Bertrand Russell Talking about Useless Knowledge#
Johannes Siedersleben, December 2014
The following is a paragraph taken from Bertrand Russell’s essay on ‘Useless’ Knowledge.
Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant, but also makes pleasant things more pleasant. I have enjoyed peaches and apricots more since I have known that they were first cultivated in China in the early days of the Han dynasty; that Chinese hostages held by the great King Kaniska introduced them to India, whence they spread to Persia, reaching the Roman Empire in the first century of our era; that the word ‘apricot’ is derived from the same Latin source as the word ‘precocious’, because the apricot ripens early; and that the A at the beginning was added by mistake, owing to a false etymology. All this makes the fruit taste much sweeter.
Let us analyse what Russell’s message is, what tricks he employs to convince the reader and what we can learn from him.
Knowledge must be useful; useless knowledge is as deceiving as worthless money. The essay’s title seems to be a hint of some hidden usefulness in useless knowledge – a paradox hard to accept, a little provocation, a threshold the potential reader must get over. But as he does he enters into a complicity with the author. He willingly accepts his being exposed to new arguments in favour of useless knowledge and might even be prepared to change his mind. Russell puts ‘useless’ in single quotes indicating irony as in the ‘honourable’ whore, thus preventing misunderstandings and lowering the threshold. The title could have been something like ‘On the Usefulness of Useless Knowledge’, but this is long, a bit clumsy and for the potential reader there is nothing left to guess: there is no point in explaining the point of a joke.
Starting a paragraph is always a challenge: how can I encourage the reader to continue to read? Russell’s approach is a promise formulated as a word play: The preceding paragraph was about making unpleasant things less unpleasant, and this one is going to be even more pleasant, because it’s about making pleasant things more pleasant. This little mental exercise prevents the reader from dozing off and puts him in a state of alertness, expecting thundering arguments in favour of the author’s thesis. But no such argument is presented. Instead, Russell speaks about his preference for peaches and apricots. Peaches and apricots? Can anything be less interesting, more beside the point? But now, with the reader left halfway between bewilderment and deception, Russell sets out to explain the etymology of the word ‘apricot’ in no more than four semicolon-separated clauses. Semicolon-separated clauses create speed and suspense; they are appropriate for dramatic events such as this one, reported by Heinrich von Kleist in his famous ‘Anecdote from the Last Prussian War’:
He spurs his horse and bears down on them; he bears down on them, as God lives, and attacks them as if he had the entire Hohenlohische Corps behind him; in such a way that he – my goodness – has all three out of the saddle and the horses, which are running around the square, captured.
But speed and suspense are seldom associated with etymology. While von Kleist needs three clauses for an event of few seconds, Russell needs four to describe a millennium of a word’s evolution. This produces an effect of fast motion, enthrals the reader and makes him effortlessly memorize the facts. From few lines he learns more than from many pages of a textbook, and it probably dawns on him that in this very moment he is accumulating useless knowledge almost against his will. It is on purpose that Russell talks about the Hun dynasty and King Kaniska as though he was taking for granted the reader’s acquaintance with this remote part of history. Many readers, concerned about their ignorance, would get from a dictionary the information Russell deliberately fails to provide: the Han dynasty reigned in China from about 206 BCE to 220 CE with an interruption by Wang Mang from 9 to 25 CE; Kaniska was an emperor of the Kushan dynasty and reigned in India from 127 to 151 CE. Returning from the dictionary and happy about even more useless knowledge acquired, readers realize that they have been tricked.
In the conclusion Russell comes back to his promise: he has shown that apricots are much sweeter if you are aware of the etymology involved. What would have seemed absurd before sounds now absolutely convincing to the reader still smiling about the A added by mistake. Russell proceeds by implicit induction: his paradoxical assertion is made plausible by means of just one outlandish example, with the induction left to the reader. The comparative degree in the conclusion (sweeter) matches the one in the introduction (more pleasant). ‘Sweeter’ is the very last word, the climax – all has been said, the promise is kept, nothing more can be expected. In football terms one would compare the paragraph with a dribbling and the last word, ‘sweeter’, with the ball reaching the goal.
Russell uses few adjectives. The use of ‘pleasant’ doesn’t count because he only argues about pleasantness rather than describing the pleasantness of something. Beside ‘useless’, which is the heart of the story, and ‘sweeter’, which we have discussed, there is only one important adjective left: The king Kaniska is ‘great’. His greatness is mentioned because ignoring a great king makes one feel even more uncomfortable than ignoring a normal one and thus the likelihood of the reader consulting a dictionary is increased. Throughout the essay we can see a twinkle in the author’s eyes telling us that we are here for our pleasure and that things shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Reading Russell is like listening to him, sitting in an armchair by the fireside. In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature – deservedly, it seems.
What can ordinary mortals learn from him? Depending on what you write, a love letter or a user manual, the following lessons can be drawn from his short paragraph on apricots:
Don’t tell everything, never tell the obvious. Let the reader deduce, guess or even procure details deliberately left out.
Talk in concrete examples. The reader will be happy to generalize himself.
Make promises and keep them. Let the reader know or guess what you are going to tell him and make it obvious when you are done.
Use adjectives sparingly and always on purpose. See what happens if you drop one. Billions of postcards told us that the weather is fine, the historical centre amazing and the people are nice. But ‘fine’, ‘amazing’ and ‘nice’ convey little information, do not surprise let alone convince anyone of the asserted properties.
Have a twinkle in your eyes as you write, and don’t take yourself too seriously. The pleasure however is on the reader’s side, not on yours. This is unfortunate for writers but the world has been so designed.