A Gabble of Experts, or: Who Will Bell the Cat?

WITH its plain white cover and official seal, the pamphlet from the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations looked as dull and uninviting as any other Government document. Even the Government Printing Office has its sleepers, however, and Of Specialists and Generalists quickly became the hottest item in Washington. A 71-page compilation of commentary from ancient and modern thinkers, it deals with the question of which is preferable: the specialist with expertise in one field, or the generalist, with broader, if shallower, wisdom. In an age where much rests on the judgment of public men, the question is of considerable interest. As it happens, most of the weight is on the generalist's side.

sb ARISTOTLE: The knowledge of the house is not limited to the builder only. The user, or master, of the house will even be a better judge than the builder, just as the pilot will judge better of a rudder than the carpenter, and the guest will judge better of a feast than the cook.

sb CHARLES BABBAGE (In a letter to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Mathematician Babbage took issue with Tennyson's lines, "Every minute dies a man,/Every minute one is born." In so doing, this eminent specialist proved his case, but magnificently missed the point): I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas the total is constantly on the increase. In the next edition of your excellent poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows: "Every moment dies a man,/And one and a sixteenth is born." The exact figures are 1.167, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.

sb HAROLD J. LASKI: The expert, simply by reason of his immersion in a routine, tends to lack flexibility of mind once he approaches the margins of his special theme. He is incapable of rapid adaptation. No man is so adept at realizing difficulties within the field that he knows; but few are so incapable of meeting situations outside that field.

sb DEAN ACHESON: Not until the end of 1950 had the Secretary of State with his senior aides ever sat down with the Secretary of Defense and the Chiefs of Staff to take counsel on a common problem, then the situation in Korea. In the course of those meetings General of the Army Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of State entered into a secret treaty. They agreed that henceforth between them the phrases "from a purely military point of view" and "from a purely political point of view" would be forbidden as utterly meaningless.

sb JOHN GARDNER: Very few of our most prominent people take a really large view of the leadership assignment. Most of them are simply tending the machinery of that part of society to which they belong. The machinery may be a great corporation or a great government agency or a great law practice or a great university. These people may tend it very well indeed, but they are not pursuing a vision of what the total society needs. They have not developed a strategy as to how it can be achieved, and they are not moving to accomplish it.

Aesop offers perhaps the best comment--and the best put-down of the narrow-gauge expert. Once, he relates, a group of mice held a council to determine what they should do about a voracious cat. Finally one young mouse came up with a proposal to put a bell around the cat's neck, providing the mice with an early warning system. But with their tunnel vision, none of the assembled specialists thought to ask the most crucial question until a grey old mouse--a generalist, no doubt--rose. Who, he asked quietly, would put the bell around the cat's neck?

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