Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
(Or does it?)
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
This is a well-known quotation by the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) from his textbook An Introduction to Mathematics. The context of the quotation was the usefulness of mathematical symbolism. A little bit earlier in the same chapter, Whitehead writes
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
He then gives as an example the difficulty of division within the Greek number system and the comparative ease using our current Arabic number system. The idea is that once a methodology to solve a problem is set up, then it can be used without thinking about the initial set up. Once the wheel is invented, it can simply be used without repeating the thought process that led to its invention. And then the relation to the advancement of civilization is that new methodologies can be built on top of the old and the whole process wrapped up into a new framework that can be thought of as a whole without each individual part.
Whitehead’s observation is correct, as far as it goes, though with important limitations. Even in mathematics, even with a method of problem solving, while mental effort can be conserved, thinking on the whole cannot be dispensed with. Before adopting a particular technique, it is first necessary to think about which one should be used for a specific problem. Also, the underlying reasoning in setting up the method must be understood before learning the problem-solving technique. And of course this applies in every other area as well. It is not necessary to know everything about a car to drive one, but somebody has to know how a car works and that knowledge has to be passed down in order to build cars. Furthermore, in order to maintain what already exist, someone has to know what is going on at the lower level even if that knowledge has now been encorporated into some higher-level process. So, yes, even though everyone does not have to think about everything, all the time, somebody needs to think about things some of the time, thinking must still be going on somewhere.
All this is particularly relevant in the 21st century because the wording Whitehead used “without thinking about them” has taken on a somewhat different meaning since the book was published in 1911. The whole idea of automating thinking, not just wrapping up lower-level processes into higher level ones, but actually dispensing with thinking has become much more prevalent, especially within the past few years. People might say, “If civilization progresses by performing more operations without thinking about them, then if everything is completely automated and nobody thinks about anything, that must be the pinnacle of civilization.” And this idea is broader than any particular technology or implementation of a technology. Whitehead meant redirecting thinking rather than replacing it, but that is what it has been twisted into.
But does it even work? Well, the experiment has been done. That is what people said about students making large use of calculators and computers, that it would free up time for the higher level skills. Except that when the higher level skills depend on the lower-level skills, if the first are not learned sufficiently, the second are not either. What about information and learning? Well, supposedly, having the “sum total of human knowledge” on the Internet would supercharge everyone’s learning and thinking. Instead what happened was that those who were motivated to learn did and those who were not did not. The process of focusing and thinking to acquire knowledge and understanding is more important than simply availability of information.
And that is basically it, redirecting thinking is not equivalent to replacing thinking; they are entirely different things.