読書ノート：Part I/Chapter 1 of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALITARIANISM
はじめに
このノートは、The Psychology of Totalitarianism（Mattias Desmet著）を読み、重要と思われた部分を抜き出して記録したものです。ノートは、章単位の構成となっています。他章のノートを参照する場合、各ノート末の「全体校正」のリンクを参照してください。
このノートは、一読者としての印象を部分的に抜き出たものです。私の意見・感想は含まれていません。しかし、部分的な抜き出しなので、正しい内容を反映していないかもしれません。また、本文での引用情報も含まれていません。従って、本書を正しく理解するためには、ぜひ原文をお読みください。
このノートの目的は、自分としての理解の整理ですが、もし、本書の興味の一助になれば嬉しいです。
Part I: Science and its Psychological Effect /
Chapter 1: Science and Ideology
Science can, in essence, be defined as open-mindedness.The original practice of science, that which formed the basis of the Enlightenment, briefly suspended prejudice about the things being observed. It was open to the greatest possible diversity of ideas and thoughts, assumptions, and hypotheses. It cultivated doubt and considered uncertainty a virtue. It let the facts speak for themselves and decide for themselves what kind of thought or theory they preferred to unite with. In this way, facts were reborn into words as fresh, budding truths.
科学とは、「オープン・マインド」である。啓蒙主義の基礎となった科学の原点は、観察対象への偏見を保留することでした。
It was not only the facts that had the liberty to assert themselves. “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” Voltaire declared (or rather, his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, declared). Science also liberated man from his self-incurred immaturity. It broke through rule by religious dogma that, in the public sphere, had largely decayed into coercion and oppression, pretense and hypocrisy, deceit and lies.
科学は、公共の場において、強制と抑圧、見せかけと偽善、欺瞞と嘘に大きく堕落していた宗教的ドグマによる支配を打ち破ったのでした。
This openness of mind, this faithful pursuit of Reason at any cost eventually yielded, through incessant endeavor over several centuries, the most sublime insights. Surprising insights, too. The great physicists of the first half of the twentieth century proved in the most rigorous way that the core of matter cannot be separated from the observing subject. They demonstrated that the observation of a material object changes the object itself (“Looking at something, changes it,” Erwin Schrödinger declared).
数世紀にう渡るオープンマインドな探求は素晴らしい洞察を得ました：物質的な物体を観察すると、その物体自体が変化することを（「何かを見ると、それが変化する」とエルヴィン・シュレーディンガーは宣言しました）。
Moreover, they relinquished the illusion that man could ever attain certainty. With his uncertainty principle, Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that it is impossible to unambiguously determine even purely material “facts,” such as the location in time and space of material particles. The great minds who followed reason and facts most rigorously came to the conclusion that, ultimately, the essence of things is beyond logic and cannot be grasped. Niels Bohr concluded that only poetry can describe the absurd behavior of elementary particles: “When it comes to atoms, language can only be used as poetry.”
更に、人間が確実性を獲得できるという幻想も捨てたました。理性と事実に最も厳格に従った偉人たちは、究極的には、物事の本質は論理を超えており、把握することはできないという結論に達しました。
Also the very idea of predictability in the material world—fanatically proclaimed by French scientist PierreSimon Laplace in the eighteenth century—was invalidated by the American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the twentieth century. Even if you’re able to capture a complex and dynamic phenomenon (which includes most natural phenomena) in mathematical formulas, you still, even with formulas in hand, wouldn’t be able to predict their behavior a second in advance.
例えば、18世紀にフランスの科学者ラプラスが熱狂的に唱えた物質世界の予測可能性という考え方（ラプラスの悪魔）は、20世紀にアメリカの数学者・気象学者エドワード・ローレンツによって無効とされました。
And finally, the image of the universe as a dead and nondirectional (nonteleological) mechanical process also proved scientifically untenable. Chaos theory showed in a truly revolutionary way that matter is constantly organizing itself in ways that cannot possibly be explained in mechanistic terms. The universe is endowed with direction and volition. We’ll explore this more in detail in the last part of this book.
