Part 8 (1/2)

”Oh. Sorry.”

”Oh well. That's all right.” January took one of the Lucky Strikes, lit up. ”That's awfully good news.” He breathed out. ”I never believed Truman would pardon me anyway, so mostly you've brought good news. Ha. They missed missed. You have no idea how much better that makes me feel.”

”I think I do.”

January smoked the cigarette.

”... So I'm a good American after all. I am am a good American,” he insisted, ”no matter what Truman says.” a good American,” he insisted, ”no matter what Truman says.”

”Yes,” Getty replied, and coughed. ”You're better than Truman any day.”

”Better watch what you say, Father.” He looked into the eyes behind the gla.s.ses, and the expression he saw there gave him pause. Since the drop every look directed at him had been filled with contempt. He'd seen it so often during the court-martial that he'd learned to stop looking; and now he had to teach himself to see again. The priest looked at him as if he were... as if he were some kind of hero. That wasn't exactly right. But seeing it...

January would not live to see the years that followed, so he would never know what came of his action. He had given up casting his mind forward and imagining possibilities, because there was no point to it. His planning was ended. In any case he would not have been able to imagine the course of the post-war years. That the world would quickly become an armed camp pitched on the edge of atomic war, he might have predicted. But he never would have guessed that so many people would join a January Society. He would never know of the effect the Society had on Dewey during the Korean crisis, never know of the Society's successful campaign for the test ban treaty, and never learn that thanks in part to the Society and its allies, a treaty would be signed by the great powers that would reduce the number of atomic bombs year by year, until there were none left.

Frank January would never know any of that. But in that moment on his cot looking into the eyes of young Patrick Getty, he guessed an inkling of it-he felt, just for an instant, the impact on history.

And with that he relaxed. In his last week everyone who met him carried away the same impression, that of a calm, quiet man, angry at Truman and others, but in a withdrawn, matter-of-fact way. Patrick Getty, a strong force in the January Society ever after, said January was talkative for some time after he learned of the missed attack on Kokura. Then he became quieter and quieter, as the day approached. On the morning that they woke him at dawn to march him out to a hastily constructed execution shed, his MPs shook his hand. The priest was with him as he smoked a final cigarette, and they prepared to put the hood over his head. January looked at him calmly. ”They load one of the guns with a blank cartridge, right?”

”Yes,” Getty said.

”So each man in the squad can imagine he may not have shot me?”

”Yes. That's right.”

A tight, unhumorous smile was January's last expression. He threw down the cigarette, ground it out, poked the priest in the arm. ”But I shot the blank. I know know.” Then the mask slipped back into place for good, making the hood redundant, and with a firm step January went to the wall. One might have said he was at peace.

A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

The covering law model of historical explanation states that an event is explained if it can be logically deduced from a set of initial conditions, and a set of general historical laws. These sets are the explanans, explanans, and the event is the and the event is the explanandum. explanandum. The general laws are applied to the initial conditions, and the explanandum is shown to be the inevitable result. An explanation, in this model, has the same structure as a prediction. The general laws are applied to the initial conditions, and the explanandum is shown to be the inevitable result. An explanation, in this model, has the same structure as a prediction.

On the morning of August 6th, 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbets and his crew flew the Enola Gay Enola Gay from Tinian Island to Hiros.h.i.+ma, and dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Approximately a hundred thousand people died. Three days later, another crew dropped a bomb on the outskirts of Nagasaki. Approximately seventy thousand people died. The j.a.panese surrendered. from Tinian Island to Hiros.h.i.+ma, and dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Approximately a hundred thousand people died. Three days later, another crew dropped a bomb on the outskirts of Nagasaki. Approximately seventy thousand people died. The j.a.panese surrendered.

President Harry Truman, in consultation with his advisors, decided to drop the bombs. Why did he make these decisions? Because the j.a.panese had fiercely defended many islands in the South Pacific, and the cost of conquering them had been high. Kamikaze attacks had sunk many American s.h.i.+ps, and it was said that the j.a.panese would stage a gigantic kamikaze defense of the home islands. Estimated American casualties resulting from an invasion of the home islands ranged as high as a million men.

These were the conditions. General laws? Leaders want to end wars as quickly as possible, with a minimum of bloodshed. They also like to frighten potential postwar enemies. With the war in Europe ended, the Soviet Army stood ready to go wherever Stalin ordered it. No one could be sure where Stalin might want to go. An end to the j.a.panese war that frightened him would not be a bad thing.

