The Return to the University of the Cruciatus

I have moved back in to the dorms and now I face the growing doom of second-year. I've been back for three days of classes and I already feel as if I am behind. For one thing, I have a shitload of management things to do, especially for Tai Chi Tao (of which I am the president of... because I was the only undergraduate not graduating in the past spring) and I've done things for The Triple Helix and auditioned for the a capella group Rhythm & Jews, without any idea whether or not I've gotten in (I swear that I have issues with singing, although I was surprised that my range is actually closer to counter-tenor than the baritone I thought I was... but at the same time, I wonder if my range is any good at all...)

My courses are quite burdensome this year, as I am finishing the Common Core and getting organic chemistry and general physics out of the way. If you read my previous post (about two posts ago), you will remember that my crazy Russian ex-boss is my O-Chem instructor. What's worse is that he calls me by name during class. I don't know if he hates me or not. To be very honest, it feels extremely awkward around him, because it's as if we were in a stormy relationship and I dumped him, only to find that he holds so much power over me. No, I did not date him, but watching him lecture and glancing at me the way he did made me feel as if we broke up under trying circumstances.

I've applied to a different lab that focuses instead on more theoretical science (systems biology, statistical mechanics, and network theory) rather than a more self-serving engineering discipline (microfluidics--although I would like to say that "self-serving" is not meant to be pejorative; perhaps "self-propagating" is a better term). The P. I. is a pretty cool dude (foreign again, this time French), and he was excited at the fact that I was excited at what he is excited by (unfortunately, for me, it is not men). He looked over my research interests and told me "you obviously have good taste," but since what I'm interested in is pretty much "final year graduate mathematics material," we are on hiatus as to where to fit me in the lab. However, he did tell me to reconsider going back to Russian's lab. I guess if I go back with my tail covering my genitals, it wouldn't be too horrid--I could work perhaps on a different project this time. But that's what's going on in the O-Chem front.

On the physics front, I'm having a lot of fun in my course. Although French prof will be teaching next quarter, this quarter (mechanics) is being taught by an awesome high-energy physicist. He's taking a really unconventional method in teaching us mechanics by beginning with special relativity. He claims that it is best to teach the "correct state" (special relativity) before "approximations" (Newtonian mechanics), which is quite an interesting statement. I'm of the persuasion (as a philosopher) that any scientific theory is an approximate description of a physical phenomena (a la Galileo and Laplace), but we will never be able to determine anything for sure (a la Hume). Still, it's a very interesting approach, especially since I have never learned special relativity before (what can I say? My mother was a quantum physicist and I'm technically a chemist). I'm starting to understand this now, seeing that relativity is built on playing around with reference frames. There is no such thing as absolute time or space. Of course, special relativity deals with inertial reference frames, whereas general relativity allows non-inertial reference frames, but with such a big shock to Newtonian determinism, I wonder why the scientists are vehemently opposed to relativism. It seems to me that relativity essentially captures pure empiricism and thereby invalidating any absolute measure. It seems to further support the absence, or at least the inaccessibility to "absolute truth" by value changes, such as the Lorentz time contraction factor. Of course, one could argue that this is purely an issue of perception, but at the moment, I will not divulge any further, since I obviously have to learn more to form a more sophisticated argument.

I do not have much to say about my civilizations class, which is "Science, Culture, and Society in Western Civilizaton," as it's being taken by humanities and social "science" majors as well, who do not have any notion as to what science actually is (perhaps I am at a disadvantage because I've already established a definition of science via Popper), and as I've explained in my Mansfield post, I have nothing but disdain for such people.

My social sciences class, "Self, Culture, and Society" is really awesome, as we go into political economy the first quarter (reading Smith, Marx, Weber, and Grieder), sociology and anthropology the second (Levi-Strauss, among others), and psychology the third (Freud, de Beauvoir, etc.) I have to turn in weekly critical responses, so now I will be writing out my thoughts for this week's reading in Smith (I may or may not continue to use my blog as an idea generator).

