Allan Schnaiberg's 1980 nightmare : pollution-producing SkyGods vs impacted-upon earthlings

SkyGod Machine in earthling Garden

In the1970s, the Canadian-born sociologist of environmentalism, Allan Schnaiberg , was the first to detect the emerging split in popular Science that this blog (also Canadian-born) is devoted to exploring ; so a man well worth honouring.


But as I have written in an earlier post in SVE, I didn't stumble upon Schnaiberg's seminal concept until I chanced upon the work of Myanna Lahsen --- thanks to the wonders of Google search.

She casually mentioned the concept of earlier-dominant production science versus the contested rise of today's impact science, as if all her readers would know what it meant.

But I didn't --- or rather I did.

It sounds an awful lot like my concept of earlier (pre-war) SkyGod scientists versus later (post-war) earthling scientists.

I eventually traced the meme back to Schnaiberg and a time period almost 40 years ago.

Long past overdue, then,  for the concept to be a commonplace and a cliche in the vocabulary of every warmist earthling environmentalist green.

Basically it can be seen as a variant of my beloved contrast between the fundamental second law of thermodynamics (matter and energy gets less and less useful to humanity (aka more and more of it becomes useless  particulate pollution and heat pollution) and the derivative first law of thermodynamics.

The sciences of half-truthfulness...

The first law says (as a half truth) that matter and energy can't ever be destroyed but only changed into alternative forms.

A half truth because converting the concentrated energy in the gasoline that powers your Piper Cub into ever so slightly heating the entire Universe does not destroy that energy --- but it certainly ruins for all time its further usefulness for humanity.

 In fact, if that waste heat in the air helps heat up the entire atmosphere --- en route to the frozen reaches of the universe --- it is likely to ruin all of humanity as well.

Similarly, impact science is fundamental science while production science is but a half truth science derived from it.

Production science produces a machine which makes lots of widgets, very cheaply and profitably - apparently the end of story.

Impact science visits that once-successful widget machine cum factory in the town of Anywhereville Quebec and discovers that the factory is throwing off deadly pollution that is ever so slowly poisoning the employees at the widget factory. As a result, they are producing less widgets per hour.

It is this, not unfair competition from the Japanese, that is the real cause of the factory owner's declining profits.

Production science is about The Machine, Impact Science is about The Machine in the Garden, with both garden and machine complexly interacting with each other in unpredictable ways.

(Hat tip to Leo Marx for re-applying his famous meme!)

Deniers cum skeptics who deny change in geology, biology, climate and physics  still only see science in the simplistic terms and certitudes of production science.

Warmists accept that changes happens and happens unpredictably and are much less sanguine about our ability to correct our own mistakes in time to prevent real harm.

Climate deniers - I steadfastly affirm in the face of zillions of scientist-bloogers who argue to the contrary - do believe in Science.

But it is the older, out-dated, hubristic SkyGod science - not current earthling science .....

the only war that Climate Skeptics ever lost was WWII (and we have the SF books to prove it !)

People who like to contrast the big finned car culture of the Fifties with the counterculture hippie dropouts of the Sixties must remember a lot different 1950s that I do.

In the bright daylight, we sure were an optimistic bunch of baby boomers, I'll grant you that.

But at night, before the glowing screen ?

Totally dif.

It was all about invading body snatchers and slimy Blobs and radioactive mutant ants eating New York.

My mom wasn't alone in liking to read sci fi short stories and by 1961, so did I.

Most had been written between the 1930s and the 1950s, long before being bundled in science fiction hard cover anthologies in the early 1960s - these were not your current SF, by any means.

Even as a twelve year old I could tell that the older stories (which I now know were written in the pre-war late1930s and early 1940s)  had a totally different atmosphere from most of those set in my own time (actually written from the very late1940s onwards, ie in the post-war period .)

Adult re-reading only confirms it ---- and the literary critics, much more SF-oriented than me-- helped explain why.

Production SF pre 1945 vs Impact SF post 1945

Hard SF ,"production SF", really suffered a loss of faith after 1945, while soft SF, "impact SF" became what the SF magazine readers got to read (because, perhaps, that was all that talented SF writers felt like writing !)

Now I have borrowed (and adapted) the terms "production science" and "impact science" , originally conceived by Canadian-born sociologist Allan Schnaiberg in 1980 --- I first came across these terms in the work of Myanna Lahsen who I feel offers the best grained explanation for the reasons why famous scientists become infamous deniers.

Best as in , natch ,  'cause it agrees with my assessment.

Production science was about the scientists who designed and built  linear, deterministic, discrete, man-made "machines" : successfully, on time and under budget, end of story.

Impact science was the scientists who went outside the lab or worksite, into the garden where the machines had been placed and asked, how did this new machine react to all its human, biological and physical neighbours - and them to it.

It was a complex, chaotic science and so unpredictable and unexpected results were the norm of their discoveries.

As in "atomic bomb tests, done to defend America from Communist attack, end up creating mutant giant killer ants from harmless American garden ants - and they destroy New York - while the sneaky Russian Commies sent in humanitarian aid and assistance to a grateful New York state".

Hard "production' SF is Denier porn ; soft "impact" SF is sci fi for Greens .

Hiroshima Atomic Energy and Auschwitz Eugenics had made many an optimistic 1939 NY World's Fair SF Convention attendee lose a little faith by late 1945 - and it showed in their writing : most SF writers became proto-greens but some remained proto-deniers.....