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1984 (2,9) No Word for 'Science'
Jul. 21st, 2012 10:43 amIn today’s installment from chapter three of Goldstein’s book, we learn about the role of science in the future totalitarian societies of the world. I find it interesting how rather apt this also seems in explaining science in today’s America, though the subordination is not to the politics of Big Brother but to a bastardized notion of Christianity in support of our plutocrats.
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The search for new weapons continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for “Science.” The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance - meaning, in effect, war and police espionage - the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. In so far as scientific research still continues, this is its subject matter.
-- “1984” by George Orwell
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The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery.
I like this line. It took me a while to figure out what Orwell was getting at. I take it that Oceania cannot afford to let people sit around and reflect and think, and moreover, it is not like people are allowed to read creative and critical books. They have books but they are strictly formulaic and can be put together like building cookie-cutter houses. And, of course, there is no need to use machinery to make labor easier when you wish to keep proles on the level of the animals.
_ _ _
The search for new weapons continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for “Science.” The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance - meaning, in effect, war and police espionage - the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. In so far as scientific research still continues, this is its subject matter.
-- “1984” by George Orwell
_ _ _
The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery.
I like this line. It took me a while to figure out what Orwell was getting at. I take it that Oceania cannot afford to let people sit around and reflect and think, and moreover, it is not like people are allowed to read creative and critical books. They have books but they are strictly formulaic and can be put together like building cookie-cutter houses. And, of course, there is no need to use machinery to make labor easier when you wish to keep proles on the level of the animals.
