Beach Haven

Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1979 & 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

​This work examines one of the large questions in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS). Are scientific facts discovered, or constructed? For the authors, facts are constructed.

Among the ideas of this work, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar describe reducing disorder in data as lowering noise, or increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) between data that support a specific hypothesis, and those that don’t. Data that don’t support a hypothesis are not necessarily counter-finding data, they are just not supporting data, hence noise. This is a concept I am very familiar with from my work in satellite and broadcast networking. It also directly relates to the authors’ concept of inscription. When data are created through process, the result is inscription. As theories become accepted they tend to change into tools to further test new theories. Tools can be physical machines or processes. When the machine or process become normalized they are said to be 'black boxed'. Such black boxes are no longer questioned, but are simply accepted. In labs, the machines (black boxes) referred to take information in and spit out printed material (data sheets or curves). It is the interpretation of data or curves that come to represent what matters in the argument for one idea over another. The more isolated one point of data is over others, the more distinct the information (higher S/N), and the more it supports a specific idea.
 
There are lots of steps along the way in the machine input, processing, printing, and transcribing of data into descriptive curves. Part of the work’s argument is that without all the manipulation a distinctive curve would not result. It is just as likely, the author’s say, that another set of complex manipulations could lead to a completely different looking curve, and a different conclusion. This is especially true if earlier curves had led to a different machine (black box) to process data in a different way.
 
My satellite and broadcast example includes the use of two tools. One is called a spectrum analyzer (SA), the other is called an integrated receiver decoder (IRD). Anyone who has ever worked with satellite or broadcast signals is familiar with these tools. In satellite, for example, after a transmit earth station (uplink) sends a signal to the satellite, and the satellite receives and sends the signal back to earth to a receive earth station (downlink), signal parameters can be both displayed by the SA, and made sense of by the IRD. Both machines have complex electronic systems within them. For example, the IRD has to first demodulate the radio frequency (RF) energy, then decrypt the data stream, then decode the information within the data stream, then transform the information into something a human can understand (audio, video, text). The SA similarly requires many parameter adjustments until the energy sent through the air can be displayed and measured in a standard format, typically comparing energy density levels at given frequencies (instantaneous or averaged over some period of time). Without all that effort the information does not really exist from the perspective of Latour and Woolgar. In fact, without the equipment, intelligence (audio, video, text) would simply be lost in space.
 
I’m reminded of basic communications theory. In order for communication to happen someone must have an idea, encode it (i.e. speech), and send it across a medium. The requirement does not stop there. Someone else must perceive the signal within the medium, and have the knowledge required to decode the information (shared language and context). Does the knowledge actually exist before all those communication steps are taken? Many in the field of STS would argue that knowledge not shared is not really knowledge. Chapter 5 of Laboratory Life emphasizes the need for a form credit in order to incentivize scientists to share or communicate findings, which in turn causes knowledge creation. This idea doesn't seem to sit well with Robert K. Merton's scientific norms, but are more akin to Ian I. Mitroff's counter-norms. Because of all the required inscription effort, the authors (Latour and Woolgar) argue that such knowledge is constructed rather than discovered.
 
Below is a typical SA plot. The square shape in the middle is the desired signal. The somewhat horizontally flat lines at either side are a representative measurement of the “noise floor”. There is never an absence of noise as radio frequency (RF) energy is always present everywhere. It is generated by the sun and many man-made devices. To obtain the S/N ratio is a simple comparison of the power measurement at a representative (average) frequency at the top of the desired signal as compared to power as measured at a representative (average) place in the noise floor. The two are then divided into a ratio. Depending on the sensitivity rating of the IRD in use, there is a minimum desired threshold. All measurements are in a decibel (dB) scale. Note the specificity of the measurement scales, as well as several 'settings' in the bottom right corner required to construct the graph. All of these scales and settings are adjustable within the black box of a spectrum analyzer. To Latour and Woolgar's point, changes in scales or settings (or principles and processes leading to creation of the SA) would yield data depicted differently on the plot.

De Musset, Alfred. 1903 & 1917. The Story of a White Blackbird. Vol. 13, in The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, edited by Charles W. Eliot and William Allan Neilson, translated by Katharine Royce, 391-426. New York: PF Collier & Son.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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This story is an allegory, perhaps maybe autobiographical. The main character is also the narrator, telling his own story. A little blackbird is rejected by his family when white plumage begins to show on its body. Eventually the family leaves him to himself. In his sadness, he travels to seek a new tribe. A number of bird families initially open their flock to him until they discover that he is actually a blackbird. Then they want nothing to do with him. He ventures about through a number of different animal species seeking a new tribe. The pattern is the same, initial acceptance ending in eventual rejection because he is, after all, a blackbird.

