“Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle (translated by W.D. Ross)

This philosophical treatise, written by Aristotle, describes his theory of how best a man should live. It contains his thoughts on morality, reason, wisdom, friendship, happiness, courage, honor, and politics. He begins by debating what is truly excellent in life. “For no function of man has so much permanence as excellent activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge), and of these themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are blessed spend their life most readily and most continuously in these.” He settles on happiness as an end unto itself. “The attribute in question, then, will belong to the happy man, and he will be happy throughout his life; for always, or by preference to everything else, he will do and contemplate what is excellent, and he will bear the chances of life most nobly and altogether decorously, if he is ‘truly good’…. If activities are, as we said, what determines the character of life, no blessed man can become miserable; for he will never do the acts that are hateful and mean. For the man who is truly good and wise, we think, bears all the chances of life becomingly and always makes the best of circumstances…. And if this is the case, the happy man can never become miserable—though he will not reach blessedness, if he meet with fortunes like those of Priam.”

Moderation, or the middle path, is one of Aristotle’s keys to living the good life. “The intermediate state is in all things to be praised, but that we must incline sometimes towards the excess, sometimes towards the deficiency; for so shall we most easily hit the mean and what is right.” Next, he circles back to describe excellence, “With regard to the excellences in general we have stated their genus in outline, viz. that they are means and that they are states, and that they tend by their own nature to the doing of the acts by which they are produced, and that they are in our power and voluntary, and act as right reason prescribes.”

Aristotle details the qualities of the best men. “Honour is the prize of excellence and it is to the good that it is rendered…. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character…. The proud man is concerned with honours; yet he also bears himself with moderation towards wealth and power and all good or evil fortune, whatever may befall him, and will be neither over-joyed by good fortune nor over-pained by evil. For not even about honour does he care much, although it is the greatest thing.” To this ideal, Aristotle contrasts the mass of men in the world, “For without excellence it is not easy to bear gracefully the goods of fortune; and, being unable to bear them, and thinking themselves superior to others, they despise others and themselves do what they please. They imitate the proud man without being like him, and this they do where they can; so they do not act excellently, but they do despise others. For the proud man despises justly (since he thinks truly), but the many do so at random.”

Aristotle continues describing the attributes of the best of men, “He does not run into trifling dangers, nor is he fond of danger, because he honours few things; but he will face great dangers, and when he is in danger he is unsparing of his life, knowing that there are conditions on which life is not worth having. And he is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of receiving them; for the one is the mark of a superior, the other of an inferior…. The proud man wishes to be superior…. It is a mark of the proud man also to ask for nothing or scarcely anything, but to give help readily, and to be dignified towards people who enjoy high position and good fortune, but unassuming towards those of the middle class; for it is a difficult and lofty thing to be superior to the former, but easy to be so to the latter, and a lofty bearing over the former is no mark of ill-breeding, but among humble people it is as vulgar as a display of strength against the weak. Again, it is characteristic of the proud man not to aim at the things commonly held in honour, or the things in which others excel; to be sluggish and to hold back except where great honour as a great result is at stake, and to be a man of few deeds, but of great and notable ones. He must also be open in his hate and in his love (for to conceal one’s feelings is a mark of timidity), and must care more for truth than for what people will think, and must speak and act openly; for he is free of speech because he is contemptuous, and he is given to telling the truth, except when he speaks in irony to the vulgar…. Nor is he given to admiration; for nothing to him is great…. He is one who will possess beautiful and profitless things rather than profitable and useful ones.”

Finally, Aristotle details the attributes contained in the best of communities. To further these ideal attributes is the job of politics. “The unjust has been divided into the unlawful and the unequal, and the just into the lawful and the equal…. For practically the majority of the acts commanded by the law are those which are prescribed from the point of view of excellence taken as a whole; for the law bids us practise every excellence and forbids us to practise any vice. And the things that tend to produce excellence taken as a whole are those of the acts prescribed by the law which have been prescribed with a view to education for the common good. But with regard to the education of the individual as such, which makes him without qualification a good man, we must determine later whether this is the function of the political art or of another…. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people usually call it polity. The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects…. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to merit what belongs to the city—all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since timocracy too tends to involve a mass of people, and all who have the property qualification could be equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations; for in its case the form of constitution is but a slight deviation…. It is the ideal of monarchy to be paternal rule.”

“The Case for the Enlightenment” by John Robertson

This book is at once a narrow comparative case study between Scotland and Naples in the 18th century and a broader look at the Enlightenment’s ideas and its movement across Europe. Robertson begins by making the case for a single “the Enlightenment”, as opposed to multiple “enlightenments”, which took place in distinct geographies or involved just specialized fields of study such as philosophy or literature. He makes the case that what unified the Enlightenment thinkers was not just a resort to reason, but a skepticism about the world and a “deliberate attempt to join mental and moral philosophy into a single science.” The key to this was a Europe-wide Republic of Letters, promoted by Erasmus, which was a network of correspondence and exchange of notes, manuscripts, specimens, antiquities, and books that from its inception, while certainly not excluding clergy, was founded on lay principles. 

Scotland and Naples shared the commonality of being “courtless kingdoms”, ruled from England and Hapsburg Spain respectively. The citizenry, led by their nobles, revolted form time to time and at other periods acquiesced to foreign rule. During this time the ideas of Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, the Stoics, Pyrrho, Grotius, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, and Locke were being circulated around Europe. Against this free-thinking trend, the Papacy in Italy and the Presbyterians in Scotland were fighting a rearguard action for orthodoxy, often imprisoning or executing supposed heretics. Following the long death of Charles II, the Spanish succession crisis would have a large intellectual impact on both kingdoms. For Naples, it was the more obvious decision of who would be their new king and how their government might modernize. For Scotland, King William and Queen Anne’s own impending deaths without heir were to weigh heavily on the Act of Settlement and eventual Act of Union in 1707. Both Naples and Scotland were fully coopted into empires and became “kingdoms governed as provinces.” This meant that their interests were often disregarded, wealth left their lands through taxation and absentee landlords, trade and commercial development was ignored, and  formal government was locally absent or removed. In the while, international commerce was supplanting feudal landholding as the foundation and wealth of the monarchies of Europe. These combustable times bred thinkers willing to challenge the old ways. 

