| This Web Page contains content related to multiple
issues--to a larger extent it is about "tribes" that have agreed not to agree.
Perhaps, this is a start .. and an advantage. - Tom .. (eMail) "Opionion" materials have been provided by John Bartlit |
Metalogues
Definition: A metalogue is a conversation about some problematic subject. This conversation should be such that not only do the participants discuss the problem but the structure of the conversation as a whole is also relevant to the same subject. Only some of the conversations here presented achieve this double format. Notably, the history of evolutionary theory is inevitably a metalogue between man and nature, in which the creation and interaction of ideas must necessarily exemplify evolutionary process.
-- Steps To an Ecology of Mind Gregory, Bateson Ballantine Books, 1972
Metalogue: Why Do Things Get in a Muddle?
(Written in 1948)
(Steps To an Ecology of Mind Gregory, Bateson Ballantine Books, 1972 )
| Daughter: | Daddy, why do things get in a muddle? |
| Father: | What do you mean? Things? Muddle? |
| D: | Well, people spend a lot of time tidying things, but they never seem to spend time muddling them. Things just seem to get in a muddle by themselves. And then people have to tidy them up again. |
| F: | But do your things get in a muddle if you don't touch them? |
| D: | No--not if nobody touches them. But if you touch them --or if anybody touches them-they get in a muddle and it's a worse muddle if it isn't me. |
| F: | Yes-that's why I try to keep you from touching the things on my desk. Because my things get in a worse muddle if they are touched by somebody who isn't me. |
| D: | But do people always muddle other people's things? Why do they, Daddy? |
| F: | Now, wait a minute. It's not so simple. First of all, what do you mean by a muddle? |
| D: | I mean--so, I can't find things, and so it looks all muddled up. The way it is when nothing is straight-- |
| F: | Well, but are you sure you mean the same thing by muddle that anybody else would mean? |
| D: | But, Daddy, I'm sure I do-because I'm not a very tidy person and if I say things are in a muddle then I'm sure everybody else would agree with me. |
| F: | All right--but do you think you mean the same thing by "tidy" that other people would? If your Mummy makes your things tidy, do you know whereto find them? |
| D: | Hmmm...sometimes--because, you see, I know where she puts things when she tidies up-- |
| F: | Yes, I try to keep her away from tidying my desk too. I'm sure that she and I don't mean the same thing by "tidy." |
| D: | Daddy, do you and I mean the same thing by "tidy?" |
| F: | I doubt it, my dear--I doubt it. |
#1 From: Los Alamos Monitor Date: Wednesday, March 16, 1994
Opinion
Are science and art opposites?
By John Bartlit
State Chairman of New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water
As an environmentalist, scientist, and citizen, I'm forever intrigued why different people may see things so differently.
It sure makes for ideas. To pass time recently waiting in a Santa Fe dentist's office, a lab colleague struck up a conversation with an ear- ringed gentleman. The friendly chat led to the man confiding that science to him means "the opposite of ail."
Maybe so, if art were to mean only decoration. But I see as many ways that art and science are similar as different. Does it matter whether people see art and science as similar or opposite? Perhaps terribly.
Perhaps contradictory and false stereotypes of science and art have something to do with the distinct "foreignness" often felt between the stereotyped Los Alamosan--full of science, logic, and reason-- and the stereotyped nouveau Santa Fean-- full of art, intuition, and imagination. Maybe these mind sets limit science as much as they limit the public's feel for science.
Art is like science. Actress Helen Hayes is quoted as saying, "I cry out for order and find it only in art." At first blush, lab-style conventional wisdom would say that science, not art, is the repository of order, if order means system or pattern. Given a little thought, Ms. Hayes' view is seen to be equally true. Art, like science, strives to capture and condense human understanding of the pattern of things in a nutshell.
