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7. Oxford Series in Human-Technology Interaction
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Human-tech: Ethical and Scientific Foundations
Kim J.Vicente
Edited by Alex Kirlik
12. Acknowledgments
Kim J.Vicente would like to thank all of his co-authors who contributed
to the articles collected here.This work would literally not be possible
without their essential contributions. Thank you also to Catharine
Carlin of OUP for finding an enthusiastic home for this collection.
Finally,countless thanks to Alex Kirlik for being so receptive to this proj-
ect, and for working so hard on the commentaries.
Alex Kirlik thanks his editor, Catharine Carlin, for her sage advice
in guiding this work through to completion; Anna Cianciolo, for her
patience and support; and Heather Ash, for her insight. On technical
matters, thanks go to Frank Ritter, John Lee, Mike Byrne, John Flach,
Peter Hancock,and David E.Goldberg,who provided valuable feedback
along the way.
14. Preface
When I was approached in 1999 about writing a book about my area for
a popular audience, I divided my deliberations into two phases. First,
I wondered whether such a book was needed, irrespective of the author.
After all, Don Norman’s Design of Everyday Things had already been a
bestseller, so what could anyone possibly add to that? I realized that, as
influential as it was, Don’s book dealt primarily with comparatively
simple systems, mainly consumer products. I concluded there was a need
for a book that dealt with complex sociotechnical systems,such as nuclear
power and aviation.
Second, I wondered, if such a book needs to be written, am I the
person to do it? I had started writing a few draft chapters, and I enjoyed
turning my knowledge about my discipline into more accessible prose
(although I still had a lot to learn about writing for a mass audience).
I also looked around me and saw that nobody else was taking up this
task,so I concluded that I would go ahead and make the strong commit-
ment to writing a book about human factors engineering for a general
audience.
It took three years to write that book—The Human Factor: Revolu-
tionizing theWay People Live withTechnology.I wrote it according to various
layers of human–technology interaction, namely: physical, psychological,
team, organizational, and political. Human factors engineers deal almost
15. x Preface
exclusively with the first two of these layers, so I was going into largely
uncharted territory. The basic idea was—at each level—to identify a
human or societal need, and then to tailor the technology to what we
know about human nature at that level. Indeed, I wound up coining a
new term—Human-tech—to represent this broader systems approach.
To set an example,I created the term“Human-tech”using a Human-
tech approach. It’s easy to remember because it consciously mimics the
conceptual structure of the idea it refers to—what you see is what you
get. First, it’s a compound word made up of two parts to remind us that
people and technology are both important aspects of one system.Second,
the hyphen connecting the two parts highlights the importance of the
relationship and encounter between people and technology.Third,“Human”
comes first to remind us that we should start by identifying our human
and societal needs,not by glorifying some fancy widget in isolation.Fourth,
“Human” is capitalized, and thus more salient, to remind us that designs
should be compatible with human nature;“tech” is in lower case because
technical details, like the laws of physics, obviously have to be heeded.
On the Readings Collected in this Book
When it came to writing many of my journal articles—some of which
are included here—I found a similar pattern. My students and I started
off with a pressing practical problem, but it often turned out that the
requisite fundamental research had not been conducted, so we had to go
into uncharted territory to solve it.
On ChapterThree
This pattern began when I first got hired as a research assistant in 1984.
I was preoccupying myself with the minutiae of a project on mental
workload, but I also started noticing that there were some very funda-
mental questions that had rarely been asked in my discipline. What is
the relationship between applied problems and basic research? It seemed
that people in industry and those in academe were constantly at odds.
Academics were criticized for doing research that was completely
irrelevant to applied concerns, and those in industry were criticized for
16. xi
Preface
doing work that was neither rigorous nor generalizable. These ideas
bounced around in my head for 16 years, and the end result is a research
article that attempts to reconcile basic and applied concerns and meth-
ods.As it turns out, this was not a new idea, but the specific framework
that I laid out was novel.
On Chapter Four
In 1999,I wrote a book about cognitive work analysis (CWA)—a way of
analyzing how people can do their jobs, providing insights into how to
design computer-based systems to help them do their work in a way that
it is safe, productive, and healthy.The CWA framework consists of vari-
ous layers, with the first (work domain analysis) equivalent to providing
workers with a map that they can use to navigate their job landscape,and
the second (task analysis) equivalent to providing workers with a rote set
of directions that they can use for the same purpose, but in a radically
different way.