For Naples, the preeminent proto-Enlightenment thinker was Giambattista Vico. He was far from a heretic. In fact, most of his writings, while espousing quasi-Epicurean strains, tried to explicitly refute Hobbes and Bayle, particularly the latter’s assertion that a community of atheists could be virtuous. His work sought to uphold “the idea of providence in a world fluctuating between the ‘chance’ of Epicurus and the ‘necessity’ of Descartes.” When studying the nature of man Vico wanted to consider him as he was, not as we might wish him to be. “Legislation considers man as he is in order to make good use of him in society. Thus out of ferocity, avarice, and ambition, the three great vices found across the human race, it creates the military, merchant, and governing classes which provide the strength, wealth, and wisdom of states; out of vices which could destroy mankind, in the other words, it makes civil happiness.” Whereas Machiavelli had written for the prince, Vico meant for his work to be widely circulated amongst the literate classes. It was not a manual for a leader, but a study for the benefit of society at large. Vico laid the groundwork for later explicit studies of the political economy of a particular country, as well as for nations in general. 

In Scotland, it was David Hume who would lead scholarship into the Enlightenment. In his Treaty of Human Nature he would state that his subject was “the science of man.” His was a theory from induction- observation and experience taking precedence from a priori reasoning. He also believed that reason was a slave to the passions, which were the first to stimulate man. Still, he tempered his Epicureanism by stating that sympathy for other men led to a moralization of the base passions. “Moral distinctions, therefore, must be derived from a ‘moral sense’. That is, they must be felt, and take the form of ‘moral sentiments’.” Justice, Hume believed, was not a natural virtue, but an artificial one that man had come accustomed to accept through experience. “It may not always be in an individual’s immediate or direct interest to behave justly towards his fellows; but this does not alter the fact that justice, and hence society, are in every individual’s interest.” Besides sympathy for his fellow man, Hume believed that man in society relied most on custom. Custom was what caused sentiments to first develop and to eventually become regarded as natural in society. Natural laws derived from custom. Although Vico and Hume did not communicate directly, they were engaged in debate with the same authors: Bayle, Descartes, Hobbes, as well as the older Hellene philosophers. “Vico possessed a keen sense of the power of the passions, and of their origin in the physical senses; he acknowledged the force of the Epicurean account of human nature. But he sought to offset this by an Augustinian morality by which, as a result of the Fall, sin was equated with indulgence of the passions, and virtue with restraint…. Hume maintained that many of our moral sentiments derive naturally from our passions, as we find them to be ‘useful and agreeable’. In adopting the useful and agreeable as the standard of morality, Hume was endorsing and elaborating the Epicurean theory of Bayle, but repudiating the Augustinian residue still present in Mandeville, who (like Vico in this respect) had persisted in identifying virtue with a strict idea of self-denial.” For Hume morality did not tame the passions, but was in accordance with basic human nature. Through sympathy and custom, moral sentiments in society would channel the passions to create a just nation. 

What Hume and Vico shared was a conception of the world where man had constructed the social structures in which he lived and by tinkering and reforming these structures could create a more perfect life here on Earth. Man was responsible for his life while on this Earth. That tradition was the founding of modern thought and The Enlightenment.

“Invitation to a Banquet” by Fuchsia Dunlop

This book is Chinese history seen through the lens of regional Chinese cuisine. “If cooking was key to the evolution of humans in general, only the Chinese have placed it at the very core of their identity…. The Book of Rites noted that some of the wild tribes of the east and south were not only tattooed, but ate food untouched by fire…. Some foreigners were less uncouth than others. While those who were beyond the pale could be described as ‘raw’ (sheng), more amenable barbarians were ‘cooked’ (shu).”

Dunlop begins by describing the setup of a standard meal. “A Chinese meal normal consists of fan, usually rice in the south, plus cai (or song in Cantonese) which means dishes, which is to say ‘everything else’. The Chinese character cai means both ‘dish’ and, literally, ‘vegetable’; it is built from the sign for ‘grass’ above the sign for ‘pick’ or ‘gather’, which itself is a pictogram of a hand over a plant…. Yet however delicious and extravagant the dishes, their ultimate purpose is to accompany the staple grain, or, as people say, to ‘send the rice down’ (xia fan)…. Fan can mean any kind of cooked grain, but there is a traditional hierarchy of cereals. Rice is most highly prized for southerners, while northerners prefer wheat in the form of dumplings, noodles, pancakes and breads. Less desirable are the so-called ‘course’ or ‘miscellaneous’ grains (cu liang or za liang) eaten by the poor and in marginal areas, including maize, sorghum and oats. At the bottom of the pile lie starchy tubers such as potatoes and sweet potatoes, which are normally only eaten as staple foods during famines or because of dire poverty.”

The basic format of a typical Chinese dish is detailed thus, “Chinese ate food that was transformed through cutting into small chopstickable pieces. One ancient term for cooking was ge peng — ‘to cut and to cook’. The habit of cutting food into slices, slivers or dice was, of course, inseparable from the habit of eating with chopsticks, and the two evolved together…. Most Chinese dishes are blends of two or more ingredients cut into similarly shaped pieces and cooked together…. Much everyday Chinese cooking involves vegetables cooked with morsels of meat. Perhaps the archetypal modern Chinese supper dish is a few slivers of pork stir-fried with garlic chives, bamboo shoots or any other vegetable…. You don’t even need much of the meat as such, because even a trace of pork can enhance the taste of vegetables: a dash of pork broth, a scattering of cracklings or a spoonful of lard as the cooking medium…. To be Chinese was not just to eat cooked food; it was also to eat grain. Describing the barbarian tribes on the fringes of the Chinese heartland, the Book of Rites mentioned, besides their tattoos and their weird habit of eating food untouched by fire, that some of them didn’t eat grain.”

Chinese also appreciate different aspects of food than those in the West. “When Chinese people discuss something they have eaten, they rarely omit mention of its mouthfeel…. Achieving textural perfection is a key concern for any cook worth his salt…. The Chinese not only relish a much greater range of mouthfeels than most westerners; they also appreciate contrast…. This creative exploration of texture allows the Chinese to eat not only a much greater range of ingredients than most westerners, but a much greater range of parts of those foods…. Elite Peking duck restaurants famously offer banquets made from ‘every part of the duck but its quack’, from webs to tongues, hearts to gizzards, each part prepared in a different way…. In most places in China, offal is still more expensive than meat.” 

Another aspect of Chinese cooking is how the ingredients that are used are prepared, “Chinese chefs always try to strike a balance between ‘root flavours’ (benwei) and ‘blended’ or ‘harmonized’ flavours (tiaowei) — the latter meaning flavours that are created through the addition of seasonings…. Often, dishes like [the former] have the word ‘clear’ (qing) in their names as a reminder that the character of the main ingredient should shine out, clear and bright, uncluttered by extraneous elements…. The most elitist food in China is often the most understated…. Even within regions, the higher you ascend the social scale, the lighter the flavours…. A light soup (tang) is an essential part of almost every Chinese meal. In fact, a kind of shorthand for a basic meal is ‘four dishes and a soup’ (si cai yi tang)…. At simple suppers in Chinese homes, a light broth may be the only liquid refreshment, serving the same function as a glass of water or wine at a western meal.”

Finally, Dunlop describes the most essential aspect in the preparation of Chinese food. “The crux of Chinese cooking is what is known as huohou, the command of heat, in terms both of intensity and duration (the first part of the word, huo, means ‘fire’, while the second can mean ‘waiting’ and/or ‘watching’)…. Written or printed Chinese recipes tend not to specify timings in seconds or minutes because this would be impossible, yet their instructions for huohou are meticulous…. The pressure on a chef working at the wok range in a high-level restaurant with an exacting clientele is unbelievably intense. If he is cooking for discerning Chinese guests, he will know that they expect him, with every dish, to hit all the targets of se xiang wei xing — ‘colour, fragrance, flavour, form’ — each of which depends on his command of huohou.”

Dunlop concludes, “There are some commonalities to Chinese cuisines: the use of chopsticks and the cutting of food into small pieces, the centrality of fermented legumes and tofu, the lack of dairy foods, the ubiquity of steaming and stir-frying, the concept of a meal consisting of fan and cai. But beyond these generalities, Chinese local and regional traditions are so diverse that they resist a unifying definition…. Areas that are now fully integrated and of the utmost culinary significance like the Cantonese south were once regarded as beyond the pale: primitive swamplands filled with snake-eating barbarians…. China, with its vast geographical diversity, is more like a continent than a nation. Within the borders of post-Qing China are many terrains and climates…. During the Song Dynasty, the key principles of healthy eating were thought to be moderation and ‘naturalness’ (ziran).”

“Exact Thinking in Demented Times” by Karl Sigmund

This book is a history of the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists who met regularly every Thursday evening in a private, by-invitation-only, seminar at the University of Vienna, followed by drinks and more debating late into the night at a neighborhood coffeehouse. Together, the members of the Vienna Circle originated and molded the idea of logical positivism, while having the ambitious goal of unifying all human knowledge into one grand discipline. Their program was anti-metaphysical and anti-theological to its core. The Circle’s manifesto stated, “the scientific worldview is characterized not so much by theses of its own, but rather by its basic attitude, its points of view, its direction of research…. In science there are no ‘depths’; instead, there is surface everywhere. All experience forms a complex network, which cannot always be surveyed in its totality and which often can only be grasped in parts. Everything is accessible to Man; and Man is the measure of all things…. The scientific worldview serves life, and life embraces it.”

The Vienna Circle was formed in 1924 by philosopher Moritz Schlick, mathematician Hans Hahn, and sociologist Otto Neurath. The Circle hammered away at the tension between science and metaphysical philosophy. “Clarification of the traditional philosophical problems sometimes leads to their unmasking as pseudo-problems, and other times converts them into empirical problems, which can thereby be subjected to the methods of experimental science. The task of philosophical work lies in this type of clarification of problems and statements, rather than in the crafting of special ‘philosophical’ statements.” The intellectual milieu in Vienna during the inter-war years was vibrant. Scholars from all over the Empire, as well as Germany, and the rest of Europe strove to get chairs at the University of Vienna. 

One particular inspiration for the Vienna Circle was Ernst Mach. He wrote, “all of science tries to replace or economize experience by mental models, since models are easier to deal with than experiences, and can even replace them in some situations…. By recognizing science’s fundamentally economical nature, we rid science of all mysticism…. [However,] we should not confuse the foundations of the real world with the intellectual props that serve to evoke that world on the stage of our thoughts.” Mach was an anti-Kantian. He did not believe in the “Thing-in-Itself”. For him, there was no independent object absent of our sensations. The whole world was made up of sensory perceptions. The physicist Mach was to have a great debate with the mathematician Ludwig Boltzmann on whether atoms existed. Mach was skeptical, as atoms, in his day, could not be seen, detected, or experienced. Boltzmann was less of a radical empiricist. He stated, “what the brain is to man, mathematics is to science…. No equation ever represents any phenomenon with absolute precision. Each equation is an idealization, stressing commonalities and neglecting differences, and therefore going beyond experience.” Despite his best efforts, he was also a closet metaphysician. “Metaphysics appears to exert an irresistible charm on the human mind, and this temptation, despite all our vain attempts to lift the veil, has not lost any of its intensity. It seems impossible to squelch our inborn urge to philosophize.” Anguished to the end, he would hang himself from a window pane while on vacation. Hertz retorted, “science has progressed almost more through deciding what to ignore than through deciding what to study.” Albert Einstein’s breakthroughs in physics, particularly his special and general theories of relativity, his principle of equivalence, and his discovery that light consists of particles, David Hilbert’s mathematics, particularly his extrication of geometry from the human physical world, and Bertrand Russell’s new logic, particularly his paradoxes, were all vital inspirations for the Circle.

One motto of the early Vienna Circle was that facts should replace human intuitions when they disagreed. As such, in math, Hahn’s work on infinite dimensions was a step in that direction. In philosophy, Schlick pronounced, “after thus sentencing theoretical philosophy to death, life itself urged me to delve into the most important part of practical wisdom, the study of man and the human condition, something I had always maintained belonged to science rather than philosophy.” The philosopher Schlick became one of Einstein’s proteges and popularizers, writing a book on spacetime, which expounded Einstein’s combination of gravity with geometry.

Ludwig von Wittgenstein was to fundamentally change the direction of the Vienna Circle, although he never attended a single meeting. The Circle became enamored with the analysis of language. Two times in a row the Circle read aloud and analyzed every word in Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus” line by line, first under the suggestion of Kurt Reidemeister, then under Rudolf Carnap. Carnap was insistent that all philosophy had to be distilled by the new logic being espoused by Russell, Frege, and Wittgenstein. “If philosophy is willing to follow the path of science (in the strictest sense), then it will not be able to do so without this thoroughly efficient instrument for clarifying concepts and cleaning up problematic situations.” The Circle adopted Wittgenstein’s phrase from the “Tractatus” as its own shibboleth, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Wittgenstein, himself, felt that “philosophy is the discipline that deals with all those propositions that are assumed to be true without proof by the various sciences.” His book’s aim was to “draw a limit to thinking, or rather- not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think on both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought). The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language, and what lies on the other side will simply be nonsense.” Wittgenstein was always a bit of a riddle, even to himself. He goes on about the nature of philosophy, “philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy, thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.” But then he continues, “the inexpressible is contained- unexpressed- in the expressed…. There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” What are we to make of all of this contradiction? Wittgenstein tries to square the circle. “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)” Despite the cryptic phrasing, or perhaps because of it, the “Tractatus” was a huge hit within the Circle. Hahn stated, “logic therefore does not say anything about the world; it only has to do with the way in which I talk about the world.” Schlick added, “logical conclusions express nothing about real facts. They are merely rules for using our signs.” Neurath, however, thought that Wittgenstein was all bunk and his words all smelled distinctly of metaphysics.

