listening to the first of the Reith lectures by the Provost of King's College, Cambridge.

My wife, as usual, was right. Dr Leach was talking nonsense, and he has been doing it now

for five weeks. Yet there is a strange fascination about his nonsense, dangerous as some of it is. It is as if a scientific radical of the 1870s had suddenly seen a psychedelic vision of the future

and rushed into the streets to communicate his insights before The effects of the drug wore off. The opening of the first lecture set the tone bravely: 'Men have become like gods. Isn't it

about time that we understood our divinity? Science offers us total mastery over our environ- ment and over our destiny, yet instead of rejoic- ing we feel deeply afraid. Why should this be? How might these fears be resolved?'

Deliberate hyperbole, to shock an apathetic audience into attention at the outset? No, he really believes it. Not that he is guiltless of a

desire to shock. The mixture of didactic, pseudo- scientific hokum and enfant terrible exhibi-

tionism has a flavour of its own: But there is a disarming innocence about it all, as we shall see.

Of course, science does not offer us 'total mastery over our environment and over our

destiny,' and no reputable physical scientist would maintain that it does. Indeed, Dr Leach berates the physical scientists for their refusal to recognise their omnipotence and take full advantage of their opportunities. Then he ex- claims in innocent surprise because the rest of us 'feel deeply afraid.'

How innocent can you get? But perhaps no one who uses words as loosely as Dr Leach can really get to the root of anything. 'Science offers us total mastery . . .' Even if the mastery were a realistic possibility, who are the `us' who are

going to exercise it? It is precisely beCause people like Dr Leach make it abundantly clear that it is not going to be us at all that 'we feel deeply afraid.'

He goes on to make the threat explicit. 'Why can't we have a science in which someone or other is prepared to take a personal view of how things ought to be and then try to bring it about? . . . Are we prepared to tamper with nature itself—consciously and systematically?'

`Someone or other.. . .1 As if it didn't matter who! The dividing line between 'inno- cence and irresponsibility is clearly a narrow one. Then we have a classic passage:

'A generation ago the Russian plant breeder Lysenko imagined that he could -mould the

processes of evolution to meet the needs of the Soviet economy. He was unduly optimistic, but at least his theories were in accord with the

principles of marxist-leninism. And precisely because he was not detached, Lysenko never had any doubt about the rightness of what he planned to do.,By comparison a British botanist would be wholly at a loss . . .

`Somewhere along the line this kind of eva- sion has got to stop. The scientists can't always expect to opt out of the tough decisions.'

Well, there it is. Some scientist or other must get to work on our environment and our destiny: and, if he turns out to be hopelessly, unscientifically and catastrophically wrong, it will still be all right so long as he is committed to something—whether it be marxist-leninism, fascism, seventh day adventism or a conviction that we should all be more comfortable if the earth were flat. So long as he has `no doubt about the rightness of what he planned to do,' it can scarcely be said to matter if he blows us all up or turns us into newts.

Sensible people always 'feel deeply afraid' of any man who has `no doubt about the rightness of what he planned to do.' Because they suspect that he may have taken leave of his senses, they will go to considerable lengths to prevent him from achieving 'total mastery over our environment and over our destiny.' The Ger- mans weren't sensible enough, and discovered the disadvantages too late.

Dr Leach, who is a social anthropologist, makes it very clear that he deeply resents the superior academic pretension of the physical scientist that 'all true science must aim at objec- tive truth, and that . . . the human observer must never allow himself to get emotionally mixed up with his subject matter.' He is all for the jolly informality of the social sciences, where it is perfectly OK to get emotionally in- volved in the selection of ends—and to hell with the effect it has on your selection and processing of the facts.