In my head,there existed a relationship between work domain anal-
ysis and task analysis, but in retrospect, I learned that this relationship:
(a) was not fully explained in my book, and (b) consisted of several con-
ceptual transformations, not just one. John Hajdukiewicz, a student of
mine, happened to be doing his doctoral dissertation in a way that
brought this lacuna to light. He and I wrote an article showing the rela-
tionship between these two forms of analysis, both in generic terms that
other people could instantiate for their own context, and in concrete
terms for the work system that John had investigated in his dissertation.
The generic form provided generalizability and the concrete form
provided pedagogical insights. Both were important steps forward from
the incomplete treatment provided inVicente (1999).
On Chapter Five
Two researchers were at a conference. One said,“What area do you do
research on?”The other replied,“I conduct research on human reaction
time.”
“I’ve never met anyone who conducts research on a dependent
variable before.”
17. xii Preface
This anecdote highlights the unsophisticated nature of many human
performance measures.We can measure reaction time, we can measure
percent correct, and we can inundate people with subjective measures
like those found in questionnaires.All of these methods have significant
limitations. Sometimes, the measures don’t reveal differences between
people in experiments, thus defeating their purpose.
The need for more objective and meaningful performance measure-
ment drove the research conducted by XinyaoYu, Elfreda Lau, me, and
Michael Carter. These measures are all quantitative, derived from data
that are automatically collected by a computer while a human partici-
pant is performing a task.The derivation is based on mathematical equa-
tions, and most important of all, the performance measures revealed
important differences between people—differences that many other
measures failed to uncover. Using more traditional measures, people
looked the same, but using these novel measures we saw—for the first
time—that these individuals were actually performing the same task in
completely different ways. On top of all that, these new ways of analyz-
ing human performance data were derived from a conceptual frame-
work, which means that other researchers using other tasks could derive
analogous measures for their own context.
On Chapter Six
I’ve taken courses on statistics three times in my career.The first time,
I was given a voodoo-like ritual akin to painting by numbers. I had no
idea what any of the steps meant and what they were for,partially because
I had never conducted an experiment. The second time, I had a new
insight: if p < 0.05, then something good had happened. And finally—
after having conducted several experiments of my own, I had a relatively
solid understanding of statistical inference.What I didn’t realize was that
my knowledge was focused almost exclusively on one kind of statistics,
namely analysis of variance (ANOVA).
Later, I realized that there is a thriving debate in psychology about
the strong limitations of ANOVA, and the merits of alternative methods
of statistical inference, such as confidence intervals, power analyses, and
so on. GerardTorenvliet and I wrote a paper describing these alternative
methods, and the important insights that they provide compared to
ANOVA.This debate had not taken place in our home discipline, so we
18. xiii
Preface
thought that we were presenting something of value, particularly to grad
students who had yet to be inculcated in the older, traditional methods.
On Chapter Seven
When I was finishing up my PhD,I actually didn’t want an academic job.
Given the approach of my mentor,Jens Rasmussen,to conduct problem-
driven research,I thought I should gain some industry experience before
going to a university as a tenure-track professor.For various idiosyncratic
reasons, it turns out that I didn’t find a suitable applied job, so I took up
a university position at Georgia Tech. I was disappointed by this turn of
events because I thought, “How can I teach students about something
with which I have no direct experience?” So, the need to do research in
the field—any field—stayed on the back burner. One day, I would gain
this practical experience, and it would fuel my teaching and laboratory
research.
As luck would have it, a few years later, the Atomic Energy Control
Board (AECB)—the Canadian government regulator of the nuclear
industry—was interested in funding research to investigate how nuclear
power plant operators monitor the plant. Because of the increasing visi-
bility of our process control research, the AECB came to us, eventually
funding a series of field studies.Although the initial focus was on the task
of monitoring, the research quickly expanded to include almost all of an
operator’s job. Even more important, we were able to conduct our
research at three different plants,spending dozens of hours of field obser-
vations at each. Moreover, each plant had different control room designs
but similar reactor designs, creating a naturalistic experiment isolating
the contribution of control room design on operator monitoring writ
large.This research was conducted with two researchers from Westing-
house, Randy Mumaw and Emilie Roth, and culminated in an article
integrating the results from each of the three field studies into a concep-
tual whole.