But there were more conditions. The j.a.panese were defenseless in the air and at sea. American planes could bomb the home islands at will, and a total naval blockade of j.a.pan was entirely possible. The j.a.panese civilian population was already starving; a blockade, combined with bombing of military sites, could very well have forced the j.a.panese leaders to surrender without an invasion.

But Truman and his advisors decided to drop the bombs. A complete explanation of the decision, omitted here due to considerations of length, would have to include an examination of the biographies of Truman, his advisors, the builders of the bomb, and the leaders of j.a.pan and the Soviet Union; as well as a detailed a.n.a.lysis of the situation in j.a.pan in 1945, and of American intelligence concerning that situation.

President Truman was re-elected in 1948, in an upset victory over Thomas Dewey. Two years later the United States went to war in Korea, to keep that country from being overrun by Communists supported by the Soviet Union and China. It was only one of many major wars in the second half of the twentieth century; there were over sixty, and although none of them were nuclear, approximately fifty million people were killed.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says that we cannot simultaneously determine both the velocity and the position of a particle. This is not a function of human perception, but a basic property of the universe. Thus it will never be possible to achieve a deterministic prediction of the movement of all particles throughout s.p.a.cetime. Quantum mechanics, which replaced cla.s.sical mechanics as the best description of these events, can only predict the probabilities among a number of possible outcomes.

The covering law model of historical explanation a.s.serts that there is no logical difference between historical explanation and scientific explanation. But the model's understanding of scientific explanation is based on cla.s.sical mechanics. In quantum reality, the covering law model breaks down.

The sufficient conditions model of historical explanation is a modification of the covering law model; it states that if one can describe a set of initial conditions that are sufficient (but not necessary) for the event to occur, then the event can be said to be explained. Deduction from general law is not part of this model, which is descriptive rather than prescriptive, and ”seeks only to achieve an acceptable degree of coherent narrative.”

In July of 1945, Colonel Tibbets was ordered to demonstrate his crew's ability to deliver an atomic weapon, by flying a test mission in the western Pacific. During the takeoff Tibbets shut down both propellers on the right wing, to show that if this occurred during an armed takeoff, he would still be able to control the plane. The strain of this maneuver, however, caused the inboard left engine to fail, and in the emergency return to Tinian the Enola Gay Enola Gay crashed, killing everyone aboard. crashed, killing everyone aboard.

A replacement crew was chosen from Tibbets' squadron, and was sent to bomb Hiros.h.i.+ma on August 9th, 1945. During the run over Hiros.h.i.+ma the bombardier, Captain Frank January, deliberately delayed the release of the bomb, so that it missed Hiros.h.i.+ma by some ten miles. Another mission later that week encountered cloud cover, and missed Kokura by accident. January was court-martialed and executed for disobeying orders in battle. The j.a.panese, having seen the explosions and evaluated the explosion sites, surrendered.

January decided to miss the target because: he had a visionary dream in which he saw the results of the bombing; he had not been in combat for over a year; he was convinced the war was over; he had been in London during the Blitz; he disliked his plane's pilot; he hated Paul Tibbets; he was a loner, older than his fellow squadron members; he had read the Hornblower stories in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post; Sat.u.r.day Evening Post; he once saw a truck crash into a car, and watched the truck driver in the aftermath; he was burned on the arm by stove oil when a child; he had an imagination. he once saw a truck crash into a car, and watched the truck driver in the aftermath; he was burned on the arm by stove oil when a child; he had an imagination.

The inboard left engine on the Enola Gay Enola Gay failed because a worker at the Wright manufacturing plant had failed to keep his welding torch flame on a weld for the required twenty seconds. He stopped three seconds too soon. He stopped three seconds too soon because he was tired. He was tired because the previous night he had stayed up late, drinking with friends. failed because a worker at the Wright manufacturing plant had failed to keep his welding torch flame on a weld for the required twenty seconds. He stopped three seconds too soon. He stopped three seconds too soon because he was tired. He was tired because the previous night he had stayed up late, drinking with friends.

In 1948, President Truman lost to Thomas Dewey in a close election that was slightly influenced by a political group called the January Society. The Korean conflict was settled by negotiation, and in February of 1956 a treaty was signed in Geneva, banning the use and manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Light behaves like either wave or particle, depending on how it is observed. The famous two-slit experiment, in which interference in wave patterns causes light s.h.i.+ning through two slits in a part.i.tion to hit a screen in a pattern of light and dark bars, is a good example of this. Even when photons are sent at the slits one at a time, the pattern of light and dark bars still appears, implying that the single quantum of light is pa.s.sing through both slits at the same time, creating an interference pattern with itself.

History is an interference pattern, says the covering law model. The conditions are particles; the laws are waves.

The necessary conditions model states that historical explanation requires merely identifying the kind of historical event being explained, and then locating among its initial conditions some that seem necessary for the event to take place. No general laws of history can help; one can only locate more necessary conditions. As William Dray writes in Laws and Explanation in History, Laws and Explanation in History, an explanandum is explained when we ”can trace the course of events by which it came about.” an explanandum is explained when we ”can trace the course of events by which it came about.”

Tibbets and his crew died in a training flight crash, and the Lucky Strike Lucky Strike was sent in was sent in Enola Gay Enola Gay's place. The bombardier, Captain Frank January, after much frantic thought on the flight there, performed just as Tibbets' bombardier would have, and dropped the bomb over the T-shaped Aioi Bridge in Hiros.h.i.+ma. Approximately a hundred thousand people died. Three days later Nagasaki was bombed. The j.a.panese surrendered. Truman was re-elected. The Korean War led to the Cold War, the a.s.sa.s.sination of Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, the Vietnam War, the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the fall of 1989. Replacing one crew with another made no larger difference. place. The bombardier, Captain Frank January, after much frantic thought on the flight there, performed just as Tibbets' bombardier would have, and dropped the bomb over the T-shaped Aioi Bridge in Hiros.h.i.+ma. Approximately a hundred thousand people died. Three days later Nagasaki was bombed. The j.a.panese surrendered. Truman was re-elected. The Korean War led to the Cold War, the a.s.sa.s.sination of Kennedy on November 22nd, 1963, the Vietnam War, the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the fall of 1989. Replacing one crew with another made no larger difference.

Richard Feynman's notion of a ”sum over histories” proposes that a particle does not move from point A to point B by a single path, as in cla.s.sical mechanics, but rather by every possible path within the wave. Two numbers describe these possible paths, one describing the size of the wave, the other the path's position in the crest-to-trough cycle. When Pauli's exclusion principle, which states that two particles cannot occupy the same position at the same velocity within the mathematical limits of the uncertainty principle, is applied to the sum over histories, it indicates that some possible paths cause interference patterns, and cancel each other out; other paths are phased in a reinforcing way, which makes their occurrence more probable.

Perhaps history has its own sum over histories, so that all possible histories resemble ours. Perhaps every possible bombardier chooses Hiros.h.i.+ma.

The weak covering law model attempts to rescue the notion of general historical laws by relaxing their rigor, to the point where one can no longer deduce the explanandum from the explanans alone; the laws become not laws but tendencies, which help historians by providing ”guiding threads” between events and their initial conditions. Thus the uncertainty principle is acknowledged, and the covering law model brought into the twentieth century.

But can any historical model explain the twentieth century? Tibbets crashed, the Lucky Strike Lucky Strike flew to Hiros.h.i.+ma, and Captain January chose to spare the city. He was executed, the war ended, Dewey won the 1948 election; the Korean conflict was resolved by negotiation; and nuclear weapons were banned by treaty in February of 1956. flew to Hiros.h.i.+ma, and Captain January chose to spare the city. He was executed, the war ended, Dewey won the 1948 election; the Korean conflict was resolved by negotiation; and nuclear weapons were banned by treaty in February of 1956.

But go on. In November of 1956, conflict broke out in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel, and Britain and France quickly entered the conflict to protect their interests in the Suez Ca.n.a.l. President Dewey, soon to be replaced by President-elect Dwight Eisenhower, asked Britain and France to quit the conflict; his request was ignored. The war spread through the Middle East. In December the Soviet Army invaded West Germany. The United States declared war on the Soviet Union. China launched a.s.saults in Indochina, and the Third World War was under way. Both the United States and the Soviet Union quickly a.s.sembled a number of atomic bombs, and in the first week of 1957, Jerusalem, Berlin, Bonn, Paris, London, Warsaw, Leningrad, Prague, Budapest, Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Moscow, Vladivostok, Tokyo, Peking, Los Angeles, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and Princeton, New Jersey (hit by a bomb targeted for New York) were destroyed. Loss of life in that week and the year following was estimated at a hundred million people.

At normal energies, the strong nuclear force has a property called confinement, which binds quarks tightly together. At the high energies achieved in particle accelerators, however, the strong nuclear force becomes much weaker, allowing quarks and gluons to jet away almost like free particles. This property of dispersion at high energies is called ”asymptotic freedom.”

History is a particle accelerator. Energies are not always normal. We live in a condition of asymptotic freedom, and every history is possible. Each bombardier has to choose.

