How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality

268 Pages·2013·1.36 MB·English

by  Paul Erickson

How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind

How Reason Almost
Lost Its Mind
The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality
PAUL ERICKSON,
JUDY L. KLEIN,
LORRAINE DASTON,
REBECCA LEMOV,
THOMAS STURM,
AND MICHAEL D. GORDIN
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Paul Erickson is assistant professor of history and science in society at
Wesleyan University. Judy L. Klein is professor of economics at Mary Baldwin
College. Lorraine Daston is director of the Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought
at the University of Chicago. Rebecca Lemov is associate professor of the
history of science at Harvard University. Thomas Sturm is a Ramón y Cajal
Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Autonomous
University of Barcelona. Michael D. Gordin is professor of the history of
science at Princeton University.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2013 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2013.
Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-04663-1 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-04677-8 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Erickson, Paul, 1976–
How reason almost lost its mind : the strange career of Cold War
rationality / Paul Erickson, Judy L. Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov,
Thomas Sturm, and Michael D. Gordin.
pages; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-226-04663-1 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-226-04677-8
(e-book) 1. Cold War. 2. World politics—1945–1989. 3. Cold War—
Philosophy. 4. Reason—Political aspects. 5. Rationalism—Political
aspects. 6. Game theory—Political aspects. I. Klein, Judy L., 1951–11.
Daston, Lorraine, 1951– III. Lemov, Rebecca M. (Rebecca Maura)
IV. Sturm, Thomas, 1967– V. Gordin, Michael D. VI. Title.
D843.E69 2013
909.82′5—dc23
2013013425
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226046778.001.0001
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments / vii
INTRODUCTION / The Struggle over Cold War Rationality / 1
ONE / Enlightenment Reason, Cold
War Rationality, and the Rule of Rules / 27
TWO / The Bounded Rationality of Cold War Operations Research / 51
THREE / Saving the Planet from Nuclear
Weapons and the Human Mind / 81
FOUR / “The Situation” in the Cold War Behavioral Sciences / 107
FIVE / World in a Matrix / 133
SIX / The Collapse of Cold War Rationality / 159
EPILOGUE / Cold War Rationality after the Cold War / 183
Notes / 189
Bibliography / 227
Index / 251

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book began at “The Strangelovian Sciences” workshop, held at the Max
Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (MPIWG) in March 2010.
Out of that workshop a Working Group of six crystallized, who met once
again in Berlin for six weeks in the summer of 2010 to write, discuss, revise,
discuss again, and revise yet one more time in order to produce a jointly
authored book. Our conversations, both formal and informal, were wide
ranging, critical, unpredictable, sometimes heated, and always engrossing.
Without them, this book could not have come into being, no matter how
diligently each of us worked in solitude. We regard it as a collective work.
An impeccably rational device ordered the authors’ names: a randomizing
computer program.
Since the summer of 2010, the manuscript has been substantially re-
vised in light of the comments we received from readers for the University
of Chicago Press. We thank Hunter Heyck and two anonymous referees
for their suggestions and criticisms, which have greatly improved the book.
Gil Skillman from the Department of Economics at Wesleyan University
was kind enough to read and comment on the sections dealing with game
theory. Karen Merikangas Darling, our editor at the Press, shepherded us
through the long process from manuscript to book with patience, encour-
agement, and sage counsel.
Like other MPIWG Working Groups, the authors of this volume are
gratefully indebted to the institute’s hospitality and support, especially that
of the library and Josephine Fenger, who heroically rounded up the im-
ages, sought permissions, and compiled the bibliography. Thomas Sturm’s
and Judy Klein’s participation was supported in part by the Spanish Min-
istry for Science and Innovation (reference number FFI 2008–01559/FISO,
to T. S.) and the Institute for New Economic Thinking (grant number
viii / Preface and Acknowledgments
IN011–00054, to J. K.), respectively. We also thank all the participants in
the March workshop, whose papers and comments proved invaluable for
the conceptualization of the volume. Paul Erickson, Judy Klein, Rebecca
Lemov, and Thomas Sturm are deeply grateful for the initiative that Lor-
raine Daston and Michael Gordin took in conceiving and coordinating our
exploration of Cold War rationality.
Six weeks of the summer can be a long time to be away from home, and
we all greatly appreciate the indulgence of friends and families in allowing
us to work together so intensively. Finally, we acknowledge with thanks the
help rendered at a crucial moment by Ivy, who pushed the button.
INTRODUCTION
The Struggle over Cold War Rationality
In the Pentagon War Room, fl anked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the
Soviet ambassador, the President of the United States speaks to the Soviet
premier on the special link to Moscow. They have only minutes to avert
a world-destroying thermonuclear war triggered by a rogue American
bomber. Everything, literally everything, depends on their remaining ratio-
nal under crushing stress:
[Ambassador] Zorubin looked carefully at the President. He realized in-
stantly that the President had reached the brink. He could be pushed no
further. Zorubin sensed that in the fi nal analysis the President would not
now hesitate to take action. Once again, the fate of the world was trembling
in the balance.1
Economist and strategist Thomas Schelling reassured the alarmed public
that such scenarios—here taken from the novel Red Alert (1958), most fa-
mously the loose pretext for Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear farce Dr. Strangelove,
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)2—were highly
unlikely, but admitted that this one surpassed “in thoughtfulness any non-
fi ction available on how war might start.” Nonetheless, for Schelling the
assorted nuclear novels and fi lms remained fantasies, no matter how in-
genious. Accidents only brought the world to the brink because human
beings had made choices that enabled those accidents to spiral out of con-
trol: “The point is that accidents do not cause war. Decisions cause war.”3
It was of utmost importance that those prior decisions be rational. In the
fi ctional scenarios, it was the quirky human factor—something that had
not been taken into account in the process of routinizing the machinery
of nuclear deterrence—that unleashed the forces of destruction; and, if