On Chapter Eight
In 1997, Jens Rasmussen wrote a very important scientific article, show-
ing how complex sociotechnical systems could be analyzed to great
effect by encompassing several layers: work, staff, management, company,
19. xiv Preface
regulators/associations, and government (Rasmussen, 1997). In addition
to the knowledge brought to bear by each individual level, the relation-
ships across levels are also very important. If the levels are coordinated,
with each rowing to the same safe beat, then safety is enhanced. In
contrast, if the levels are misaligned, with each rowing to the beat of a
different unsafe drummer, then safety can be threatened. Thus, it is
important to determine the degree to which these systems are coherent
or incoherent across these multiple levels.
I thought this paper was very important, but to be honest, I didn’t
really know what to do with it.A tragedy changed all that. In May 2000,
the water supply system in Walkerton, Ontario, became contaminated
with deadly E. coli bacteria. In a town of 4,800 residents, seven people
died and an estimated 2,300 became sick. Some people, especially
children, are expected to experience lasting health effects.The total eco-
nomic cost of the tragedy was estimated to be over $64.5 million CAD.
As I followed the details of this situation in the media, I started
making connections between Rasmussen’s framework and the events at
Walkerton. I brought in Klaus Christoffersen, a former master’s degree
student of mine,to analyze what had happened atWalkerton through the
lens of Rasmussen’s framework.We used Part 1 of the Walkerton report,
which focuses on the events surrounding the accident, as the source
document for our analysis.The results, reprinted here, provided a seam-
less fit.This holistic framework did indeed provide life-and-death insights
into real world tragedies.
On Chapter Nine
Since 1983, when I took my first human factors engineering course,
human factors researchers and practitioners are still complaining that we
are not having the practical impact that we deserve.A quarter of a cen-
tury is a long time. Like many others, I became very frustrated by this
state of affairs, so I started reading well outside of my discipline but
within the broader Human-tech approach, namely in the management
and political science literatures. My rationale was that companies and
governments change all the time,and that researchers in these disciplines
have spent their entire adult lives studying these events. Surely, they
have learned things that can help foster societal change systematically, if
chaotically.
20. xv
Preface
My bet paid off (Vicente, 2008; reprinted in Chapter 8). I found
several bodies of work in these macro social science disciplines that have
a direct bearing on not just this discipline, but on any discipline con-
sumed by societal change. More important, these works can be used to
develop “design implications” to tilt the playing field in the name of
activist aims. It’s possible to change society in a principled way.
Kim J.Vicente
22. Contents
1. Introduction (Alex Kirlik) 3
2. The Origins of Human-tech (Alex Kirlik) 9
3. A Human-tech Research Agenda and Approach (Alex Kirlik) 21
Reprint:Toward Jeffersonian research programmes in ergonomics science
(Kim J.Vicente)
4. Inventing Possibilities: Understanding Work Systems and Tasks
(Alex Kirlik) 53
Reprint: A theoretical note on the relationship between work domain
analysis and task analysis (John R. Hajdukiewicz and Kim J.Vicente)
5. Psychological Distance: Manipulating an Interface versus
Controlling a System (Alex Kirlik) 77
Reprint: Toward theory-driven, quantitative performance measurement in
ergonomics science:The abstraction hierarchy as a framework
for data analysis (XinyaoYu, Elfreda Lau, Kim J.Vicente,
and Michael W. Carter)
6. Statistics for Human-tech Research (Alex Kirlik) 107
Reprint:The Earth is spherical (p < 0.05):Alternative methods
of statistical inference (Kim J.Vicente and Gerard L.Torenvliet)
7. Constructing the Subject: Cognitive Modeling (Alex Kirlik) 145
Reprint: Operator monitoring in a complex, dynamic work environment:
a qualitative cognitive model based on field observations (Kim J.Vicente,
Randall J. Mumaw, and Emilie M. Roth)
23. xviii Contents
8. Sociotechnical Systems, Risk, and Error (Alex Kirlik) 191
Reprint:TheWalkerton E. coli outbreak: a test of Rasmussen’s framework
for risk management in a dynamic society (Kim J.Vicente and
Klaus Christoffersen)
9. Nested Systems: Economic, Cultural, and Political Dimensions
(Alex Kirlik) 221
Reprint: Human factors engineering that makes a difference: Leveraging
a science of societal change (Kim J.Vicente)
References 257
Author Index 263
Subject Index 267
26. 3
1
Introduction
Alex Kirlik
In The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way People Live with Technology
(2003), KimVicente coined the term “Human-tech” to describe a more
encompassing and ambitious approach to the study of human–technology
interaction (HTI) than is now evident in any of its participating disci-
plines, such as human factors, human–computer interaction, cognitive
science, industrial or cognitive engineering, ergonomics, informatics or
applied psychology. Researchers and practitioners in these HTI disci-
plines are increasingly involved,or at least hope to be involved,in design-
ing the world in which many of us live and work, ideally, for the better.
