Picture, if you will, a window ledge on the sixth floor of an office building. A man is perched on it with a pair of wooden wings. The window behind him says, "PATENT OFFICE."(12) It's evident that he has had words with the people inside: his face is set in a grim expression, and he's about to give his wings a demonstration (their first). As he leaps from the ledge, he is heard to mutter, "They laughed at Columbus, too."
This illustrates what I call the "Columbus problem." At any given moment, there are hundreds and thousands of kooks at large with wild schemes which they insist you take seriously. They all know the story of Columbus, and if you laugh, they will remind you that history may be getting ready to snicker at you. Unfortunately, only one of all this throng, at most, is really beckoning the way to a New World. The rest all deserve to be laughed at. How do you tell which is which?
Don't look for conclusive proof. In the nature of the case, we are talking about a judgment of gambles. Look at it this way: any scheme which is going to interest a Columbus (or a nut) must have dizzying consequences. Dizzying consequences are to be had only for dizzying leaps into the unknown. By the time that only a moderate vault is required, with the opposite side in full view, everybody has gotten used to the idea. The prize no longer dazzles, it is fully discounted. Where's the glory in that?
You might think, if wild leaps are all it takes to make a Columbus, that society should produce Columbuses at random -- for the unknown is all about us, and no end of fools cavort about. That, however, does an injustice by the original. Columbus made no wild leap, only a dizzying one. There's got to be a difference.
Columbus flew in the face of public opinion, but his theory was solidly in line with learned opinion of the time. (It was the difference between the two that created his opportunity.) An error in measurement frustrated his actual intentions, but it was sound theory that brought him to another shore -- sound theory and a quite practical skill as a mariner. He indulged no foolishness: note that he didn't try the polar route, he didn't try to bore through the center, he relied on no magical incantations, he sought no magic carpet. He just applied the best down-to-earth technology to a rather untested idea.
Somewhere between the baby steps that interest a corporate research center and the vague, cosmic expectations that glaze the eyes of a mystic, there lies a Columbus-class gamble. It may be defined, or at least described, as a rational bet for a skeptical man who doesn't mind long odds as much as he minds an insignificant life. It rests on a theory which seems less uncertain to him than to the world at large.
To identify such a venture in advance is a matter of purest intuition. As much as anything, it depends on one's leanings in scientific controversies of the day. Right leanings generate right hunches, wrong ones generate wrong ones -- it's as simple as that, and that's all the help one gets.
The achievement of what might be called "artificial reincarnation" is now, in my opinion, a Columbus-class gamble. I have presented my reasons for thinking so. I can offer further only a couple of comments on method.
First, note that I am relying on no unknown forces, no new departures in what is known of the physical universe. There may be such forces, just as there were radio waves and heaven-knows-what lurking among the tangible objects of nineteenth-century materialism. (At a certain point in time, our concept of what was "material" had to be attenuated somewhat.) The point is, though, none such are gratuitously postulated.
The effort, rather, is to reproduce a phenomenon that is known to exist -- intelligence --, working with forces and phenomena we already know. Only the particulars and the actual arrangement are unknown -- and this is a type of problem we deal with all the time. That should be reassuring to anyone whose sense of skepticism is in tune with mine.
As it happens, people are skeptical about difference things. Jaki, for instance(13), argues that only forces and phenomena beyond the physical world as we know it could account for the observed behavior of minds. To him, what would make a scheme far-fetched is not that it should invoke unproven metaphysical phenomena, but that it should rely on "mere" physical ones to accomplish what is "demonstrably" outside their province. (Characteristically, he considers ESP an established fact.)
Well, you can't convince them all. Since it is necessary to choose, I would rather be persuasive to those who share with me a rule of thumb: that results are easier to come by, and more likely, using known phenomena which can be systematically manipulated. That's only a rule of thumb, it doesn't always work -- but how often does the opposite work?
The other point to which I should like to call attention is that nobody is called upon to believe -- just bet. Sensible people don't like to be asked to take leave of their senses. If I can convince lots of people that my scheme is a reasonable bet, the necessary work will be undertaken sooner, and this may be urgent -- we are racing with human extinction. At no point, however, is it required that people should set aside their doubts. This is not one of those schemes that will wither and die if there is an Unbeliever in the house. Either it's right, and the unbelievers will be confounded, or it's wrong, and a time will come to give up. That should recommend it to the hard-boiled.
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The Isabella Question: Should the Queen Pawn Her Jewels? |
| The Road to Glory: Potholes and Perplexities. |
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