From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Sat 3/28/2009 4:35 PM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] The full text of the University speech -- "The Need for Heretics" The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile - NYTimes.com
Begin forwarded message:
From: George Dyson <gdyson@gmail.com>
Date: March 28, 2009 12:33:35 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Re: [IP] The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile -
NYTimes.com
On Mar 28, 2009, at 6:02 AM, David Farber wrote:
> Is there a write-up on the University speech?
Here is the full text:
The Need for Heretics
Commencement Address, given at the University of Michigan, December
18, 2005
Freeman Dyson, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey
When the Princess Rosalba was baptized, in Thackeray's story, ``The
Rose and the Ring'', her father, King Cavalfiore of Crim Tartary, gave
a banquet, and all the royal guests came with fine clothes and
expensive presents and flattering speeches. Then at the end of the
line of guests came the Fairy Blackstick, an ugly old lady with a long
nose, carrying nothing in her hands but a plain black stick. She
waved her stick over the baby and said, ``As for this little lady, the
best thing I can wish her is a little misfortune''. The King was
furious and ordered his servants to remove the Fairy Blackstick from
the hall. But of course the magic was done, and the Fairy
Blackstick's present turned out to be more valuable than all the other
presents put together. I will tell you at the end how the magic worked.
I am grateful to the University of Michigan and to you, President
Coleman, for giving me the privilege of talking at this celebration. I
find it strange that I should be talking here. In this company I am
the Fairy Blackstick. You students are proud possessors of the Ph.D.
or some similar token of academic respectability. You have endured
many years of poverty and hard labor, and now you are ready to go to
your just rewards, to a place on the tenure track of a university or
on the board of directors of a company. And here am I, a person who
never had a Ph.D. myself and fought all my life against the Ph.D.
system and everything it stands for. Of course I fought in vain. The
grip of the Ph.D. system on academic life is tighter today than it has
ever been. But I will continue to fight against it as long as I
live. In short, I am proud to be a heretic. But unfortunately I am
an old heretic. What the world needs is young heretics. I am hoping
that one or two of you may fill that role.
I will tell you briefly about three heresies that I am promoting. The
first of my heresies says that all the fuss about global warming is
grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of
climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe
the numbers predicted by the models. Of course, they say, I have no
degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But
I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The
models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good
job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans.
They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the
chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do
not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world
is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand.
It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned
building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and
measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the
clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing in
their own models.
There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the
warming is not global. The warming happens mostly in places and times
where it is cold, in the arctic more than in the tropics, in winter
more than in summer, at night more than in daytime. On the whole, the
warming happens most where it does the least harm. I am not saying
that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does.
Obviously we should be trying to understand it better. I am saying
that the problems are grossly exaggerated. They take away money and
attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important,
such as poverty and infectious disease and public education and public
health, and the preservation of living creatures on land and in the
oceans.
I could talk for the whole of my fifteen minutes about the global
warming heresy, but I won't. My second heresy is about
biotechnology. It says that biotechnology will soon be domesticated.
Fifty years ago in Princeton, I watched the mathematician John von
Neumann designing and building the first electronic computer that
operated with instructions coded into the machine. Von Neumann did
not invent the electronic computer. The computer called ENIAC had
been running at the University of Pennsylvania five years earlier.
What von Neumann invented was software, the coded instructions that
gave the computer agility and flexibility. It was the combination of
electronic hardware with punch-card software that allowed a single
machine to predict weather, to simulate the evolution of populations
of living creatures, and to test the feasibility of hydrogen bombs.
Von Neumann understood that his invention would change the world. He
understood that the descendants of his machine would dominate the
operations of science and business and government. But he imagined
computers always remaining large and expensive. He imagined them as
centralized facilities serving large research laboratories or large
industries. He failed to foresee computers growing small enough and
cheap enough to be used by housewives for doing income-tax returns or
by kids for doing homework. He failed to foresee the final
domestication of computers as toys for three-year-olds. He totally
failed to foresee the emergence of computer-games as a dominant
feature of twenty-first-century life. Because of computer-games, our
grandchildren are now growing up with an indelible addiction to
computers. For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, till
death do us part, humans and computers are now joined together more
durably than husbands and wives.