Observing that the way forward is“not by widgets alone,”instead,Vicente
advocated a Human-tech approach that addresses every level—physical,
psychological, team, organizational, and political—at which technology
impacts quality of life, identifies a human or societal need, and then
tailors technology to what we know about human nature at that level.
This Human-tech approach contrasts sharply with many currently
prevalent approaches to the design of interactive technologies, or tech-
nologies that structure the activities of other people (mainly, human
work). Many researchers working from primarily engineering or com-
puter science perspectives often focus on what can possibly be engi-
neered or designed, and only later (if ever) address questions about the
impact of their inventions on people or society.And many other research-
ers,working largely from psychological or cognitive science perspectives,
often claim that their research will somehow be relevant to applications
improving the human condition. But, upon close examination, all too
often one sees that the prime motivation for much of this research is
actually a desire to contribute to the scientific literature, rather than to
solve a socially relevant problem (Klatzky, 2009).
Clearly, many HTI researchers do work in the problem- and need-
driven manner thatVicente recommends.Yet, his The Human Factor, and
27. Human-tech
4
the Human-tech approach he created and presented there,has made two
notable contributions. First, as evidenced by various awards and breadth
of market (Canadian National Business Book Award and the Science in
Society General Audience Book Award), his book has had success in
popularizing these ideas to those who might otherwise be unaware of
them. Second, the Human-tech approach structures and articulates what
a research agenda should, in his view, look like, if one desires to pursue
HTI research that is truly focused on understanding how technology
should be marshaled to best suit human needs.
Vicente approached me with the idea of compiling the HTI research
articles collected here, in part, for the reader’s convenience, with my
commentary on each.His notion was that because I am at greater remove,
I might be better at making explicit the tacit themes uniting these pieces
and possibly identifying insights that might be available only to one at a
distance.
After studying the articles, I noticed that they provided much of the
technical material behind the work that had been presented in a more
mass-market form in the The Human Factor.That nontechnical presenta-
tion makes sense, asVicente originated the Human-tech approach in his
struggle to make a significant body of research understandable to a lay
audience.However,there is no book that integrates the underlying theo-
retical and methodological work for the audience of HTI students and
researchers.
As I worked to find a vantage point from which to relate and com-
ment uponVicente’s work,I observed that a recurring theme across these
articles was a desire to not merely inform, but to reform. Anyone who
knows Vicente or his work will understand immediately what I mean.
His career has been marked by a series of contributions with an occa-
sionally subtle, and often not so subtle, reformist tone. One can read the
pieces collected here simultaneously as an extended complaint and,more
importantly, a set of recommendations—or at least object lessons—for
how HTI research ought to broaden both its perspective and its practical,
even moral, aspirations. At least, this is my reading of the motivation
behind the Human-tech approach.
Vicente’s complaint is that rapid advances in both the complexity
and ubiquity of technology have,in his view,rendered much of recent and
modern practice in HTI research inadequate to meet society’s current
28. Introduction 5
needs and insufficiently ambitious to address its emerging challenges.
In the final article reprinted here, he goes so far as to recommend that,
to be ultimately effective, HTI researchers need to adopt an activist
stance, even in the face of significant risk.There, he also alludes to efforts
(by him and a colleague) that resulted in a positive change in how a “Big
Pharma”corporation does its business.Unfortunately,details on this case
could not be provided.
In pondering the undercurrent of reform running throughout these
articles,I was reminded of a thought-provoking article by noted physicist
Freeman Dyson on the all-too-frequent mismatch between society’s
needs and the products of both basic and applied scientific research,pub-
lished a number of years ago in the New York Review of Books. I was
delighted to find that Dyson had collected and updated this piece, The
Scientist as Rebel, along with a variety of his articles on related themes, in
a recent book of the same name (Dyson,2006).Since I first encountered
it, I have been strongly swayed by Dyson’s analysis of the relationship
between basic and applied science, of their different goals, their different
motivations, and most importantly, of the fact that neither, unchecked
by ethical decisions by scientists or engineers themselves, provides any
built-in guarantee for improving the human condition. Dyson is per-
fectly positioned to provide this sort of analysis. He not only made fun-
damental contributions to theoretical physics, he also joined a company
to successfully invent, produce, and sell inherently safe and modestly
priced nuclear reactors to hospitals to make isotopes used for medical
purposes.
I will not belabor Dyson’s treatment here (I draw on it,as well as the
work of others, opportunistically throughout this book). Suffice it to say
that it provided a fruitful and hopefully informative perspective from
which to relate and comment uponVicente’s work.And, almost imme-
diately after I realized this, I understood why.Anyone who has ever read
Edwin Abbott’s scientific classic Flatland (1884) will appreciate the
impossibility of organizing a reality spanning N dimensions using only
N dimensions to do so. One requires at least one additional dimension.
Vicente has described his Human-tech approach as addressing every
level—physical, psychological, team, organizational, and political—at
which technology impacts quality of life.This book, as is the case with
The Human Factor, is generally laid out in terms of these five successive
29. Human-tech
6
levels or dimensions, from the physical all the way through to the politi-
cal (the finalVicente article).
But I do not believe Vicente could have conceived an approach
spanning these five dimensions without a sixth from which to organize
his thoughts.This sixth dimension,the ethical dimension,is only implicit
in Vicente’s Human-tech approach. But I have come to believe that it
provided the motivation for the whole thing. I thought that, if I could
make this sixth dimension explicit, I could use it to create a perspective
from which to organize these articles, and a vantage point of sufficient
altitude to comment on them.
Because I enjoy no privileged perspective on ethical matters or on
the relations between basic and applied science, as Dyson does, I have
chosen to co-opt his analysis in the perspective I have chosen to take in
my contributions to this book. In a sense, by doing so, I am suggesting
that it will be useful to view ethics as the missing sixth dimension in a
Human-tech approach aiming to address every level at which technology
impacts quality of life.
To briefly foreshadow the discussion in Chapter 2, I should also say
right up front that,of course,Vicente is hardly the first scientist-engineer
to have been motivated to consider the ethical consequences of tech-
nology.Founding cyberneticist NorbertWiener devoted The Human Use
of Human Beings (1950) to this issue, and Sheridan and Ferrell were
explicit in calling attention to the dangers of mistaking scientific and
engineering abstractions of human work for human workers themselves in
their classic Man-Machine Systems (1974). Human factors pioneer Peter
Hancock (1994) has also written eloquently about the importance of
ethics,and technology alienation was a core theme in Pirsig’s enormously
popular Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
But the concrete ways in which ethical matters get fleshed out in the
design and use of technology change just as quickly as technology itself.
For this reason, to give ethical considerations added currency and
renewed visibility, I have chosen to frame my comments on the papers
reprinted in this book,where appropriate,not only from a scientific per-
spective, but from an ethical perspective as well.
My work on this book has reinforced my belief that engineering
and ethics are becoming intertwined in an even more fundamental and
intimate way, owing to the ever-increasing ubiquity of technology in
30. Introduction 7
human life.There is a grain of truth in philosopher Karl Jaspers’ observa-
tion that many people tend to become “their situations personified.”
