Tea at Trianon: G.K. Chesterton on Scientific 'Experts'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

G.K. Chesterton on Scientific 'Experts'

From The Imaginative Conservative:

Experts, Chesterton worried, were the new aristocrats of his 20th century. Or at least they liked to fancy themselves as such. He much preferred the aristocrats of old, who merely thought that they knew how to live well, as opposed to the modern expert claimed to know better. Of course, that same modern expert may very well have great command over the particulars of his chosen field of expertise. And that knowledge might come to be very valuable indeed. Then again, it might not. In any case, scientific expertise, alleged, advertised, or actual, should never be the end of the story. This is especially so when it comes to the application of scientific knowledge or the uses to which it is put.

Let’s be clear here. G.K. Chesterton was no Luddite. He readily conceded that products of science could be “wonderful things.” At the same time, he still reminds us, no product of science is, “in any ultimate sense,” necessarily a good thing. For that matter, no product of science is, “by definition,” automatically a bad thing.

For Chesterton, what it all came down to was this: science was either a “tool or a toy.” Actually, he refined that statement just a bit more: science was “only” a tool or a toy. Did he prefer one to the other? Most definitely. Science as a toy was science as its “highest and noblest.” After all, a toy was something of far greater “philosophical grandeur” than a mere tool. Why? Because a toy “is valued for itself,” while a tool only has value for some other purpose. In sum, a toy is an end in itself, while a tool is only a means to an end.

In his musings on science Chesterton never got around to musing about viruses and models. But he did get to the heart of the matter when it came to the role of science and scientific expertise, no matter the matter at hand: in dealing with pandemics science may not be a toy, but it can only be a tool. (Read more.)