Extractive tendencies

Regarding what I said in an earlier post ("The past, in color") about the abstracting or rarifying tendencies associated with the extended pursuit of rational inquiry, this process is not itself mere abstraction or vague idea. On the contrary, it has produced, and continues to produce, a monumental array of tangible and entirely physical changes in the world of experience. Like some mysterious alchemical procedure writ large on the canvas of the planet, the history of materials science resembles a massively parallel, iterative process of refinement and reduction, incrementally paring away that which is not at ever more precise tolerances, in order to leave behind what is, but was formerly obscured, a mere latent possibility hidden between the folds of the fabric of the natural order; for so long kept safe, so to speak, from the repercussions of our inexpert meddling.

Defining an intensely generative second stage, the industrial-scale "amplification" of a freshly isolated substance in volumes incommensurate with its corresponding occurrence in nature often follows on the heels of its discovery. The extraction of benzene, for instance, first identified and isolated from lighting gas residue by Faraday in 1825 in a stroke of genius somewhat overshadowed by his similarly groundbreaking work introducing the concept of the field in electromagnetism, led to its eventual synthesis in quantities far surpassing those of its terrestrial counterparts as naturally occurring components of gum benzoin: a fragrant, fruity balsamic resin from Styrax trees used for centuries in Asia and the Middle East as an incense and in perfumes. Global production capacity of benzene, still used intensively in the manufacture of polyester and polyurethane foams, in rubber processing and as a precursor to countless synthetic substances, including polystyrene, is now somewhere in the area of 70 million metric tons annually(!) And this is but one example among many hundreds that could be named of extractive projects, not only in organic chemistry but in applied physics as well, from the distillation of alcohol to the generation of electricity from radioactive materials. (The advent of near-synthetic or totally synthetic substances might be considered a third stage of this progression).

The conservation of mass and energy always applies, but everywhere we look, the local material distribution of the physical world has been irrevocably altered through extractive industry, not merely changed but systematically redistributed in a thousand ways different from what the natural order would otherwise have ordained. The structure of natural systems is densely intercalated, a tightly interwoven mesh of complementary material properties, distributed according to function and form at multiple interconnected levels, but the strange fruit of human endeavor is by comparison curiously concentrated, insular. Vast tracts of a single substance only, or a few select substances, neatly arranged in containers, tanks, vials, subdivisions, meticulously catalogued in accounts, sent through pipes thousands of miles long to distant ports, an alien confederation beyond the contours of any local ecology. It sounds almost a trivial point until you consider the cumulative size of the operation, as the cyclone of reason has carved its peculiar, zig-zag course through the material landscape. The extraction of raw essence, the harnessing of inner forces has unleashed vast reserves of energy into the world, enough to destabilize the climate of an entire planet in only a few centuries and cause serious harm to ecosystems across our globe. Material superabundance, the fallout from the unmooring of a typhoon of displaced material inhabiting myriad forms never suspected by our forebears is truly the sine qua non of our age.

I say this neither to heap criticism on the achievements of Michael Faraday and his fellow innovators, for it's hardly all their fault, nor to trumpet the success of applied science at disproportionately elevating the living standards of a small percentage of people near the top of the global economic hierarchy, but merely to point out that if something like a balance of material distribution can be said to exist in the world of nature, or indeed in our own society, what we have today is decidedly not anywhere close to it. Far too many things are too far out of place. Our very success at winnowing the secrets of nature in the service of unlimited possibility has already begun to cut deep into the branch which carries our own weight.

And the program is clearly far from complete. The apparatus required to blast apart atoms to parse the unresolved subtleties of the subatomic realm, the largest machine ever built by human beings, is spread out over a land area larger than many cities, a feat of engineering no doubt as formidable as the theoretical problems it was designed to solve. There is a vaguely druidic air about the project which suggests some kind of cloistered, 21st-century subterranean Stonehenge. And why not? After all, the overarching objective, should it ever be realized, is nothing less than a total description of the fundamental constituents of matter, a complete account of the raw essence of stuff at the foundation level. One might reasonably expect a certain amount of woolly mysticism suffusing the operation, despite its thoroughgoing precision. But at the same time the question of humanity's future hangs in the balance with an ever starker degree of immediacy, as if at the threshold of total understanding we find not the exhilarating yet benignly enlightened vision we had anticipated, but rather, to our surprise and shock, meet suddenly with the specter of our own annihilation.

The question that seems unavoidable, then, is was it always necessary that things develop in this way, with all the flagrant and wanton destruction, the sheer volume of waste that has characterized the startling progression of human understanding at nearly every turn? Was this just the inevitable outcome of blind evolutionary forces shaping the human mind, and the human mind in turn shaping the natural order into some sort of distorted, fun-house mirror extrapolation of our ancestral state, complete with all its unintended consequences? Or, considered a different way, was there some fundamental flaw in our constitution, an error in the course of our development, that necessarily consigned our species to this unfortunate and ignominious condition, as we steadily undermine whatever evolutionary advantage we might have enjoyed at the outset? Could such an error have been avoided? Would it have been possible for us to know what we now know about the fabric of the cosmos, and everything we've come to know about ourselves, without the untold suffering that has ever dogged that knowledge's unfolding across our reach of time and space? Why was so much effort required to attain even the barest minimum of reliable theoretical insight into our condition, and at such enormous cost not only to ourselves, but to the survival of other species as well?

One suspects that a universe in which there is any hope of distilling the truth must make exacting demands of its participants; so exacting, in fact, that they do not, as a rule, survive any longer than the lifespan required of them to ensure that all known facts agree. Not even the stars burn forever. Somehow, a universe where everything and everyone, or possibly anything at all, went on existing without end would simply be false, the phenotype of an impossible world. No truth of any consequence could be discovered about such a place, and consequently there would be precious little worth knowing there.

This hardly seems a satisfying answer, but one also suspects that it might be unwise to hope for one that is substantially better in the long run, or to have any reasonable hope of such an answer being correct. Regardless, if the science of the past and present has advanced chiefly by breaking the elements of nature down into their purest essence, perhaps the science of the future will someday attempt the arduous project of forging them anew into a resilient, mutually beneficent whole.