This morning on the train I read this passage in The Man Without Qualities (published 1930–1943). The protagonist, Ulrich, is (circuitously) complaining about a prominent and popular intellectual figure of the time, a modern mind, a generalist whose works are widely read and admired, an interesting personality, Herr Doktor Paul Arnheim:

“Let me tell you what I have against him,” Ulrich resumed. “Scientific man is something quite inevitable these days. One can’t not want to know! And at no time has the difference between the expert’s experience and the layman’s been as great as it is now. Everyone sees it in the skill of a masseur or a pianist. Nobody will even race a horse these days without special preparation. It’s only where being a human being is concerned that everyone still believes he’s entitled to judge. An old prejudice still insists that one is born and dies a human being. But once I know that women five thousand years ago wrote word for word the same letters to their lovers as women do now, I can’t read another such letter without asking myself whether there oughtn’t to be a change for once!”

“I am even prepared to admit something else, something quite different. The experts never get to the end of anything. It’s not only that they haven’t got to the end of anything today. But they can’t even picture the idea of their activities ever being complete. Perhaps they can’t even wish it. Can one imagine, for instance, that man will still have a soul once he has learnt to understand it completely and manage it biologically and psychologically? And yet that is the state of things we are trying to achieve! There it is. Knowledge is an attitude, a passion. Actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is just like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all true that the scientist goes out after truth. It is out after him. It is something he suffers from. The truth is true and the fact is real without taking any notice of him. All he has is the passion for it. He is a dipsomaniac whose tipple is facts, and that leaves its mark on his character. And he doesn’t care a damn whether what comes of his discoveries is something whole, human, perfect — or indeed, what comes of them! It’s all full of contradictions and passive suffering and at the same time enormously active and energetic.”

Just then the G reached the pocket of cell service at 21 St., and I got a bunch of push notifications about the detection of gravitational waves.

Pretty cool! Two thoughts.

1. Neat how we have to build really big antennas to pick up these waves — at least, “big” relative to most EM antennas, and most things we build, or maybe just relative to a person. Relative to the wavelengths of gravity they’re just as small as a cell phone antenna is relative to radio light, right? Smaller, even! (Although I guess antenna size is also a function of the amplitude you want to be able to detect? I am clueless!) What waves might exist on a such a scale that we’d have to build an antenna the size of a galaxy to pick them up? With respect to what natural phenomena might the Earth be “electrically small”? Might there be entire “fundamental” forces operating on distances way too big or small for us to ever notice? An infinite continuum of forces beyond the “visible universe” of our “four”? Why not? The observation that “the geometric mean of the Hubble and Planck lengths is the size of a living cell” sounds very suspiciously like a sort of abstract scalewise geocentrism! We should treat it with as much skepticism as Hubble’s realization that all galaxies are moving away from us! It seems to me a priori (i.e. ignorantly) more likely that information-processing structures (structures such as “human scientists”) have a log-scale scalewise focal length. Or else, well, there are also anthropic accounts.
2. It takes light 1ᴇ6 years to travel the 1ᴇ-8 lightyears from the Sun’s core to its outer shell, and then (moving unobstructed at “full speed” at 1 ly/y) 1ᴇ-5 years to travel the 1ᴇ-5 lightyears to Earth. So: the light is traveling at c, but its effective propagation from its source to our eyes is “delayed” 1ᴇ14-fold. (You could tell a similar story about electron propagation.) But now I want to be able to talk about the information-theoretic propagation speed of the whole cybernetic system. E.g., human visual reaction speed to that photon is about 1ᴇ-8 years. In comparison: humanity, considered as a single cybernetic cognitive apparatus, has been thinking about gravity for a very long time. What is our reaction speed to a gravitational wave, or perhaps to the abstract concept of a gravitational wave? It’s, like, centuries or millennia or more! A history of scientific discovery! I don’t know how to count this. What was evolution’s reaction speed to the phenomenon of light (i.e. developing eyes)? What is civilization’s reaction speed to the phenomenon of gravitational waves (i.e. developing LIGO)? A photon emitted by the Sun hits sensors in a human’s eye and sets off a cognitive chain reaction and you blink in like 0.25 seconds. A gravitational wave emitted by a distant binary black hole hits sensors in a civilization’s scientific infrastructure and sets off a cognitive chain reaction and they hold a press conference. It is pretty cool, developing a new sense of sorts. We’ve always been reacting to gravity, like an eyeless amoeba reacts to light, but we haven’t been well-equipped to see it.

Anyway, I don’t know if I agree with Ulrich. It’s very well-put and provocative. It seems prima facie obvious that a mania for knowledge is more “productive” than a mania for alcohol. But sometimes we measure a thing only by its own metrics. It is hard to see it from the outside. Is there sometimes something a little too manic about a rush to catch up on the latest scientific news?

Ulrich goes on:

“Our view of our environment — and for that matter, of ourselves — changes every day. We are living in a period of transition. Perhaps, if we don’t tackle our profoundest problems any better than we have so far, it’ll go on as long as the world lasts. But still, if one is set down in the dark, one mustn’t be like a child and whistle to keep one’s courage up. And it’s only whistling to keep one’s courage up if one behaves as if one knew how to behave in this world here below. You can bellow for all you’re worth, but it’s still only from fear. Apart from that, one thing I’m convinced of is — we’re galloping! We’re still a long way from our objectives, they don’t get any nearer, we can’t even see them, we shall often ride astray and often have to change horses. But some day — the day after tomorrow, or in two thousand years — the horizon will begin to flow and will come rushing and roaring towards us!”

Is he afraid of that horizon? It is hard to imagine it will ever come.

But, re-reading — “It is not at all true that the scientist goes out after truth. It is out after him… And he doesn’t care a damn whether what comes of his discoveries is something whole, human, perfect — or indeed, what comes of them!”

The atom bomb was exploded a few years later. It does seem we may have been a little drunk.