What has this story of von Neumann's computer and the evolution of
computer-games to do with biotechnology? Simply this, that there is a
close analogy between von Neumann's vision of computers as large
centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic
engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and
agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts
Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides
into food-crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because von Neumann
liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs. It is likely
that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so
long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large
corporations.
I see a bright future for the biotechnical industry when it follows
the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to
foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and
centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken
recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and
brilliant colors appeared in pet-stores. For biotechnology to become
domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently
spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest flower
show in the world, where flower-breeders from all over the world show
off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile
Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of
another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses,
San Diego excels in lizards and snakes. The main problem for a
grandparent visiting the reptile show with a grandchild is to get the
grandchild out of the building without actually buying a snake. Every
orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and
skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and
professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine
what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become
accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for
gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of
roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and
lizards and snakes, to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs
and cats will have their kits too.
Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of housewives and
children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living
creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations
prefer. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art-form as
creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be
masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and variety to
our fauna and flora.
The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech
games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten
age, but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a
screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for
the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid
whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches
the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly
dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our
kids do not endanger themselves and others. When they are grown up,
these kids will be at home in the new world of biotechnology. They
will be ready to put their skills to use, designing new species of
termite with a taste for heavy metal to chew up derelict automobiles,
and designing new species of tree with silicon leaves to make liquid
fuels out of carbon dioxide and sunlight.
Here is my third and last heresy. I say that the United States has
less than a century left of its turn as top nation. Since the modern
nation-state was invented around the year 1500, a succession of
countries have taken turns at being top nation, first Spain, then
France, Britain, America. Each turn lasted about 150 years. Ours
began in 1920, so it should end about 2070. The reason why each top
nation's turn comes to an end is that the top nation becomes over-
extended, militarily, economically and politically. Greater and
greater efforts are required to maintain the number one position.
Finally the over-extension becomes so extreme that the whole structure
collapses. Already we can see in the American posture today some
clear symptoms of over-extension. Who will be the next top nation?
It might be the European Union or it might be China. After that it
might be India or Brazil. You should be asking yourselves, not how to
live in an America-dominated world, but how to prepare for a world
that is not America-dominated. That may be the most important problem
for your generation to solve. How does a people that thinks of itself
as number one yield gracefully to become number two?
I am telling you that misfortunes are on the way. Your precious
Ph.D., or whichever degree you went through long years of hard work to
acquire, may be worth less than you think. Your specialized training
may become obsolete.You may find yourself over-qualified for the
available jobs. You may be declared redundant. The country and the
culture to which you belong may move far away from the mainstream.
But these misfortunes are also opportunities. It is always open to
you to join the heretics and find another way to make a living. With
or without a Ph.D., there are big and important problems for you to
solve.
I am hoping that things will turn out for you as nicely as they turned
out in the end for the Princess Rosalba as a result of the Fairy
Blackstick's appearance at her baptism. A few years after the baptism
the misfortunes began. King Cavalfiore was slain in battle and the
rebel Duke Padella usurped the Kingdom of Crim Tartary. Rosalba was
left alone, a toddler in the abandoned palace. She wandered out into
the forest and was adopted by a friendly lioness. After living quietly
for a few years with the lion family, she wandered back to
civilization and found a job as a serving-maid in the household of
King Valoroso the twenty-fourth of Paflagonia. There she took
advantage of her situation to educate herself with the school-books
cast aside by her spoiled mistress, the Princess Angelica. Finally,
having acquired the right sort of education, the education of hard
knocks, she married Prince Giglio, the rightful heir to the throne of
Paflagonia, and lived happily ever after. But now I must sit down
quickly, before the King's servants throw me out.
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