Technical People and Nontechnical People

There’s a line in C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy that sticks with me. In Out of The Silent Planet, the first book in the series, the protagonist, Dr. Ransom, is speaking to the villain, Professor Weston. Weston is a world-renowned physicist who has solved human interplanetary travel. Weston as brought Ransom on the journey against his will. When Ransom awakes in the spaceship, he realize what has happened and asks Weston, “how have you done it?”Weston responds condescendingly,As to how we do it—I suppose you mean how the space-ship works—there’s no good your asking that. Unless you were one of the four or five real physicists now living you couldn’t understand: and if there were any chance of your understanding you certainly wouldn’t be told. If it makes you happy to repeat words that don’t mean anything—which is, in fact, what unscientific people want when they ask for an explanation—you may say we work by exploiting the less observed properties of solar radiation.The line is brilliant in part because it helps to establish Weston’s megalomania, which plays an important role in the story later on. But it also raises a question about how much “unscientific” people can understand scientific things.In my own profession, we tend to impose a distinction between “technical” people and “non-technical” people. I first arrived at the Pentagon just after finishing a PhD in philosophy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chapainsights.substack.com/subscribe