Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  Scholarship had a noble original purpose, however. And within the context of that noble origin, it remains worthy. This noble purpose has two worthwhile implications, which also remain valid. But these implications have been twisted over time to prevent original thought. The original noble purpose of scholarship was to teach students that they did not have to take the word of their teacher for granted. Wow. Imagine trying that concept out in a public school or university today.

  Scholarship was intended to teach students to go out into the world, and find out for themselves whether what they had been taught was meaningful. Go read what others say, and see whether they agree with me or you or not. See whether the intuition you have matches what others have thought or discovered for themselves of God's creation. And then ask yourself whether you believe them or whether you think they are wrong. Not just gobble their ideas up as if the mystical "someone else said" has final merit. Scholarship was intended to avoid having to take on faith what anyone told you.

  Often, a student would find something out there in the world from someone else which made sense in the context of the original source, but didn't match what the student had discovered for himself. The student might wander off and think about the disconnect and find that his understanding of the subject was wrong, and thus learn more, and more deeply, than if he had just sat in a class. The knowledge would then be drilled into his subconscious mind, and he would understand. Which is better than knowledge by far, which can be misunderstood, or misremembered.

  The teacher was merely a guide on this path, and knew where the potholes were. But rather than steer the student clear of the potholes as a mother might, he allowed the student to hit them anyway because falling into these potholes was the best way to learn. And more importantly, learn how to learn, and what the feeling of learning felt like, so that it could be repeated even without the teacher in later life.

  Many times, the student would find that, although his original experiment or observation was in error, the error itself led to a new discovery. In 1934 Enrico Fermi was far from a student at this time in his life, but had not yet ossified beyond the understanding of how to think. While trying to reproduce a neutron experiment, he noticed that his lab in Italy had dramatically different results than other labs in other places had obtained. He believed that his colleagues in other places were competent, and yet his own work was sound, too.

  Fermi eventually realized, through a series of careful experiments, and original thought about the implications of the results he saw, that the lab tables themselves changed how neutrons behaved in the experiments. His tables were marble, and yet throughout the rest of the world similar lab tables were predominantly wood. The neutrons streaming through his tables weren't slowed by light elements, which are abundant in wood, but scarce in marble. Because his experiments didn't match the others, he discovered the moderating property of hydrogen and carbon, which led to the development of the nuclear reactor.

  Other times, the student might find that the original source was entirely wrong, and that information uncovered by the student through his own investigation was right. This gap, between the accepted norm and the new data which the student had found, is where progress takes root and grows. The classic example of this idea was that, long ago, some men believed that flies came from rotting meat. Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, decided to test this idea by sealing some meat in a jar, as well as covering a jar with gauze or leaving a jar open. He discovered that flies didn't come from meat, but, instead, flies came from maggots which came from flies. Had he, and others, not questioned the accepted norm, but instead merely repeated what others had said or written, we would still believe that flies came from rotting meat.

  Hardly anyone knows the name Sadi Carnot. Engineers know him, or more likely recognize his name, but only a few know his work well enough to have a conversation with you about it. But his work, done in the early 1800s, comes into play each time you turn on a light or ride around in your car or enjoy the cool air in your house in the summertime.

  Internet Research

  Research Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot. Wikipedia has a great article about him and his work. The striking thing about his 1824 book, "Reflections on the Motive

  Power of Fire", was that it was so insightful, and yet relied almost entirely on his thinking about how heat can create a pushing force. And how much push a given amount of heat might create. In his mind alone, he created the entire science of thermodynamics, and wrote down these ideas so compellingly correct that they stand today. Others have added to his work, but never challenged it.

  Sadi was the master of the thought experiment. With thought alone, he presented simple examples of steam engines. And showed, correctly, how heat engines might be best designed, and that the efficiency of a heat engine was limited by the temperatures employed to operate it. He also created the concept of a heat pump, such as the one which cools your home or office. He also showed that a nuclear reaction would be the ultimate in powering a steam engine to generate power. And yet, it would be more than a hundred years before this idea would even have words to express it. Read that year again. 1824. Such is the power of the mind alone.

  Most impressively, Sadi showed how, using a steam engine, that a perpetual motion engine of any kind was impossible. And, if such a thing could be invented, it could be used to dislodge the universe from its mountings. Heavy stuff. And yet so simple and easy to comprehend that it should be taught in every high school physics class, yet almost never is. Pity, as it would bring the lie to the quest for wind and solar power, and focus us instead on nuclear. And yet, perhaps that is the reason that his work is avoided today although it is the foundation upon which all modern energy use is laid. And yet, had Sadi been forced to exercise modern scholarship, and only repeat what he had learned from others, he would have never published those original ideas which benefit us all so much today.

