So, why do we feel so conflicted in our judgment of Fritz Haber? He accomplished everything one might expect of an engineer. Not merely adequate: his accomplishments were extraordinary. Transformative. Without precedent.
Yet are dissatisfied. There was some additional responsibility we wish he could have borne as well. Unreasonable as it may be, we can’t forgive him for buckling under its weight. In this section, we will seek a name for this additional expectation. We must understand it: if our modern engineers succeed in changing the world, an analogous dreadful weight may fall upon them as well.
A Grouchy Rampage
A small altercation in 1999 woke me up to this concern. This incident was minor, but illustrative. A graduate student from my floor at the Lab for Computer Science at MIT went on a grouchy rampage. This student was a peculiar character: having already founded and sold a successful company, he was independently wealthy. So he wasn’t afraid to antagonize the professors. It was a freedom he exercised liberally. He was constantly either outraged by something, or stirring up everyone else’s outrage with his lack of tact.1
That particular day, his ire was directed at the head of the computer science lab, Michael Dertouzos, whom he accused of being a toady. Dertouzos had just dedicated a time capsule with items of significance to computer science history, including an item that purported to honor Bill Gates’s historic achievement. Our curmudgeon was angrily suspicious of the whole affair because the ceremony simultaneously celebrated a large donation towards the new computer science building from the self-same Bill Gates. As part of this dual ceremony, Gates himself had been invited to deposit said object in the capsule before the ceremonial sealing. According to the account, Dertouzos put his arm around Gates’ shoulder and spoke glowingly about his contribution to computer science.
Our narrator declared the scene sickening. He denounced Dertouzos in the most unvarnished terms. He called him a coward and a spineless toady. He raged and stomped around on his big flat feet, riling everyone up. Of course, the kerfuffle blew over quickly. Everyone was used to his antics.
Let Them Eat Poundcake
But I couldn’t get that denunciation out of my mind. I had recently been surprised by Paul Krugman’s review of Dertouzos’s recent book, What Will Be. Krugman’s reaction centered on a snarky diss of Dertouzos’ prediction of a computerized cooking machine: something like a Vitamix with robot arms. Krugman’s response was certainly clever: “We may assume that Dertouzos doesn’t cook, but even so, his [enthusiasm] suggests… that he lives on a diet of unusually homogeneous shape and texture—let them eat poundcake!”
Now, I knew Dertouzos’s pronouncements were sometimes silly and often obsequious. Even so, if I thought about it at all, I found it comforting. After all, a prospective graduate student is anxious about where their support will come from: engineering is expensive. Someone like Dertouzos who can stomach the obeisances needed to shake down large donations from rich people was reassuring to have around.2 However, I was shocked to realize that Krugman takeaway from Dertouzos’s book was derived wholly from the latter’s fund-raising shtick.
An auto-cook was something Dertouzos touted on a calculation of the workings of the minds of donors. It’s not like anyone at the Lab cared! In fact, the Computer Science Lab prided itself on avoiding glitzy gadgets, which were relegated to the nearby Media Lab. In reality, it proudly pushed foundational computer science. But how can one wax lyrical about cryptographic hash functions, or automatic differentiation, or advanced programming languages, or visions of robust computing? Not so easy.
Dertouzos' Real Passion
For all that un-sexy but foundational work was the real meat of the Lab’s efforts, there was something that mattered even more to Dertouzos. He was developing, together with Tim Berners-Lee, a new structure for Internet governance. But he was hardly going to put his arm around Bill Gates’s shoulder in the middle of the Browser Wars and sweet-talk him into investing in a free and open Internet! Dertouzos was good at schmoozing. That said, he wasn’t that good. Soliciting donations demands a certain degree of dissembling.
This masquerade had distorted the vision of What Will Be. Did we really seem to be saying: “Let them eat poundcake”? That’s not what we meant! The denunciation of Dertouzos’s spinelessness riled people up because it hit a nerve. Unexpectedly, our community had developed passionate values. Not just engineering values, but political ones as well. There was the uneasy feeling that backbone was needed. But backbone was no easy feat. It felt dangerous. Later a more fiery advocate, Aaron Swartz, was hounded by the feds. The MIT community was less than supportive of his struggle. Like Clara Immerwahr, he was driven to suicide.
In any case, our community’s political values were quite inappropriate to whisper into the ear of a wealthy target of fundraising efforts. So leadership tended to remain tactfully tacit. I woke up to the question: is this a problem? On the one hand, why does it matter if someone whose job is principally fundraising does whatever it takes to succeed? But on the other, one can’t forget that at certain junctures in history, excessive obsequiousness of engineers has been disastrous. Disastrous not just for them, but also for the civilization of which they were a part. Had we arrived again at such a juncture?
With this question in mind, we return to our main narrative. When has it happened before that more was required of an engineer than merely building, and raising funds for building? What else was required? And why?
Technology Changes Everything…
Why can’t we feel good about Fritz Haber’s achievement? After all, in the genre of tales of technological breakthrough, the story has all the elements of high romance. There is the audacious goal, the doubters with their sensible objections, the hero’s stubborn persistence, his bravery in the face of physical danger, and the demo to potential industrial backers that almost fails but at the last possible minute manages to impress. Then it continues with the persistence and further genius displayed by the industrialists in commercializing the breakthrough. Finally, there is the undeniable benefit to humanity, including arguably each and every individual person who hears the story. Why is this tale not near the top of list the romantic parables of progress with which schoolchildren are regaled and inspired?
