Working with the Expert
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1954.tb01725.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1954 |
| Date | 01 March 1954 |
| Author | John Maud |
Working
with
the
Expert
By
SIR
JOHN
MAUD, K.C.B., C.B.E.
This talk was broadcast on the Home Service,
Sunday, 1st November,
1953,
at
9.15
p.m.
ou
remember
“
Points
’’
rationing in the war
?
We had a certain number
of
‘‘
points
”
each month, which we could spend on tinned salmon, or
rice, or even prunes. The system was generally voted a success,
I
think.
But before the Minister of Food decided to introduce it, there was a splin-
tering row among his expert advisers. Almost all of them were dead against
the new idea. The rationing experts and the expert businessmen all for
various reasons foresaw chaos. Only one or two experts of another kind-
economists-persisted in claiming that the scheme could be made to work.
I
remember the climax. ccProfessor,’7 says the expert grocer to the poor
economist,
‘‘
imagine yourself behind the counter. The customer hands over
his ration book.
You
cut out the paper
‘
points.’ Where do you put them
?”
“
Well,” says the economist, on the spur of the moment,
‘‘
you might have
one of those spikes on the counter that a cashier uses for keeping bills together,
and spear the paper points on that.”
‘‘
Oh no, Professor,” came the shocked
reply, “don’t say that. There would be blood on the butter.” For the
moment, that seemed the end of the affair
:
the practical man of business had
finally routed the long-haired theorist. But in the end the Minister of Food
thought otherwise-and he was right.
There you have the model
:
experts of several kinds concerting, on equal
terms with one another, to solve a single problem.
No
counting of heads but
decision by one man after everyone has had his say-by one man who has
taken the trouble to understand the various arguments for himself and who
accepts total responsibility for the decision.
I
often think happily of that episode-especially when people tell
us,
as they often do, that nowadays we are the slaves of the expert, and if we
prize freedom what we ought to be seeking are means of escape from the
expert, not means of working with him.
You
know the way the argument runs.
Life is now
so
complicated that it is divided into water-tight compartments-
like villas in a suburban dormitory. The walls between-the walls separating
the scientist, the engineer, the artist, from each other and from you and me-
are more or less impenetrable. And inside each compartment the expert is
sovereign.
Let me say at once that I believe that is largely nonsense.
It
has certainly
not been my experience, either in private life or at work, that specialists and
non-specialists cannot understand each other or work together on equal
terms. And if I had to make a bold generalisation, I should claim that in this
country common sense is sovereign, rather than any expert.
There is no problem (I think everyone would agree) when you want the
expert to run the show-when, for example, your Amateur Dramatic Society
has the luck to find a professional to produce the play for you. In fact,
working with professionals, in that sort of way, gives
us
amateurs far and
118
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