In 1929, the Vienna Circle finally published its own manifesto, “The Scientific Worldview.” It was a rejection of all things metaphysical and theological. It stated that only results based on experimentations and logical analysis were to be accepted as truth. Its goal was to tackle the problems at the foundations of mathematics, physics, geometry, biology, psychology, and the social sciences and to integrate them into one core discipline. Later Schlick emphasized, “philosophy is not a set of statements. It is not a science. But what is it then? We see in philosophy not a system of knowledge, but a system of actions: philosophy is that activity through which the meaning of statements is revealed or determined. Through philosophy, statements are explained; through science they are verified. The latter is concerned with the truth of the statements, while the former is concerned with what they actually mean…. The method of science is observation and experiment, combined with calculation and inference; through this method one establishes the set of true propositions about the real world. The method of the philosopher, by contrast, is reflection; the philosopher looks upon the given statements, observations, and calculations, and explains what they mean. To do philosophy is not to give a list of true propositions. It is, rather, an art- an activity leading to clarity.” Hahn separated philosophies turned towards the world, such as Epicurus and Hume, with philosophies turned away from the world, such as Kant and Plato. “The English, after all, are known as a nation of shopkeepers. And it is surely no accident that one and the same nation gave the world both democracy, on the one hand, and the rebirth of a philosophy turned toward the world, on the other; nor is it an accident that the same land that saw the beheading of a king also witnessed the execution of metaphysics.” Questions such as “Is the external world real?” are not genuine problems, but pseudo-problems, for they cannot be answered conclusively. According to Carnap, “everything that is beyond the factual must be considered meaningless” because according to the manifesto, “the scientific worldview knows no unsolvable riddles.”

As the years past, the Vienna Circle became more publicly known and its membership grew more diverse, although still having to be specially invited to join. Kurt Godel was a mathematician universally recognized as brilliant and insane. Einstein considered him his only true peer. Godel solved Hilbert’s riddle that “there exist true mathematical statements that cannot be derived by formal means from a set of axioms.” Godel’s proof of incompleteness claimed, “if mathematics is consistent, then the statement “mathematics is consistent” is precisely one of those weird Godelian propositions that are true but cannot be proved!” Karl Popper was never invited into the Vienna Circle but was a friendly antagonist, sparring and clarifying the views of the Circle because his views were greatly similar. He viewed induction as a flawed method because no matter the amount of experimentation, it could never lead to a general law. He stated, “my view implied that scientific theories, if they are not falsified, forever remain hypotheses or conjectures. This consideration led to a theory in which scientific progress turned out not to consist in the accumulation of observations, but in the overthrow of less good theories and their replacement by better ones- in particular, by theories of greater content.” The mathematician Karl Menger  advanced the ideas of dimension theory, while in his spare time editing his father, Carl’s, posthumous book, clarifying his invention of marginal utility theory. The economist Franz Alt invented the concept of a utility function and contributed to the burgeoning field of computer science. Abraham Wald founded the field of statistical sequential analysis and started to sketch out the concept of general equilibrium in economic systems. Oskar Morgenstern invented game theory along with John von Neumann, a friend of many in the Vienna Circle.

Already tottering from years of domestic authoritarian rule, the Vienna Circle finally broke up after the Anschluss. A few members had already left Austria, sensing which way the fascist winds were blowing. After the German invasion, even those members who were not themselves Jews were branded as friends of Jews and lost their University positions as well. Some emigrated to England or America and continued their correspondence as best they could. Godel had to take the trans-Siberian railroad across Russia, before setting sail to America from Japan. Neurath hopped on a stolen Dutch naval schooner to cross the heavily mined English Channel. The lucky ones found professorships in the Allied countries. The historian of physics Gerald Holton coined the phrase, “from the Vienna Circle to Harvard Square.” In fact, many were not so fortunate. The more junior members of the Circle often could not get teaching visas to flee abroad and many died in the concentration camps, committed suicide, or lived out their days in poverty, stripped of all ability to earn a living teaching in the Reich.

After World War II, there was a feeble effort to resurrect the Vienna Circle, but most of its members were dead or refused to return to Vienna from teaching posts in the West. The Vienna Circle petered out with a whimper. A few members even recanted their positivist worldview. Godel, ensconced at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, wrote to his mother after the war, “the world and everything in it has a reason and meaning, and actually a good and indubitable meaning. This immediately implies that our existence on Earth, since it has by itself at best a very doubtful meaning, must be a means for another existence…. For we understand neither why this world exists, nor why it is constituted just as it is, nor why we are in it, nor why we were born in just these and no other circumstances. Why then should we fancy that we know one thing for sure, that there is no other world, and that we never were nor ever will be in another?” He was certifiably insane, but that sounds like metaphysics to me.

“Derek Parfit: His Life and Thought” edited by Jeff McMahan

This is a collection of remembrances of Parfit by those who knew him best: his wife, his sister, and his closest colleagues and philosophical collaborators over the years. The collection purposefully avoids treading over the same ground as Edmonds’ famous biography, instead giving anecdotes, life snippets, and very personal remembrances. However, in all, it still gives a very accurate portrait of Parfit’s personality and intellectual pursuits. The philosopher, Johnathan Dancy, suggests, “Parfit thought that correct philosophical thought could free us from an obsessive concern with ourselves and our weal and woe, since the distinction between self and others was not as stark as common sense takes it to be.”

In her essay on their life together, Parfit’s wife, the philosopher, Janet Radcliffe Richards, reminisces, “What I suppose I was gradually discovering was the extremity of the extent to which Derek lived in his mind…. As regards achievement, nearly everything that other people might count as comfort or leisure or enjoyment was sacrificed to his perfectionism in both his philosophical work and his photographs. He wanted to achieve things that he thought had real value in the advancement of knowledge and the production and preservation of things of beauty…. As regards beauty, he was again concerned more with what there was and what there might be than anything he would experience.” She concludes, “He did not want to be a well-rounded human being. He was deeply, essentially, an academic and aesthete, fascinated by the capacities of the human mind in advancing knowledge and creating things of beauty, and he thought of the purpose of his life in terms of advancing such achievements…. He thought it would be appalling if it were true that nothing really mattered…. Also, permanently in the background, were his intense feelings for beauty in art, architecture, the natural world, poetry, and music. My impression is that if he had thought he could produce outstanding work in any of those areas, he might have pursued them, but that he judged that he would not be able to achieve anything of the very highest quality in any of them and had no interest in spending his time on anything less…. What he wanted to do in both areas [of philosophy and photography] was produce something of real objective value, which would in its particular way make the world better than it would have been without it.”

