Science as Obsession

Even the standard storage of the
standard kilogram seems a bit obsessive.

Obsession is an ever present theme in art and literature. Science's major (perhaps only) outstanding literary archetype, the Mad Scientist (ubiquitous from pulp fiction all the way up into works like Gravity's Rainbow) is defined chiefly in terms of obsession.
Even gentle portrayals of scientists frequently dwell upon their monomania, which they may enter only in fits, as though possessed, while retaining enough humanity the rest of the time to get the girl (or guy) in the end.

Perhaps the only concession to the scientist's valuable social role in modern literature is that sometimes, in his monomaniacal monotone, the scientist becomes sibyl: the mouthpiece for the implacable forces of nature. Think, for instance, of Ian Malcom¹, who delivers in quiet monotone, tiny lectures on the futility of trying to control nature while the camera hangs in the air and silence, or low, tense tones, fill his words with ominous portent. Of course Jurrasic Park, apart from the dinosaurs, is really a story about bad mad scientists vs good ones. We will have to settle for that as progress.

Science Journalism, tasked with the often difficult role of interpreter of science for non-scientists, falls into the trap of occasionally portraying scientists as hopelessly obsessed with their fields. Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that many scientists do have an obsessive streak. Never the less, some subjects present the journalist with irresistible temptation towards this end, and one such subject is the drift in the standard kilogram.

The story is this: the International Prototype Kilogram was produced in 1879, a time when positivism had an almost suffocating grasp on reality. It's a little platinum iridium cylinder whose whole purpose can be summed up in two bullet points:

• Weigh exactly about as much as a liter of water


• Don't change.

Thenceforth, more or less, the world has been weighed relative to this unit, which due to its obsession with consistency, convalesces, much like Proust, in a dark room somewhere in France.

Of course, the IPK does not take visitors very often and so, like most other interesting things, it's become a meme. Periodically, copies of the cylinder are made and then carried by the metrologists of the world to their own climate controlled basements. Presumably somewhere along the way, these International Instance Kilograms are used to calibrate measuring devices which eventually measure everything in the world, instilling all of Western Civilization with a soothing sense of the consistency of the Universe, which may be godless, but at least is
not without measure.

Scientific anxiety as a function of time since the
manufacture of the IPK.

Unfortunately, in accord with the progress of man since the turn of the last century, wherein the positivism of the late 1800's has been re-arranged into countless post-isms, this family of identical kilograms has begun to drift apart.

A quick google search reveals that this story has made the rounds. The article in the LA Times, though, is typical. In it, Scientists are portrayed as brittle, near mad, obsessives, desperately trying to re-establish a certainty which is drifting away. The portrayal is not negative, but it is perhaps a bit too dramatic. Not much effort is put towards explaining the real practical and scientific issues associated with errors in the measure of the kilogram (of which there are many). I wonder what this kind of media coverage does for science at large.

Ian Malcom, it should be noted, in the first and most popular Jurassic Park films, is a bit out of place as a lead character. He is not set up against a love interest and there is very little to humanize him as a regular movie archetype. I wonder if this kind of reporting leaves scientists seeming more alien to the average person, even if it does not consciously demonize them.

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¹ Ian Malcom, Jeff Goldblum, Howie Mandell, Bobby's
World...