そして最後に、宇宙は死んだような無方向性（非テレオロジー）の機械的プロセスであるというイメージも、科学的に成り立たないことが証明されました。カオス理論は、機械論では説明できないような形で、物質が常に自己を組織化していることを、真に革命的な方法で示しました。
This sheds surprising light on the nature of science. Most are of the opinion that science consists of making dry, logical connections between “objectively” observable facts. However, science is, in fact, characterized by empathy, a resonant affinity between the observer and the phenomenon under investigation. As such, science stumbles upon an unknowable and mysterious essence that escapes logical explanation and which can be described only in the language of poetry and metaphor.
多くの人は、科学とは「客観的に」観察可能な事実をドライに論理的に結びつけることだと考えています。しかし、科学とは、観察者と現象との間の「共鳴的な親和性」として特徴付けられます。
Encounters with that essence often result in what we might describe as the seminal religious experience—a religious experience that precedes and is untainted by religious institutions or dogma. Max Planck testified to that experience, in perhaps the most direct and vulnerable way: Science eventually arrives where religion once started, in a personal contact with the Unnameable (see also chapter 11).
やがて、科学は、かつて宗教が出発した場所にたどり着きます。
As we will discuss in the latter part of this book, the faithful pursuit of Reason attained the highest and most sublime achievement: mapping its own boundaries. The human mind had accepted its own limitations and once more relocated the ultimate knowledge beyond and outside itself. The ultimate achievement of science is that it finally surrenders, that it comes to the realization that it cannot be the guiding principle for man. It is not human reason that is at the heart of the matter, but man as an individual who makes ethical and moral choices, man in relation to fellow man, man in relation to the unnameable, which, at the heart of things, speaks to him.
科学の究極に達成したことは、科学が人間の指導原理になり得ないことを悟ることでした。
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However, from the beginning, the tree of science also sprouted a branch in another direction—the exact opposite direction of that original scientific practice. Based on the great achievements of science, some people tipped from open-mindedness to belief; for them, science became ideology. It was mainly the mechanistic-materialistic branch, the so-called hard sciences, that most enraptured us. Simple in its principles (the laws of mechanics), specific in its object (the tangible, visible world), and awe-inspiring in its practical applicability (from the steam engine to television and the atomic bomb to the Internet), this science has everything to seduce human beings. With this branch of science, man conquers space; it enables us to see and hear what is happening on the other side of the planet and visualize brain activity; it gives us the ability to move faster than sound and to perform microsurgical procedures. In the past, people waited in vain for God to perform miracles, but this science made them actually happen. Man had left the stage of believing and could now rely successfully on what he knew. At least, so he believed.
しかし、科学の木は初めから別の方向にも枝を伸ばしていました。その方向は、科学の原点とは正反対でした。科学の偉大な成果をもとに、ある人たちは「開明主義」から「信念」に転じました。その人たちにとって科学はイデオロギーとなったのです。その枝は、ハードサイエンスと呼ばれ、機械論的・物質論的な分野です。原理は単純（力学の法則）、対象は具体的（目に見える世界）、実用性は畏敬の念（蒸気機関からテレビ、原子爆弾からインターネットまで）、この科学は人間を魅了するすべてを兼ね備えています。
From the Enlightenment forward, mechanistic thinking provided the Grand Narrative in Western civilization. According to that story, it begins with a big bang that sets an expanding universe in motion, generating a series of phenomena of growing complexity. Hydrogen is formed first, then helium, and then all the other elements through alternating processes of fusion and explosion. The elements clump together and form stars and planets and one of them, the Earth, contains water. This water allows for the formation of amino acids, often regarded as the first form of life. From here, guided by natural selection, simple forms of life gradually give way to more complex forms until, at long last, man emerges—the provisional end point of evolution. In this way, the scientific discourse spun its own creation myth.
啓蒙主義以降、機械論的思考は西洋文明のグランドナラティブ（大いなる物語）を提供してきました。
“Whoever doubts this creed, voluntarily declares himself foolish or insane.” One is still allowed to doubt, but only about the “right” things. In this way, the tree of science sprouted a branch that grew in the opposite direction from the original shoots. At its birth, science was synonymous with open-mindedness, with a way of thinking that banished dogmas and questioned beliefs. As it evolved, however, it also turned itself into ideology, belief, and prejudice.
