Last Thursday, the 10th of February, Stephen Whitaker was declared Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Salamanca. His name was familiar even for me, who got my Bs.D. skipping as much as I could on the whole thing. His curriculum is impressive. He is not very, very old, not as much as I thought. Got his Bs.D. in Ch.E. in 1954, University of California in Berkeley. He is one of the pioneers of the concept and development of Unit Operations in academia, as he tells. Then, after completing his Ms.D. and Ph.D. in the University of Delaware, made an outstanding career from the University of California in Davis into the world, literally. Professors M. A. Galan Serrano and R. L. Cerro, about 15 years younger (one generation), met in Davis and took courses with Whitaker. I owe both of them my going into the US. I owe much to Cerro.
I've read Dr. Whitaker's speech prior to receive the award. One would expect a powerful and moving piece of testimony after more than 50 years of excellence of work and life in several countries. Instead, one read four pages full of weak arguments, half-developed ideas and inconsistencies, plus incomplete lines of thought stuffed with ecological misjudgements. Any freshman student, 18 years-old could have written it. I really don't understand. Had me cold feet.
Whitaker says (I translate):
"While Rachel Carson awaken the conscience of the world about the small, continuous impact of manufactured products, Union Carbide showed the not-at-all silence industrial impact of Bhopal, India, 1984. (...) Security technicians, considered second-class citizens (sic) in the chemical plants, were considered in a much different way after Bhopal".
It is ok to talk about Carson. I guess it is of good memory for Whitaker. In 1962 I guess he was about 30 and in an ascending point in his career, the place where the sun starts to show some light, and you feel that you are the builder who will make the world stand out of its ruins again. However, Mr. Whitaker, Bhopal was an accident. No one wanted it. It was not on purpose. It was not even the results of repeated bad practices.
The terrible disaster of Bhopal was due to negligence and, thus, individual responsibilities could be found. Indeed, although less severe in terms of human casualties, the accidental escape of TCDD in Seveso years before, in 1976, really turn the hinges of political conscience. Individual responsibilities were found as well.
I tend to think in an overall sense that humans have always try their best until they found and could practice a better way of doing things. It is a nice way of putting it _I learnt that while working for Pall Corp. And therefore, I don't believe very much that security engineers were considered a "second-class" individuals in chemical plants in the early times. Probably they had responsibilities in accordance to what it was understood at the time. To imply that the quest for economical benefits in detriment of safety requirements was what really was happening by then, as Whitaker implies, is hard to believe, and moral and intellectually dishonest.
Evil is human, as human as tears, love or languages are, and has a tremendous capacity to expand and corrupt and take over human spirits. Men of all civilization have found a way to fight it, cast it, keep it at bay, conquer and control it, overall. Individual men are day by day hunted and devoured and burn by evil. It is present in all parcels of life, all professions, all activities to which a human man endeavour himself and, still, the overall man can progress as much as he manage to keep it under his feet, under constant supervision. But the individual man is condemned to fight it with no guarantee every minute of the hour for an entire life.
Therefore, to imply, as Whitaker does, that evil is inherent to chemical plants or chemical production is misleading and only partially true, and sounds ill-intended. It is shocking that someone like him says so. I wonder why... I wonder if I am mistaken in this analysis... .
I give you another example:
"As the world population increases and oil reserves are depleted, chemical engineers have expanded their areas of influence from chemical plants in 1952 to biochemistry and biomedical engineering, industrial hygiene, food and environmental engineering and activities related to vineyard harvest and production".
The line of argumentation is so weak, so careless... What got to the head of this man?
This one is particularly childish, as he did not specify what Universities can offer:
"Our students need certain things and the University can provide them better than any other institution".
He also says:
"On another hand, the Chemical Engineer must deal with and solve the conflict between benefit, security and environmental responsibility. Here, the University must provide a solid, moral basis".
Of course, although vague and subliminally (dishonestly), Whitaker is referring to economical benefit; even more, to the economical benefit of some people, namely the rich and clever and wicked chemical plants administrators. But, I say, what about the benefits of the customers, all benefits that, from chemical plants, people obtain? Isn't it of capital importance to them their economical benefit? What shall prevail: the benefit of humans or the benefits of the "environment"? Is it possible to give a categorical answer to this question? Evil will get to every side of the road, like pressure reaches all blobs of fluid in a pipe, and it is no nice either to impose a tremendous burden on people to obtain petty, doubtful or unmeasurable benefits for the environment. This can happen. This is happen. Who is going to prevent us from it?
The majority of people tend to do things when they expect something in return. In other words, they are willing to provide a service and exchange it by something else they cannot provide or prefer not to. I like this approach rather than claiming to moral responsibilities. It seems to me that moral concepts are not very rational, strictly speaking. They might damp the individual creativity and freedom of thinking. Who is going to set the moral standards? Politicians? Philosophers? Law men? International United Councils? Against what reference those standards shall be tested? What guarantees do we have of their fairness?
Too complicated questions. Too complex. It is so why I am surprised that a clever mind as Whitaker's has dispatched them in a unreasonable, biased and simple manner.
Chemical Engineers do a beautiful job, as engineers generally do, regardless their focus or activities. The work in industries, plants, production areas and as in any other areas where dozens of agents work is fascinating and, unfortunately, students in Universities of Spain do not have a chance to guess it, to take a glance at it. Neither do they have a clear idea of what to do expect from their lives, or the whys and whens and hows.
You, Mr. Whitaker, has seen the inners of the beautiful and miraculous structure of human production; has been faithful and eminently successful to a profession for half a century; has loved Sue since before I was born; luckily you have weathered the storms of life. Please, show this! Talk about this! Jerk torrents of tears from our eyes and move our hearts!... That is exactly what we need: a little of humanity.
(PLEASE, LEAVE YOUR COMMENT)
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