When I called him in early December, his job with the publishing
company had run its course and he was back in his tiny Manhattan
apartment, writing freelance. “I finally have time to think!” he said.
We discussed an article he was working on about how technology
structures information.
“Technology advances,” he said, “and we complain about information overload. But it turns out we’re really good at organizing information. And when we organize information really well, something gets sacrificed.” He wondered, “Is information too organized?” He wondered, “What gets sacrificed?”
The answer he suggested is a word I hadn’t heard in a while, but, given all the research I’d been doing for this article, it initiated a kind of convergence: “serendipity.” Serendipity, indeed. Serendipity is so beautifully slippery. It situates itself between Nagel and Koch, empiricism and the humanities, wonder and science. Serendipity, when you get right down to it, is at the beating heart of wonder. It accounts for McNerney’s epiphany, Sander’s love of literature, my own distrust of reducibility, and Koch’s comfort with his own “annihilation.” Serendipity interrupts the linear view of science.
McNerney brought up Darwin. Darwin, he explained, would never have read Malthus’s 1798 essay on population growth, and thus would never have developed his theory of natural selection, had he been “searching for birds on Google.” The comparative looseness of information, the unchanneled nature of investigation, joined with Darwin’s innate curiosity, is what led to one of the most unifying explanations of physical existence the world has known. What sparked it all was pure serendipity.
In our age of endlessly aggregated information, the ultimate task of the humanities may be to subversively disaggregate in order to preserve that serendipity. After all, a period of confusion inevitably precedes the acquisition of concrete knowledge. It’s a necessary blip of humbling uncertainty that allows for what McNerney describes as “the call and response” between disparate ideas. As long as that gap exists, as long as a flicker of doubt precedes knowledge, there will always be room for humanistic thought—thought that revels in not knowing. As long as that gap exists, we will not be reduced to the moral equivalent of computers.
“There’s a big benefit to not knowing the answer to a question for a long time,” McNerney said toward the end of our conversation. “The trick is knowing enough but not too much, not so much that you kill that sense of wonder.”
- On the Value of Not Knowing Everything
“Technology advances,” he said, “and we complain about information overload. But it turns out we’re really good at organizing information. And when we organize information really well, something gets sacrificed.” He wondered, “Is information too organized?” He wondered, “What gets sacrificed?”
The answer he suggested is a word I hadn’t heard in a while, but, given all the research I’d been doing for this article, it initiated a kind of convergence: “serendipity.” Serendipity, indeed. Serendipity is so beautifully slippery. It situates itself between Nagel and Koch, empiricism and the humanities, wonder and science. Serendipity, when you get right down to it, is at the beating heart of wonder. It accounts for McNerney’s epiphany, Sander’s love of literature, my own distrust of reducibility, and Koch’s comfort with his own “annihilation.” Serendipity interrupts the linear view of science.
McNerney brought up Darwin. Darwin, he explained, would never have read Malthus’s 1798 essay on population growth, and thus would never have developed his theory of natural selection, had he been “searching for birds on Google.” The comparative looseness of information, the unchanneled nature of investigation, joined with Darwin’s innate curiosity, is what led to one of the most unifying explanations of physical existence the world has known. What sparked it all was pure serendipity.
In our age of endlessly aggregated information, the ultimate task of the humanities may be to subversively disaggregate in order to preserve that serendipity. After all, a period of confusion inevitably precedes the acquisition of concrete knowledge. It’s a necessary blip of humbling uncertainty that allows for what McNerney describes as “the call and response” between disparate ideas. As long as that gap exists, as long as a flicker of doubt precedes knowledge, there will always be room for humanistic thought—thought that revels in not knowing. As long as that gap exists, we will not be reduced to the moral equivalent of computers.
“There’s a big benefit to not knowing the answer to a question for a long time,” McNerney said toward the end of our conversation. “The trick is knowing enough but not too much, not so much that you kill that sense of wonder.”
- On the Value of Not Knowing Everything
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