Peter Emmerson

3. Philosophers not Engineers when tackling social problems.

Labour’s willingness in 1945 to construct and put into operation a prototype welfare model grounded in ideals rather than engineering was unfortunately to be expected.  Sadly, this has not changed.  Correspondingly, when dealing with political problems we remain committed to ancient theometaphysical (religious, philosophical and mathematical) conventions and standards.  Oxford University degrees such as Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE), so connected with those who achieve political eminence (see Adrian Wooldridge’s article in The Sunday Times, 28/12/14, p22), evidence and reinforce this pattern – why not EPE, Engineering, Politics & Economics?  20/01/15 was Democracy Day on BBC Radio 4.  I listened to a brief debate chaired by Today’s ultimate authority on these issues, ‘the public philosopher’, Michael Sandel of Harvard and LSE.  We could have been in ancient Athens listening to Socrates (Plato).  Contemporary political thactivity is structured according to ancient idealistic rules and is concomitantly shot-through with dream notions like ‘democracy’.  Why is this a problem?

It is a problem because these techniques have failed us in understanding and sorting out some of our most pressing human difficulties: just consider our continuing preparedness to resort to serious violence when resolving human conflicts.  In addition, British people face very different problems in 2017AD than did Greek people in 500BC.  We in Britain have benefitted enormously from taking an engineering approach to our material problems.  However, as stated above, we have been much less willing to explore such an approach to our figurational issues.  This limited development is partly explained by our profound security needs that demand our dependence on obsolete, inappropriate ancient habits, which is why BBC producers selected Sandel to chair a debate rather than a political engineer.  Isn’t 2500 years of failure sufficient time to judge such conventions unfit for purpose?  Our willingness to accept such a limited degree of penetration into political analysis by engineering methods is alarming.  Engineers have been extremely successful in dealing with human illness, but in doing so medics had to jettison ancient Hippocratic and Galenic models.  Why do we not carry out a parallel exercise as regards most other figurational issues?