Beach Haven

Review by Michael Beach

Bibliography
​Jayawardhana, R. (2013). Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe. New York: Scientific American.
 
I first got interested in neutrino particles many years ago. When we lived in Colorado, much of my professional work put me on airplanes, heading for many corners of the globe. One of those trips I was thumbing through an airline magazine and saw a story on neutrinos. Much of the description of the 'ghost particle' mirrored descriptions of the substance of the spirit as described in the Doctrine and Covenants. I have often kicked myself for not hanging onto the magazine.

I recently stumbled across this book. It is essentially a history of those scientists who made speculation about subatomic particles in general, then those who were able to create tools to try and measure their forces. In the process they discovered many subatomic particles, neutrinos just being one among the discoveries. In the book there are several sections that act as tutorials both of the current understanding of the various subatomic particles, as well as the methods and infrastructure it takes to run experiments and take force measurements. The science is complicated of course, but someone like me who is less ingrained in the community can follow along as described by Ray Jayawardhana. In fact, my poor Anglo brain might find his name more difficult to say than to grasp his explanation of the science involved (just kidding... sort of).

Despite the broader descriptions of other particles, the focus of the book is on neutrinos and the specific scientists who worked it all out. As one might guess, there were plenty of setbacks, collaborations, and competitive interference. Some of the discovery was accidental, or perhaps better said as incidental. As the evidence mounted not all involved were supportive of the explanations eventually adopted. This may be because of the normal versus revolutionary paradigmatic science as described by Thomas Kuhn. At any rate, human endeavor is fraught, and whether facts are created or discovered (that’s a debate by the way), acceptance is rarely universal and almost never rapidly so. Such was and is still the case surrounding subatomic theory (quantum mechanics) and the neutrino in particular.

​Review by Michael Beach

Bibliography
Medina, E. (2011). Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press..

As the title suggests, this work is a look at technology efforts in 1970’s Chile. This of course was pre-Internet. The Chilean government was attempting centralized planning and operation of the country’s economy by bringing all sorts of data about things like crop yields, price indices, and interest rates into not only a single computer system, but into a single physical location. The location was a sort of Star Trek ship bridge where an octagonal room was ringed with screens of data. Statisticians worked to make sense of all the information. Also in the room was a ring of futuristic chairs for government officials to discuss the information. Each chair included a number of control buttons that allowed the occupant to manipulate a screen.

By definition, data is post-facto, but in the case of the Chilean effort, because of the limited tech of the day, some data was not only slow in coming, but by the time it made it to the central room, it was counter-factual.

Although Chilean president Salvador Allende was attempting to ‘centralize’ decisions, the political climate was also one of decentralization, as in the data came from decisions being made at other locations. This was a reflection of his political views. The approach was a holistic design to account for decentralized data through a national Telex network. At the time, Chile was in the throws of work stoppages by industrial workers in particular. The network was dubbed ‘Cybersyn’.

Because of the instability of Chilean politics of the day, the full system never really got running. In many ways, the project was the brain child of Stafford Beer, who was a British cybernetician. Like the program he shepherded, his own status in Chile waxed and waned with the popularity of the Allende government. At times he had his family in Chile with him in lavish surroundings. As Allende’s topple neared, Beer had to leave his family out of Chile for their physical safety. He found himself at increasing risk in more and more spartan accommodations.
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The story is a good case study of how political agendas and technological thought go hand in hand. Although Allende’s success was not pinned to Cybersyn, the technical effort was clearly dependent on political will and support. The tech was seen by administration opponents as a controlling means to ends such groups were against. As a result, the program was scrapped along with the government administration that championed and represented the programmatic ideals. Values of the Allende leadership were seen as expressed in the aims of the Cybersyn project, and any associated technology. Eden Medina speculates that the nature of the technology as a closed system caused people without access to view the whole as suspect. In today’s world, something approaching more universal access to the tech, if not the information, would likely cause less anti-tech rhetoric. Political animas would be more toward the specific way it was used to gather intelligence, make decisions, and enact policy that many felt as repressive. 

Bibliography
​Edgerton, David. 2007. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

The essence of David Edgerton’s treatise is how “…our future-oriented rhetoric has underestimated the past, and overestimated the power of the present” (Edgerton 2007, 206). The book is full of examples where later technology proves either less effective or more detrimental than earlier versions. He pulls examples from war, economics, national relations, and other fields of technological implementation. He compares outcomes in such areas as the effects of time, production requirements, and maintenance needs.

