July 1, 2008

Dear Colleague:  

    Mozart, only a few hours before his death, asked that the canary in his bedroom, which was chirping merrily, be removed so that he could concentrate on the drum beats in the Requiem Mass. Now, that to me is a charming example of civilization pushing aside nature. Some people may not be amused. They may even prefer the canary over Mozart. I am not, however, one of them. I am hopelessly addicted to culture; nay, not even to culture but to civilization, which I define as culture, or artifice, carried to its sublime extremity. It is the unnaturalness—the transcendence of high art—that appeals to me.

    In science and technology, again what impress me are not the techniques of survival, which we share with other animals, but rather thrusts into neverland and the results they bring back that have little or no practical value. Pure mathematics is full of such thrusts. What is the use of pi carried to more than a billion decimals, which, if written down in the usual way, will stretch from New York to southern California? Pi so spelt out is not only useless in everyday life but useless—so I gather—even in the high, abstract realms of physics.When it comes to technology that is put to some use, I am amazed at the degree of precision that is deemed necessary in our civilization. In 1993, the National Institute of Standard and Technology installed a new clock. What's wrong with the old one? Well, it hasn't been working well: it is off by 10 seconds in 3 million years. The new one isn't perfect either: it is expected to be off by 1 second in the year 3,001,993. Shame on us, I say. How can we bear to live so sloppily? From the viewpoint of biological evolution, I am waiting to see biologists argue, somewhat desperately, that a knack for number theory gives human bipeds a survival advantage.

    What about a knack for exploration? That is much more easily explained by Darwin's theory: moving out of one's niche in search of possibly better niches clearly has survival value. But in humans it has been carried to excess. What motivates the excess? One answer is knowledge, or science. The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Orchard, is an account of his journey, with two companions, from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier, Antarctica, June 22 to July 28, 1911. In the bitter cold and darkness of an Antarctica winter, the explorers suffered excruciatingly and risked death every step of the way. Why did they do it? The reason they gave was to find a couple of Emperor penguin eggs and take them home for scientific study. "You call that reason?" our cousin the chimpanzee might well ask. Darwinian theory is geared to account for the existence of reasonable creatures like the amoeba, the chimpanzee, and the penguin. Yes, the penguins too. The explorers observed them pushing their weakest member off the ice floe to test the presence of the sea-leopard. That act, though not pretty, contributed to the survival of the fittest. The explorers who witnessed the act were deeply offended. Under the severest physical stress and constant life-threatening conditions, their behavior was—without fail—selfless. Not only that. If Apsely Cherry-Orchard is to be believed, he and his companions never used God's name in vain; they never swore. It would have been natural for them to swear and curse, if only to relieve the irritations, frustrations, and trials they met with every day in that unforgiving environment. But no. They preferred to be unnatural—that is to say, civilized.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu