SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY : When Opportunity Tickles
Perhaps it was the word fuzzy that turned them away, particularly when placed alongside logic, but American scientists, mathematicians, engineers, investors and business leaders have had serious trouble embracing the notion of “fuzzy logic,†a discovery that has revolutionized computer technology and changed forever the way we operate and design machines. Fuzzy logic has a whimsical overtone and it does sound like an oxymoron, at least to minds schooled in Aristotelian logic and Cartesian/Newtonian philosophy.
But even a cursory reading of Lofti Zadeh’s seminal 1965 paper on the subject, referenced at length in Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger’s reportorial tour de force, “Fuzzy Logic,†reveals that Zadeh was not trying to make logic fuzzy with his revolutionary set theory. He was trying to tame fuzziness with logic, to round the edges of complexity and uncertainty in ways that could be expressed in computer language and applied in a myriad of products, systems and applications.
If a single American manufacturer grasped this simple fact, the country might not be in the crisis we face today, and McNeill and Freiberger would barely have a story to tell.
Their book, winner of this year’s Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology, describes the development of fuzzy sets and fuzzy chips by Zadeh and a handful of scientists and mathematicians who for almost 30 years were ignored, derided, lampooned and insulted by their American peers. Meanwhile systems designers and engineers in Japan applied their logic to stores of products that will soon be flooding the American market along with VCRs, fax machines, Walkmen, robots and other technologies invented in the U.S. but developed in Japan.
Lofti Zadeh is a professor emeritus of computer science at UC Berkeley. Born in Azerbaijan to a Russian mother and Turkish-Iranian father, he is also the undisputed godfather of fuzzy logic, although more of a hero in Japan than at home in America. Zadeh found the crisp true/false, yes/no nature of traditional logic of limited use in a world of vagueness and uncertainty, which he perceived to comprise most of the world within which precise machinery operates--elevators, trains, cement kilns, cars, washing machines.
“Bob, who is six foot six, is tall†is true by any logic, says Zadeh. “Fred, who is five foot nine, is tall†and “Pete, at five two, is tall†are not true, unless one uses graded memberships, in which case Bob’s claim might be 95% true, Fred’s 40% true and Pete’s 20%. This logic, when used to design computer chips inserted in control mechanisms for machines that need to make complex decisions based on many variables, has been found to be much more useful than algorithms based on strict binary (yes/no, true/false) programming.
The best example McNeill and Freiberger found of fuzzy logic in action is the Sendai subway system, in Japan, touted by mass-transit aficionados as the best in the world. Trains on the Sendai lines start and stop so smoothly, the authors report, that even during rush hour no one ever reaches for the straps. In fact if you aren’t looking out the window, it’s difficult to tell when the trains start up or stop. And they run on time.
Fuzzy logic is difficult to explain. I had to slow down to half-speed when passing through the long sections of the book that set out to demystify the arcane mathematics and algorithms behind “graded memberships†and defined categories or “sets.†But McNeill and Freiberger make the process as entertaining and accessible as any writers could. And they assert that fuzzy logic is bound to be better understood in Japan and China where the prevailing philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism teach and accept the kind of ambiguity that makes imprecise logic seem reasonable. I’m not sure I totally understand it yet. But evidently neither do a lot of better minds than my own.
American reviews of “Fuzzy Logic,†particularly those written by scientists, have generally taken offense at McNeill and Freiberger’s suggestion that Western scientists are a bunch of stubborn knuckleheads, hung up on Aristotelian math and reductionist Cartesian ideas. Conventional logic and probability theory, they rightfully point out, landed a human being on the moon and guide satellites all over the solar system. But the fact is that on Earth less exact controls sometimes work better with some machines. And the additional fact is that America missed the boat on developing those controls, having had ample opportunity to do so, simply because Zadeh decided to call his logic “fuzzy.â€
Japanese manufacturers cleverly kept the word fuzzy (written faaji in anglicized Japanese). Faaji of course has absolutely no meaning in the Japanese language, but the word has nevertheless become a generic advertising slogan attached to all products that contain fuzzy logic systems. A faaji washing machine with one control button (“startâ€) is in much greater demand in Tokyo than an American Whirlpool with a dozen or more manual control options. Whether they fly in Peoria remains to be seen.
There is an important lesson to be learned from this book, a lesson that goes beyond the shopworn indictment about America’s blown opportunities, avoidance of risk-taking, inadequate R&D; and the resultant loss of manufacturing hegemony. The lesson is about complacency--the kind of “complacency (that) thrives at the core of prosperity, hollowing from within.†McNeill and Freiberger believe that “in technology, where knowledge is wealth, (such complacency) is a fast track to shantytown.†There is ample evidence throughout America that they may be right.
What is also refreshing about “Fuzzy Logic†is that it isn’t about a product--a smart bomb, high-density television, a fast plane, a brilliant computer or a new scanner that can spot malignant cells before they metastasize. It’s about a concept, a way of seeing the nexus between human and mechanical worlds that will make things run a little smoother and in most cases a lot more efficiently. And it’s an allegory about the conflicting wisdom that still exists on this incredible shrinking planet and how it affects the way technologies are developed in one culture as opposed to another.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
FUZZY LOGIC: The Discovery of a Revolutionary Computer Technology--and How It Is Changing Our World, by Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger (Simon & Schuster)
Nominees
THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE, by Edward O. Wilson (Belknap Press / Harvard University Press)
GENIUS: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick (Pantheon)
BAD SCIENCE: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, by Gary Taubes (Random House)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence, by Daniel Crevier (Basic Books)