Edgerton also examines the methods of invention. Like many scholars, he rejects the image of the lone scientist or engineer in a basement or garage toiling away until one day, eureka!, some grand new thing emerges. In reality, invention is a group effort in some social setting. Even the likes of Edison, Jobs, and Gates had colluders and predecessors they gained insights and direct help from. The flood of tech that evolves from ‘break through discoveries’ may bring into question if they make life better or not. For example, are we better off with 24/7 connectivity? Are we more informed through the social media of our day than our parents were reading newspapers or watching the evening news? For those of us who have to go to work at a specific place, has life improved in our daily commutes on an ever more congested roadway? With our new approach to remote work and its loss of work-related in-person community, are we not now feeling more isolated?

There are movements for a return to old tech. Things we think of as modern have been around for a long time. We certainly put more value on some things like wood furniture that are individually created by a craftsman than we do on the same thing mass produced. By putting more value on it, I mean we pay more for it. Food seems to taste better when it’s locally provided straight from the farm as opposed to frozen and shipped in from a distance. The caution is to judge carefully the right tool for the job. For example, do we really have to get a new phone every time there is an update? How many landfills are now burgeoning with the hazardous materials included with the millions of perfectly functioning discarded phones? We should all consider when simpler and older is better, or at least good enough.
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Bibliography
​Martin, John Levi. 2017. Thinking Through Methods: A Social Science Primer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago.
 
Review by Michael Beach

As the name implies, this is a methodology work. Specifically, John Levi Martin explores how social science is conducted from a practical ‘how to’ sense. In the empirical sciences one might reduce variables and examine outcomes. In sociology the study subjects are human beings in a given social setting. The variables are countless. One cannot isolate the subject, people, from their natural environment. If one does attempt to remove the subject from normal life by say bringing them to a formal location like a university, the information would likely be less true.

Sociology then is a combination of examining and interviewing people, then looking for patterns. Martin spends a considerable amount of space looking at question formulation and interview arrangement to get as close to truth as possible as it relates to whatever one is attempting to learn something about through research. He notes the ethics of studying people, and procedures to ensure both the subjects are protected while still getting useful information. Martin also approaches how to glean information from all sorts of documents, from official publications such as laws, to personal official information such as tax returns, to private personal information such as journals. He then walks the reader through ways of coding information within observations, interviews, and documents to see patterns that relate to the research topic at hand.

The book is clearly aimed at research specialists in the field of Sociology. Despite all the help, Martin admits that there is a tension between decided what to research originally, and how that aim changes as one gathers information. The researcher has to find ways to be careful to not approach a study with preconceived ends in mind, and at the same time not to allow data to take them too far away from a focused finding. 
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Bibliography
​Brenton, Tony, ed. 2017. Was Revolution Inevitable?: Turning Points of the Russian Revolution. London and New York: Oxford University Press.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
This is an interesting volume. Each chapter has a different author. Each proposes a counter-factual ‘what if’ concerning pivotal moments in the history of the Russian revolution of the early 20th century. The individual authors are each historians whose academic scholarship have concentrated on Russia and the rise of the Soviet in particular.

Each of the cases are more or less persuasive. I think the strongest case was made by Orlando Figes in his chapter titled, “The ‘Harmless Drunk’: Lenin and the October Insurrection”. As the Tsarist hold was slipping and several parties were vying for power, it was by no means a given that the Bolsheviks would eventually take control of Russia. Lenin was living in exile in Germany for a number of years. As the revolution became stronger and more violent, he went back and forth between the two countries a number of times. In general, when the Red army gained ground he would come to Russia. When things seem to go the other way he fled back to Germany, or at least closer to it. Gains by the Red army did not equate to gains by the Bolsheviks, but they were at least sympathetic causes. As the royal household was falling and violence increased, Lenin entered Russia for the last time, but did so in cognito. He disguised himself as a drunk and meandered through the crowds until he could get to a safe house in the capital. Finges speculates what might have happened if any of the city police or White army guards had recognized him. They would surely have put him in jail. Though the Tsar would have fell out of power, both his brother and his son were likely to have formed a new Duma and held some sort of election before the Bolshevik party forcibly seized control over all the revolutionary factions. Lenin coming out of hiding and encouraging his party to put down other opposing parties through force likely is what caused the Tsar’s brother, a popular war hero, to recant and then get murdered along with the rest of the Romanov family. Any political leaders who originally were open to forming a new government quickly ceded when Lenin’s followers began to kill their political colleagues.

