Creativity (39 page)

C
reativity generally refers to the act of changing some aspect of a domain—to a painting that reveals new ways of seeing, to an idea that explains how stars move and why. But of course there was a time when domains did not exist. The first astronomers, the first chemists, the first composers were not changing a domain but actually bringing one into being. So, in a sense, the most momentous creative events are those in which entire new symbolic systems are created.

To do so, of course, is not easy. The rate of attrition for creativity within domains is very high, and that for new domains must be at least as large. Many people have grandiose ideas about inventing new paradigms, new perspectives, new disciplines. Exceedingly few of them succeed in convincing enough others to form a new field. The four people in this chapter exemplify these hazardous attempts at bringing about a new set of symbolic rules.

Each was successful within an existing scientific domain before trying to establish a new one. None started out on a new course in order to achieve personal advancement, power, or money. A deep concern for the well-being of the world informs their lives. In each
case, they addressed a central social problem in an effort to achieve a voluntary reorganization of the human community. Because they could not see how to address these issues adequately from within existing domains, all four struggled to develop new symbolic representations and new social institutions dedicated to the solution of global problems. These are important similarities; but as we shall see, the differences are just as impressive.

T
HE
S
CIENCE OF
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URVIVAL

The name Barry Commoner has become synonymous with the ecological struggle. He was among the first scientists to realize, in the 1960s, that some of the fruits of technology—from nuclear fallout to pesticides, from oil consumption to solid waste—posed dangers for human health. Trained as a biochemist and biophysicist, Commoner found himself increasingly frustrated by the abstraction and fragmentation of academic science. He tried to influence public awareness through a number of books, and in 1980 through an unsuccessful campaign for the presidency of the United States. For m
any years now he has directed the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, now associated with the City University of New York, where he continues to explore the problems posed by runaway technology and their possible solutions.

At War with the Planet

Commoner did not start his career with any specific sense of mission. He had been a fairly good student in high school, and his father, an immigrant tailor, pressured him to become a radio repairman. But then an intellectual uncle pushed him to enroll at Columbia University—not an easy step for a Jewish boy in those days. At the end of his college career, when it had become clear that Commoner had a knack for science and should continue his graduate education, a biology teacher called him in and told him he was going to Harvard. “What do you mean?” Commoner remembers asking. “‘I’ve arranged f
or you to become a graduate student at Harvard.’ I hadn’t applied, nothing. ‘As a Jew from Columbia, you’ll have a very hard time getting a job; I’m sending you to Harvard.’” And so Commoner moved to Harvard, where he received an interdisciplinary education in chemistry, biology, and physics.

After he started his academic career, Commoner was confronted with a number of ominous developments. One was the threat of a nuclear holocaust, which after World War II cast a pall on an entire generation. Two other defining events he describes in the first chapters of his book
Science and Survival
. The first was an electric blackout that shut down power on a 1965 November night across a huge area of the Northeast and Canada. What struck Commoner about this failure was that it was caused by the elaborate computerized controls built into the electric grid, which overcompensated for a sur
ge in demand by closing down the system entirely (a process not dissimilar to what happened more than twenty years later when the computerized programs for buying and selling stocks circumvented human controls and went into a selling frenzy that brokers were unable to stop, thereby causing a market crash).

The second event Commoner describes in his book was the discovery that fallout from nuclear testing in Nevada produced iodine—131 isotopes that were carried by winds to pastures in Utah, where they contaminated the grass cows foraged on. The idoine passed into the cows’ milk, and when children drank it, it deposited itself into the cells of their thyroid glands. There the radiation from the iodine occasionally produced goiters and tumors.

Both the blackout and the iodine—131-produced diseases were typical examples of the kind of unintended chain reactions that occasionally occur when technology escapes from human control. Most people chalk up such events as the necessary price to pay for progress and do not worry too much. But Commoner, either because his interdisciplinary training made him think in terms of systemic patterns rather than linear processes, or because of a long personal history as an outsider who has been forced to take a critical perspective, felt that these events were not just side effects bu
t part of the main history of our time.

The main story, according to Commoner, is that we have unintentionally declared war against the planet on which our lives depend. Science started out as a powerful tool for increasing human well-being. But when knowledge within separate domains is pursued without understanding how its applications affect the whole, it unleashes forces that can be enormously destructive. The sorcerer’s apprentice, who sets in motion a magic spell that he cannot stop when it begins to get out of hand, is a metaphor that recurs in Commoner’s writing.

Of course, he was not alone in this realization. In fact, several groups founded in the sixties helped hone Commoner’s ecological consciousness, such as the Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Committee for Nuclear Information. But with time Commoner developed a personal approach to the problem of helping the environment, one that made it possible for him to envision solutions that were feasible given who he was and what he could do.

Science and Politics

What Commoner realized was that the solution could not come from science alone. To keep runaway technology under control, science and public policy had to work together. When it comes to applying technology, science predictably sells out to the highest bidder. The military ends up controlling the awesome power of radiation; pharmaceutical companies profit from the fruits of chemistry; agribusiness uses biology for its own aims. None of these entrenched interests has any responsibility to preserve the fabric of life on the planet, although each one owns the means for destroying it.
So we must step in and regain control in the name of the common interests of continued life on Earth.

Unlike many others who also have perceived the threats of technology, Commoner has kept his faith in science. He realizes that even though science may have gotten us into this mess, we are unlikely to get out of it without its help. So he continues to use the scientific method both to diagnose the problems and to find solutions for them. In doing so, he works with the dedicated humility of a true scholar. For many years now, the efforts of his institute have been focused primarily on solving problems of solid waste disposal. Garbage is not a fashionable topic, but its exponential g
rowth presents real threats that few want to think about. And what is more, it is a problem that can be solved and thus might serve as an example of how to tackle more complex issues. Like all creative individuals we studied, Commoner tends not to waste energy on problems that cannot be solved; he has a knack for recognizing what is feasible and what is not.

Commoner felt that it was not enough just to demonstrate that when you burn trash in incinerators you create dioxin, which is a
dangerous pollutant, or that by using too much fertilizer we poison our water supply with nitrates. This was important knowledge, but it would not make any difference as long as special interests benefited from incineration or fertilization. So he concluded that the first priority was to inform the public about these environmental crises and their origins. To do this he used different means: He wrote books and pamphlets, talked to leaders and opinion-makers, gave press conferences, got money from foundations for environmental causes, and developed networks of like-minded people.

In the process he had to break out of the standard scientific domains and from the academic fields that preserve their boundaries. This meant leaving the safe shelter of the universities, a step that few people trained in them have the courage to take:

Only by crossing disciplinary boundaries is it possible to think holistically, which is necessary if we are to “close the circle” and preserve the organic balance of planetary life forms.

Instead of letting specialized academic fields dictate how he should approach problems and attempt solutions, Commoner lets “real-
world” events dictate where he should turn his attention, and what means he should use to try to control recalcitrant technology. Specific threats, such as the proliferation of toxic waste or the pollution of drinking water by nitrogen isotopes, are what mobilize his energies:

This quote has a facile, anti-intellectual ring to it. But Commoner is using science in its most basic, truest sense. What he objects to is not systematic, careful observation, only the irresponsible uses of it. What he objects to is the ritualized worship of domain knowledge for its own sake, instead of the integrated knowledge we actually need to avoid becoming history.

Struggling with Reality

Commoner calls himself “a child of the Depression” who always had to struggle to achieve his goals. This, plus the constant awareness of his marginal status as a Brooklyn Jew in what used to be WASP ivory towers, is probably why he maintained his unorthodox views all his life. Those who are not properly socialized by a field are prime material for the skeptical, divergent thinking approach that often leads to creativity.

Like so many of our respondents, Commoner insists on the importance of maintaining two usually contradictory attitudes toward his work: to keep an emotional link to what he does and at the same time a rigorously objective perspective. There is no doubt that he cares deeply about his topic—the entire pattern of his life is evidence of it. And it is equally clear that he takes the rigor seriously: Among his associates he is famous for writing draft upon draft for each speech or press release, until it is free of ambiguities and weaknesses.

It is not easy to be a maverick and to keep to the narrow path of
self-chosen excellence in a nonexisting domain. Commoner ran into various difficulties with university administrators who didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish, with fellow scholars who felt he was trespassing on their turf, with the authorities who wanted to silence his opposition to nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. His stubborn faith in the necessity of his task kept him from giving up. But he also had to find strategies to keep his mind focused and prevent distractions. As with most other creative individuals, a sort of ascetic discipline orders his attention:

S
PLICING THE
C
ULTURAL
DNA

Hazel Henderson’s life theme dovetails almost perfectly with Commoner’s. She also is struggling to develop a new interdisciplinary—or adisciplinary—domain to deal with the problems of technology. She also has dedicated her life to keeping our species from destroying the habitat in which it lives. But because she was trained in economics instead of biology, her concern is more with how patterns of consumption affect our uses of resources than with the biochemical consequences of our lifestyles.

Henderson was born and grew up in the United Kingdom, in a loving, traditional family in which gender roles were strictly respected. It is impossible to say why, but Henderson seems to have fallen in love with the world quite early in life: