Naive Readings

Exhibit 2.1 is from page twenty-five of the brochure. As is obvious, this is a drawing, the drawing of an aircraft. Then the question arises immediately: how naive do we want to make the reader? If we insist on a radical version of naivete then we need to say that there is noth­ing about the picture that links it with the TSR2. For yes, it is a picture of an aircraft. But there is no caption to say that this aircraft is the TSR2.

EXHIBIT 2.1 Perspectival Sketch of Aircraft (British Aircraft Corporation 1962, 25;

© Brooklands Museum)

EXHIBIT 2.2 ”The T. S.R.2 weapons system is capable of a wide range of recon­naissance and nuclear and high explosive strike roles in all weathers and with a minimum of ground support facilities.” (British Aircraft Corporation 1962, 4)

EXHIBIT 2.3 ”In T. S.R.2, high grade reconnaissance is allied to very accurate navi­gation and this suggests the application of the aircraft to survey duties. In many areas the navigation accuracy of better than 0.3% of distance travelled is a signifi­cant improvement on the geodetic accuracy of existing maps. This degree of pre­cision enables new maps to be made or old ones to be corrected with a minimum of accurately surveyed reference points.” (British Aircraft Corporation 1962, 17)

Exhibit 2.2 appears much earlier in the brochure—indeed on the first full page of text. Here we don’t learn anything about an aircraft. Instead, we learn that the TSR2 is a weapons system. We also learn that this weapons system fulfills a range of roles, and that it does so in ways that are independent of the effects of weather and elaborate ground-support facilities. But is it an aircraft? Again, to be sure, it de­pends just how naive we want to be. But ifwe were to dig in our heels then we would have to say that we’ve learned that the ‘‘TSR2’’ is a weapons system, but not that it is an aircraft.

Exhibit 2.3 tells us something about TSR2 and navigation. Here the naive reader does indeed learn that TSR2 is an aircraft, but that reader also learns something about the character of this aircraft: that it has

EXHIBIT 2.4 ”In T. S.R.2 the internal and external communications facilities are completely i ntegrated. Two control units provi de for i ntercommunicati on between the crew and for control of the radio equipment installed.” (British Aircraft Cor­poration 1962, 29)

to do with remote sensing and surveying. TSR2, or so it is being sug­gested here, is an aircraft capable of accurate navigation—but also, and perhaps more remarkably, one that is capable of making maps.

How many more versions of naivete do we need? Exhibit 2.4 turns the TSR2 into a communications system. Exhibit 2.5 (though, like the drawing in exhibit 2.1, it does not mention the TSR2 by name), turns it into a fuel system, complete with pipes, tanks, pumps, and engines. And exhibit 2.6 (again we need to enter the caveat about the absence of a name) turns it into a global traveler, moving to and fro between Britain, Australia, and a host of other points around the globe.

Let’s stop the experiment now. We could pile up more exhibits, but we have learned what we need to learn for the moment: a naive reader who does not start out with an idea of what it is, this TSR2, who does not make connections, will learn that it is many and quite different things.1 Let me stress the point: ‘‘the TSR2’’ is not a single
object; neither, whatever the exhibits might suggest, is it many differ­ent parts of a single object. Instead it is many quite different things. It is not one, but many.

This is the problem of difference: we have different objects. Or it is the problem of multiplicity: we have multiple objects. In other words, a reader who insists on being naive is likely to find that he or she is dealing not with a single object but rather with an endless series of different objects, objects that carry the same name—for instance “TSR2’’—but which are quite unlike one another in character.

Of course, we know that it is not really like that. We know—or at least we assume—that the object, the TSR2, is indeed an object. But why is this? Why do we make this jump? And how does it come about? The ability to pose such questions is the reason for avoiding a histo­rian’s sensibility and the justification for being naive. An initial as­sumption of naivete enables us to ask why the reader for whom the brochure was intended would assume that it was, indeed, describing a single object, a single aircraft, rather than a whole flock of differ­ent machines. In other words, an initial assumption of naivete is a methodological position.2

But why be naive? To answer this question I need to talk of strate­gies of coordination. In particular, I will identify a series of mecha­nisms that work to connect and coordinate disparate elements. The

EXHIBIT 2.6 Strategic Deployment (British Aircraft Corporation 1962, 23; © Brooklands Museum)

The Problem of Difference

Annemarie Mol has written a book about this, about the problem of difference in medicine.3 Think, she says, of lower-limb arteriosclerosis. Or better, think of the practices within which lower-limb arterioscle­rosis is located. Perhaps we may number three of these. First, there is a phenomenon the doctors call "claudication." Clau­dication is suffered by patients. It is pain in the legs occurring when the patient walks further than a certain distance. This is diagnosed in general practitioners’ surgeries when the patient is interviewed. Second, there is the phenomenon of an inadequate flow of blood to the legs and the feet. This usually arises initially in outpatient clinics. The investigating physician measures the pressure of the blood flow at the ankle and compares it with the pressure at some other convenient point such as the top of the arm. If the difference is large then there is said to be pressure loss at the ankle. This loss of pressure is taken to be a sign of increased resistance to the flow of the blood. Third, there is the phenomenon of the thickening of the intima of the blood vessels in the leg. There are various practices for exploring this, but the most important is located in the pathology laboratory, after the amputation of a diseased leg. The pathologist cuts cross sec­tions through the blood vessels of the leg to detect whether, and if so to what extent, there has been a thickening of the intima of the vessel. What is the relationship between these practices? There is, says Mol, a textbook explanation. It says that arterial disease leads to a thick­ening of the vessel intima. Beyond a certain point this leads in turn to a fall in blood pressure and, again beyond a certain point, this be­gins to interfere with the blood flow in the legs. When this happens,

the leg muscles don’t receive enough oxygen during exercise—and the result is claudication, pain, upon walking. This textbook story is realist in character. It assumes that there is an object—lower-limb arteriosclerosis—out there that manifests itself in various ways. If one looks as what goes on in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries there are moments, indeed, when this story is quite unprob­lematic. Thus a patient may arrive complaining of claudication, and when his blood flow is measured, it turns out to be inadequate. He may then be treated in one way or another. Rarely—and this is only after all possibilities of treatment have been exhausted—there may be need for amputation. If this happens, the amputated limb is sent to the pathology laboratory and the sectioning of the vessels will reveal, if all goes as anticipated, substantial thickening of the vessel intima. So there are occasions when it is possible to say that there is an object out there, ”lower-limb arteriosclerosis," that manifests itself in a series of different ways. It often turns out, however, that the three medical practices described above come to different conclusions. A patient may be suffering from claudication, but there appears to be no pressure loss at the ankle. Or a patient whose blood vessels seem to be occluded turns out to have no pain on walking. There are end­less case conferences in the hospital dealing with problems such as these. There are also many strategies for explaining these inconsisten­cies away. And, in particular, there are ways of dealing with the press­ing question as to what should be done for a patient who is in pain or whose lifestyle has been restricted. Annemarie Mol is a philosopher who argues that the three prac­tices generate three different and sometimes very badly coordinated arterioscleroses. In the plural. And this is the problem of difference: practices may and often do generate multiple rather than singular ob­jects.

TSR2 brochure, or so I want to suggest, embodies and performs a number of these.