The philosopher, Larry Temkin, suggests about Parfit’s quest for objective truth, “For Derek, the problem of disagreement among epistemic peers regarding the most fundamental truths about ethics was deeply troubling.” Temkin continues by stressing the utter focus of Parfit’s life mission, “Derek not only wrote about future generations, he constantly wrote for future generations. Derek thought in terms of the lasting significance of the truth. Correspondingly, he wrote with the hope, and thought, that his work would still be read for many centuries after he was gone…. Other than books and ice cream, Derek had very few material wants and needs. He didn’t drive a car, own a lavish home, take vacations, dine out extravagantly, have a TV, or have any expensive habits.” The philosopher, Jeff McMahan, relates, “For almost anyone, myself included, a life like Derek’s would be unfulfilling. But he was happy—by which I do not mean that he was subjectively contented, though he was certainly that…. Derek believed, and I agree with him, that there can be various elements in a life that are objectively good for the person in whose life they occur. He referred to this belief as the Objective List Theory of self-interest. He cited as examples “moral goodness, rational activity, the development of one’s own abilities, having children and being a good parent, knowledge, and the awareness of true beauty.” (He also mentions, on the preceding page, loving and being loved by many people.) Derek also suggested, as perhaps the most plausible understanding of well-being, that for these objectively good features of a life to be genuinely good for a person, the person must desire and take pleasure in them.” Parfit, himself, admitted, “My life is my work. I believe I have found some good reasons showing that some things matter objectively, not just because we care about them. If I am wrong, my life has been wasted.” His views on his own death were also somewhat idiosyncratic, “My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. There will later be some memories about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no-one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.” On the breath of humanity in general Parfit posits, “We shall increasingly have the power to make life good…. It may depend on us and our successors whether it will all be worth it. What matters now is that we avoid ending human history…. We are part of a universe that is starting to understand itself.”

The philosopher, Ingmar Persson, shares some thoughts on Parfit’s method of doing philosophy, “Derek got his philosophical ideas first and foremost by reading and rereading texts—especially Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics—again and again rather than by sitting thinking with closed eyes…. If he was not reading, he would be at his computer, wearing out its keys at a speed that amazed computer people, or in a philosophical discussion with somebody…. Derek’s method was that of an extrovert: as remarked, in his thinking he ruminated on a steady flow of inputs from fellow philosophers, alive and dead…. If possible, Derek would always be hooked up to some medium: if he was not reading or writing, he would listen to music or watch a movie, or view works of art or photos…. So Derek lived on cultural products, but also, I think, he lived chiefly for them, in the sense that he lived in order to contribute to increasing their quantity and quality. His all-consuming passion and mission in life seems to have been to leave as good a record as possible for posterity.” Parfit, himself, claimed, “Most of the world looked better in reproduction than it did in life.” He also admitted, “I want people to admire what I produce.”

“The Enneads” by Plotinus (translated by George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A.H. King, Andrew Smith, James Wilberding)

This huge corpus of philosophy was written by the Neo-Platonist, Plotinus, during the course of his lifetime, in the third century. He was almost certainly Greek, definitely born in Egypt, educated in Alexandria, and traveled during his lifetime as far afield as Persia and Rome. Plotinus wrote a comprehensive book of philosophy focusing on metaphysics, ethics, the human condition, and the nature of reality. He begins, “The virtuous person is always content and his state is one of tranquility, his disposition is lovable…. Happiness is living well, something which is bound up with the soul.”

Plotinus spent much of his thought grappling with the essence of the good and the nature of the human soul, the body, and the mind. “The Good is that upon which all beings depend and that ‘which all beings desire’; they have it as their principle and are also in need of it. It itself lacks nothing, being sufficient unto itself and in need of nothing. It is also the measure and limit of all beings, giving from itself Intellect and Substantiality and Soul and Life and the activity of Intellect. And all of these up to the Good are beautiful, but it itself is above Beauty and is the transcendent ruler of all that is best, all that is in the intelligible world…. Intellect is the primary activity that comes from the Good, and the primary Substance that comes from it, while it remains in itself.”

Not much space in “The Enneads” is concerned with worldly matters, but Plotinus does digress on the inequalities between men, “And if someone should complain of wealth and poverty, that is, of the inequality of their distribution to all people, then this person, first, fails to understand that the virtuous person is not interested in equality in these matters, nor does he think that those who have a lot of possessions are better off than those who do not, nor that those in positions of power are better off than private citizens, and that he rather leaves concerns of this kind to others. And the virtuous person is fully aware that there are two kinds of life here—that of the virtuous person and that of the human masses—and for the sage life is aimed at the highest peak and pinnacle, while the life of the all-too-human has again two forms—the one life involves the recollection of virtue and participating in some good, while the common mob is there, in a way, to do the manual work necessary to provide for the better kind.”

Metaphysics occupies the bulk of Plotinus’ philosophy. “And we are each of us an intelligible universe, connected to the world below by the lower parts of our soul, but to the intelligible world by our higher parts, that is, by our cosmic parts…. One should think that there is also a universe in our soul, not only an intelligible one, but a state like that of the soul of the universe. And just as the soul of the universe, too, has been distributed amongst the fixed stars and the planets according to its different powers, the powers in us are also of the same kind as these powers.” He continues, “Certainly, there is both the true universe and the imitation of the universe, that is, the nature of the visible universe. The true universe is, then, in nothing, for there is nothing prior to it…. The universe, the primary being, neither looks for a place nor is it in anything at all. Actually, the universe, being all, is not such that it falls short of itself; rather, it has both completed itself and is equal to itself. And where the universe is, it is there, for it is itself the universe…. And there is nothing to be astonished at if that which is everywhere is in being and in itself. For that which comes to be everywhere is already in unity.”

There is a dichotomy in Plotinus’ philosophy between the sensible world and the intelligible world. “Intellect, being real, thinks Beings and causes them to exist. It is, therefore these Beings…. For anything which is first is not a sensible. For the form in sensibles that is over and above their matter is an image of the real Form…. There must be, therefore, prior to the cosmos those Beings that are not impressions of other Beings, but archetypes and primarily Beings and Intellect’s substantiality…. Intellect, therefore, is the real Beings, and does not think Beings as if they were elsewhere. For they are neither prior to it nor after it. But it is, in a way, the primary lawgiver, or rather it is itself the law of their existence.” Plato’s theory of the forms also plays a substantial role in Plotinus’ metaphysics, “One has to grasp the general substantiality of the Forms, namely, that they exist, without someone, in thinking each of them, providing them with real existence by thought itself…. The thing itself, being without matter, is intelligible and intellection, not such as to be an account of the thing nor an act of apprehension of it, but the thing itself in the intelligible; what else could this be but intellection and scientific understanding…. This is not an image of the thing, but the thing itself…. One has to think that, generally, all things [in the intelligible world] lie within one nature, and that one nature contains them and, in a way, encompasses them, and not that they are each separate, as in the sensible realm.”

Finally, the primacy of the One is paramount to Plotinus’ metaphysics, “All beings are beings due to unity…. Being has life, too—for it is certainly not a corpse—it is, therefore, a many. If Being is Intellect, then it, too, would have to be many, all the more so if it contained the Forms. For the Idea is not one; rather, it is a Number, both each Idea, and all of them together, and one in the way that the cosmos is one. Generally speaking, the One is primary, while Intellect, Forms and Being are not primary…. So, neither will the One be all things, for then it would not still be one; nor is the One Intellect, for in that case it would be all things because Intellect is all things. Nor, finally, is the One Being. For Being is all things…. The biggest puzzle arising is that comprehension of the One is neither by scientific understanding or by intellection…. For this reason, Plato says it is neither to be spoken nor written of…. The One is certainly absent from nothing and from everything; it is present without being present, except to those who are able to receive it, and who are prepared for it, so as to be harmonious with it and in a way grasp it and touch it through their likeness to it…. The One, that is, the principle of all beings, is simple…. Intellect is not dispersed. Rather, it truly coheres with itself, without articulating itself, since it comes immediately after the One, having dared to depart somehow from the One…. Indeed, in truth no name suits it, but if indeed one has to name it, it is fitting to call it ‘One’, as is usually done, but not so that it is something else, and then one. This is the reason it is so difficult to know, and it is known rather through its offspring…. The One must be understood to be unlimited not because it cannot be traversed either in extension or number, but by being incomprehensible in its power…. Thus, there is no good for the One, and so it does not have a will for anything. It is beyond good, and is good not for itself but for other things, insofar as other things can participate in the Good.” 

“The Elephant in the Brain” by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler

Humans often act in their own selfish interests. However, humans do not want to appear to others to be acting selfishly. Through evolution, the brain has come up with mechanisms to obscure one’s own selfish behavior. This book discusses the hidden motives that are ubiquitous in human society. These motives are so hidden that they are often hidden even from our conscious selves. Hanson and Simler’s thesis is “we, human beings, are a species that’s not only capable of acting on hidden motives- we’re design to do it. Our brains are built to act in our self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep “us,” our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide from others.”

The social brain hypothesis suggests that humans got smarter than other primates primarily through competing with other humans in social and political situations. It was an intra-species arms race that led humanity to such massive brain size, through natural selection. Robert Trivers suggests, “both the detection of deception and often its propagation have been major forces favoring the evolution of intelligence. It is perhaps ironic that dishonesty has often been the file against which intellectual tools for truth have been sharpened.” We yearn for sexual partners, friends, prestige, and to be part of winning coalitions and so our brains have evolved to facilitate that type of success. However, signaling fitness as a mate, friend, or teammate is costly. “The best signals- the most honest ones- are expensive. More precisely, they are differentially expensive: costly to produce, but even more costly to fake.” Furthermore, successful humans live within the bounds of societies governed by norms. “The insistent egalitarianism of our ancestors was arguably the world’s first true norm…. Collective enforcement, then, is the essence of norms.” Collective punishment can deter even the strongest of alpha males and force them into submitting to the group. Gossip is an effective tool in spreading reputation and, therefore, status within society.  Meta-norms have also been established, whereby those who don’t actively punish norm breakers, because it might seem too costly, are themselves punished, thereby reinforcing group cohesion and loyalty. 

So, while it pays to be selfish, even more so, it pays not to look selfish. However, “weaker norms, the ones that regulate intention, are harder to notice.” Intentions leave room for more leeway and ambiguity. “Pretexts are a broad and useful tool for getting away with norm violations. They make prosecution more difficult by having a ready explanation for your innocence.” Discreet communication also allows for ambiguous interpretation. Body language, cryptic talk, and subtext all allow for deniability. These methods allow one to convey one’s meaning to the intended recipient, but also leeway to deny that meaning if confronted by a third party or even betrayed by your target. It is even easier to appear unselfish if you are able to deceive yourself. “It’s possible for our brains to maintain a relatively accurate set of beliefs in systems tasked with evaluating potential actions, while keeping those accurate beliefs hidden from the systems (like consciousness) involved in managing social impressions.” As Robert Trivers notes, “we deceive ourselves, the better to deceive others.” This pays evolutionarily. “We’re often rewarded for acting on selfish impulses, but less so for acknowledging them.” To do this we often come up with justifications. “Rationalization, sometimes known to neuroscientists as confabulation, is the production of fabricated stories made up without any conscious intention to deceive.” We spin our version of the truth for others (and ourselves) to consume.

We convey many intentions through body language. Leonard Mlodinow notes, “much, if not most, of the nonverbal signaling and reading of signals is automatic and performed outside our conscious awareness and control.” Hanson and Simler continue, “body language, however, is not arbitrary. Instead nonverbal behaviors are meaningfully, functionally related to the messages they’re conveying.” Acts of following and copying another can show sympathy or submission. Rituals, such as hand shaking or kissing of the hand, similarly convey status. Body language’s primary usefulness is in its lack of explicitness. “Relative to spoken language, it’s considerably more ambiguous. While the overall patterns of body language may be consistent, any isolated behavior will have many interpretations…. This is the magic of nonverbal communication. It allows us to pursue illicit agendas, even ones that require coordinating with other people, while minimizing the risk of being attacked, accused, gossiped about, and censured for norm violations.”

Laughter is another way to convey intentions ambiguously and often unconsciously. “We use laughter to flirt, bond with friends, mock our enemies, probe social norms, and mark the boundaries of our social groups. It’s a response to social cues, laced with interpersonal significance, and yet “we”- the conscious, deliberate, willful parts of our minds- don’t get to decide when we do it.” Humans laugh thirty times more often in groups than when alone. Speakers laugh fifty times more than listeners. Babies laugh more when tickled by their mothers than when tickled by a stranger. Laughter is a social phenomenon. It is a signal of play. “When we laugh at our own actions, it’s a signal to our playmates that our intentions are ultimately playful (although we may seem aggressive)…. When we laugh in response to someone else’s actions, however, it’s a statement not about intentions but perceptions. It says, “I perceive your actions as playful; I know you’re only kidding around.”” Laughter can be used to test norms. “We use laughter to gauge and calibrate social boundaries- both behavioral boundaries (norms) and group membership boundaries (who deserves how much of our empathy)…. Laughter, then, shows us the boundaries that language is too shy to make explicit.” Laughter allows us to test what is appropriate and what will get sanctioned by the group.

