The Royal Observatory Bomb and the Rise of Unreason
I missed the anniversary by a day but I thought I’d pass on a fascinating but very sad little bit of history. One hundred and twenty years ago yesterday, on February 15th 1894, a 26-year old Frenchman by the name of Martial Bourdin blew himself up near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. His death seems to have been an accident caused by the bomb he was carrying going off prematurely. It is not really known either whether the bomb was meant for the Royal Observatory or somewhere else. Anarchist attacks involving bombs were not uncommon in the 1890s and the range of targets was very wide.
Bourdin was found alive, though very seriously injured, by people who heard the blast. Though able to speak he did not offer any explanation for what had happened. He died about half an hour later.
This sad and perplexing story inspired Joseph Conrad‘s famous novel The Secret Agent. Conrad added an “Author’s Note” to the manuscript of his book:
The attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory: a blood-stained inanity of so fatuous a kind that is is impossible to fathom its origin by any reasonable or even unreasonable process of thought. For perverse unreason has its own logical processes. But that outrage could not be laid hold of mentally in any sort of way, so that one remained faced by the fact of a man blown to pieces for nothing even most remotely resembling an idea, anarchistic or other. As to the outer wall of the Observatory, it did not show as much as the faintest crack.
We’ll never know what Bourdin’s motivations were; perhaps he didn’t really know himself. He is usually described as an “anarchist” although that term describes such a wide spectrum of political beliefs that it doesn’t really explain Bourdin’s actions; not all anarchists embrace violence and aggression, for example, although some – such as the members of Class War – clearly do. At one end of the anarchist spectrum there are the violent thugs who are nothing more than the mirror image of fascism and at the other there are reasonable intelligent people who simply don’t believe in hierarchical structures.
Brighton has its share of anarchists and the thing that’s most noticeable about them to an outsider like me is their conformity; the dress code is apparently very strictly enforced. The obvious irony aside, this suggests to me that much of the attraction of being an anarchist is not really the existence of a compelling political philosophy, but simply to fulfill the need to belong to something.
The main thing that occurred to me yesterday while I was reading about the Greenwich Observatory bomb plot concerns the implications of the location. If the Royal Observatory was the intended target then why was it so? The simple answer is that a core belief for most varieties of anarchist is their opposition to “the State”. A powerful symbol of the British state in 1894 was the Royal Navy; it was Britain’s maritime traditions that led to the founding of the Royal Observatory in the first place and most of the work carried out there involved accurate positional measurements designed to help with navigation. Or maybe it was to do with the role of the Observatory in defining the time? Insofar as acts like this make any sense at all, these seem reasonable interpretations.
I’m tempted to suggest that the adoption of Greenwich as the Prime Meridian in 1884 may have given a young Frenchman additional grounds for resentment..
A different answer from the suggestion that it was an anti-establishment gesture stems from the conflict between anarchism and the nature of scientific knowledge. Anarchists usually express their beliefs in terms of the desire to make society more “equal” and “democratic”, so that decisions should be made collectively for the common good. I’m happy with that line of argument, and agree that we should all enjoy equal rights versus the government and other institutions, and in relation to one another. However, having equal rights does not mean having equal knowledge and it doesn’t mean that any person’s opinion about anything is as good as anyone else’s. What I mean is that there are scientific experts, and the knowledge they possess has demonstrable value.
The approach of some to this challenge is simply to deny the value of scientific knowledge, and assert instead that it’s just a social construct like anything else. I am aware of a number of so-called social scientists at the University of Sussex and elsewhere who hold this view; my usual response is to ask them whether they regard witchcraft or crystal healing as equal to orthodox medicine.
CLARIFICATION: Please note I do not mean to imply that all social scientists hold the opinions described above. I’m fully aware that they are fringe views. The phrase “so-called social scientists” does not refer to all social scientists, just the fringe in much the same way I’d use “so-called geographers” to describe the Flat Earth Society.
