Rats in mazes, factory workers’ productivity, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the 40s, the Rockefeller Foundation, and consumer focus groups: what common thread runs through this odd array of topics? Each plays a part in the strange and complex story of human engineering as described by Rebecca Lemov in World and Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes and Men.
In this book, Lemov provides a broad historical account of a loosely-defined field which aimed to use the findings of psychologists, behavioural scientists, and anthropologists, among others, to promote social order and control individual behaviour. Beginning with Jacques Loeb’s work on tropisms (involuntary responses to stimuli) in the late 19th century, the text progresses chronologically towards Stanley Milgram’s investigation of obedience to authority and Timothy Leary’s experiments with LSD in the 60s, with Lemov weaving together social history, laboratory research, and biographical sketches of the field’s main protagonists. The result is an intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfying read.
Lemov is a historian and anthropologist by training, and her writing is strongest when she discusses human engineering within social contexts, such as research into brainwashing during the Cold War, or attempts at social control in Pacific Islands under American occupation during and after World War II. However, she deals awkwardly with the actual scientific research that formed the basis of human engineering. Readers interested in hard science may find Lemov’s approach frustrating, as her interest lies in the social implications of experiments, and her treatment of procedure and methodology is vague at best. The reader is forced to trust the author’s interpretations of the research, and this is problematic, considering her weak scientific background and obvious biases.
The text is laden with Lemov’s personal judgments of individual scientists and of the wider implications of their research. At times, she depicts behavioural science as one big, dark conspiracy, and consistently displays a kind of horrified fascination with the scientists and experiments she describes. This attitude becomes startlingly clear in her account of the life of the psychologist O. Hobart Mowrer: Lemov implies that Mowrer imposed suffering on his subjects due to his own psychological instability, and that he was “redeemed” by renouncing this research and turning instead to religion, family, and group therapy. She goes on to suggest that the other social scientists of the time, consumed by their “countless counts and experimental zeal”, needed to be redeemed as well.
World as Laboratory does have certain strengths if it is viewed simply as a very general introduction to the field of human engineering. Lemov brings attention to the development of our understanding of human social functioning by bringing together the findings of several decades’ worth of research in many fields. She also succeeds in reminding us that ideas we currently take for granted, such as the notion of sports as an outlet for aggression, or the use of psychological principles in marketing, were once revolutionary. However, these insights are fragmented, and offered to the reader in bits and pieces. No attempt is made to convincingly explain exactly how human engineering has shaped the world we live in today, despite the fact that the introduction claims this is one of the main premises of the book. Perhaps World as Laboratory is best appreciated in this way: it is enough to pique your interest, but not to quench any deeper intellectual thirst.
World as Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes and Men. 2005, Hill and Wang, 291 pages.
