The Modern Mind Read online

  THE

  MODERN MIND

  An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

  PETER WATSON

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Preface

  Introduction: An Evolution in the Rules of Thought

  PART ONE

  FREUD TO WITTGENSTEIN The Sense of a Beginning

  1 Disturbing the Peace

  2 Half-way House

  3 Darwin’s Heart of Darkness

  4 Les Demoiselles de Modernisme

  5 The Pragmatic Mind of America

  6 E = mc2, ⊃ / ≡ / v + C7H38O43

  7 Ladders of Blood

  8 Volcano

  9 Counter-Attack

  PART TWO

  SPENGLER TO ANIMAL FARM Civilisations and Their Discontents

  10 Eclipse

  11 The Acquisitive Wasteland

  12 Babbitt’s Middletown

  13 Heroes’ Twilight

  14 The Evolution of Evolution

  15 The Golden Age of Physics

  16 Civilisations and Their Discontents

  17 Inquisition

  18 Cold Comfort

  19 Hitler’s Gift

  20 Colossus

  21 No Way Back

  22 Light in August

  PART THREE

  SARTRE TO THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY The New Human Condition and The Great Society

  23 Paris in the Year Zero

  24 Daughters and Lovers

  25 The New Human Condition

  26 Cracks in the Canon

  27 Forces of Nature

  28 Mind Minus Metaphysics

  29 Manhattan Transfer

  30 Equality, Freedom, and Justice in the Great Society

  31 La Longue Durée

  32 Heaven and Earth

  PART FOUR

  THE COUNTER-CULTURE TO KOSOVO The View from Nowhere, The View from Everywhere

  33 A New Sensibility

  34 Genetic Safari

  35 The French Collection

  36 Doing Well, and Doing Good

  37 The Wages of Repression

  38 Local Knowledge

  39 ‘The Best Idea, Ever’

  40 The Empire Writes Back

  41 Culture Wars

  42 Deep Order

  Conclusion: The Positive Hour

  Notes and References

  Index of Names, People and Places

  Index of Ideas and Subjects

  About the Author

  Praise for the Modern Mind

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PREFACE

  In the mid-1980s, on assignment for the London Observer, I was shown around Harvard University by Willard van Orman Quine. It was February, and the ground was covered in ice and snow. We both fell over. Having the world’s greatest living philosopher all to myself for a few hours was a rare privilege. What surprised me, however, was that when I recounted my day to others later on, so few had heard of the man, even senior colleagues at the Observer. In one sense, this book began there and then. I have always wanted to find a literary form which, I hoped, would draw attention to those figures of the contemporary world and the immediate past who do not lend themselves to the celebrity culture that so dominates our lives, and yet whose contribution is in my view often much more deserving of note.

  Then, around 1990, I read Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb. This book, which certainly deserved the Pulitzer Prize it won in 1988, contains in its first 300 pages an utterly gripping account of the early days of particle physics. On the face of it, electrons, protons, and neutrons do not lend themselves to narrative treatment. They are unlikely candidates for the best-seller lists, and they are not, exactly, celebrities. But Rhodes’s account of even quite difficult material was as accessible as it was riveting. The scene at the start of the book in 1933, where Leo Szilard was crossing Southampton Row in London at a set of traffic lights when he first conceived the idea of the nuclear chain reaction, which might lead to a bomb of unimaginable power, is a minor masterpiece. It made me realise that, given enough skill, the narrative approach can make even the driest and most difficult topics highly readable.

  But this book finally took form following a series of discussions with a very old friend and colleague, W. Graham Roebuck, emeritus professor of English at McMaster University in Canada, a historian and a man of the theatre, as well as a professor of literature. The original plan was for him to be a joint author of The Modern Mind. Our history would explore the great ideas that have shaped the twentieth century, yet would avoid being a series of linked essays. Instead, it would be a narrative, conveying the excitement of intellectual life, describing the characters – their mistakes and rivalries included – that provide the thrilling context in which the most influential ideas emerged. Unfortunately for me, Professor Roebuck’s other commitments proved too onerous.

  If my greatest debt is to him, it is far from being the only one. In a book with the range and scope of The Modern Mind, I have had to rely on the expertise, authority, and research of many others – scientists, historians, painters, economists, philosophers, playwrights, film directors, poets, and many other specialists of one kind or another. In particular I would like to thank the following for their help and for what was in some instances a protracted correspondence: Konstantin Akinsha, John Albery, Walter Alva, Philip Anderson, R. F. Ash, Hugh Baker, Dilip Bannerjee, Daniel Bell, David Blewett, Paul Boghossian, Lucy Boutin, Michel Brent, Cass Canfield Jr., Dilip Chakrabarti, Christopher Chippindale, Kim Clark, Clemency Coggins, Richard Cohen, Robin Conyngham, John Cornwell, Elisabeth Croll, Susan Dickerson, Frank Dikötter, Robin Duthy, Rick Elia, Niles Eldredge, Francesco Estrada-Belli, Amitai Etzioni, Israel Finkelstein, Carlos Zhea Flores, David Gill, Nicholas Goodman, Ian Graham, Stephen Graubard, Philip Griffiths, Andrew Hacker, Sophocles Hadjisavvas, Eva Hajdu, Norman Hammond, Arlen Hastings, Inge Heckel, Agnes Heller, David Henn, Nerea Herrera, Ira Heyman, Gerald Holton, Irving Louis Horowitz, Derek Johns, Robert Johnston, Evie Joselow, Vassos Karageorghis, Larry Kaye, Marvin Kalb, Thomas Kline, Robert Knox, Alison Kommer, Willi Korte, Herbert Kretzmer, David Landes, Jean Larteguy, Constance Lowenthal, Kevin McDonald, Pierre de Maret, Alexander Marshack, Trent Maul, Bruce Mazlish, John and Patricia Menzies, Mercedes Morales, Barber Mueller, Charles Murray, Janice Murray, Richard Nicholson, Andrew Nurnberg, Joan Oates, Patrick O’Keefe, Marc Pachter, Kathrine Palmer, Norman Palmer, Ada Petrova, Nicholas Postgate, Neil Postman, Lindel Prott, Colin Renfrew, Carl Riskin, Raquel Chang Rodriguez, Mark Rose, James Roundell, John Russell, Greg Sarris, Chris Scarre, Daniel Schavelzón, Arthur Sheps, Amartya Sen, Andrew Slayman, Jean Smith, Robert Solow, Howard Spiegler, Ian Stewart, Robin Straus, Herb Terrace, Sharne Thomas, Cecilia Todeschini, Mark Tomkins, Marion True, Bob Tyrer, Joaquim Valdes, Harold Varmus, Anna Vinton, Carlos Western, Randall White, Keith Whitelaw, Patricia Williams, E. O. Wilson, Rebecca Wilson, Kate Zebiri, Henry Zhao, Dorothy Zinberg, W. R. Zku.

  Since so many twentieth-century thinkers are now dead, I have also relied on books – not just the ‘great books’ of the century but often the commentaries and criticisms generated by those original works. One of the pleasures of researching and writing The Modern Mind has been the rediscovery of forgotten writers who for some reason have slipped out of the limelight, yet often have things to tell us that are still original, enlightening, and relevant. I hope readers will share my enthusiasm on this score.

  This is a general book, and it would have held up the text unreasonably to mark every debt in the text proper. But all debts are acknowledged, fully I trust, in more than 3,000 Notes and References at the end of the book. However, I would like here to thank those authors and publishers of the works to which my debt is especially he
avy, among whose pages I have pillaged, précised and paraphrased shamelessly. Alphabetically by author/editor they are: Bernard Bergonzi, Reading the Thirties (Macmillan, 1978) and Heroes’ Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (Macmillan, 1980); Walter Bodmer and Robin McKie, The Book of Man: The Quest to Discover Our Genetic Heritage (Little Brown, 1994); Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern American Novel (Oxford University Press, 1983); Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds., Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890—1930 (Penguin Books, 1976); C. W. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars (Knopf, 1951) and The First Americans (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971); William Everdell, The First Moderns (University of Chicago Press, 1997); Richard Fortey, Life: An Unauthorised Biography (HarperCollins, 1997); Peter Gay, Weimar Culture (Seeker and Warburg, 1969); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (Penguin Books, 1996); Paul Griffiths, Modern Music: A Concise History (Thames and Hudson, 1978 and 1994); Henry Grosshans, Hitler and the Artists (Holmes and Meier, 1983); Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (Touchstone, 1998); Ian Hamilton, ed., The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (Oxford University Press, 1994); Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996); Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860—1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1997); John Heidenry, What Wild Ecstasy: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Revolution (Simon and Schuster, 1997); Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Simon and Schuster, 1953); John Hemming, The Conquest of the Incas (Macmillan, 1970); Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (Free Press, 1997); John Horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Addison-Wesley, 1996); Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New (BBC and Thames and Hudson, 1980 and 1991); Jarrell Jackman and Carla Borden, The Muses Flee Hitler: Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, 1930–1945 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983); Andrew Jamison and Ron Eyerman, Seeds of the Sixties (University of California Press, 1994); William Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An Intellectual and Social History, 1848—1938 (University of California Press, 1972); Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art (Macmillan, 1957); Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science (Princeton University Press, 1997); Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations (W. W. Norton, 1995); Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes (Penguin Press, 1967); J. D. Macdougall, A Short History of Planet Earth (John Wiley, 1996); Bryan Magee, Men of Ideas: Some Creators of Contemporary Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1978); Arthur Marwick, The Sixties (Oxford University Press, 1998); Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1982); Virginia Morrell, Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind’s Beginnings (Simon and Schuster, 1995); Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1986); Harold Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers (W. W. Norton, 1970); Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War One (Vintage, 1955); Quentin Skinner, ed., The Return of Grand Theory in the Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 1985); Michael Stewart, Keynes and After (Penguin 1967); Ian Tattersall, The Fossil Trail (Oxford University Press, 1995); Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State (HarperCollins, 1995); M. Weatherall, In Search of a Cure: A History of Pharmaceutical Discovery (Oxford University Press, 1990).

  This is not a definitive intellectual history of the twentieth century – who would dare attempt to create such an entity? It is instead one person’s considered tour d’horizon. I thank the following for reading all or parts of the typescript, for correcting errors, identifying omissions, and making suggestions for improvements: Robert Gildea, Robert Johnston, Bruce Mazlish, Samuel Waksal, Bernard Wasserstein. Naturally, such errors and omissions as remain are my responsibility alone.

  In Humboldt’s Gift (1975) Saul Bellow describes his eponymous hero, Von Humboldt Fleisher, as ‘a wonderful talker, a hectic nonstop monolinguist and improvisator, a champion detractor. To be loused up by Humboldt was really a kind of privilege. It was like being the subject of a two-nosed portrait by Picasso Money always inspired him. He adored talking about the rich…. But his real wealth was literary. He had read many thousands of books. He said that history was a nightmare during which he was trying to get a good night’s rest. Insomnia made him more learned. In the small hours he read thick books – Marx and Sombart, Toynbee, Rostovtzeff, Freud.” The twentieth century has been a nightmare in many ways. But amid the mayhem were those who produced the works that kept Humboldt – and not only Humboldt – sane. They are the subject of this book and deserve all our gratitude.

  LONDON

  JUNE 2000

  ‘… he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.’

  —Ecclesiastes

  ‘History makes one aware that there

  is no finality in human affairs;

  there is not a static perfection and

  an unimprovable wisdom to be achieved.’

  —Bertrand Russell

  ‘It may be a mistake to mix different wines,

  but old and new wisdom mix admirably.’

  —Bertolt Brecht

  ‘All changed, changed utterly:

  A terrible beauty is born.’

  —W. B. Yeats

  INTRODUCTION:

  AN EVOLUTION IN THE RULES OF THOUGHT

  Interviewed on BBC television in 1997, shortly before his death, Sir Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher and historian of ideas, was asked what had been the most surprising thing about his long life. He was born in Riga in 1909, the son of a Jewish timber merchant, and was seven and a half years old when he witnessed the start of the February Revolution in Petrograd from the family’s flat above a ceramics factory. He replied, ‘The mere fact that I shall have lived so peacefully and so happily through such horrors. The world was exposed to the worst century there has ever been from the point of view of crude inhumanity, of savage destruction of mankind, for no good reason, … And yet, here I am, untouched by all this, … That seems to me quite astonishing.”1

  By the time of the broadcast, I was well into the research for this book. But Berlin’s answer struck a chord. More conventional histories of the twentieth century concentrate, for perfectly understandable reasons, on a familiar canon of political-military events: the two world wars, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression of the 1930s, Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, decolonisation, the Cold War. It is an awful catalogue. The atrocities committed by Stalin and Hitler, or in their name, have still not been measured in full, and now, in all probability, never will be. The numbers, even in an age that is used to numbers on a cosmological scale, are too vast. And yet someone like Berlin, who lived at a time when all these horrors were taking place, whose family remaining in Riga was liquidated, led what he called elsewhere in the BBC interview ‘a happy life’.

  My aim in this book is, first and foremost, to shift the focus away from the events and episodes covered in conventional histories, away from politics and military events and affairs of state, to those subjects that, I feel confident in saying, helped make Isaiah Berlin’s life so astonishing and rich. The horrors of the past one hundred years have been so widespread, so plentiful, and are so endemic to man’s modern sensibility that it would seem conventional historians have little or no space for other matters. In one recent 700-page history of the first third of the twentieth century, for example, there is no mention of relativity, of Henri Matisse or Gregor Mendel, no Ernest Rutherford, James Joyce, or Marcel Proust. No George Orwell, W. E. B. Du Bois, or Margaret Mead, no Oswald Spengler or Virginia Woolf. No Leo Szilard or Leo Hendrik Baekeland, no James Chadwick or Paul Ehrlich. No Sinclair Lewis and therefore no Babbitt.2 Other books echo this lack. In these pages I try to rectify the imbalance and to concentrate on the main intellectual ideas that have shaped our century and which, as Berlin ack
nowledged, have been uniquely rewarding.

  In giving the book this shape, I am not suggesting that the century has been any less catastrophic than the way it is described in more conventional histories; merely that there is so much more to the era than war. Neither do I mean to imply that politics or military affairs are not intellectual or intelligent matters. They are. In attempting to marry philosophy and a theory of human nature with the practice of governance, politics has always seemed to me one of the more difficult intellectual challenges. And military affairs, in which the lives of individuals are weighed as in no other activity, in which men are pitted against each other so directly, does not fall far short of politics in importance or interest. But having read any number of conventional histories, I wanted something different, something more, and was unable to find it.

  It seems obvious to me that, once we get away from the terrible calamities that have afflicted our century, once we lift our eyes from the horrors of the past decades, the dominant intellectual trend, the most interesting, enduring, and profound development, is very clear. Our century has been dominated intellectually by a coming to terms with science. The trend has been profound because the contribution of science has involved not just the invention of new products, the extraordinary range of which has transformed all our lives. In addition to changing what we think about, science has changed how we think. In 1988, in De près et de loin, Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, asked himself the following question: ‘Do you think there is a place for philosophy in today’s world?’ His reply? ‘Of course, but only if it is based on the current state of scientific knowledge and achievement…. Philosophers cannot insulate themselves against science. Not only has it enlarged and transformed our vision of life and the universe enormously: it has also revolutionised the rules by which the intellect operates.’3 That revolution in the rules is explored throughout the present book.