Personally, I’ve not explored this sort of historical approach before. In fact, Tony Brenton who authors one chapter and edits the volume, admits that most historians are loath to approach counter-factual musings. Each author acknowledges to what degree they believe their alternative may or may not have made any ultimate difference. Each gives reasons not just for how things might have changed, but also how it was just as likely, or even more so, that outcomes would have been no different.  My look at Russian history and politics is at a very amateur level. I’ve read a book or two and visited Siberia twice for work reasons many years ago. These arguments by scholars imminently more qualified to document and speculate make this small part of human history jump out for me.

Bibliography
Howe, Joshua P. 2014. Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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There are two curves that give reference to the title of this book. The first was developed by Charles David Keeling in 1958. This was his projection linking increased carbon dioxide levels measured in the atmosphere with increased temperatures globally. As the book notes, much of the science of what today is called climate change is connected in one way or another with that original dataset and its resulting graphical curve. Politically, being behind the curve in this sense relates to actions taken or deferred by various national and international organizations.

The other curve Joshua Howe is more focused on, is about the assumptions that are made within the scientific community. Essentially, many scientists find data such as that developed by Keeling, then share that data assuming it will speak for itself and everyone will recognize the need to act. This thinking is linear in that science ‘discovers’, society ‘accepts’ and technology ‘enables’ some sort of course correction. Instead what the science community finds is that unless the political discussion happens throughout, or even if it does, the data will seldom ‘speak for itself’. In fact, much of the data has been called into question by all sorts of communities, professional and societal. The fact that scientists must form consensus on issues such as global climate change brings pause to the non-scientific. To some, consensus means not all scientists, and it also means not proven. To those connected with science, consensus has always been a part of how facts are established.

In fact, Howe points out how this relationship within the science industry, and between science and the community at large, is a long held tension that has always existed. He argues that science as a community should accept a need for contextual social influence and communication to help ‘sell’ findings. Limiting findings to just the ‘facts’ of research data is not likely to get the sort of outcomes science advocates hope for. The controversies created by the case of the Keeling curve and climate change is a good example of how science and society as a whole need to find ways to co-produce information from the facts of data. Howe notes that in some ways the science community has come to learn this lesson, yet stumbles still happen. One need only look at recent controversies over COVID-19, shutdowns, masks, and vaccines to see how the tension still exists. 
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Bibliography
Fujii, Lee Ann. 2018. Interviewing in Social Science Research: A Relational Approach. New York, London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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In the discipline of social science, the ability to conduct effective interviews of research subjects is a must. If any sort of validity can be given to research findings then some form of objective data extracted through interviews is one tool. Another is using data from interviews to help drive the direction of research. This book is a how-to from selecting research candidates, building relationships, and strategic approaches in the actual interviews, to how to interpret data.

In particular, the section of ferreting out data patterns I found particularly helpful. There are all sorts of ways to preset questions, but unless one is using a set survey tool, topics will present themselves that were not imagined ahead of time by either party in an interview. Applying an ethical approach to coding the unanticipated information is perhaps more important than information one is specifically seeking. Many a research project has changed course mid-stream as these kind of sociological interviews get conducted by researchers.

​At the end of the book there are four sample research approaches that were a part of real research projects. They are diverse. One is about a Rwandan prisoner, another is on a multi-generation resident of Maryland thought of as an ‘old timer’. The third example interview is of a clergyman in Northern Ireland who had lived through the sectarian violence with Britain. Finally, the attitudes of a sex worker attempting rehab in California wraps up the book, and the examples.

Bibliography
​Churchill, Winston S. 1948. The Second World War: The Gathering Storm. Cambridge: Houghton Mifflin Company.
 
This is one volume in a series written by the former British Prime Minister. I only have this particular book and not the entire series. This is a personal memoir, and as such depicts events either within his direct experience as he recalls them, or related events as he came to understand them through others. Churchill directly shares in appendices copies of documents that he refers to such as letters, official transcripts, or published government forms. Comparing his earlier works on his experiences during WWI, in this case he claims more authoritative views. “I am perhaps the only man who has passed through both the two supreme cataclysms of recorded history in high Cabinet office. Whereas, however, in the First World War I filled responsible but subordinate posts, I was for more than five years in the second struggle with Germany the Head of His Majesty’s Government. I write, therefore, from a different standpoint and with more authority than was possible in my earlier books” (Churchill 1948, iii).

The period covered begins in the immediate aftermath of WWI in which Churchill makes the argument that the seeds of WWII were sown between 1919 and 1929 by the victors of the first war by how they set treaties and requirements heaped on the German government. He shares some of the warning signs missed as political unrest in Germany grew, and complacency in both the UK and France did also. Often Churchill as a member of the Cabinet or Parliament was ignored or countered when he would share concerns coming to him through intelligence reports or other means. Given the assumed military size differences between the French and German armies, any aggression was thought to be easily quelled. Yet, as Hitler took power, a warning in itself, he was also building military equipment and growing the ranks of the army and navy. All of this was in violation of the imposed treaties, and many in allied authority simply did not believe it was really happening until it was too late.

For a casual history consumer like me, there was much I didn’t know about how events flowed. In particular I found the section on Hitler’s excuses for moving against Austria particularly foreboding. One can take the rhetoric of Hitler about ethnically German people in Austria, or the need to defend Germany against western or Russian aggression and shift the time and circumstance to today. Recent justification by Vladimir Putin as concerning the Ukraine are pretty much word for word the arguments used by Hitler in his eventual advancements in Austria, then eastern Europe. Serendipitously, I happen to be going through this portion of the book as Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine was beginning, and the similarities were uncanny.

This is an insightful historical work by someone who had a great deal to do with how things went. One can question any sort of memoire for accuracy, or for subjectivity, but then again, the same can be said no matter the historical author even when the work is not autobiographical.
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Bibliography
​Heilbron, J. L. (1996). The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.
 
Max Planck was a contemporary of Albert Einstein. They knew each other and worked on projects together in their respective roles in the physics community in Germany before WWI and in the interwar years. Plank provided some theoretical ideas that helped Einstein work out his special and general theories of relativity. Unlike Einstein, and many other of their colleagues, Planck was not Jewish. As Hitler’s Nazi party came into power, Germany’s scientists had to decide. Would they continue in Germany and serve ‘from the inside’, making the best they could of it? Would they stay and risk whatever the Nazis decided about their fate? Would they leave Germany and continue to pursue their scientific careers elsewhere? How vocal should they become, supportive of the new regime, publicly opposed it, or stay relatively quiet about political issues. Einstein left for America and became very vocal about his opposition to Hitler’s government. Plank decided to stay in Germany and continue his scientific leadership role.

For Planck, his decision, he said afterwards, was not to support Hitler, but to try to preserve German science and scientist from within. He encouraged Jewish scientists to remain in Germany as WWII approached. He also worked to shield them from policies that would put their positions and their lives at risk. Eventually he failed at both. In fact, he was even pressured to be openly supportive of Hitler’s government. On one occasion he attended a public meeting about the German scientific industry. It’s not clear how much pressure was placed on him, but he attended dressed in Nazi regalia and joined the crowd at the end in the Nazi salute, visibly mouthing a “Heil Hitler” as the meeting closed.
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German science, at least in the field of quantum mechanics, we often at the forefront of advancement. During WWII, theoretical lost to practical weapons creation. Most of the best minds left Germany so the field suffered even more from a sort of ‘brain drain’. Heilbron concludes, “Planck remained in office largely from a sense of duty owed not to individuals, certainly not to the state, but to the institutions of German science he served” (Heilbron, 1996, p. 207). Others noted by Heilbron thought of Planck more as a coward, or worse, a sympathizer. Perhaps his motivation is impossible to know for sure, even by Planck himself, yet his actions are unavoidable. In attempting to maintain status quo while everything was changing around him, his own standing and Germany’s as well were permanently damaged in the 1930s and 1940s. Nations that benefited by the emigration of German scientists are still world scientific leaders, especially in quantum mechanics.