  This is the scholarship which the critic intends when he says, "Don't think for yourself, only consider those things which others tell you." And only rely on the thoughts of others for where you find truth. The classical scholarship, on the other hand, set students out to discover for themselves, true or false, what they may about the body of knowledge of God's creation. This is why a Ph.D. is called a "Doctorate of Philosophy." And not, instead, a "Doctorate of Regurgitated Hash." At one time, a Ph.D. meant that the holder was an original thinker who could determine for himself whether new information he encountered was meaningful or not. This made the holder valuable as an idea worker, who was able to challenge the ideas of others. But, at the same time, this idea worker was able to accept challenge to his own ideas, changing his mind when reason prevailed.

  Over time, however, the academic orthodoxy, as do all collectives, grew weary of being challenged by upstarts. Gradually, monkeys began to percolate into the culture. As this happened, the old-hands, the true philosophers, accepted their students' ignorance as merely the normal steps on the path to enlightenment. Just as previous teachers had accepted the short-term ignorance of their students before them.

  But this crop was different. Not only did they not learn to think for themselves, they began to stifle the generations which followed. And so, rather than philosophical guides, the teachers evolved into the shamans of academia, choking off new discovery until the blatant truth stared them in the face. Only then would they accept the new theories, but then as their own, pretending that the original discoverer had been flawed in some meaningful way.

  The threat to the orthodoxy was original thought. Armed with authority out of proportion to their knowledge, the orthodoxy began a careful campaign to stamp out original thought wherever it might be found. Instead, ideas were only accepted to the extent that they sprang from those of its members who had been carefully screened and approved. To accomplish this choking off of original thought the orthodoxy had to subvert two time-honored implications of scholarship: publication and peer review.

  Publication was intended originall
y to allow original thinkers to share their ideas and to learn from the work of others. Eventually, as knowledge grew more rapidly each day, scientific journals of all kinds began to be overwhelmed with submissions. And so, to limit the flow, standards became adopted to ensure that the submissions which became published were only of the highest quality.

  To accomplish this quality assurance function, each author had to distinguish between what material he submitted was derived from others, and what portions of his work were original. If an author merely repackaged the work of others, it was rejected as of little merit. So, authors were required to reveal their sources, and to refuse to do so was, rightly, seen as an intellectual offense, almost criminal.

  Armed with papers filled with references, the publishers handed these papers to experts in the fields, intellectual peers of the author in the author's field, for review. This peer review process allowed the publisher to focus on the logistics of the publication process. Meanwhile, the peer experts checked the references, determined what references of prior work the author may have missed, and judged the work on its original content. At first, the reviewers' task was not to judge the merit of the work, that was the task of the readership. Instead, the reviewers were only to determine the originality.

  Publication and peer review promised an open, free-trade exchange of ideas. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, this refereed journaling launched the progress we see in the modern world today. If an idea was sound, it would be lauded by the readership and the author advanced in esteem. But if an idea could be proven to be wrong, the readership would counter with their own papers to show their results. The first author might then retract his work, or offer additional experimental evidence or theoretical discussion. Although in print, this discussion could continue for years or decades, much as friends might brainstorm in a room over lunch. New knowledge leaked from the seams of this process at every turn. And so, by the back and forth which is normal to the creative process, the truth of God's creation would gradually be teased from behind the curtain. The quest itself was the reward, and often, being hailed as the discoverer was sufficient to bring consultancy to the discoverer's doorstep.

  But then, as monkeys began to percolate through academia, original work began to be judged by the reviewers more and more on what the handful of reviewers perceived as its merit. Often this judgement was determined by how much the content threatened the work of the reviewer. Papers were stifled by the opinion of the few, rather than being open for all to see. And although reviewers, officially, were to be selected at random from the scientific community, cliques began to form as publishers sought the advice from the same pool of reviewers.

  With cliques come politics, and the suppression of the individual over the collective. A sort of "favorably review my work and I'll favorably review yours" economy developed. The orthodox mutually resented the intrusion of those who might upset their own work, and referred for publication instead the work of other orthodox who were more likely to support the reviewer's own findings. Papers which were not littered with references to the work of others were considered less worthy. Toss in a lot of references, particularly to the work of the pool of likely reviewers, and your paper sails through with less turbulence or critique. Except for, perhaps, suggestions to reference more of the work of this reviewer or that.

  Had Sadi Carnot tried to publish his work in that environment, we would have never heard of him. With too much original content, and too few references to his contemporaries, it could have hardly been worthy of publication. How many Sadi Carnots are being turned away today, their ideas stifled at the outset? True individualists with original thought were gradually and progressively shunned, and work considered too controversial was softly banned. Scientists began to work more and more, not in garages or attics above the lecture halls, but in well-funded government labs. And as their work habits changed, the orthodoxy naturally evolved to support the source of their funding. Research from academia, and their governmentfunded labs, became considered more "correct", while the same paper, submitted from outside the establishment, would be viewed in a harsher light, or rejected entirely.

  And then the size of the lab began to matter. Surely, small schools were incapable of producing merit, only the larger with their larger staffs and more expensive equipment and better funding could generate worthy ideas.

  Small businesses, which had at one time been the acorns from which large enterprises grew, had to be stifled from the start. Consider the example of the Small Business Innovation Research program, more commonly known as the SBIR. Long ago, the SBIR was started to help keep small businesses in the research game, a goal which could easily have been obtained at zero cost by simply dropping the regulations which kept them out. Instead, a new program was created to fund small businesses by issuing research grants for specific topics.

  Even so, topics considered too controversial were not available for grants. Further, such grants could only be issued for topics which could be immediately commercialized. Fermi's neutron research, for example, would have been rejected on both grounds. His research would have failed the first test as it could not have even been anticipated. SBIR solicitations lack requirements such as "develop, in five milestones, using marble tables procured from domestic sources, an entirely new neutron theory which could not possibly have been anticipated."

  Fermi's neutron research would have been rejected by the second restriction as well. Decades passed between his 1934 research and the first commercial nuclear power reactor in Calder Hall, in England, which didn't begin operation until 1956. No small business research proposal would have been accepted with a twenty-two-year commercialization window. On the other hand, universities and large contractors were under no such restrictions. For them, funding of basic research was of merit in and of itself. After all, these organizations provided many jobs. And so the orthodoxy further ossified, those researchers outside those protective wings being left to wither away.

  Over time, the program evolved further away from the individual. Before Al Gore, the term "small business" allowed SBIRs to be awarded to firms as large as 500, hardly small. But as Vice President, Al Gore insisted that the term "small business" would now include educational institutions, regardless of size. Educational institutions would now compete head-tohead for research dollars with entrepreneurs. As these dollars were to be doled out to those whom independent reviewers, selected from the orthodoxy, determined to be best capable of completing the research, guess who wins?

  Even without this windfall, large companies frequently spent a significant fraction of the available SBIR dollars. How? Merely by creating small companies to receive the grants, seeding them with their own staff to flesh out the resumes, and then subcontracting the mother company to do the bulk of the work. While I was an engineer at McDonnell Douglas, many of my contemporaries performed work funneled through small businesses created for this purpose. I myself worked on small business projects while in the employ of that aerospace giant. Crumbs tossed here and there to small sub-sub-contractors, these selected predominantly for their smallishness and loyalty to the sow, satisfied the requirements of these programs.

  As the ossification of the scholarly orthodox continues, great ideas, or even bad ones which will spark merely good ideas later are stifled. Want to destroy your career in physics? Dare to challenge their god Einstein and his theories regarding the speed of light. Consider the following question:

  Spaceship A leaves Earth traveling toward Jupiter at 0.8c (eighty-percent of the speed of light). Meanwhile, Spaceship B leaves Jupiter toward Earth, also at 0.8c. Are they not closing upon each other at 1.6c (sixty percent faster than the speed of light)? From the perspective of Spaceship A, is not Spaceship B screaming in at greater than the speed of light?

  Pose this question to the orthodox and enjoy the answer. After they get over the rage of being asked such foolishness, or simply try to drown you out as a fool, they might actually try to explain things. Wa
tch their eyes as they do this. You might think they are just playing a tape, rather than understanding. Now modify your question further:

  Once these spaceships pass each other, narrowly, are they not now departing from each other at 1.6c, greater than the speed of light?

  And now, after you have endured the torrent: Assume that Spaceship A launches a probe toward Spaceship B. This probe first decelerates to cancel the 0.8c of Spaceship A to float motionlessly with respect to Earth. And then, the probe accelerates to match the 0.8c of Spaceship B, has it not changed its velocity by greater than the speed of light?

  At some point, you will hear the word relativity, which claims that there is a mythical space-time continuum, which no one has proved, that is the universal fabric which regulates the speed of light. You will usually hear this idea cast around if you ask what happens if some pre-teen boys on either spaceship are fooling around with flashlights, before or after the craft pass in the night. Time to invoke classical physics, which they say that their god has overturned, destroyed in his petty, jealous rage:

  And what if the Earth, and the Sun, and our spaceships and all we know in the universe is sitting on the back of a giant turtle (classical physicists love turtles) with a grid painted on its back, said turtle zipping along at 0.8c in some unknown direction.

  Their eyes roll. "Now, the probe's speed is relative to what?," you demand, "the spaceships, the Earth or the turtle? And how would you know?" And you will get something about the turtle itself getting bigger. At 0.8c. Anything to avoid challenging the word of their god. To a physicist, asking these questions means the ultimate death, stoning by peer review. The orthodoxy has provided answers to these which must be accepted on faith, and recited faithfully if challenged. The experiment, and discovery of an earth-shattering principle, may come from an obscure corner.