その誕生当初、科学はドグマを排除し、信念を問うオープンマインドな考え方の代名詞でした。しかし、科学は、その進化に伴い、イデオロギー・信念・偏見に変わっていきました。
Science thus underwent a transformation, as all ideologies do. At first, it was a discourse by which a minority defied a majority; then it became the discourse of the majority itself. In the course of this transformation, scientific discourse aligned itself with objectives that were opposed to the original ones. It enabled manipulation of the masses, allowed people to build a career (“publish or perish”), promote products (“Research shows our soap washes the whitest”), spread deception (“I only believe the statistics I faked myself,” Winston Churchill), and belittle and stigmatize others (“Whoever believes in alternative medicine is an irrational fool”). Indeed, even to justify segregation and exclusion (no access to public spaces unless you bear the sign—a mask, a vaccine passport—of the scientific ideology). In short, the scientific discourse, like any dominant discourse, has become the privileged instrument of opportunism, lies, deception, manipulation, and power.
すべてのイデオロギーがそうであるように、科学も変容を遂げました。最初は、少数派が多数派に反抗するための言説でした。やがて、科学は多数派の言説そのものとなりました。この変容の過程で、科学的言説は、本来の目的とは異なる目的に自らを合わせるようになりました。
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To the extent that the scientific discourse became an ideology, it lost its virtue of truth-telling. Nothing illustrates this better than the so-called replication crisis that erupted in academia in 2005. This crisis emerged when a number of serious cases of scientific fraud came to light. Scientific scans and other imaging were proven to have been manipulated, 6 archaeological artefacts were found to be counterfeit, 7 embryo clones had been forged; 8 some researchers claimed to have successfully transplanted skin from mice, whilst they had simply dyed the skin of the test animals without performing any surgical procedure. 9 Other researchers had manufactured missing links from pieces of skulls of humans and monkeys; 10 and yes, it appeared that some even completely made up their research.11
科学的言説がイデオロギー化し、真実を語るという美徳は失われました。このことを最もよく表しているのが、2005年に学界で勃発したいわゆる「再現性の危機」です。
In recent decades, academics have attempted to improve the quality of research through a number of initiatives. They questioned the pressure on researchers to publish, urged researchers to make their data publicly available, pushed for more transparency around financial interests, and more. Overall, these measures don’t seem to have had much effect.In 2021, 50 percent of surveyed academics anonymously admitted that they sometimes presented their findings in a biased way. Half is already a problem, but according to Fanelli, it almost certainly represents a substantial underestimation. This is because a significant percentage of the researchers, even if surveyed anonymously, will not admit to engaging in questionable research practices. The measures taken to improve the quality of scientific research, however well-intentioned, failed to address the problem.
最近の数十年、学者たちはさまざまな取り組みを通じて、研究の質を向上させようと試みてきました。全体として、これらの施策はあまり効果を上げていないようです。2021年、調査対象となった学者の50％が、自分の研究結果を偏った形で発表した経験を匿名で認めました。しかも、その結果が、かなりの過小評価であることはほぼ間違いありません。
The replication crisis does not simply indicate a lack of seriousness and scrupulousness in research. It first and foremost points to a fundamental epistemological crisis—a crisis of the way in which science is conducted. Our interpretation of objectivity is wrong, excessively based on the idea that numbers are the preferred approach to facts. If we look at the scientific fields with the worst replicability outcomes, it becomes clear that the measurability of phenomena plays a significant role. In chemistry and physics, for example, it wasn’t that bad. However, in psychology and medicine, the situation is wretched. In those fields, researchers assess extremely complex and dynamic phenomena—the physical and psychological functioning of human beings. Such “objects” are, in essence, only measurable to a very limited extent, as they cannot be reduced to unidimensional characteristics (see chapter 4). And yet, all too often, we see desperate attempts to mold them into data.
「再現性の危機」は、単に研究に対する真剣さ・慎重さの欠如を示すものではありません。何よりもまず、これは科学のあり方の危機です。特に、心理学や医学では悲惨な状況です。
During the coronavirus crisis, the public became aware—perhaps for the first time—of the relativity of medical measurements, as we witnessed the manifest problems with the PCR test. It quickly became clear that the test can be administered in different ways, that it produces widely variable results, that the results can also be interpreted in different ways, and so on. Johann Goethe once said, “Measuring a thing is a crude act, which cannot be applied in any other way than extremely imperfectly to living bodies.” By attempting to measure the unmeasurable, measurement becomes a form of pseudo-objectivity. Instead of bringing the researcher closer to his research object, the measurement procedure leads him further away. It hides the examined object behind a screen of numbers.