Why do humans engage in so much conversation? “We spend roughly 20 percent of our waking lives engaged in conversation.” One might assume it is to gain information cheaply. “Listening costs very little, but has the large benefit of helping us learn vicariously, that is, from the knowledge and experience of others.” Yet, it seems most of us prefer to speak than to listen. In fact, humans have evolved and honed our tools for speech far more than our listening apparatus. It seems that we have evolutionarily adapted to become better speakers, while remaining relatively unchanged on the listening front. Speaking well must have a benefit. “Every remark made by a speaker contains two messages for the listener: text and subtext. The text says, “Here’s a new piece of information,” while the subtext says, “By the way, I’m the kind of person who knows such things.” We convey a signal about the type of person we are (or hope to portray ourselves to be) through speech. We demonstrate our fitness and imply that we are the kind of person others should gravitate towards by talking to others, not by listening.

Humans engage in consumption, but more than that, we enjoy conspicuous consumption. We take pleasure in showing off. We even discuss our services and experiences with others (or post them on social media), so that we can flaunt those intangibles, as well as material goods. What is self-described as individuality or personality is often another way of distinguishing ourselves from the herd. Advertisements rely on this instinct in humans. “The easier it is to judge someone based on a particular product, the more it will be advertised using cultural images and lifestyle associations.” Fancy products are often advertised to the masses, who cannot afford them, because of this third person effect. By showing the product to non-buyers, it still increases the prestige of the product and thus the prestige of those few who can afford to buy it.

Art seems to be wasteful from the standpoint of natural selection. Making art is “a costly behavior, both in time and energy, but at the same time it’s impractical.” However, while it doesn’t make sense to produce art in terms of fitness selection, it does in terms of sexual selection. It signals that you are the type of person who is so fit you can waste your time on art. “Human art is more than just a courtship display, that is, an advertisement of the artist’s value as a potential mate. It also functions as a general-purpose fitness display, that is an advertisement of the artist’s health, energy, vigor, coordination, and overall fitness. Fitness displays can be used to woo mates, of course, but they also serve other purposes like attracting allies or intimidating rivals.” That is why it is often the extrinsic properties of art that society judges artwork by. “These properties include who the artist is, which techniques were used, how many hours it took, how “original” it is, how expensive the materials were, and so on.” These properties help to advertise the “survival surplus” of the artist. It is the very fact that he can spend so much time and effort on something non-functional that suggests that he has such as surplus of fitness that he can afford to waste his energy on frivolous pursuits. The impracticality and waste is actually the feature.

Humans like to appear altruistic. However, “only 3 percent of donors do comparative research to find the best nonprofit to give to…. People also prefer to “diversify” their donations…. Only 1 percent of donations to public charities are anonymous.” This leads Hanson and Simler to believe that charity is actually more about making the giver feel good, than about helping others. They point to five factors that have been shown to influence charitable giving: visibility of the giving, peer pressure, proximity to the people being helped, relatability of the recipient, and thinking others from the opposite sex will notice. After all, “up to 95 percent of all donations are given in response to a solicitation.” Studies have also shown that men are much more likely to give to a cause when approached by a stranger of the opposite sex. We only get social rewards when others notice. Charitable behavior sends a signal that we have an excess of goods and wealth.  It also conveys that we are prosocial individuals, concerned with the greater good. They argue against Peter Singer’s theory of charity. “Singer may be right that there’s no moral principle that differentiates between a child drowning nearby and another one starving thousands of miles away. But there are very real social incentives that make it more rewarding to save the local boy. It’s a more visible act, more likely to be celebrated by the local community, more likely to result in getting laid or making new friends.”

Hanson and Simler rely on much of Bryan Caplan’s work to assert that most education is signaling. The sheepskin effect seems undeniable. “Each of the first three years of high school or college (the years that don’t finish in a degree) are worth on average only about a 4 percent salary bump. But the last year of high school and the last year of college, where students complete a degree, are each worth on average about a 30 percent higher salary.” Students signal their innate intelligence, work ethic, and ability to conform to expectations by finishing what is expected of them, school. School performance is just a proxy for future work productivity.

Medicine in America is expensive. Hanson and Simler suggest much of it is unneeded. There is social pressure to enlist every possible treatment, no matter the cost, lest there be gossip that we didn’t care enough for our dying parent or spouse. Expense has been equated with care. Cheap remedies are deemed not as effective as the newest expensive drug or fancy technological gadget. More is always better. The credentials and reputation of doctors shield them from probing questions. We are taught never to question the experts. However, Alex Tabarrok points out, “more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS and yet physicians still resist and the public does not demand even simple reforms.” Hanson and Simler add, “the public is eager for medical interventions that help people when they’re sick, but far less eager for routine lifestyle interventions.” The one is visible and thus could be commented on by neighbors and peers, while the other is often hidden from public approbation. “Medicine isn’t just about health- it’s also an exercise in conspicuous caring.”

Religiosity is still deemed admirable in American life. More citizens would prefer a Muslim president to an atheist one. Yet, “most religions are fairly lax on questions of private belief as long as adherents demonstrate public acceptance of the religion.” Jonathan Haidt says, “religion is a team sport.” Emile Durkheim agrees that “God is society writ large.” Sacrifice is a signal to the community that one takes religion seriously. Whether it is wearing distinctive clothes, abstaining from eating certain meats, giving alms, or actually killing an animal, sacrifice is costly and, therefore, hard to fake. By going to sermons you are implicitly submitting to the authority of the speaker and the religious organization at large. You are endorsing the message and staying within the norms of the group. Beliefs can be arbitrary, but as long as they are distinctive they serve the purpose of creating an in group/out group bond.

Politics seems to cost more than it’s worth. No single vote actually matters, but it costs time and energy to go to the polls. Yet, voting allows you to signal what team you are on. It is the symbolism that matters, not the results. Voters in “swing” states (where your vote might theoretically matter more) hardly show up to the polls in greater numbers than in “safe” states. Voters care more about values than particular policies. Even uninformed voters are encouraged to go vote. This only makes sense if voting is more about personal expression than actual outcome.

