Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

the major intellectual currents that dominated their times, although most military thinkers -by nature people of intellectual inclination - were remarkable conscious of them […] militaryoutlook was in some important respects almost predetermined by the prevailing culturalperspectives 135 .In the same vein as Azar Gat, Pellegrini argues that one also needs to look at thebroad scientific climate, the prevailing scientific paradigm or the popular perception of ‘new”or “fashionable” scientific insights and concepts of the day, as part of the Zeitgeist 136 . Theseprovide metaphors for expression, new ideas and concepts for analysis and explanation andsometimes novel insights for discovering new patterns of causality. In On War the influenceof science and philosophy becomes manifest in several guises: the use of scientificmetaphors; the use of a scientific framework for investigation; and the use of concepts hederived from science and adapted to military theory. The Newtonian paradigm and thecultural dominance of the mechanistic view of the world appear in metaphors Clausewitzemploys to describe the nature of war. His idea of the trinity of people, the army and thegovernment, exert an influence on war like an object suspended between three magnets 137 .Other such scientific phenomena appear such as fulcrum, pendulums, polarity, electricity andof course, friction and center of gravity 138 . Throughout the entire book, indirect references toNewton’s laws of motion were used both as a concept and as a metaphor to describe theinteraction between armies.Considering Clausewitz’s intended audience these metaphors were useful since theyquickly describe the nature of the concepts he was attempting to show. However, they wentbeyond mere superficial similarities to describe the action taking place. In that Newton’s lawsof motion and Newtonian science were used throughout the entire 18 th century, to describeall forms of human endeavor, the use of these metaphors were appropriate. Clausewitz was,moreover, describing the use of force. The act of war was considered an application of force,violence, and this force was subject to the same factors as the force described in Newton’s lawsof motion: inertia, momentum, resistance, and friction. Force is the unifying theme for bothNewton and Clausewitz 139 . Essentially, the book described the use of force under differentconditions and at different levels. It showed what factors inhibit the use of force and keepreal war from being absolute war. Like Newton, Clausewitz felt the need to postulate anabsolute form of the phenomenon he was investigating as a fixed reference point in order toallow him to describe real war, and to uncover those factors that make real war differentfrom absolute war: friction, chance and uncertainty.And it is in explaining these things that separate real from absolute war thatClausewitz had to refer to the nature of man, and not science. This is also where his critique135 Ibid, pp.2, 3. See also Peter Paret, who argues that Clausewitz used concepts learned from otherwriters, together with ideas that were the common property of his generation. Both in method and interminology he was influenced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and of German idealism.Such thinkers as Kant, Herder, and Fichte inspired him not only directly through their works but alsothrough the filter of German historical writings that was influenced by them. Paret writes thatClausewitz, like other Germans of his class, attended lectures on logic, ethics, and science as well asreading nonprofessional articles on philosophy. See Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State (New York,1976), p.84.136 Robert P. Pellegrini, The Links Between Science and Philosophy and Military Theory, Understanding the Past;Implications for the Future, Master Thesis, SAAS, (Maxwell AFB, Alabama, June, 1995), p.33. This studywas later published as a monograph by Air University Press, August 1997137 Clausewitz (1976), p.89.138 Pellegrini, p.37.139 Ibid, p.39.36