Copyright: © 2001, 2002 Emile van Kreveld (kreveld@wxs.nl), all rights reserved. Unaltered copies of this computer text file may be freely distributed for personal and classroom use. Alterations to this file are permitted only for purposes of computer printouts, although altered computer text files may not circulate. Except to cover nominal distribution costs, this file cannot be sold without written permission from the copyright holder. This copyright notice supersedes all previous notices on earlier versions of this text file. When quoting from this text, please use the following citation: "Science of a domestic turn" , M.E. van Kreveld (Internet Release, 2002).

Several countries have characteristic cultural features that are so deep-rooted that it even influences the style of research, of writing the articles and the selection of theoretical models. That a lot of fundamental physics and physical chemistry originated in Germany in the beginning of the 20th century can probably related with the educational programs in this country that devoted much attention to a thorough training in philosophy. On the other hand these strong philosophical positions that were often adopted by German scientists could also turn out to be detrimental to their progress. Ernst Mach influenced with his points of view many German scientists, who were rather often transformed in aficionados. One can speak in a certain sense of a School of Mach: Non-observable quantities cannot have any physical significance, with e.g. the consequence that atoms don’t exist because no one can directly see them. W. Kaufmann and F. Ehrenhaft will certainly have deplored their “Machian” philosophical bias[1] later on, because they both could whistle for the Nobel Prize. At the present day J.J. Thomson is known as the discoverer of the electron although Kaufman had a better piece of equipment and more accurate experimental data. Such was also Ehrenhaft’s fate because he did not believe in a basic unity of electricity as contrasted with R. Millikan who got the credit of it.

In former days, certainly before World War II, a characteristic cultural feature made it possible to distinguish the German scientific publications from the Anglo-Saxon writings. Germans start axiomatically, taking every detail into account and after a huge amount of derivations and computing end up with formulas containing a plethora of terms. Next they ask their selves which terms can be neglected and which have to be retained. Their Anglo-Saxon counterparts start questioning what are the most relevant factors that have to be incorporated in the modeling before starting any calculation. Notwithstanding the difference in approach still these authors mutually appreciate each other’s work and acknowledge the related achievements, because there is yet at the end of the day conceptual agreement on the level of “nature’s behavior”. That subject, which I sketched in this quite simplified picture, has been elaborated much more extensively in a separate chapter by Duhem[2]. The French (for Duhem identical with the German) scientific approach is set against the English. Duhem is horrified by the idea to call in the help of mechanical models in the development of a new theory. The idea that a mathematical formalism even in itself can be considered as a model is just as well anathema to Duhem. Although he must admit that Maxwell, J.J. Thomson and Lord Kelvin contributed greatly to the development of physics, he abhors their working methods. “We thought we were entering the tranquil and neatly ordered abode of reason, but find ourselves in a factory.” Duhem extends his judgment exactly like that towards mathematics. English physicists play easily around with quaternions and vector analysis whereas French and German physicists consider them as exotic branches of the mathematical tree[3]. As Paul Morin, a French mathematician, once confidentially told Duhem that he never felt sure about a result obtained by the method of quaternions until he had checked it by the conversant old Cartesian algebra. I cannot help feeling that Duhem thinks himself and his compatriots treated unfair by the Almighty when English physicists time after time took the wind out of French and German sails by applying such an unscientific method as modeling[4]. Real science according to Duhem starts with axioms and designing differential equations. And from there deduction via the solution of the coupled differential equations and syllogistic reasoning leads to natural laws. Off course Duhem is right when he asserts that a lot of factors are omitted via the modeling method, because the interactions of minor importance are eliminated beforehand. So both the number and the complexity of the starting differential equations are drastically reduced. That is the very strength of the modeling approach; the better the model, the less calculation is needed. Probably this cultural difference between on the one hand Englishman and on the other hand Franco-German people has to be explained by the divergent formal training (maybe even drilling) the pupils received under the various national school programs.

Japanese research faces problems of an entirely different cultural category. In the Japanese society there exist another idea about originality than in the Atlantic world. A Japanese appreciates a copy as much as the original if they cannot be distinguished from each other. I saw with my own eyes, climbing along the footpath to Kamikoche (a very beautiful natural park in the mountains), several Japanese man carrying complete photo studio outfits in specialized backpacks. That meant per person three cameras, of which one or two were of 4x5 inch size, and of course also three tripods to mount the cameras. Some people were hardly able to move along under their burden. The denouement of this baffling mystery came after hiking around in the mountainous area. Everywhere we discovered vigilant photographers with all their cameras at the present on their mounts to be able to release all their shutters exactly at the right moment. We were told of the existence of a famous photo book, stuffed with masterpieces, of an even more famous Japanese photographer. All these amateur photographers were coming to this area to recreate the pictures of the book as accurate as possible. That meant waiting for several hours to catch a situation with light and weather conditions that were indistinguishable from those on the photographs in the book. No detail was skipped. To prevent any risk they had taken the book along with them. If that little cloud was not covering the sun exactly for one third as was incorporated in their program they considered their expedition as a failure. Till next time! As being members of such a task-oriented procedure nation, these photographers don’t give up very easily; apart from that neither do other sub-groups in Japanese society. Maybe this story can shed some light on articles in journals where somebody worries about creativity in the Japanese society and particularly in research.

When a Japanese assistant working for his Ph.D. has made a small but simple mistake in his draft, negotiating with his professor about the final draft of his thesis can be a time consuming affair in Japanese science. A slip of the pen as writing the decimal point at the wrong position can be considered as a non-relevant stupid little mistake, hardly worth a moment of discussion between parties involved when transplanted to the equivalent Atlantic situation. Mumbling: “Of course, I’m sorry professor, I will correct this immediately”, making a little mark in the margin as a reminder. But in Japan it is very impolite to point out bluntly a mistake to a person, that is simply not done in Japanese culture. Neither bottom-up nor top-down in the hierarchy. The ritual verbal dance can last for a while when the subtle hints remain undetected.

As a last example of detecting the influence of culture in scientific practice we will draw the attention to the priority that is given to “idea” in French intellectual circles. More than one author has observed this last feature. We can read in a book by Bodanis[5]: “The fact that so many French scientists had turned away from Lavoisier’s hands-on approach and instead insisted on a sterile over-abstraction only made it harder for Poincare to be immersed in practical physics.” To say nothing of the horrifying French philosophers of science in the grip of their “idées fixes”[6], ceaseless making believe themselves that they develop a theory that has any significance. Instead of studying the product and mechanism of the scientific process “philosophical ideals” have been dreamed up about how science should be carried out, even in cases where the scientists themselves opposed strongly the “invented” description that was given by outside philosophers of their research activities. These “philosophical ideals” are either designed by inventing non-existing mechanisms or, as in most cases, by proclaiming ex cathedra a few either invented or observed aspects of science as the essential characteristics of the whole (pars pro toto).

The above-described fixation seems a typical characteristic of French discourse. This also links up nicely with some sentences from Pierre Duhem[8] (famous for his work in thermodynamics[9] in the early 20th century, member of the Academie des Sciences of Paris, so in this respect an unimpeachable authority): “The Frenchman wishes to have a clear and simple history which has developed in an orderly and methodic way, a history in which all the events have proceeded strictly from the political principles he boasts of, just as corollaries are deduced from a theorem. And if reality does not furnish him with that history, it will so much the worse for reality, he will alter the facts, suppress them, invent them, preferring to have to deal with a novel, clear, and methodic history than with a true but confused and complex one.” It goes without saying that this persistent culture (Latour has been born about 110 years after Duhem!) is probably transmitted from generation to generation by the formal educational methods that are employed in the French school system. Maybe French culture, which enriched our western culture with invaluable contributions, exhibits here the reverse side of her medal.

Already in 1927 one of the obvious pitfalls in such considerations has been brought to the fore by Bertrand Russell: “The manner in which animals learn has been much studied in recent years, with a great deal of patient observation and experiment.... One may broadly say that all the animals that have been carefully observed have behaved so as to confirm the philosophy in which the observer believed before his observations began. Nay, more, they have all displayed the national characteristics of the observer. Animals studied by Americans rush about frantically, and with an incredible display of bustle and pep, and at last achieve the desired result by chance. Animals observed by Germans sit still and think, and at last evolve the solution out of their inner consciousness.”