The Saunterer

Alvin Martin Weinberg on why science should not oversell itself

    If big science promises benefits that it can’t deliver, notes Alvin Weinberg, it risks disillusioning society, which threatens its future funding:

It is quite conceivable that our society will tire of devoting its wealth to science, especially if the implied promises held out when big projects are launched do not materialise. . . . It is as much out of concern for their own survival that scientists must acquire the habit of scrutinizing what they do from a broader point of view than has been their custom. (Quoted from page 83 of Reflections on Big Science, by Alvin Martin Weinberg. MIT Press. 1967.)

    For a brief biography of Alvin M. Weinberg, click here.

Selfridges’ principles of excellence in retailing

    Selfridges, the United Kingdom department store, which opened in 1909, is going strong today. It stuck to its principles, which it advertised in the Times on 24 February 1909:

What the public have yet to realize is that business is a science, or at its greatest an art. . . . Sheer commercialism, the desire to make a profit and to accumulate money, may determine the organization of a business, but business to-day has passed beyond that mere money-grubbing stage. (Quoted from ch. 4 of Consuming Traditions: Modernity, Modernism, and the Commodified Authentic, by Elizabeth Outka. Oxford University Press. 2009.)

    For a history of Selfridges, click here. To see it in its present condition, click here. To learn about Elizabeth Outka, click here.

George Calderon on how good intentions can produce evil

    The Saunterer, a longtime subscriber to The Times Literary Supplement, read in a recent issue an extract of a book review of G. K. Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World? George Calderon wrote the review a hundred years ago, and in it he systematically discredits Chesterton’s ideas. Still, one of these ideas persists today: that teams of experts can solve big public problems (the money crisis, the problem of Afghanistan, the poor tests results in the schools, etc.). Not only are solutions by teams of expert do-gooders impossible, their attempts harm society. Here is Calderon writing of Chesterton:

He . . . does not realize that the evils of society are the result of conglomerate good intentions, not of individual ill-will. They arise from the incapacity of little private brains to settle big public problems.

    To read the review in full, click here.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on conquering personal inertia

    As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin insisted:

The greatest sacrifice we can make, the greatest victory we can win over ourselves, is to surmount inertia, the tendency to follow the line of least resistance. (Quoted from page 173 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg.)

    For a brief biography of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, click here.

Proof that the arts have utilitarian power

    My Saunterings on Kabuki (Japanese theater) show that the Catholic Church isn’t alone in using the arts - paintings, sculptures, and Passion plays - to propagandize. Read the following World War II directive from the Japanese Bureau of Information’s Executive Office to Kabuki theater workers, urging them to get with the propaganda effort:

Today, the foremost objective for theater arts must be to encourage men to sweat diligently to fulfil industrial production that will increase military strength. In addition, dramatic content must be suitably artistic and enjoyable. However, in current theater we see that war content is treated superficially and awkwardly. Because theater is for an audience of idlers, the required connections to the war situation are bogus and underhanded. Performances for a leisure class and plays that merely drag in references to the war will not do. (Quoted from page 257 of Kabuki’s Forgotten War: 1931 - 1945, by James R. Bradon. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 2009.)

     For information on Kabuki, click here.

Simone Weil on beauty in art

    The Saunterer is only a semi-devout reader of Simone Weil, but her writings occasionally reward with a thoughtful passage like this one:

In everything which gives us the pure authentic feeling of beauty there is really the presence of God. There is, as it were, an incarnation of God in the world, and it is indicated by beauty. The beautiful is the experimental proof that the incarnation is possible. Hence all art of the highest order is religious in essence. (That is what people have forgotten today.) A Gregorian melody is as powerful a witness as the death of a martyr. (Page 52 of The Simone Weil Reader, George A. Panichas, ed. New York: David McKay Co. 1977.)

    For a brief biography of Simone Weil, click here.

Eugene Delacroix on what art is

    Art is not the material thing. It is what the material thing does to us. Eugene Delacroix:

I have told myself a hundred times that painting, that is to say the material thing called painting, was no more than the pretext, than the bridge between the mind of the painter and that of the spectator. Cold exactitude is not art: ingenious artifice, when it pleases or when it expresses, is art itself. (Quoted from page 293 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg.)

    For a brief biography of Eugene Delacroix, click here. For some images of his paintings, click here.

Victor F. Weisskopf on encouraging the many modes of thinking and feeling

    Victor Weisskopf gets full marks for explaining:

Human experience encompasses much more than any one given system of thought is able to express within its own framework of concepts. We must be receptive to the varied and apparently contradictory ways of the mind when we are faced with the realities of nature, our imagination, and human relations. There are many modes of thinking and feeling, and each of them contains a part of what we may consider the truth. Science and technology comprise some of the most powerful tools for deeper insight and for solving the problems we face. But science and technology provide only one path toward reality; others are equally needed for us to comprehend the full significance of our existence. Indeed, those other avenues are necessary for the prevention of thoughtless and inhuman abuses of the results of science. The survival of our civilization is severely threatened by nationalism, religious fundamentalism, and other intolerant, one-sided views. We will need to use many different approaches in order to overcome the grave problems that we face today. Only then do we stand a chance of achieving a better world. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg, p. 332.)

    For a brief biography of Victor Weisskopf, click here.

Petronius Arbiter on “solving” problems by reorganizing

    Petronius Arbiter seems to be the first to write about this folly of meeting any new situation by reorganizing:

We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into a team, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be of creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. (Quoted from page 12 of Fishbowl Management: A Participative Approach to Systematic Management, by Howard Sargent. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 1978.)

    For a brief biography of Petronius Arbiter, click here.

Lukas Foss on the need to make love to the past

    Conductor Lukas Foss explained the need this way:

I conduct because I love to make love to the past. I think man has this need, and the need to discover the future as well. The more my own composition is busy with exploration and experimentation, the greater is my need to keep my tie with the past which made me a musician in the first place; my tie with Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and Wagner and Verdi and Handel and Schubert. (Quoted from Lukas Foss’s obituary, The New York Times, February 2, 2009.)

    For a brief biography of Lukas Foss, click here.