Because this is a university that values diverse opinions, I'dlike to express my views about Alan Kay's talk, "What if It Isn'tToo Late?" delivered last week in the Student Center.
Kay, a well-known pioneer of the personal computer, has a longlist of impressive credentials and accomplishments, and I admirehis time-honored and tenacious commitment to "push theenvelope."
But his talk was founded on a number of disturbing -- and justplain wrong -- assumptions. And because he spent so much timetalking about Americans' misconceptions of science, I felt obligedto speak to his own misconceptions of culture and history.
Kay began his talk with an amusing NSF video, which featuresrecent Harvard graduates explaining that the earth's seasons arecaused by the earth's varying orbital distance from the sun (whichis wrong). He explained that the students were not expressing anysophisticated understanding of science, only a popular assumptionabout science.
Simply enough, and a fine way to begin a lecture. But as thetalk progressed, Kay professed one popular assumption afteranother; assumptions that, like the assumptions about science he sorightly condemned, actually are not backed by any empiricalevidence. There were many (I counted at least eight), but here arejust four:
Assumption #1: Hunting and gathering subsistence was a bleak andharsh way of life before humans created agriculture. Thisassumption is sometimes called the "progress fallacy."Anthropologists have known for quite some time that foraging wasnot the bleak and harsh way of life we presume it was. In fact,evidence suggests that foragers knew about agriculture (and triedit) long before they were forced to adopt it. They didn't adopt itat first mainly because agriculture, it turns out, presented manymore bleak and harsh conditions (increased work loads, widespreaddisease, reduced quality diets, class conflict) than didforaging.
Assumption #2: Humans had no radical ideas before science, or inKay's words, before "modern knowledge." Another fallacy:Anthropologists first began illustrating in the late 19th centurythat so-called "primitive" societies were in a constant state offlux, often brought on by ideological and/or technological changes,many of them "radical" and far-reaching. Although the DiscoveryChannel likes to feature "unchanging" tribes "lost in time," intruth we have never known of any truly isolated peoples.
Assumption #3: Science is the only mode of thought that provideshumans with complex ways of thinking, or in Kay's words, there was"nothing to learn" before the advent of "modern knowledge."Anthropologists have demonstrated since the early 20th century thatpeople everywhere -- science or no science -- think in very complexand dynamic ways. Many systems of kinship, for example, are ascomplex as any mathematical formula.
Assumption #4: In Kay's words, "language is metaphorical; mathis abstract." To the contrary, language and mathematics share rootsimilarities. Both are systems of symbols, and both requireabstract thought.
Perhaps, many will surely say, I'm being picky. But someone ofKay's stature and influence should know better. Indeed, before wecritique others for not having what we think should be a "commonknowledge of science," we should be extra careful not to espousepopular assumptions and fallacies of what many historians andsocial scientists believe should be common knowledge about historyand culture.
Write to Luke at elassite@bsu.edu
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