Welcome to Newspeak

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a political satire written for its time (the late 1940s).  Orwell extrapolates the totalitarian direction of the Stalinism of his day, and imagines what would happen if it were combined with ubiquitous surveillance technology. In the world of the novel, truth is no longer a constant, an unchangeable record of how things really are.  Instead, "truth" varies from day to day according to the requirements of the Party.  If the size of the crowd at a certain event was declared, by the Party, to have been the greatest ever - why, then, it was the greatest ever, and any historical record suggesting otherwise needed to be adjusted [this example is not an actual incident from Nineteen Eighty-Four, but a similar though more extreme "changing of gears" occurs at the beginning of the crucial Chapter IX of the book]. In fact, the Ministry of Truth, where the book's hero, Winston Smith, works, has as one of its main functions this continuous 'adjustment' of the historical record. Winston rebels, but by the end of the book he has been brought back into line; he will declare even that 2+2=5 if his Party torturer demands it.




At the end of the book is an Appendix on The Principles of Newspeak.  This is a completely different kind of writing, a pseudo-academic document, from the perspective (one imagines) of some future sociologist or historian, describing how this almost universal social control had been accomplished.  Central was the control of language, and especially the reduction of available vocabulary.  Ordinary English (Oldspeak) had been replaced by Newspeak. Orwell writes

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view... and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [the Party ideology], but to make other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc - should be literally unthinkable.

This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatsoever...  Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

Let me now take you back, not to 1984 but just to last week.  What do the following words have in common?

Science-based. Evidence-based. Fetus. Entitlement. Vulnerable. Transgender. Diversity. 

You may have heard the truly 1984-like story that the Trump administration had forbidden (or at least "discouraged") the use of these words in the forthcoming budget request from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC is, of course, the government's public health agency. Public health work has been science-based since Dr John Snow removed the handle of the Broad Street water pump in 1854. His study of the evidence led him to the (correct) conclusion that the drinking water drawn by this pump had become contaminated from a local cesspool, leading to a cholera outbreak. His work saved many lives, and led to the understanding that all citizens have an entitlement to clean, pure drinking water. Public health work including that of the CDC has continued to save lives, especially by focusing on vulnerable populations such as those at risk of prescription opioid addiction, unborn children (fetuses), or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgencer people.

I apologize. Perhaps I am working too hard to make my point (which is, in fact, Orwell's point).  Remove the language that is used for a certain kind of thought and you make that thought impossible. The kind of thought that these directives would make impossible for the CDC is in fact the kind of thought that is essential to its mission. The effect of these directives is therefore to change the mission of the CDC in a quite fundamental way (for instance, by forbidding the notion "evidence-based"), while appearing not to do so.

Faced with a wave of ridicule, it now appears that the government has walked back these directives somewhat. Perhaps they were never seriously intended in their original form. But it is likely that attacks like this on science and the scientific method will continue. A government whose approach to the issue of climate change is to scrub references to the concept from the EPA's website is sadly delusional. We can only wonder what will come next.

Some of my colleagues believe that one thing that may come next is a sudden outpouring of public support for "science" - thought of as an evidence-based process for generating and refining knowledge. This is not so clear to me. When we scientists have been asked to speak publicly about the significance of our work, we have often pointed to the material goods that it has enabled us to produce, or enabled us to produce more cheaply.  In my world of mathematics, we've spoken about elliptic curves and then public key cryptography and its foundational role in the financial system - credit cards, Amazon, online stock trading,...  Or we've talked of general relativity and its effect on satellite orbits, segueing into GPS and online mapping.

Yes, it's certainly true that our evidence-based search for truth has turned up many materially valuable goodies.  But there is no reason to believe it will continue to do so. Suppose the most important result that science turns up is, "Change your habits or you will bring about the end of your comfortable way of life!" - a fair enough summary of decades of careful research on climate change compiled into the report of the US Global Change Research Program (28 June 2017).  Will this evidence-based news be automatically welcomed? Experience dating back to Jeremiah and the prophets suggests that the answer is probably "No!". It's more likely that "those with power" will be deluded that by destroying the words of the report, they are somehow avoiding its message (Jeremiah 36).  Wait... does this sound familiar somehow?

No, we scientists have enjoyed a good run, but we can't assume it will continue.  Indeed, if we stop delivering "the goods", we could face a genuine revolt against science, of which the CDC's list of seven forbidden words is just a preliminary sign. I am not sure what happens then.  Jeremiah, remember, spent most of his prophetic career in prosperous times.  The disaster that he foretold kept being postponed. There was one "pause" after another in the anticipated northern threat to Jerusalem.  But Jeremiah was steadfast and consistent in his warning.  As a result, he was able to provide (in his old age) a source of advice that was respected by the exilic (post-collapse) community (see Jeremiah 29).  Can we see any parallels here?

PS: I don't usually include directly political material in my postings.  But I think it is relevant to mention the name of Congressman Bill Foster.  He is the only PhD scientist in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. One might think it was important that a reasonable number of our legislators were trained in the methods of science, but apparently the electorate as a whole does not.  By contrast, over 40% of members of the House are trained as lawyers; for the Senate, the figure is over 60%.