The blackbird’s attitude grows steadily more and more gloomy until he hears two birds speaking. One says to the other, “If you ever succeed, I will make you a present of a white blackbird!” He comes to recognize that he is less an oddity and more a rarity. His life then turns for the better as he comes to depend on himself, and is less concerned about finding a tribe.

The work is written in a way that can appeal to children as a simple story, yet adults can read many philosophical and sociological threads within it as well. 

Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. 2018. The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Among many threads, Mavhunga makes a point around ‘thingamication’. He shares examples throughout the book on colonial (and later) white perspective on African people as objects of study, control, labor, and information.

One striking example was the use of fences in building corridors through tsetse infested areas. Local labor was used alongside a thing called a bulldozer to clear forest where the land was too steep for the machine. They were also used to put in fencing, then funneled through those fences and ‘de-flying’ stations while moving along the fenced paths (182). The roads themselves were also a product of African labor, mostly built to allow for traffic between white-owned farms as well as for Africans to get from their homes to work in mines or on farms. These same Africans were able to move through traditional paths in ways that avoided infested areas during infested times before the belief that roads and fences were necessary.

Another particularly difficult approach from the perspective of Mavhunga was government creation of villages as a prophylactic. This effort removed people from their ancestral homes to gather them in new communities in between white-owned farms. Clearing and building up these small towns forced elimination of tsetse habitat (as well as habitat for nature in general), lowering the threat to sparse white-owned farms. The towns became a form of human shield. This approach lead to overcrowding of people in the buffer zones, and over burdening of the soils around the new towns (153). Mavhunga gives examples of eventual movement patterns adopted by officials that were not all that different than those previously employed by locals, but instead of preventative movement efforts these were about damage control (161).
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I’ll share one more human-as-object example. When authorities added chemical efforts to ‘mechanized phytocides’ (141) Africans again became a tool for the effort. While pilots sprayed less effectually from the thing called an airplane, African workers called ‘spray boys’ were given backpack pneumatic sprayers to go directly into the infestation. This put them as risk both from the fly and from the chemical poisons. Mavhunga offers a great deal of insight over several chapters about which chemicals were used during various periods and the effect on the fly, the plants, the environment, wildlife, and humans who both applied the poison and lived on the affected land. Decision makers only backed off aggressive use of chemicals when whites in the area began to complain after the shift from organic to synthetic pesticides (152).

Birkby, Robert. 2008. Moutain Madness: Scott Fischer, Mount Everest & A Life Lived On High. New York: Citadel Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

In this work, Robert Birkby shares the unusual life of Scott Fischer who was a well-known mountaineer and co-founder of the adventure tour company called Mountain Madness. Birkby was a personal friend of Fischer, and had joined him on some expeditions. Fischer’s life was full of mountaineering expeditions all over the world. He was inspired by a television program he saw as a youth about the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. He saved up money, attended a summer session, and his life’s course was forever altered for the teenage New Jersey Fischer.

The book depicts the rise of Fischer as a mountaineer, an adventure educator, and finally as an entrepreneur. Along the way he builds a philosophy, and builds a family with his wife who was an airline pilot. His mountaineering eventually took him to Mount Everest. He succeeded summitting on his second attempt. After gaining that credential he felt ready for Mountain Madness to guide others professionally. Birkby shares the successes and failures of the first year in the endeavor. Sadly, the second year was the fateful year in which a number of climbers famously died when a storm suddenly engulfed them on the day of their summit attempt. Scott Fischer and some of his guide clients were among the trapped. Fischer was among those who perished.

The book speaks to the appeal many people have for adventure travel, and specifically the challenge of high-altitude mountaineering. The risk and difficulties of forming and running a business while navigating how it all affected his family prove interesting parallels. The story of Fischer's life as depicted by Birkby is both inspiring and cautionary.

Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Vernacular

Among the threads in Tilley’s work is the idea of a linkage of vernacular with goals. In many instances, officials at the Colonial Office and scientists in the various studies documented similar goals. For example, all were trying to understand how to make the best use of soils in agriculture. Depending on the era, they also often agreed on concepts of ecology.

Tilley shares examples of divergent goals as well. In areas of ecology, forestry, anthropology, etc., the scientists were interested in local farming approaches. Colonial officials were sometimes more interested in helping white settlers to succeed in creating cash crops. Native agriculture differed from area to area just as soils differed. Burning, then planting in particular ways, allowing portions of land to lay fallow, all looked like randomness to European farmers who approached farming essentially the same way regardless of environment. Indigenous farms in Rhodesia, for example, remained sustainable. White farms in the same area were initially fruitful, but by year three or four tended to fail as soils became depleted (p. 158). Practices of clearing and tilling by Europeans also led to damaging ground erosion. Homer Shanz referred to such farming approaches as “the tyranny of the plow” (p. 136). He sought to guard against “dogmas that hinder successful agricultural development”.

There was a definite tension within the various studies described with regard to considering local conditions as opposed to scaling up to regional or continental approaches. The larger scale proponents looked to standardization. Localization proponents looked to unique factors in a given area. As movement in the scientific community discussed merits of using ecology as a potential way to connect various fields of science, consideration of factor interrelationships seemed ever more complex, even locally.

Similar to the debate over local vs standard farming approaches, attempts to control trypanosomiasis, or sleeping disease, spread by the tsetse fly were cast in similar language. William Ormsby-Gore noted, “No one form of attack upon the tsetse fly is universally practicable” (p. 177). Note the language of war used around to the time of both world wars.

Just as dogmas noted by Shanz clouded European colonialism in farming, similar language around the people of Africa shaped perspectives toward native populations. Tilley tells us how the language of eugenics and demography “had important effects on conduct and legislation of colonial administrations” (p. 258). She shows a number of examples of scientists and administrators who believed Europeans could learn more from locals about farming techniques. She also gives examples of language in which indigenes are seen as ‘backward’ or somehow 'less'.

​Vernaculars differed throughout the work. Whether the language was political, administrative, scientific, that of the local farmer, or of workers in faraway laboratories, language, perspective, and actions are clearly intertwined.

​BLACK INVENTORS IN THE AGE OF SEGREGATION
By Rayvon Fouché
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 225 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
In this work the author shares the personal stories of three specific African American inventors in attempt to call into question several myths often perpetuated about black technologists. The ideas are how a patent equals financial success, people of color invent purely to uplift the race, or that Black-patented objects are the first of their kind. Fouché approaches these myths by building a narrative about each of three inventors that contradict one or more of them. The inventors are Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson.
 
This approach by Fouché goes a long way to dispel the inventor-as-hero narrative which has been put in question by other writers about other inventors without the race angle included. In this work race is certainly part of the narrative, but not exclusively the narrative, making the complexity of both the inventors and others they interact with more nuanced, and enlightening. Fouché approaches this historical and sociological work in this way in order to show three different people with three different personalities, cultures and motivations. In other words, they are each a unique person and not some sort of imagined icon.
 
The work would appeal to those with interest in technology, sociology, racial studies, and history. Fouché connects with readers through clear language, personal stories of the three inventors, depicting and dispelling ideas commonly held in both the African American and majority communities. The strength of the work comes through the individual lives depicted, and how these men fit into larger societies. They are juxtaposed to other prominent Black leaders that they were at odds with. Their histories do show how they were at times helped by race, and at times hamstrung. Perhaps a deeper look at societal trends that inspired the inventor-as-hero myth, and in particular the black-inventor-as-hero myth may have add more insight into Fouché’s main argument. One could argue, given the documented experiences, how the effects of these inventors’ efforts perpetuated these beliefs at least at some level, and were not just debunking.

THE DEVIL’S POOL
By George Sand
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903 - P.F. Collier & Son Company, 1917, 105 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
This version of the work is included in a series of writings published as Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. Despite the ominous sounding title, the work is a quaint snapshot look into rural life in the French berry region. It may come as a surprize to others as it did to me that the author, despite the name, was a French woman.
 
A recent widower with three growing children sets out to find a new wife at the urgings of some of his neighbors. A well-intentioned father-in-law of Germaine points him in the direction of a well-to-do young lady of marrying age in another part of the region. As he travels to meet her, his oldest son, Pierre, joins him and despite his best efforts he cannot get the youngster to return home. Along the way they meet a young lass named Mary from the rural district where the intended lady lives. She and the son become fast friends. The trio get lost after taking a break near the small body of water baring the story’s titular name. They camp there for the night and resume travel the next day.
 
Mary agrees to care for the boy as Germaine advances to the home of the potential bride. This lady is of the upper set. The widower is a farmer. He quickly learns there are other suitors on hand and the coquettish intended is not of his sort. He returns to Pierre and Mary and the friendship resumes as they travel home. As you might guess, the friendship leads to love and the book ends with Germaine and Mary happily married.