In the progress of society, philosophy or speculation becomes, like every other
employment, the pincipal or sole trade and occupation of a particular class of
citizens [...] Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch,
more work is done upon by the whole, and the quantity of science is considerably
increased by it.

-Adam Smith, The Wealth of the Nations. Book I, Chapter 1, pp 14

In the first chapter of Book I, Smith argues that the division of labor is what causes greater productivity and "greater power of labor." He presents pin creation as an example of the efficiency caused by the division of labor, stating that a group of individuals assigned a different task in the creation of each pin working together will create twelve pounds of pins a day (a pound having upwards of 4000 pins), whereas an individual alone might scarcely make even one a day (Smith 8). He then extends this analogy to "every other art and manufacture" (Smith 9). Although he does not provide any empiricial evidence for his assertion, his argument does make sense mathematically and thermodynamically speaking: given a limited amount of resources R (which would include time and effort) for each individual, an individual working alone would have to create the whole product (we will denote the amount of work to create the whole as W), while division of labor will reduce the output to a partial product (work to create the partial as P). Since W>P, (R-W)<(R-P), meaning that the individual who creates partial products will have more resources left, allowing for the creation of more partial products than the individual creating whole products. Empirical issues aside, this model that Smith presents makes sense, but only on a limited scale. The major assumption that Smith makes is the reducibility or divisibility of labor--what about irreducibility and/or complexity?

It is fair to say that in manufacturing, Smith's model can hold true, but Smith extends the division of labor to the creation of ideas (Smith 14). Although his assertion regarding a "class of thinkers" rings true to ancient and contemporary society (e.g. the intelligentsia), he claims that further specialization will somehow benefit the whole of science. In many cases, this is true--there is too much information out there for an expert virologist to also be a brilliant cosmologist, while publishing copious amounts of publications regarding Baudrillard's "non-Euclidean semiotic space of war" (although, one may argue that the last achievement is not too difficult, given the Sokal Affair and the "Postmodern Essay Generator"), but there are many examples of progress without the division of labor. Smith seems to ignore the idea of a "Renaissance Man," such as Sir Issac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, and, of course, Leonardo Da Vinci. These examples are admittedly extreme, but nonetheless present the profound effect a single individual can have on broad reaches of disciplines, whereas the names of hyper-specialized experts are not even registered.

Furthermore, continuous division of labor will also result in catastrophe, which is also demonstratable through physics and mathematics: division of labor L by any number n and also with recursive divisions by any numbers n or otherwise (m) will lead to an extremely large number D (D=n x m x l x k x j x...). This means that there are D degrees of freedom, with D becoming larger with more divisions. Thermodynamically speaking, the efficiency of a system decreases with increasing degrees of freedom due to entropy (it is useful to use Shannon's definition of information entropy: the amount of information lost in transmission). A simple example is the difference between listening to a conversation in an empty coffee shop versus listening to a conversation at the New York Stock Exchange during trading hours--self-described "intellectuals" revel in the calm ambience of a coffee shop in which they can engage in profound philosophical discussions, whereas stockbrokers on the floor will shout at each other, gesture, and only end up frustrated and tear their hair out. Similarly, with complex organizations like the United States Federal Government, efficiency is further limited by the large amount of projects it oversees and limited budgets will in the end restrict the overall progress of the organization. Of course, Smith provides a solution in Book IV Chapter III (competition), but the basis of his oevre is on the division of labor and since his foundation is shaky, his entire theory may be subject to criticism.

To conclude, Smith's model of division of labor applies only to the examples he has described in manufacturing. However, his attempts to extend this to other spheres, such as the technological or the intellectual arena, is easily rebutted. Perhaps Smith's description of the importance of the division of labor is incomplete--maybe there is a "golden mean" to the division of labor, but in any case this issue points to a flaw in Smith's model.