Science is like art. Often overlooked is that scientific advances, like artistic advances, come through intuition and imagination. The formal logic that is popularly ascribed to science is created after the inspiration. The inspiration to depict gravity came to physicist Isaac Newton watching an apple thud to the ground. "Kubla Khan" came to poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a dream.
The structure of the benzene ring came to chemist August Kekule in another dream, and produced the structure theory of organic chemistry, useful in creating plastics. Einstein came to new theories by way of "experiments of the imagination." Following the ideas, squiggly equations become a way to depict concepts concisely and to help verify and use them.
Art and science are but different media for recording ideas. A piece of music, a painting, a sculpture, a book, a play, or an equation are but concise representations or summations. However intuitively they're created, they are intellectual orderings of "flashes of genius," of insight and perspective. The best of each of these encapsulate the accumulation of thought of a period of time and of some part of human development over that time.
A work of art or an equation endures by maintaining relevance over time. Like art, science comes first in the imagination, then is recorded (depicted) in some form. The final test of either is its continued validity for successive ages. As records, scientific principles and equations serve as a sheet of music. The notation is not the creation. The symbols themselves--letters and numbers in funny places or staves, key and time signatures, bars, notes, and rests - make little sense to the airport crowd. Only when translated by scientists and musicians, respectively, do the symbols begin to touch lives.
Indeed, scientists would do well to adopt more of the musician's will to communicate the essence of their art to the public. Preserving the myth of the "scientific mind" may feed a few fancies, but it dulls the insights of scientist and generalist alike.
This column is a thing like everything else. My view can be seen to be true, true indeed. Others of us, or each of us at other times, will see it quite differently and conclude Bartlit really crashed and burned with this one.
Maybe people see things so differently because we see different aspects. One aspect is how ideas in art and science arise, namely, through imagination. A different aspect is how ideas endure. The test of art is human response over ages. The test of science is the response of the physical world over ages.
The story of differences is filled with similarities.
John Bartlit
#2 From: The Los Alamos Monitor Sunday, November 5, 1995
Opinion
Is evidence lost on society?
By John Bartlit
State Chairman of New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water
I've never been much for bumper-sticker slogans because ills and cures are not five-word simple. Rule 1: Never say never. Last month I found myself locked in Santa Fe traffic behind the Obi-wan Kenobi of bumper stickers.
The Obi-wan sticker said: DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK. A small twinkle. Then, meanings came clear like stars at nightfall. Then a sense of constellations. Which led me to this column I'd been simmering.
Our expanding society seems to be losing a sense of evidence, of verification. What is evidence? How to judge the quality of evidence? How is evidence verified? How much evidence and verification are enough? When does a thought qualify for belief?
Topics abound to use as examples--the ties between the environment and the economy, the O.J. trial, religious prejudice, alternative medicine, nuclear safety, and on and on. Typically all these examples are too emotion--packed to discuss in public without losing friends. An example that's relatively discussible is federal certification of new drugs. To keep friends, I confine my topic to this.
One job of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is to certify new drugs to be sure they are safe and effective--a goal that few quarrel with. But there agreement ends. Assurance of safety and effectiveness requires evidence. Evidence takes money and time to acquire, and more money and time to verify. The greater the assurance wanted, the more money and time are needed. How much assurance is enough is a value judgment.
Time costs the drug companies markets. Time also risks the public safety, either way. If a drug is brought to market too quickly, it may be unsafe. If it's tested more years for safety, the public is unsafe more years from ills the drug may cure.
So people's feelings start to fill in for evidence. It's called "anecdotal" evidence. "I hear there's a drug to cure that is being kept off the market so doctors can make more money." "I hear that-- cured Lucy of--." The word goes out. The FDA is foolish, Congress is foolish, "those" people are foolish, drug companies are greedy, doctors are crooks, columnists are in cahoots with--,....