In The Open Society and Its Enemies The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper writes: ”If two armies are equally well-led and well-armed, and one has an enormous numerical superiority, the other will never win.” Popper made this proposition to demonstrate that any historical law with broad explanatory power would become so general as to be trivial. For the school of thought that agrees with him, there can be no covering laws. Karl Popper writes: ”If two armies are equally well-led and well-armed, and one has an enormous numerical superiority, the other will never win.” Popper made this proposition to demonstrate that any historical law with broad explanatory power would become so general as to be trivial. For the school of thought that agrees with him, there can be no covering laws.

In June of 1945, seven of the scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project submitted a doc.u.ment called the Franck Report to the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee, which was overseeing the progress of the bomb. The Franck Report called for a demonstration of the bomb before observers from many countries, including j.a.pan. The Scientific Panel decided this was a possible option and pa.s.sed the Report on to the Committee, which pa.s.sed it on to the White House. ”The Buck Stops Here.” Truman read the report and decided to invite James Franck, Leo Szilard, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein to the White House to discuss the issue. Final consultations included Oppenheimer, Secretary of War Stimson, and the military head of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves. After a week's intense debate Truman instructed Stimson to contact the j.a.panese leaders.h.i.+p and arrange a demonstration drop, to be made on one of the uninhabited islands in the Izu s.h.i.+chito archipelago, south of Tokyo Bay. An atomic bomb was exploded on Udone s.h.i.+ma on August 24th, 1945; the mushroom cloud was visible from Tokyo. Films of the explosion were shown to Emperor Hirohito. The Emperor instructed his government to surrender, which it did on August 31st, one day before Truman had declared he was going to begin bombing j.a.panese cities.

Truman won the election of 1948. In 1950 North Korean troops invaded the south, until a series of six so-called s.h.i.+ma blasts, each closer to the north's advance forces, stopped them at the 38th parallel. In 1952 Adlai Stevenson became president, and appointed Leo Szilard the first presidential science advisor. In 1953 Stalin died, and in 1956 Szilard was sent to Moscow for a consultation with Khrushchev. This meeting led to the founding of the International Peace Brigade, which sent internationally integrated teams of young people to work in underdeveloped countries and in countries still recovering from World War Two. In 1960 John Kennedy was elected president, and he was succeeded in 1968 by his brother Robert. In 1976, in the wake of scandals in the administration, Richard Nixon was elected. At this point in time the postwar period is usually considered to have ended. The century itself came to a close without any further large wars. Though there had been a number of local conflicts, the existence of nuclear weapons had ended war as practiced in the first half of the century. In the second half, only about five million people died in war.

The great man theory considers particles; historical materialism considers waves. The wave/particle duality, confirmed many times by experiment, a.s.sures us that neither theory can be the complete truth. Neither theory will serve as the covering law.

The defenders of the covering law model reply to its various critiques by stating that it is irrelevant whether historians actually use the model or not; the fact remains that they should. should. If they do not, then an event like ”the bottle fell off the table” could be explained by either ”the cat's tail brushed it,” or ”the cat looked at it cross-eyed,” and there would be no basis for choosing between the two explanations. Historical explanation is not just a matter of the practice of historians, but of the nature of reality. And in reality, physical events are constrained by general laws-or if they are not laws, they are at least extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the links between an event and those that follow it, allowing predictions that, if not deterministically exact, are still accurate enough to give us enormous power over physical reality. That, for anyone but followers of David Hume, serves as law enough. And humans, as part of the stuff of the universe, are subject to the same physical laws that control all the rest of it. So it makes sense to seek a science of history, and to try to formulate some general historical laws. If they do not, then an event like ”the bottle fell off the table” could be explained by either ”the cat's tail brushed it,” or ”the cat looked at it cross-eyed,” and there would be no basis for choosing between the two explanations. Historical explanation is not just a matter of the practice of historians, but of the nature of reality. And in reality, physical events are constrained by general laws-or if they are not laws, they are at least extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the links between an event and those that follow it, allowing predictions that, if not deterministically exact, are still accurate enough to give us enormous power over physical reality. That, for anyone but followers of David Hume, serves as law enough. And humans, as part of the stuff of the universe, are subject to the same physical laws that control all the rest of it. So it makes sense to seek a science of history, and to try to formulate some general historical laws.

What would these general laws look like? Some examples: If two armies are equally well-led and well-armed, and one has an enormous numerical superiority, the other will never win.

A privileged group will never relinquish privilege voluntarily.