Panopticism and The A-Bomb

Foucault leaves us with an opening for speculation as to how the Panoptic observation model will divorce itself from its physical institutions (like scientific investigation was freed from the Inquisition and applied, in principal, as a universal methodology). “Who will be the Great Observer?” Oh, if only it could be me! Unfortunately, some 19th-century Danish novelist already found a way, and more than two hundred thousand people died because of it. Okay, that may not be fair. Here’s the story. Forgive my incomplete allusions as I work through what I’ve read so far of Richard Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” This book is an odd sort of composition in that it attempts, simultaneously, to outline the theoretical evolution of mid-19th century physics and biographically sketch the physicists that made it happen. Niels Bohr was one of the pantheon of those odd and brilliant men behind the A-bomb. One thing that becomes clear in Rhodes’ book is that a new type of intellect comes out of this field and this era, which is evident all around us today when we look at the nature of new scientific inventions. The days of Edison, who could conceptualize something as revolutionary as the phonograph in a single sketch and build a physical model a diletant mechanic could appreciate, are over. Learning has evolved just as Foucault anticipated. Individual education has been optimized for its maximum social utility, the labor of the genius being divided into infinitely complex tasks accomplished by armies of men instead single prodigies. Look at Apple. Steve Jobs is not a genius, he’s a figure-head; like a symphony conductor, only instead of musicians he organizes masses of programmers. But if we look at genius this way, we are only measuring men by their output, their capital product, which is not only a sterile and obnoxiously marxist way to talk about them, but an incomplete one as well. Inventions are only the productive yield of the panoptic educational apparatus, but, when we look at the scientist instead, we see that these products are not those of a panoptically optimized conventional intellect. They are products of a new type intellect. This brings me back to a moment in Rhodes’ description of Niels Bohr that has been echoing in the quiet backdrop of my apartment since I first began reading Foucault’s study of panopticism. Bohr (forgive my very brute understanding of physics) was responsible for many breakthroughs in physics and chemistry, but one of them was the “complimentarity” theory, the idea that a single theoretical model isn’t enough to describe certain things- Excuse me, now professor Garrett’s voice has entered the backdrop- to describe light. Anyway, sometimes two models are required, each limiting the other. Neither is complete. The models are instead in conversation with one another. But if we contrast this with the way Newton, for example, conceived of light, we start to understand that this is more than a new, unified theory. This is not one man’s model supplanting his predecessor’s. This is a new kind of mind. This is one man’s mental labor, segmented, conversing with itself, observing itself. Now for the novelist. Niel’s Bohr, like man of his fellow atomic physicists, was heavily influenced by literature, and his favorite novel was by a Danish existentialist (whose name is hiding in my notes somewhere- apologies) entitled “The Adventures of a Danish Student.” From this book: “I divide myself into an infinite retrogressive series of I’s... who consider each other.” Bohr, apparently, was haunted by this phenomenon. Rhodes’, drawing on interviews of the physicist, tells us that this was Bohr’s way of stalling. It was a defense against the anxiety of publication, a psychologically internalized way of keeping concepts in dialog until they were perfect. The point is that Bohr had already done what Foucault anticipated. He had internalized the panoptic disciplinary model, replacing all physical supervision by actually fragmenting his own psyche into operational parts. He became the thing that watches itself, and, in doing so, catapulted science into the ashy future as realized in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Depressing. But really, Bentham- Did you really think anything sunny could come out of something called a Panopticon?