None of these feelings (thoughts) can be proved categorically right or wrong by me or anyone else. Besides, that is not the useful point. The point is: What is statistically meaningful? That is, what is sufficiently representative of affairs that it helps explain what is generally going on, and thus
helps in sizing up expected outcomes. Statistics ... probability ... estimating outcomes vs. one-of- or four-of-a- kind happenings. What is evidence? What is verification? What is most probably true?
My point is not that feelings and values have no part in decisions. They certainly must have a part, and do. Yet feelings and values are not the all in all. Data and statistics are real, too. They too figure into the likelihood of truth, as well as into the limits on stating dead certain. outcomes, on anyone's side. The secret is to balance feelings, values, and relative likelihood's. The last seems now in danger of slipping out of sight altogether.
As my wife is learning in her master's courses in Communications & Journalism at UNM, statistics and the probability of accurate predicting is a large, complex discipline. The concepts relate to most decisions made by society and how well we get along. Yet the notion of statistics remains alien to most citizens. More and more I believe it vital to start teaching "pitch-penny" statistics and probability in every grade school, then going on in high school civics to compute norms and outliers in anthills and track hantavirus; trends.
In the meantime, how do we all. make decisions that work the best we can? I believe more use of Obi-wan's keen advice would take us far--DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK.
Even more, I believe it would help a lot if most of us just ran this thought past our minds regularly. But then, I may be wrong.
John Bartlit
#3 From: Los Alamos Monitor date: Sunday, December 22, 1996
Opinion
Democracy is still alive and well
By John Bartlit
State Chairman of New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water
Like an Impressionist painting, the democratic process is best seen from a little distance. Thus, this Sunday morning is a choice spot from which to see the 1996 electoral campaigns.
My view of elections tilts-askew from most views around and about. I stand betwixt the blind cynicism of many voters and the tub-thumping of party bands, and off some way from either. To me, political campaigns are a powerful consequence of elections and a mighty wheel-horse of democracy.
How's that? Campaigns, a "consequence" of elections? A wheelhorse? A little story may explain. Recently I discussed my premise with a skeptic in Santa Fe. She chanced to say, "I'm so glad the Democrats took up the family values issue this year, rather than letting the religious right have it all, as in 1994." I made my point, "See. As I say, the system works: Common places appear, ideas meet there to form a new mix that moves our national thinking. Call it 'campaign rhetoric,' a 'ripe idea,' or a 'consensus,' it's still democracy working."
She stood back a little and said. "I never looked at it like that before."
As with most goings-on, electioneering can be seen in many lights. One can choose, as many do, to see campaigns as a meaningless exercise in blarney, cajolery, and poll-leaning posturing. One can choose, as many do, to see campaigns a a contest in flipping platitudes at the most gullible among us. One can choose to say that all candidates but maneuver cutely to catch the votes. The cynic thinks campaigns are gimmicks and voters have no real choice among candidates.
On the other hand, one can choose to see crucial differences in party positions One can choose to see monstrous chasms between "liberal," '.'conservative, " or "populist" leanings in candidates. One can choose to say they but follow those predisposed whims. The loyalist thinks the other camp wrecks the nation.
Although all these views hold some truth, all are also unduly dark: They miss much that happens. If folks overlook the outcomes, democracy itself is trivialized, and sapped of much wisdom, strength, and vitality in its processes.
What is often overlooked is the current --that is, the trend of the medium, the course of change, ... the developing scene. What matters is what happens, not the postures used to get there.
Take the environment for instance. Last fall, candidates of every stripe promised their intent to gain the most practical protections for air, water, land, and wildlife. To be sure, candidates have widely differing definitions of what the words mean, but the words are neither trite nor meaningless. And any meaning is vastly different from saying nothing at all.
With all the fussing and scoffing about endangered species, it means much that no office-seeker promises us the practical phaseout of wildlife. Think a moment. It means that we--the great majority of 262 million odd travelers--reach a consensus on the general value of wildlife. The swatch of consensus is profound, and is more so because it endures through constant tests in the marketplace of ideas. Certainly all ideas must, and will, continue to be fine-tuned, but see how profound is the agreement compared with the tuning.