​EMPERORS OF THE DEEP
By William McKeever
Harper One, 2019, 311 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
This work is subtitled Sharks – The ocean’s most mysterious, most misunderstood, and most important guardians. The author’s major claim is closely associated with that subtitle noting his intent as “an urgent call to protect them, a celebration of sharks as remarkable apex predators, supersensory navigators, and humankind’s greatest ally in nature” (p. 10).
 
Among many examples and justifications, McKeever notes how ecosystem culling by sharks makes marine life stronger and more abundant. For example, in the presence of an apex predator, prey behavior adjusts in ways that ensures the most healthy and adaptive survive to pass on genetic characteristics.
 
The author notes how he makes his arguments in order to “raise awareness about the massacre of sharks around the world” (p. 295). His hope is to appeal to policy makers, fisheries, and sea food consumers to take actions that would curtail bad behavior by people who exacerbate the human and environmental impact of bad practices related to sharks.
 
McKeever shares specific examples that clarify the points he makes. From sports fishing tournaments, to human enslavement on industrial fishing boats, impact by and to humans supplement the argument to the impact to sharks and the larger maritime ecosystem. At times he also seems to praise more radical groups. Such an approach may make it difficult for the policy makers he is hoping to sway. Along with his nod to Greenpeace or scientific organizations such as the South Africa Conservancy, he often points to ‘illegal’ fishing activities without reviewing what regulatory efforts have come about to define what fishing is legal or not. Sharing good efforts in this area as examples could persuade countries less involved to consider similar approaches.
 
For those like me who are interested in areas of science, technology and society there are plenty of examples of how science, technology, policy, economics, and cultural perspective ultimately influence each other around shark-related environmental concerns. McKeever gives both hopeful and discouraging examples from various parts of the world.

​SCIENCE IN ACTION
By Bruno Latour
Harvard University Press, 1987, 274 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
Subtitled How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Latour claims that as scientific ideas become generally accepted they are ‘black boxed’ (taken for granted in future knowledge claims). In what later becomes known as actor-network theory (ANT) his thesis is that knowledge is not linear discovery, but rather the building of supportive relationships among actors (human or otherwise), creating a web of idea dependency among scientific communities. The author seeks to describe the need to follow the closure of scientific controversies in order to understand the nature of knowledge production.
 
Latour seeks to link himself with scientists, and those who study aspects of science, he himself using the scientific method to study practitioners of the scientific method. In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this is a seminal work as it introduces a link between the philosophical perspective such as the social construction of knowledge, with the practical need for scientists to enlist others for consensus and adaptation. Unfortunately, the idea that knowledge is a function of the strength of actor relationships leaves out the potential of black boxing what at some future point turns out to be untrue.
 
As mentioned above this is foundational STS work as paradigmatically shifted away from the idea of linear knowledge advancement through discovery. ANT takes into account all forces at work in the knowledge creation process, including non-human participants.

​OLD GARIOT
By Honoré de Balzac
PF Collier & Son Company, 1917, 268 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
This is a French romance novel. It was written in the mid-nineteenth century and set in the early part of that same century. Translations alternately title it Old Gariot or Father Gariot. I’ve noted in past reviews how this is not my preferred genre of work, yet I have been reviewing them as part of working my way through a 20-volume set of the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction series. Many of the authors in this series are names I have vague recollection of, but really don’t know any works by many, and only some works by a few of the featured authors. Balzac is one of the former.
 
The main character grows old after a successful life. He becomes a widower. His two daughters marry. He invests all his money into these daughters and their respective husbands. Little by little his own circumstances deteriorate. His daughters and sons-in-law also distance themselves from him over time. Things begin to turn as the marriages both become loveless. The young women begin to have affairs, as do their respective husbands. Gariot lodges in boarding house as does a young man who courts one of his daughters. The two of them work together to become more connected to her. Gariot helps the illicit lovers become a couple as he helps his daughter extract herself from her marriage. Her sister becomes jealous of this successful life change and begins to reconnect with her father as well. In the end he dies happy having gotten to be more connected with both his girls.
 
Like other French novels of the period I’ve read, these sort of stories bother me. They are not explicit in terms of character physical sexual interaction, but they do seem to spurn happy marriage and put extra-marital attraction as a preferred, and even normal, route. Marriages in this case were more like business arrangements and impropriety a norm. I’m sure there were, and still are, sectors in society where this is the case, yet there has been, and is, an element of societal shame associated with the behavior. Balzac displays none of that. Not only does the story seem to support these attitudes, but pretty much all the characters act and speak in a way that would put doubt in the idea of love, marriage and fidelity.