Soul Bound

1          Soul Bound

1.2        Taking Control

1.2.5      An Idiosyncratic Interlude

1.2.5.4    Sharpe Lecture: revolution (part one)

“Viva la revolución !”

As they entered the UCL lecture theatre, a stirring song was playing and, projected onto the back wall of the stage, was a backdrop of raised guns, waving flags and clenched fists done in bold swathes of red, black and yellow. In the centre, above the motto, was a recoloured photo of a square-jawed priest with determined eyes that she didn’t recognise.

The music reduced in volume but kept playing as the last student sat down, and Dr. Sharpe started talking.

Sharpe: “Does anyone recognise this man? Raise your hand if you do.”

No hands went up.

Sharpe: “He was a Canadian who graduated college in 1905, the Annus mirabilis during which Einstein overturned the world of physics by publishing papers on the photoelectric effect, on the random motion of suspended particles, on the equivalence of mass and energy, and on special relativity.”

Still no hands went up.

Sharpe: “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. His name was Dr. Moses Coady, and today we’re going to use him as an example of why it can take multiple false starts before a revolutionary new idea or practice spreads.”

The music stopped abruptly, with the sound of a needle dragged across an old-fashioned vinyl record, and the projected backdrop image split in two and fell away.

Sharpe: “There are many types of revolution: social, religious, political, economic, technological, scientific or even purely conceptual. And it turns out they are often linked, with a revolution of one sort triggering others. Some have been more studied than others, so before we get onto our friend, Dr. Coady, we’re going to start with the most irresistible objective sort of revolution: scientific.”

Sharpe: “What shape is the planet Earth?”

He waited a moment, hand cupped by his ear, and someone obligingly shouted out the answer.

Sharpe: “A sphere? Good answer. And incorrect. The Earth is not a sphere. Any other guesses?”

Another guess was shouted out.

Sharpe: “An oblate spheroid? Excellent approximation, but no. As flat as a pancake? Also no, definitely not. I’ll tell you an answer: a geoid.”

He brought up a slide, showing a series of increasingly accurate approximations.

Sharpe: “My answer isn’t correct either. It doesn’t take into account tides and mountains. But even if none of us has an answer that is 100% correct, that doesn’t mean they’re all equally inaccurate. We can look at a particular measurement, and see how well these models predict it, such as the total mass predicted by the shape, compared to the actual mass of the Earth.”

He clicked the slide control, adding pre-calculated numbers by the different globes of the Earth, and below them a quote:

“When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.” --Isaac Asimov

Sharpe: “In short, the shape of the Earth is an objective fact. Something measurable that you can put numbers on; numbers that don’t depend upon the identity of the person doing the measuring. The same applies to most of science: the motion of planets around the sun, how much a particular mass will stretch a spring when on the surface of different planets, the position of the hands of clocks sitting on the surfaces of different planets. You may not be able to model these things perfectly, but given sufficient opportunity to make measurements, two scientists ought to be able to agree upon which of two models is the more accurate approximation.”

Sharpe: “So you might think that new models would spread easily through the scientists of the world. All it should take is one scientist to propose the model, a few more to publish independent confirmation that the new model improves upon the accuracy of the previous best candidate, and then all the other scientists would switch to using the new model as soon as they read and digest the evidence.”

Sharpe: “And usually you’d be right. Usually.”

Sharpe: “But it turns out that sometimes the new model is so different, so revolutionary, that even the meaning of the words used to describe it change. For example, the Copernican Revolution, changing the model of planetary motion from geocentric to heliocentric, took so long to win acceptance that most of those initially opposing the new model died of old age before admitting the new model was better.”

Sharpe: “Scientists are human too, and the big sticking point over heliocentrism wasn’t unfamiliar words or lack of data; it was the person’s whole worldview. Accepting that the Earth orbited the Sun, rather than the other way around, meant accepting that the human species wasn’t the center of the universe, and to them that was a given. Not even open to debate. When two people’s views of how the world works (and what things mean) are so far apart that no meaningful communication can pass directly between them, there’s a special word to describe that: incommensurable.”

Sharpe: “For example, imagine a discussion between Kirk, Spock and McCoy over the shape of a newly discovered planet. Kirk says it is a sphere, but when Spock declares that an oblate spheroid is a better model because that more accurately predicts the mass Kirk accepts that - their worldviews are commensurable. But McCoy declares that the planet is egg-shaped, and he doesn’t accept mass prediction as being valuable; he values some other criteria, such as how likely it is to hatch into a bird. His worldview, his paradigm, is incommensurable with that of Spock because they can’t even agree upon a common standard of measuring the merits of a model. Their argument could go on for hours…”

He brought up a slide, showing a planet cracking open and a moon-sized space phoenix flying out of it.”

Sharpe: “... or until Spock gets eaten by a giant chicken.”

He waited until the laughter died down. If there was one thing you could rely upon Dr. Sharpe’s lectures for, it was being memorable. He used whatever tactics it took, whether shock or humour, to make thoughts and images stick in the minds of his students.

He’d gone on to talk for a few minutes about the preconditions of understanding and how someone with a widely different worldview could be brought to understanding by a series of small steps that emulated the organic accumulation of learning, which each piece being seated in relation to things the listener already knew and accepted, before being further built upon.

The task of designing the steps was complicated when the listener had things to unlearn, and was using compatibility with those same things as a touchstone to judge the reliability of new data. Any misstep, any attempt to jump too far ahead in a single go and thus straying outside their comfort zone, was liable to set alarm bells ringing in the listener’s head and reinforce their defences.

Wellington, she remembered, had even made a tower-defence computer game out of it, named “Only Say Things That Can Be Heard”, or O.S.T.T.C.B.H. for short. The hardest scenario was when the listener had several things to unlearn that all had to be toppled simultaneously, and the listener was getting constant reinforcement of them from a second outside source, the Shadow Cabal.

Alderney had designed a cute personification of the game, Osty-chan, and Nadine had contributed some vocals and background music. The project had been great fun, even though it hadn’t taken off, and they’d given Dr. Sharpe a boxed copy as a Christmas present.