I have just returned from Beijing where I gave a number of talks: at the World Economic Forum meeting; to the Beijing Olympic Committee; to the Beijing Institute of Technology; to China Central TV; and a public seminar.
As a culture, the Chinese are highly intelligent, very disciplined and hard-working and show a high respect for each other (see the Beijing traffic problem). The economy is growing by about 7.3% p.a at the moment.
Two thousand years ago the Chinese were far ahead of the West in science and technology. They had gunpowder and rockets. They had invented printing and paper long before the West. Had China continued at the same rate of progress, today China would easily be the dominant economic power in the world. So what happened?
The Chinese had a formal and civilised society very early. This had two effects. The first is that you advanced by doing things the way they should be done. The incredibly stiff Civil Service exams meant that the brightest youngsters aspired to do things in exactly the right way. The second effect is that you use your intelligence to adjust to the world rather than to change the world. Bernard Shaw put it neatly: 'Progress is due to the unreasonable person. The reasonable person seeks to adjust to the world. The unreasonable person seeks to change it'.
Then there were the scholars, the academics and the mandarin class in general. They sought certainty. They described things as they were. There was no room for ambiguity, possibility or 'maybe'. This traditional deadening effect of the scholar class (also present in the West) held back progress and was the basic reason behind the 'Cultural Revolution'. That is not to justify the way this revolution was carried out.
It seems the Chinese never developed the 'hypothesis'. Without that key piece of 'mental software', progress came to an end. Where did the hypothesis come from? It came from ancient Greece and the pre-Socratic thinkers, who were much brighter than the Gang of Three but were suppressed by the Gang and, much later, by Christian thinkers.
In science the hypothesis provides a framework for collecting evidence and designing experiments. In Karl Popper's view you should set up the most 'reasonable' hypothesis and then seek to refute this. This approach is very seriously flawed. If you only have the most reasonable hypothesis, you can only see the evidence in one way. You need other hypotheses, even if they are unreasonable. After all, reason is only a framework of expectation set up by past experience. In technology the hypothesis is the 'vision'. We imagine a possibility and then look to see how we can make it happen. So it is possible that this very intelligent Chinese culture was brought to a standstill through the absence of this key piece of mental software.
THE VITAMIN
The human body needs food. It also needs vitamins. The vitamins work with key enzymes to carry out essential work. Without a key vitamin, life can stop. The 'possibility system' is a key vitamin in progress. That is why the Chinese have become so interested in my work. They see this as the key missing vitamin in their thinking. I agree. I believe that if this 'vitamin' is introduced in all schools and at all levels in society, China will become a very powerful nation indeed.
THE HYPOTHESIS
I have had appointments at some of the leading universities in the world: Oxford, Cambridge, London and Harvard. In my experience (which is not comprehensive and may be out of date) totally insufficient attention is paid to the huge importance of the hypothesis and possibility in science.
Some years ago a senior person in the French national research organisation (CNRS) came to see me. He told me that his scientists had been taught to believe that science is the analysis of data. He felt that without the ability to generate hypotheses science could not advance. I agreed, because this is also my experience. Computers are now providing more and more subtle ways of analysing data. So the emphasis is moving from the hypothesis and experimental design to data analysis. This will hold back the advance of science.
AN EXAMPLE
Peptic ulcer is a serious medical condition. This means an ulcer in the stomach or duodenum. Some people with such ulcers were on antacids for twenty years or more. They had to watch their diets carefully and avoid coffee, alcohol, etc., etc. The pain could be bad, and life could be miserable. A significant proportion of hospital beds were occupied by patients with peptic ulcers. A significant protion of the time of GP's was taken up with attention to such patients. There were rather fierce procedures called Billroth operations which set out to remove all the stomach, or half or one-third, etc. Then a young doctor in Perth, Australia had an idea. He had a hypothesis. Perhaps peptic ulcers were caused by an 'infection'.
Everyone roared with laughter. The powerful hydrochloric acid in the stomach would destroy any bacteria, so infection was ridiculous. The doctor made a culture of the suspected offending bug (helicobacter pylori) and drank it. He gave himself an ulcer. Still no one believed him. Thirty (or maybe forty) years later, it turns out he was right. Today, instead of twenty years of antacids and operations to remove the stomach, you can be cured in two weeks with antibiotics! The change in treatment and suffering is astounding.
Because someone had a hypothesis.
SPECULATION
Science came about precisely to do away with supersition, beliefs, speculations and wild unproven possibilities. Science came to demand certainty and proof at every stage. I shall not go into the details of the negative effect this has had on science. This is especially so in psychology, where the obsession with measurement not only holds back development but can give very misleading practical results.
Statistically, boys are better at maths than girls. Does that mean that the boy in front of you is better at maths than the girl behind? This legitimate horror of speculation also holds back the progress of science. Albert Einstein made his extraordinary contribution through speculation. Again and again Einstein used what I would call 'provocation' to take his thinking forward. He carried out what he called 'thought experiments'. He declared that imagination was more important than knowledge. Yet throughout education there is a failure to understand the importance of possibility.
In business there is a concern for possibility in strategy development and things like scenario techniques. At the same time the 'analytic mentality' often removes the whole purpose of possibility. In a scenario process the least average scenario gets dropped (through corrections) and may be the most important one.
Much lip-service is paid to creativity, but little is done about it. As a result most organisations are operating way below the potential offered by their assets and performance. Most operate on the basis of 'keep going as you are going and solve problems as they arise'. To some 'me too' products and acquisitions may be added.
The relationship between certainty and possibility is very little understood in society.
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