The work of-candidates to claim the same turf means a consensus of diverse travelers is thereabouts. Finding spots of consensus is a feat to be cherished, not derided. Such places include stronger education, balanced budgets, smaller government, welfare reform, attention to immigration, health care, and a valued environment. And don't forget that notion of family values.
After the campaigns and the elections pass--and because of them. the range of debate and its center of gravity are moved yea much. What is plausible has a different sense than it had before. So, slowly, imperfectly, our country moves in the directions pushed by consensus.
To see the effect depends on perspective. Step back from the mess of blobs, swirls, and swipes laid on in electioneering. Behold the wonder of democracy. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.
John Bartlit
#4 From: The Los Alamos Monitor Date: Sunday, February 1, 1998
Opinion
What's in a Word?
A difference of opinion, often
By John Bartlit
State Chairman of New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water
At the risk of dating myself, my theme today starts from two lines out of old Broadway shows. The first one rattles from that ever fair lady, Miss Eliza Doolittle, as she flails the air with "Words! Words! Words!" In the "Flower Drum Song," Oscar Hammerstein sums up: "How will we ever communicate without communication?" My topic is how simple words often mean different things to different people.
These same mental reflexes raise distrust like quills on a porcupine in any issue of debate--where the norm is to disagree and the temper is to misunderstand. Examples rise aplenty in the public discussion of technical processes and pollution.
Technologists are proud to say they "characterize" a material or situation. In their lingo, "characterize" means to analyze all qualities and aspects of something with great thoroughness. Yet the word sounds very different to most ears in public, where bigots forever "characterize" Texans by the likes of big hats and. big mouths. The two meanings are not only different, they are the exact opposite.
How about "decay"? --What leaps to your mind? If you work at the lab, you may think of radioactivity and how it naturally decreases with time, so decay means areas get safer. On the other hand, if you are not a lab wonk and have kids in school, "decay" sounds more like rotten spots in teeth that get nothing but worse. One word, two pictures --each the full-blooded opposite of the other.
Companies, such as Intel, proudly tell the public about the "secondary containment" they use to protect around hazardous materials. It means to contain doubly--to use a pipe-in-a-pipe. Yet, among master shopkeepers and schoolteachers, what image pops to mind? Hmmm. "Secondary" ... "secondary." Funny word, that: maybe something like second-string, second-rate, or after- thought? You know, amounting to less than the best. Sounds like a pretty lax kind of protection.
At public meetings, lab people are often asked about work on "new weapons"; Is the lab still doing any? Unless specified the word "new" can equally well bring to mind a thing that is newly relocated, newly rebuilt, newly built, newly redesigned, newly designed, or newly conceived--all quite different things, but all of them "new" in some sense. Yet, I have heard public arguments on the place of "new weapons" go back and forth endlessly, with nobody telling, nor asking anyone, their meaning of that simple, but crucial, word "new."
Here's a jim-dandy one to look at: "model" - a showpiece of its kind, like a fetching poser to sell new styles; or a nifty little railroad, as spotless as the mini-town on its toy tour. Technologists proudly tell the public how they "model" equipment failures, to see the worst harm that could happen if everything went wrong at once. The public sees models that are always arranged to look better than real life; the techie's ,'model" seeks the ugliest. The two pictures conflict from the outset. Which concept might stick more firmly in the minds of most people?
To prevent your relegating this column to the file marked Tales from "The Twilight Zone," I offer a true-life incident that happened on the Hill: An outside newspaper reporter interviewed a lab leader about the work in his division. The leader, call him Don for short, discussed their use of "hot cells" those special facilities designed to let workers handle radioactive materials safely. As the interview grew to 10 minutes, then 20, it was plain that confusion was climbing from casual to rampant. The metallurgist finally asked the reporter, "what do you think a hot cell is?"