Because we wanted more. We needed more. Haber’s exceptional achievement thrust him into a position of responsibility. Because of his success, he gained the position and influence to interpret the manner in which his invention “changed everything.” Because the breakthrough appeared at an unstable moment, his interpretation had an outsize influence. He wasn’t just inventing a technological means to transform the world. He was also inventing the narrative which informed crucial decisions about how to manage that transformation.
Nobody disputed his talent at the former task. But he was terrible at the latter. He crumbled under the weight of the responsibility which had been thrust on him. He failed to understand the full consequences of his own achievement. Tragically, this latter responsibility was so critical that we cannot forgive him for this failure.
In retrospect, his choices seem monstrous. But, this perception is filtered through our knowledge of the result. We have to remember that Haber himself had no idea what the long-term consequences would be. Or worse: he had a strong idea of the outcome he expected. Unfortunately, it was entirely different from the thing that actually happened.
Without Changing Anything?
We might endeavor to grant him the benefit of the doubt that he arguably deserves. Given what he knew, his image of the outcome wasn’t totally implausible. Can we think he simply made an honest mistake? As I will argue, not only was it an honest mistake, but it was a painfully easy mistake to make. It may be a mistake we are at risk of making ourselves.
So what was the outcome Haber expected? Why was it so different from the actual result? Looking backward at his society as it had been, he observed that many of its most persistent and intractable problems could be eliminated by his invention. His vision was concrete. He imagined children who wouldn’t go hungry because the fields were fertilized. He imagined battles that wouldn’t be lost because ammunition could be manufactured. He imagined the notable tolerance and enlightenment of the Prussian regime empowered and ennobled. Naturally enough, he extrapolated forward a happy future which was a continuation of the past, essentially unchanged. Except it was much better because of the specific ways his invention would solve old problems. His invention was worthy of a boast about “changing everything.” Yet, his vision was of a society in which his technology changed everything without actually changing anything.
Suspiciously Selective Vision
In retrospect, the wrongness of such a vision is easily apparent. But was it at the time? When Clara challenged him, what was it that struck her as so “monstrous”? It might seem obvious: her husband was gaily celebrating the exceptionally grisly deaths of thousands of promising young men. But he had a ready answer for such an accusation: it was war. Such deaths were commonplace. If his breakthrough could change the rules of the game, it might save many more lives. Many millions, even, if it had successfully brought about an early end to the war.
There was a more profound problem, however, with the vision that justified his actions. Perhaps it merited the word “monstrous” all by itself. Haber envisioned a technology that would “change everything”—but only in a suspiciously selective way. It would dissolve the obligations of the ruling class to previously cherished notions of chivalry; to the peasantry they were supposed to protect from devastation; and even to each other and the wishes of their late grandmother. But it would keep in full force the obligations that flowed in the other direction. Still in force were those that bound subjects to unquestioning loyalty to the king and the state. Still in force were those that suggested to promising young men that they embrace the “sweetness and honor” of dying for their country. All these obligations still held—even as they choked to death on poison gas.
The failure of Haber’s hopes were not unrelated to this imbalance. Germany broke all the long-standing norms of warfare by using poison gas, bombing civilians from the air, and sinking merchant ships. These “six weeks that changed the world” horrified the world and inflamed public opinion. Since it brought the United States into the war, it ultimately sealed Germany’s fate. The fate of Germany’s then-ruling Prussian aristocracy was also sealed. For their transgression, they fell. They fell not just from power but eventually even from memory.
Fritz Haber had loved the world of the Prussian aristocracy and military corps. He longed above everything to be accepted into it. But, like Othello, he “loved too well and not wisely.” His love, so tinged by a longing for acceptance, similarly destroyed the object of his affection. Haber offered the Prussian aristocracy the product of his genius. In accepting it, they sealed their fate, and were destroyed.
An Honest Mistake?
Haber, with his technocratic literalism, did not consider these social and emotional consequences. One might argue that in an era where the effects of new technology were uncertain, he made an honest mistake. But for being labeled honest, it was suspiciously self-serving. It was a convenient story for an insecure sycophant such as he. He wanted the commission of the Prussian officer corps—otherwise unobtainable to a Jew like him—too badly. His story was more tailored to the favor he wanted to curry than to devotion to truth. Its sheer one-sidedness made it thoroughly unlikely. One wonders, then, if we are too kind to Haber if we call his mistake honest.
On the other hand, why judge him so harshly? He was only an engineer! Why do we expect so much from him? And yet… consider how many people were later helplessly borne by the momentum of history towards a terrible fate whose course he had locked in. With the outcome in view, we can’t help but expect more of him.
- For instance, he got himself rejected by my professors when he loudly refused to share an office with a woman he deemed too ugly. ↩︎
- I was concerned with good reason: when Bush was elected DARPA, MIT's traditional funding agency, was “tethered.” My professor, who had relied on relationships with program managers for decades, lost his funding. Since the days of Vannavar Bush, MIT's culture had an Oppenheimer mentality: that the goal of research was to secure to country's future military competitiveness with extremely long range visions. But those wings were clipped. Suddenly we had to worry much more about the whims of rich people. ↩︎
