The Case for Clear and Present Understandings

Challenging.

When I was given Understanding the Present by Bryan Appleyard over Christmas, I was warned by said donor that I would probably hate this book. Quite an intriguing selling point on a non fiction book analysing the role of science in society, but I decided I needed something to get my brain ticking over the holidays, and so bit into it. And found it… challenging.

Okay, the guy writes awfully, and so even if the book itself wasn’t “challenging”, the literary style was almost enough to put me off. Almost. I certainly put it down a few times. But, again, I wanted to see where the guy was leading, and so I stuck with it.

I don’t want to ruin the book for you, so let me paraphrase the general theme, but instead of science and mathematics (as an exercise for myself), use cooking and agriculture as the topics in question.

Basically, the argument runs that, prior to agriculture and cooking, mankind lived fairly harmoniously, happy with where he was and in touch with nature, the big questions in life answered by beliefs in the spirits and food provided by nature in a very natural way. “Hello Mr Shrub! You provide me berries, magically, when you like! Hello Ms Mammoth! You come through here every so often, and your flesh is tasty, even if you don’t surrender it willingly. Nonetheless, I revere and worship you and the sky gods who occasionally help me stumble across you”.

But then, some people devised a way of harvesting and preparing food in a very productive way, discovering ways to combine and refine processes so that yields were high and food was more palatable. This had fairly profound effects: people could stay in one place longer; people built more permanent dwellings; people were more fecund with more food and thus produced more hands to assist with preparing more food; the elite experimented with food and discovered unnatural ways of preserving foods using chemicals like salt; and then created breads and pastes and all sorts of things that were certainly yummy and nutritious. But there were bad sides: direct issues like increased obesity, tooth decay, poison (if the mix was wrong); and then indirect issues like population explosions and overcrowding and sanitation issues, and of course (leading on from that and from the desire by others for the increased resources) war.

So, pretty soon, everyone decided that cooking and agriculture were bad things and that it had all pretty much been a mistake. Because cooking and agriculture did not provide a moral framework in which they could be developed. How dare eating copious amounts of chocolate be bad for you! And you could feed armies on the food you were able to grow – had these techniques no shame?

And… as facetious as I am being, you get the gist. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that with science and mathematics: there are “paradoxes” which seem to undermine the disciplines; understanding and changing one part of a system can impact on other parts of the system, sometimes with catastrophic and far-reaching effects; and the biggie from Appleyard’s point of view – it did away with “meaning” and/or “religion” without replacing it with anything.

And this, for me, is where I get really mad with this book. By understanding cooking and agriculture, mankind was able to achieve a great many things. And people created gods to assist with their cooking and agricultural needs. And cooking and agriculture did give some societies a “way of life”. But a meaning to life? A meaning to existence? So, similarly, why should we expect mathematics and the scientific method, which are tools to help us understand and control the world for our benefit, provide us with any answers?

None of which matters when he comes to the final chapter of the book, when he dispenses with the sham of attacking science by coming to the crux of his problem - he hates liberalism because he wants certainty and he wants to be right. Liberalism either doesn't make judgements, or judges after weighing a whole lot of boring evidence, when what people really want is clarity of vision, and freedom from uncertainty. He doesn't go into whether he wants a freedom from independent thought as well, but I kind of get the impression that is where he is heading. However, his final line undermines absolutely everything that has come before, with me paraphrasing (as I have a heavy cat on my lap so can't get to the book) the summation as being "that's what I want, even if it doesn't make me happy". Of course.

For all that this confusion, the book is interesting in that it presented views and opinions and discoveries in a way I have never thought of before. Possibly, as from my perspective, it doesn't make a huge amount of sense at all. But then, that is just me, and I am sure it will appeal to someone out there. Possibly. Open invite to those who wish to try...

Verdict: Understanding the Present does not really live up to the promise of the title. It criticises the present and finds fault with... well, almost everything, but criticism does not always mean one actually does understand what is going on, and is a poor way to teach others as well. I know I was no better off from when I started the book. But I was... challenged. 2 unscientific and unliberal certainties out of 10.