コロナ危機で、一般の人々は、PCR検査の明らかな課題を目撃することで、医学的測定の相対性に初めて気づいたと思います。PCR検査の課題とは、その検査が様々な方法で実施されたため、得られた結果も様々で、その結果もまた様々に解釈されたことでした。測定不可能なものを測定する試みは、PCRによる測定を擬似客観なものにしました。この測定手続きは、研究者を研究対象に近づける代わりに、さらに遠ざけることになりました。研究すべき対象は、「数字」の背後に隠されてしまいました。
The lack of quality in scientific research raises a few pressing questions, including about the blind peer review system, which is used in all scientific journals and is considered the ultimate seal of approval for scientific legitimacy. Peer review requires that a study be read and critically evaluated by two or three independent experts in the field before publication. These experts are supposed to be “blind” (they don’t know who conducted the study), but in reality, they usually do know the authors because they know the other researchers working in their field. Hence, they can usually guess who conducted the research. For this reason, a fair assessment by an expert requires not only that he is willing and able to free up sufficient time and energy—far from given in the current academic climate. Moreover, it requires that he is capable of identifying his personal prejudices with regard to the research and its authors, and put them aside. In other words: Peer review stands or falls on the ethical and moral quality of the expert—that is, his subjective, human characteristics.
科学研究の質の低さは、いくつかの差し迫った疑問を提起しました。その疑問が向けられた対象には、全ての科学雑誌で採用されているブラインド査読システムがあります。ブラインド査読は、専門家の倫理的・道徳的な資質に依存しています。つまり、それは、人間の主観的・人間的な特徴に寄って成立しています。
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And just like that, this chapter has come full circle. Both great Science (the science that maintains an open mind and pursues Reason) and small science (the science that degenerates into ideology) eventually re-encounter what they originally had pushed out of view: man as a subjective and ethical being. The first kind of science does so in a positive way, by recognizing the importance of that dimension and anchoring it in its theories. It started as a courageous, young science by looking outwards to the material world, registering phenomena and establishing logical connections between them. It assumed—and rightly, to a degree—that this was the way to sovereign knowledge. In great Science, the human being, in its psychic, symbolic, moral, and ethical dimension, disappeared into the background. But that didn’t last long. It was discovered that the observer, in his subjective qualities, has an essential influence on the objects being observed. The theories in which those insights have been anchored, such as quantum mechanics and complex, dynamic systems theory, have to be considered among the greatest achievements man has ever produced. (We will explore this in more detail in part 3.)
偉大な科学（心を開いて理性を追求する科学）も小さな科学（イデオロギーに堕落した科学）も、やがて、もともと視界の外に押しやっていたものに再び遭遇しまし。それは、主観的で倫理的な存在としての人間です。
As we will discuss more extensively in chapter 3, the most striking thing of all is that, in general, researchers themselves hardly realize that there is something wrong with their methodology.They generally take their scientific fiction for reality, confusing their numbers with the facts of which they are a distorted echo.The same applies to a large part of the population, blindly trusting this scientific ideology, with no other ideological hiding place, given the fall of religion.Numbers and graphs presented in the mass media by someone with credentials are considered de facto realities by many people. It is at this level that Hannah Arendt situates the ideal subject of the totalitarian state: the subject that no longer knows the difference between (pseudo)-scientific fiction and reality. Never before were there so many such people as in the beginning of the twenty-first century; never before were the societal conditions so prone to totalitarianism.
最も衝撃的なことは、研究者自身が、自分たちの方法論に何か問題があることにほとんど気づいていないことです。彼らは、自らの科学的フィクションを現実のものと思いこみ、事実としての数字と歪んだ反響の結果である数字を混同しています。このことは、多くの人々が科学的なイデオロギーを盲目的に信頼することにも当てはまります。彼らにとって、宗教の崩壊は、イデオロギー的な隠れ場所を失ったことになるからです。マスメディアで然るべき人が発表する数字やグラフは、多くの人々にとって、事実上の現実とみなされます。
全体構成
Part I: Science and its Psychological Effects
Part II: Mass Formation and Totalitarianism
Part III: Beyond the Mechanistic Worldview
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