I’m not trying to suggest that members of the Department of Sociology are plotting to blow up the Astronomy Centre! What I do think that while we should always strive to be as democratic as possible there are always limits, not just because of what is practically possible but also what is socially desirable. Any organization in which everyone votes about every decision that has to be made would struggle to function at all. We have to find ways of working that make best use of the different skills and knowledge we all possess.
A constructive approach is to argue that if we are to build a more democratic society it is first necessary to greatly increase the level of scientific literacy in the population, so that more people can make informed decisions about the big issues facing the future, such as how we fulfill our energy requirements for the next 30 years and how we cope with global warming. That will not be an easy thing to do given the dearth of scientists in Parliament and in the media, but that’s not an argument for not trying.
Symptomatic of the widespread rejection of science among the politically disaffected is the lamentable state of Green politics in the United Kingdom. In my opinion there is huge potential for a scientifically-informed political movement focussed on environmental issues. Unfortunately the current Green Party is anti-science to the core, which would doom it to perpetual marginalization even without the loss of credibility stemming from the childish antics of the only Green MP, Caroline Lucas. I know that many will argue with me about whether the Green Party should be included in “The Left”, but since both Labour and Conservative parties now belong to the Centre-Right it seems a sensible classification to me.
It hasn’t always been like this. As Alice Rose Bell pointed out in a Guardian piece some time ago, there have been examples of constructive engagement between science and left-wing politics. This seems to me to have largely evaporated. I don’t think that’s so much because scientists have rejected the left. It’s more that the left has rejected science.
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February 16, 2014 at 4:17 pm
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February 16, 2014 at 8:20 pm
“A social construct like anything else”. Saying science is a social construct is merely a (jargon) way of saying that people, interacting, are essential to its progress. It’s people, interacting, who do science and decide what is accepted and what rejected as reliable knowledge. It is emphatically not a way of saying that observation or experiment, amongst other things, are not similarly essential to this progress. The idea that a serious social scientist would argue that we should vote on which is the best explanation of the physical or social world is absurd.
If you really have colleagues in the “so-called social sciences” (a bit anti-intellectual that – first they came for the so-called social scientists, then the climate scientists, then the astronomers…) who use the term social construct in the way you suggest, then they’re shit social scientists and not typical. But I suspect they may not be saying what you think they are saying, if only you’d listen respectfully and not get so riled up by technical terms which don’t carry the everyday meanings some think they do (even the “so-called social sciences” have them)
February 16, 2014 at 9:34 pm
I used the phrase “so-called social scientists” to refer to that subset who think the way I describe. I agree that they are not typical. I did not and do not mean it to apply to all social scientists. Just those who have anti-scientific attitudes, including the cultural theorist I met recently who told me he “hated science”…
I used the phrase “social construct” in the sense it was used by Feyerabend. I agree of course that science is defined as something done by people I’ve emphasized that many times on this blog in fact.
February 16, 2014 at 10:24 pm
Leaving aside whether cultural theory is a social science, your friend sounds an idiot. Richard Dawkins also often sounds like an idiot but that doesn’t invalidate biology.
On the question of Feyerabend, though a philosopher, you are right that he’s been influential on some brands of the sociology of science. His ‘scientific’ (if you’ll allow me to use the term) observation is that science doesn’t follow a universal and unchanging method and this is more than borne out by empirical studies and decades worth of really careful histories of science. (Also by the fact that no two accounts of the method ever seem to quite agree.)
But Feyerabend’s conclusion from his observation, that science is just another knowledge system, deserving of no special attention or status, is not, for me, scientific. It’s his opinion. I don’t agree with it and I don’t know anyone who does. I would have thought that most social scientists who study the practice of science do so precisely because it is so uniquely successful.
February 17, 2014 at 10:18 am
Writers of Feyerabend’s ilk do their best via sophistry to give the impression that scientific law is no more reliable than human law which can be changed by people’s opinions, without ever saying so explicitly because they know that they would then lose the ensuing debate. David Stove and Alan Sokal have both made that point in differing ways.
I don’t use the phrase “social scientist” at all because the study of social systems, whether it is done well or badly (and it is not hard to find examples of each) does not seem to me to conform to the definition of a science.
February 17, 2014 at 1:05 pm
Science seems pretty hard to define to me, as it encompasses so many different modes of enquiry. I remember years ago having a long discussion with a CP friend who insisted that Marxism was a science. I couldn’t agree.
Of course saying a discipline isn’t a science is not a criticism. History isn’t science but it doesn’t purport to be and doesn’t need to pretend to be something that it isn’t. It’s the pseudosciences we should be worried about..
February 18, 2014 at 8:25 pm
This entertaining book
is called “Learn to write badly: How to succeed in the Social Sciences” and is written by a longstanding professor of social sciences.
February 16, 2014 at 10:02 pm
Ps. I would use the phrase “so-called climate scientist” in an analogous way to describe someone who adopted an anti-scientific attitude.
February 16, 2014 at 8:41 pm
Pretty much agree with Kieron. And I’d also recommend you re-read the piece by me you link to. Because I don’t think it says what you argue it does.
I’d also suggest you talk to more people in the Green Party/ read their policies in more detail – I’ve found them variable on science, but your characterization really doesn’t fit my experience at all. It does depend a bit on who you talk to, but it really is worth scratching the surface there. Their current leader, Natalie Bennett has a degree in agricultural science. You might not agree on everything with her on science, but ‘science’ is a big thing, and it’s a bit weird that aspects of the sci community have allowed the idea of particular views on, for example, nuclear and GM to have become a shibboleth for ‘good on science’.
This might also be worth looking at, though it’s a bit old now http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/greens_vs._science
February 16, 2014 at 9:54 pm
Thank you for the link. I shall try to find time to read it! I think my reference to your interesting piece was misleading as written as it conflated my opinions with the link to your article. I have edited it and hope it’s now clear that the last bit was just my thought, not a response to something you wrote.
February 17, 2014 at 7:27 am
It should be noted that the Right is also often very bad on science when science steps on its central assumptions. I don’t think anyone who heard Nigel Lawson speaking about climate change on Today last week would have taken the message that he was pro-science when it came to its implications for his fossil fuel industry friends and backers.
That’s the problem with being right is more important than being convenient.
February 17, 2014 at 9:00 am
I’m not arguing that the only people who reject science are on the left. I didn’t hear Lawson’s intervention, but I suspect it wasn’t based on ideology so much as personal financial interest.
February 17, 2014 at 11:10 am
“Unfortunately the current Green Party is anti-science to the core”
If asked whether I agreed or disagreed in one word I’d agree, but it’s actually more anti-technology. The current Green movement is a direct descendant of the Romantic movement of the 19th century which indulged in a kind of nature-worship and detested the Industrial Revolution – a revolution which has brought us so much that we (and Greens) take for granted.
February 20, 2014 at 9:51 am
I couldn’t possibly comment on this article from this week’s Times Higher
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.aspx?storyCode=2011442
February 20, 2014 at 11:15 am
I thought you did, a few months ago, in a blog post on exactly this finding. What date was that please, and is this THES article referring to the same study?
February 20, 2014 at 11:29 am
I think this was the piece – a different study:
https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/iq-in-different-academic-fields-interesting-quite/
March 24, 2014 at 6:22 am
hi, would you help me please, do you think the story “the secret agent” by Joseph Conrad really similar with the accident? I have an assignment about discuss this novel and I’m confused what background that makes Conrad wrote this novel.
December 2, 2017 at 2:21 pm
[…] are on the way to murder him). Conrad, whose The Secret Agent is inspired by Bourdin’s disaster, recalled in 1920 that “the outer wall of the Observatory… did not show as much as the faintest […]