If our“situations”are increasingly designed for purposes counter to those
bringing forth our better nature, against the grain of those promoting
health, happiness, and peace, then engineering has indeed become fun-
damental and even central to ethics.Back in the father of scientific man-
agement FrederickTaylor’s day, the engineer’s idea of the “one best way”
to get things done could be promoted only softly, by training and
incentives.Today, what was once soft inducement has become, through
technology, hard constraint: we either do it the engineer’s way, or we
don’t do it all.Taylor would probably be thrilled.
Winston Churchill once said, “We need a lot of engineers in the
modern world, but we do not want a world of modern engineers.”We
may not (yet) be living in a “world of modern engineers,” but we are
increasingly living in a world of their creations.The difference may wind
up being no difference at all.
32. 9
2
The Origins of Human-tech
Alex Kirlik
Science flourishes best when it uses freely all the tools at hand, unconstrained
by preconceived notions of what science ought to be. Every time we introduce a
new tool, it always leads to new and unexpected discoveries, because Nature’s
imagination is richer than ours.
Freeman Dyson,The Scientist as Rebel
KimVicente began his research career in the discipline of human factors
engineering in the mid 1980s.This was an era of increasing disillusion-
ment,especially among those with design orientations,with the received
view that dominated the prevailing culture of his field: that human
factors was both largely and essentially a branch of experimental psy-
chology, one known as engineering psychology.The assumption behind
the received view was that experimental design, statistical analysis, and
information processing theory provided a nearly sufficient basis for
human factors researchers and practitioners to inform the design of tech-
nology,artifacts,and products,which today,comprise the near totalWestern
human ecology.
In one form of this model, the idea was that design engineers or
computer scientists would act responsibly in calling in the human factors
experts prior to delivering or fielding their creations.Then,these experts
would run experiments to ensure that the resulting technologies achieved
their aims, whether in the realm of productivity, safety, reliability, and so
forth. A second form of this model was that engineering psychology
could get ahead of the design curve, albeit in a limited way.The notion
here was that a large body of engineering psychology experiments would
result in a collection of findings that a designer would consult for some
reason or another, or that these findings could be integrated into a set of
design principles or guidelines.
Significant advances have indeed been made from this perspective,
and these advances should not be overlooked or underappreciated, even
33. Human-tech
10
if advances may still be needed in additional directions. For example,
perhaps the very best of what we now have along these lines is reflected
in human factors textbooks: Wickens, Lee, Liu, and Gordon-Becker
(2003) is a notable example.This text is a particularly valuable resource
for providing guidance on optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of
the relationship between a person and the information and actions made
immediately, or proximally, available from a system interface, such as an
automobile cockpit, cell phone, or website (e.g. stimulus–response com-
patibility is a prime example). Many of the products and devices we use
every day, unfortunately, still do not benefit by the tremendous amount
of knowledge and guidance texts such as these provide. Only rarely is a
human factors course considered to be an essential aspect of engineering
education (see Pew and Mavor, 2007 for related observations).Although
the handling qualities of my car benefit from state-of-the-art technology,
its cockpit design nearly completely ignores some 60 years of accumu-
lated human factors research and wisdom.When I put on my polarized
sunglasses, the electronic cockpit displays disappear. (I bought the car in
a dark winter.) Did the design engineers never imagine that people
might want to wear sunglasses and drive at the same time? (Perhaps it
was also designed and tested in one.)
Despite the important advances made by the engineering psychol-
ogy approach,back in the mid 1980s,it was becoming increasingly appar-
ent that the (high) technologies then requiring creation were becoming
soincrediblycomplex(somegoingbythename“sociotechnicalsystems”—
nuclear power plants, health care delivery, military command and con-
trol, to name a few) that the limitations of the received view were
increasingly being felt in quite tangible ways, and from many different
quarters. Systems such as these have so many degrees of design freedom
that it was becoming increasingly implausible to argue that every design
decision having a human or social dimension could be decided empiri-
cally, via experimentation and analysis of variance (ANOVA), or that
these systems would be amenable to analysis and design in terms of the
types of context-free design principles available in traditional human fac-
tors textbooks. Research sponsors were more frequently expressing dis-
satisfaction with what human factors had to offer. Human factors
researchers were themselves becoming ever more frustrated with the
34. The Origins of Human-tech 11
inadequacy of their training, their methods, and their techniques for
effectively engaging research problems in their full complexity.
