Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the fallacy that war is the driver of innovation, is merely an idol of the marketplace. An idol of the marketplace is a philosophical idea of Francis Bacon. In it, he suggested that people harm themselves by ideas that are false, but accepted as true, because they are talked about. In the modern lexicon they could be called an Urban Legend. One such Urban legend is the notion that war drives innovation. While it sounds plausible, even likely, it’s simply loose talk. Because necessity is the mother of invention, not destruction. War generally lowers a nation’s science by killing its scientists. It lowers innovation by slaughtering potential innovators. Moreover, war stifles research into anything but how to kill people… which isn’t really progress at all.
My understanding of Bacon’s idols, the Idol of the tribe, Idol of the cave, Idol of the theater and Idol of the Marketplace, is that they are ways to describe the fallacies that people fall into. In each idol we are trapped in false thinking that keeps us from advancing. His idol of the marketplace is the idea that there is loose talk that misdirects us from truth to falsity. The more we believe these falsities the further they take us from truth. Therefore, knowledge, wealth and health. Since these qualities are based on right thinking and action. Wrong thinking and action lead to bad results. Suggested by William James Pragmatism. Judging truth by result. If an idol is good it will result in good outcomes but if it’s bad it’ll result in bad outcomes. What does a belief in alligators in the sewer result in… good or bad outcomes?
Necessity is the mother of invention. The difference between a human and a crow or monkey, is that we not only make and use tools, but we save them for later. The next time the need arises we have a ready tool and skill at hand. Moreover, we connect other needs with the use of that tool. Expanding our abilities. Weapons first came of the need for meat. They were used after as a way to defend that meat. Then finally as tools of war. To take someone else meat. If a tool is changed slightly to make it a better weapon for war, that is indeed an innovation, but not paradigm breaking by any measure. The only time technology could be claimed to advance during war was WWII. The Cold War wasn’t war, it was a standoff. The advances of WWII were already baked into the cake before the war.
Had the Germans been able to carpet bomb the US, as the allies carpet bombed German factories, the technological advancement of WWII would have stopped. Germany was engrossed in making better tanks to effectively combat the innovative T-34. They built rockets to retaliate for Britain’s bombing of Nazi factories. Those rockets were already on the drawing board though. The war provided slave labor and the funds. Funds that might have been available in greater quantities, had there not been the drain on the coffers, for slaughtering innocent people. The same goes for the US. The huge expenditures for war squeeze out those for R & D. No, rather than create a bed for innovation to grow, war salts the ground of science, innovation and humanity. Did the killing of Archimedes advance or hinder science?
While it sounds reasonable that war drives innovation, like it sounds reasonable that the government can make everyone rich, but both are fallacies. Moreover, they’re dangerous fallacies. Both are idols of the marketplace. The loose talk that becomes common knowledge though it’s the opposite of truth. One danger in the fallacy that government can make everyone rich, no matter one’s effort, is that it corrodes the work ethic. A danger of the fallacy that innovation comes from war is that it makes war less repulsive. Such idols of the marketplace lower the lot of mankind… they don’t raise it. These aren’t the only idols of the marketplace that lower our lot though. I bet if you think about what passes for common knowledge today, a bit… you’ll notice other dangerous fallacies many of us believe.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