The reporter replied, "I really don't know, but I guess it, comes from irradiating the tissue cells inside a worker's body." Simple words do not always mean to others what they mean so clearly to us.
QED --quod erat demonstrandum. In other words, I return to the distant glow of my college days to draw on a dear old term used in math books for the wrap-up: Thus, the proof "which was to be demonstrated."
And what for the remedy? Ay, there's the puzzle. All one can say is the answers seem to be in the realm of awareness, patience, and effort. Not more dictionaries and their reassurance.
John Bartlit
"Crossed-Wire Words"
January 1996
by John Bartlit
| / | technical | \ | ||
| Words about | experiences | |||
| \ | everyday | / |
Introduction
The newer, more enlightened standard for industry and government alike is greater dialogue with neighbors and stakeholders. This valuable dialogue immediately runs into problems of language. How can different activities, ideas and words be made understandable to diverse listeners?
The Laboratory's new, broader, and deeper interactions with the public, with pueblo and local governments, and with the news media encounter new pitfalls of communication. This pamphlet aims to help us see and work past the pitfalls.
The pamphlet lists common words and phrases that mean one thing in the technical language of the Laboratory and mean something rather different in everyday English, The words come from careful listening "with two ears" at town meetings held to discuss Laboratory activities with the public.
A few words about the words:
- None of the phrases are obviously technical ones, like "nanocurie" or "alpha contamination," Such words are a lesser problem. Clearly technical words may not be understood, but they don't confuse the public into misunderstanding, "Crossed-wire words" mislead. And in very hurtful ways.
- The words that may mislead are common, numerous, and subtle. Eliminating them from speech is impractical. Defining them all is impractical. If done in an hour's talk, no listener can possibly keep in mind so many new connotations that are opposite to everyday meanings. The only remedies are awareness, patience, and trying twice again.
- Every phrase won't confuse every person. But every word will confuse some people and some of the people will be confused by most of them.
- The problem is compounded for the concerned critic, that is, one who comes to listen for the worst of the Laboratory-one with whom a clear, two-way understanding is essential.
Turn your science ear to "Crossed-Wire Words," then your street ear. Does the same message come through?
"CROSSED-WIRE WORDS"
COULD MISTAKEN IMPRESSIONS OF OUR WORDS REINFORCE PUBLIC FEARS OF THE LABORATORY?
| / | Laboratory technical meaning | |
| word or phrase | ||
| \ | everyday meaning that could come to mind to an unfriendly or skeptical public listener, or one unfamiliar with the topic |
| / | something done in a nuclear accelerator facility | |
| accelerator-based | ||
| \ | something we make go faster and faster | |
| / | hole in ground where waste is currently buried | |
| active pit | ||
| \ | hole in ground that boils with radioactivity or toxic chemicals, like an active volcano | |
| / | levels of radiation that naturally exist | |
| background | ||
| \ | things that are unimportant, disregarded, or faraway "in the background" | |
| / | convert elements by nuclear reactions | |
| burn | ||
| \ | consume in a fire | |
| / | analyze thoroughly to determine many chemical components and physical properties | |
| characterize | ||
| \ | pick out one feature to represent the whole picture, like a stereotype |
| / | as with radiation and radioactive materials: to undergo change, decrease, become safer | |
| decay | ||
| \ | as with teeth and moral values: to rot, become infected, become more dangerous | |
| / | operate a new process to show that it works | |
| demonstrate | ||
| \ | promote views by vigorous efforts and slogans | |
| / | work on new weapons to understand them exactly enough that designers could start to make blueprints for them | |
| design of weapons | ||
| \ | thinking about weapons to find ideas for new ones of possible interest to the U.S. or anyone else in any situation | |
| / | testing that ruins the item tested | |
| destructive testing | ||
| \ | testing that destroys land features or test facilities | |
| / | something, like uranium or a falling brick, that can release heat or is in motion | |
| energetic | ||
| \ | something, like a person, that habitually bustles around here, there, and everywhere | |
| / | consider a case as a standard for comparison | |
| establish a base line | ||
| \ | pour concrete to build a foundation, such as for a fence or wall | |
| / | highly trained people in specialized fields | |
| first class (people) | ||
| \ | specially privileged people | |
| / | an endeavor, like chess or strategic planning, whose purpose is to reach specific goals through a series of coordinated, inventive moves made according to outside conditions | |
| game (of Laboratory work) | ||
| \ | an endeavor, like playing marbles, whose purpose is having fun |
/ something, like a safety system, that is engineered to work by itself when people, power, and controls all fail passive \ something, like a person, that is lackadaisical and unresponsive by nature / fabrication of a finished weapon to be placed in stockpile production (of weapons) \ fabrication of a component for a weapon under development / an emitter of radiation radiation source \ a factory to produce radioactive materials / results obtained minute by minute (analyze in) real time \ requires much time to get results (as in, requires "real money") / put in standard form according to laws or equations shrapnel \ make results smaller than they really are / a device (like a bomb) that never "goes off"(does damage) in any accidental situation significant \ something that never can hurt anyone / debris, down to the smallest particle of dirt, spread by an explosion safe (weapon) \ fragments (from an explosion) big enough to maim or kill / meeting mathematical tests of statistics that link an effect (such as a person's cancer) to a possible cause reduce (data) \ important in people's lives and emotions
| / | experimental technology with a fair chance that it can't be made to work well soon,. for example, a solar-powered passenger bus | |
| high-risk alternative | ||
| \ | technology choice that's likely to hurt people | |
| / | to calculate, using equations that correspond as close as possible to the physical situation and the real or worse conditions | |
| model | ||
| \ | to display or serve as an example of something (like fancy clothes or a new house) in a way designed to impress people to boost sales | |
| / | studying macroscopic properties of materials by passing controlled beams of nuclear particles through them in a basketball-sized containment structure | |
| neutron scattering | ||
| \ | scattering radioactive pieces to the four winds like tumbleweed seeds in a dust storm | |
| / | technology of advanced design that includes all the latest improvements | |
| next generation | ||
| \ | unborn, uncertain, unproved; or else old | |
| / | facility involving work with radioactive elements of less than a minimal, regulation- specified amount | |
| nonnuclear facility | ||
| \ | facility that involves no radioactivity | |
| / | stuff like unusable carbon-based chemicals and combustibles to be treated, stored, or buried | |
| organic wastes | ||
| \ | stuff like biological or medical refuse, maybe even pieces of human organs (see "waste disposal and "waste stream") |
| / | technology useful to the general public that results from government R&D in defense or space technology | |
| spinoff | ||
| \ | technology that runs nicely, then suddenly starts doing something dangerous we didn't expect, don't like, and can't control, like a pickup truck on a muddy road | |
| / | chemically not reactive, or not radioactive | |
| stable | ||
| \ | not likely to tip over and spill by accident | |
| / | cleaning using fluids at special temperatures and pressures | |
| supercritical cleaning | ||
| \ | nuclear cleaner that might explode or that cleans by exploding, -or emergency cleaning needed to prevent great public harm | |
| / | modify to meet new ES&H standards, replace worn out facilities, or add capabilities | |
| upgrade | ||
| \ | add new weapons capabilities | |
| / | to blow radiation to where it's caught for proper disposal | |
| ventilation (of areas where radioactive materials are used) |
||
| \ | to blow radiation out to the public | |
| / | solidify, package, and bury in a controlled and monitored area | |
| waste disposal | ||
| \ | send down the sink or to the garbage can | |
| / | waste generated, to be stored, treated, or buried | |
| waste stream | ||
| \ | small river into which garbage, chemicals, and radioactive waste are dumped |
The End