Most people would feel safer if scientists stuck to a scientific preoccupation with the accumulation and systematisation of knowledge, submitting all their hypotheses and theories to experimental verification under strictly con- trolled conditions. Once science ceases to be 'ethically indifferent,' it ceases to be scientific and enters the domain of philosophy. If all scientists were also well-disciplined philoso- phers, this might not matter very much; but it would still be necessary for the representatives of the people rather than of the scientists to take the ultimate ethical decisions as to how scientific discoveries shall be applied. Scientists are far too often wrong to be in the least fit to be entrusted with control over our environment. They are always pronouncing things to be safe which turn out in the long run to be hideously dangerous and sometimes lethal.

'All of us need to understand,' says Dr Leach, that God, or nature, or chance, or evolutiOn, or the course of history, or whatever you like to call it, can't be trusted any more. We simply must take charge of our own fate.'

Well, fine. But wait for it—we aren't really going to get a look-in after all. 'We must some- how -see to it that the decisions which have long-term consequences are taken by men who understand what they are doing and not by bewildered amateurs.' That last crack, chaps. is aimed at you and me. But where are these men who understand the long-term conse- quences of what they are doing? I don't think I ever met anyone of whom this could be said with complete confidence; it is, after all, a very large claim to make. The thing is, though, that Dr Leach doesn't really mean it. All he wants is that we should hand ourselves over to someone who 'never had any doubt about the rightness of what he planned to do.' Know any good paranoiacs who are looking for a job? This remarkable lack of perception animates nearly everything that Dr Leach has to say. Since he cannot apprehend this fear, he endows us with others and tells us how unreasonable they are. We are afraid of nature, it seems, rather than simply scared of what his friends might decide to do to it. Being a good deter- minist, Dr Leach tells us that we are conditioned animals and that we must learn to have a happy and constructive relationship both with nature and with our machines, which are only exten- sions of ourselves. But, of course, the really alarming machines are not extensions of us at all, and we bewildered amateurs are to have even less control over them rather than more. (Samuel Butler thrashed all this out in Erewhon —in 1872.) `Far from being the basis of the good society, the "family," with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discon- tents.' Clearly Dr Leach has not the remotest idea of the meaning of the word 'tawdry'; but has he any idea of what goes on in a family, either? No evidence at all is adduced for any of these sweeping generalisations. which culmin- ate predictably in the pronouncement that 'children need to grow up in . . . something like an Israeli kibbutz perhaps, or a Chinese commune.' Perhaps. Perhaps in a few genera- tions we shall have enough data to form a judg ment about the results of communal nurture in a modern society; until then, it seems a large decision to take on Dr Leach's unsupported insights.

The 'rebellion' of the young—who are, of course, healthily reacting against 'English class values' (what are they reacting against in Russia and other countries?) and against the incompe- tence of their elders—is summarily dealt with in a series of fine marxist generalisations, exagger- ating the reactions of young and old alike. Dr Leach has also discovered the problem of longevity and whether doctors should keep sick old people alive. He thinks we should discuss it more. I have just turned up a speech I made abed this at a conference in 1953.

Morals are out, of course. 'Beware of moral principles . . . moral judgments are about social relations and relations have no material existence.' Philosophers have been discussing this for well over 2,000 years. If only Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant and the cautious Hume could have had the innocent insights of Dr Leach! Education is out, too, for the most part, since it makes us madly competitive and sadly conformist. Comprehensive schools are, however, a start in the right direction. Sancta simplicitas! Finally, we are told, 'Only those who hold the past in complete contempt are likely to see visions of the New Jerusalem.' For a man who talks so much about evolution, Dr Leach has, a strange passion for instant transformations. But at least we can now begin to discern the marxian outlines of the man who is to assume 'total mastery over our environment and over our destiny.'

He is an unscientific young scientist, brought up not in a family but in a Chinese commune; rejecting moral principles, but without any doubts of the rightness of what he plans to do; emotionally involved with his data, and having no truck with amateurs like us; holding the past In complete contempt; committed to arbitrary and compulsory retirement at the age of fifty- five, and presumably to euthanasia thereafter.

That's who is going to be in charge of your environment and your destiny. Book now for The New Jerusalem—better get in quick while you last.