Hanson and Simler argue that in all these fields the brain distorts your real motives to your benefit. It makes you look better to the group than your real motives might. “Key tasks for our distant ancestors were tracking how others saw them, watching for ways others might accuse them of norm violations, and managing stories of their motives and plans to help them defend against such accusations. The difficulty of this task was a big reason humans had such big brains.” They conclude by suggesting, “savvy institution designers must therefore identify both the surface goals to which people give lip service and the hidden goals that people are also trying to achieve.” Humans are selfish and designed to conceal it. Any useful public policy will bear this in mind.

“Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future” by Dan Wang

For much of this past decade, Wang worked for an economics research firm, Gavekal Dragonomics, spotting macro and geopolitical trends for hedge funds and other well-paying institutions, while living in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai, also traveling the country extensively, looking at Chinese trends on the ground. Now, back in America, Wang has formulated this book into standalone chapters, loosely copying the format of the annual letters that he used to send out from China, which riffed on his thoughts of the past year. Wang begins, “Socialist China detains union organizers, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist…. China is an engineering state, which can’t stop itself from building…. Deng Xiaoping promoted engineers to the top ranks of China’s government throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By 2002, all nine members of the Politburo’s standing committee—the apex of the Communist Party—had trained as engineers…. Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua, China’s top science university. For his third term as the Communist Party’s general secretary starting in 2022, Xi filled the politburo with executives from the country’s aerospace and weapons ministries…. The fundamental tenet of the engineering state is to look at people as aggregates, not individuals…. The chief feature of the engineering state is building big public works, no matter the financial or human cost.”

Wang worries about the loss of manufacturing capacity in America. He contrasts it with China’s ability to constantly build. “Embracing process knowledge means looking to people to embody eternity rather than to grand monuments. Furthermore, instead of viewing “technology” as a series of cool objects, we should look at it as a living practice…. The National Nuclear Security Administration found that it could no longer produce “Fogbank,” a classified material used to detonate the bomb, because it hadn’t kept good records of the production process and everyone who knew how to produce it had retired. The NNSA then spent $69 million to relearn how to produce this material…. It’s rare for blueprints to encode enough information to be technologically valuable…. Process knowledge is hard to measure because it exists mostly in people’s heads and the pattern of their relationships to other technical workers. We tend to refer to these intangibles as know-how, institutional memory, or tacit knowledge. They are embodied by an experienced workforce like Shenzhen’s…. Shenzhen is a community of engineering practice where factory owners, skilled engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, and researchers mix with the world’s most experienced workforce at producing high-end electronics…. The value of these communities of engineering practice is greater than any single company or engineer. Rather, they have to be understood as ecosystems of technology.”

There is a takeaway, related first in an anecdote, from Wang’s return to America which stood out. “I found one item particularly quite irksome on my return to America in 2023: a yard sign that begins “In this home we believe science is real.” The Communist Party “followed the science” of zero-Covid to its logical conclusion: barring people from their homes, testing people on a near-daily basis, and doing everything else it could to break the chains of transmission. Four decades ago, it “followed the science” to forcibly prevent many pregnancies in the pursuit of the one-child policy…. We can agree that “science is real.” But we have to keep in mind that there is a political determination involved with how to interpret the science. And that is something the lawyerly society is better at. It has lawyers interested in protecting rights, economists able to think through social science, humanists who consider ethics, and many other voices in the mix, attempting to open policy prescriptions up for debate. China doesn’t have a robust system for political contestation; engineers will simply follow the science until it leads to social immiseration.”

China’s engineering society has other downsides. Wang discusses Xi’s recent effort to clip the wings of China’s own tech sector. “The Communist Party distrusts and fears the Chinese people…. Authoritarian systems aren’t good at disseminating bad news…. China’s crackdown consisted of both technocratic regulation and an effort to impose political discipline on a freewheeling sector. Xi has forcefully reminded China’s tech companies that they cannot represent a power center that challenges the state’s sovereignty…. The Communist Party reminded them that it retains the discretionary power to engineer all aspects of society…. In the name of achieving change, the engineering state delivers such beatings on people or industries that they are unable to pick themselves back up again. Even if Xi’s judgments are right, his brute-force solutions reliably worsen things…. Sometimes, the only thing scarier than China’s problems are Beijing’s solutions…. The Chinese government often resembles a crew of skilled firefighters who douse blazes they themselves ignited…. After alienating so many people, has Xi decided to change course? No, he’s doubling down on promoting engineers to leadership…. Social engineering will increase as well. In 2018, Xi praised teachers as engineers of the soul, a phrase first used by Joseph Stalin…. [Xi] has talked about how love of the party and the country needs to start young, which means to “grab little ones from the cradle.” The party’s messages need to “enter the mind, enter the heart, and enter the hands.””

Xi is also ready to isolate China from the West and go to war if need be to fulfill his vision of China’s future. “In speeches to China’s national security community, he has spoken about “ensuring normal operation of the national economy under extreme circumstances.” What does that mean? As usual, the top leader is oblique, but it suggests that he’s worried that China will one day be cut off from the rest of the world…. The intention, it feels to me, is to build China into a great fortress…. Xi has already put up higher walls. In 2018, while I was living in Hong Kong, I started to tell people that China might close its doors in forty years, by the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic. At that point, it will once again become the Celestial Empire, its people serenely untroubled by the turmoils of barbarians beyond its borders…. It turned out that I was off by a centenary: China had been mostly shut in 2021, a hundred years after the founding of the Communist Party. The pandemic was like a practice run—an exercise in what life in China would be like with its doors closed to the outside world. Xi apparently liked what he saw…. At the end of 2024, the country felt more fortresslike than before the pandemic…. It’s not encouraging for the future of Chinese and American relations that there are only about a thousand American students studying in China. Just before the pandemic, there were ten times that many.”

Wang concludes by, again, pointing out what China’s engineering state sees at its highest priorities. “Rather than prizing efficiency and just-in-time deliveries, China has invested in redundancies and shock buffers…. China takes energy security seriously…. Low carbon capacity—solar, wind, nuclear—has to be understood as part of a broader motivation to make the country dependent on energy sources within its borders…. In 2023, China added twenty times more coal-burning capacity than the rest of the world put together…. That also explains why China is so enthusiastic about electrifying the auto fleet: It would rather burn domestic coal than Middle East oil to power its cars…. China takes food security seriously as well…. [Xi stated,] “The bowls of the Chinese people should be filled mostly with Chinese grain.” The pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have made Beijing more conscious of food self-sufficiency. Chinese leaders have always been aware that food shortages have toppled imperial dynasties. And so one of the things that provincial governors are graded on is whether they are self-sufficient in rice and wheat, while mayors of major cities have to make sure that a variety of foods are grown locally.” Wang ends, “Communist Party propaganda blared in 2023, “China will always be a developing country.””