Re: Medusa and the Snail

In his essay “The Medusa and the Snail”, biologist Lewis Thomas claims that humans are built to make mistakes. Furthermore, he argues that mistakes are the basis for human progress. According to his claims, there are always right and wrong choices of which one needs an equal balance. Wrong choices are necessary and one learns from them by trial and error. Thomas argues that mistakes are common and that they serve as an important guide towards discovering the new and creating progress. Additionally, he contends that all new kinds of thinking are created in opposition to a previous state of mind. For every argument there has to be a counterargument, and moreover, Thomas claims that in debates there is a mutual understanding that one is right and the other wrong. Thus, Thomas maintains that “landing on the wrong side” is responsible for the greatest human achievements. I agree with Thomas that error is the basis for progress because faced with errors humans are pushed to correct them. However, I find his contention to be contradictory because in “Medusa and the Snail”, Thomas states that new ideas and progress are created in opposition to past accomplishments. In fact, the greatest human achievements have been made when past precedents have been adapted. Trial and error is not about experimenting with the unknown; it’s about improving what is already there.

I firmly disagree with Thomas that new thinking is created in opposition to past ideas. If this was so, then there would be no continuity in the world which is necessary for progress. Furthermore, if every generation made fresh starts and neglected the past accomplishments only trials would be made but no errors. Without errors the motivation to improve is absent thus yielding no success. True success is achieved when one builds off of past achievements and continues the traditions of the past while adapting them. As has been evident throughout much of history, progress has often been due to civilizations borrowing from their past and each other. For example, the Chinese dynasties existed for millennia and lasted till the 20th century. The reason for this great continuity was that the Chinese retained some of the traditions of the past such as Confucianism and Daoism and built off of them to create a strong base which would withstand and enable future improvements. China’s dynasties eventually ceased to exist; however, this was due to their modernization, which wasn’t totally against the past traditions. Rather, it was an adaptation to the new conditions. In fact, to this day the Chinese have maintained much of their old ways of thinking and have become successful because they have effectively blended the old with the new.

Additionally, in Huntington’s book, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order”, the author contends that non Western civilizations such as China are most successful when they borrow from past traditions and spin them in order to adapt to future challenges. Other countries which completely neglect their past traditions and old ways of thinking are bound to fail because they adopt foreign ways of thinking instead of their own. Huntington states that China’s communism is effective because in the ancient Chinese Confucianism the same values as in communism are endorsed, such as work ethic and community. Thus, continuity has enabled effective trials such as communism to be made, which have helped to lead China to progress. Furthermore, in the past century after the Communist Revolution, China had isolationist politics which caused it to regress, however, in recent years, the Chinese have learned from this error and have become more open towards the world. This openness which has been backed by a strong cultural identity and tradition has resulted in their booming economy and rapid progress. Thus, contrary to Thomas’ argument, new ways of thinking are not created in opposition to something old, but rather they build off of past discoveries and traditions to create a new blend.

The discovery of penicillin was also an unintentional error which led to a scientific breakthrough and progress in the field of medicine. Fleming discovered penicillin after leaving his laboratory in a mess and going off on vacation, only to come back to mold in his petri dishes. He’d been performing experimentations and raising bacteria and unexpectedly his untidiness led to the discovery of the first antibiotic. The discovery of the first antibiotic was completely unintentional and at the beginning was unacknowledged, and without further experimentation its value could have never been fully revealed. Frustrated with his efforts towards perfecting his discovery and nearing old age, Fleming eventually passed on the development of penicillin to other younger scientists in the US, who successfully managed to improve it, enabling it to attain its wide importance and usefulness. These followers of Fleming succeeded in creating an effective penicillin antibiotic which very soon became so readily available that it was indispensably used during WWII. The history of the development of penicillin supports the claim that those progressive individuals who develop breakthroughs need to ensure that their developments have continuity either toward the future or from the past, because inventions that have no previous basis or future implications are not progressive or beneficial to humanity. Lasting progress is timeless and offers room for error, which opens up the opportunity for future adjustments, just like those that were made to penicillin.

The French Revolution was a major turning point in history when egalitarianism, liberty and democracy were instituted by the people’s uprising in resistance to the French monarchy. One might argue that the people revolted in opposition to the monarchy, and thus one may contend that Thomas correctly states that important developments occur due to an existent opposition, however, this would be a naïve statement. One might support this argument if they solely look at the history regarding this period and neglect human history as a whole, thus neglecting an essential perspective in historical analysis. In fact, looking back to the past examples, the French philosophers who heavily influenced the revolutionary thinking all endorsed the democratic principles of government previously invented by the Greeks. Montesquieu, for example, developed the theory of separation of powers which is simply a continuation of the ideas of democratic rule. Furthermore, as a result of the French Revolution, assemblies were instituted in efforts to decentralize the power from the monarch. Assemblies were also previously present in both Greek and Roman classical civilizations. Thus, though the French Revolution has been considered as a period in history when drastic change was instituted in opposition to the monarchy, the revolutionary ideas of change were actually a continuation of the Greek and Roman political ideology.

In opposition to Thomas’ contention, most of the world has been successful when it has recycled the old to create something new. Thomas’ argument has a strong base by contending that trial and error lead to success, however, his argument is flawed because he naively maintains that progress and effective change is created in complete disagreement with the past developments. This argument is feeble because in reality as Thomas contends but fails to expand upon, making errors leads to progress and there would be no room for recognizing and learning from errors if each error was due to a different discontinuous trial. Furthermore, anyone can make a mistake, but the mistakes that matter are those that have ground set in the past and those that offer the possibility of continuity. Errors that lead to progress are those that yield timeless results.