A variety of human factors researchers wrote scholarly,often search-
ing, pieces offering their own diagnoses of the situation, and sketching
possible remedies and alternative futures. Jens Rasmussen, who, along
with Donald Norman championed the use of the term “cognitive engi-
neering”in an attempt to define a new discipline transcending solely the
engineering psychology approach,offered a particularly cogent diagnosis
of the situation, and an especially influential way ahead. Rasmussen
observed a variety of mismatches between both the theoretical and
methodological tools available in the human factors marketplace and the
pressing needs of cognitive engineering researchers and practitioners.
First, Rasmussen, a control engineer working to ensure the safety of
nuclear power plants and operations, observed that, in the crucially
important area of interface design, semantics had overtaken syntax as the
chief barrier to effective plant control and problem diagnosis. It was not
that operators had great difficulty perceiving or attending to their dis-
plays, but rather in understanding what they meant.
Adopting a largely extensional semantics as a theory of meaning,
Rasmussen cashed out meaning in terms of external reference. The
operator’s actual task is to control, diagnose, and manage a plant, not to
observe and manipulate an interface.In other words,an interface must be
functionally considered not as the (proximal) target of human interac-
tion, but instead as a window to a (distal) plant or other environment
comprising the true target of work.Just as Jerome Bruner had character-
ized cognition as “going beyond the information given,” Rasmussen
described an operator’s cognitive task in terms of exactly the same sort
of going beyond, but in this case, going beyond the interface given.
This description simultaneously describes the challenge and oppor-
tunity for interface design. It has a direct parallel in the challenge and
opportunity I am now facing in trying to make myself understood to
you.Presumably,the publisher’s production technology is not to blame if
I am not making myself clear, as I expect that a legible and possibly even
visually appealing page (or display) of text lies before you. No, if I am
failing to meet my challenge, and missing out on the opportunities edit-
ing this book affords, it is likely to be a semantic, rather than syntactic
35. Human-tech
12
failure on my part. Rasmussen realized that the demands of good inter-
face design had, in terms of the reading metaphor, moved beyond font
legibility to the need to write well.
But the methods of experimental psychology—dealing as they typi-
cally do with a human participant presented with a proximal display and
a proximal control, and asked to do one task or another—focus almost
exclusively on proximal interaction, with legibility rather than compre-
hension. Instead, from an empirical perspective, what seemed to be
needed, according to Rasmussen, were studies having not merely high
levels of fidelity with respect to the proximal “stimulus,” but also those
faithfully representing the often complex, and possibly even uncertain,
relations between proximal information sources and the state of the true
target of human interaction, the distal plant, system, or work environ-
ment. Rasmussen’s insights and research contributions had a profound
impact onVicente.As a graduate student, he traveled to Denmark for a
year to study under Rasmussen’s mentorship.
A second, perhaps less direct but nevertheless highly influential
influence on Vicente were James J. Gibson’s (1979) theories of direct
perception and affordances. The intuition behind Gibson’s affordance
concept is that much fluent, perceptually guided behavior involves the
“pickup”of information that directly specifies the existence of the action
opportunities made available by the environment or“the ecology”(those
aspects of the environment with behavioral and psychological relevance).
Unlike today,the University of Illinois,whereVicente was doing his grad-
uate study, at the time had a critical mass of faculty members with a
Gibsonian bent,across campus units such as aviation,psychology,mechan-
ical & industrial engineering, kinesiology, and others.Vicente did his PhD
research in what was then a hotbed of Gibsonian collaboration.
Strongly inspired by both Rasmussen and Gibson, in his PhD dis-
sertationVicente had seemingly found a way to leverage the resources of
both these theorists, resulting in an interface design framework called
ecological interface design or EID. Research questions surrounding EID
dominated Vicente’s research agenda, not only during his dissertation,
but also during perhaps the first half of his career as an engineering fac-
ulty member. Research associated in one way or another with EID has
resulted in numerous publications by Vicente and others (e.g. Burns
and Hajdukiewicz, 2004;Vicente, 2002), and has been influential in the
36. The Origins of Human-tech 13
design of industrial interfaces at an international level. This book is
devoted largely to his research activities post-EID, but a few comments
on the approach are necessary to better convey the ideas that follow.
Rasmussen’s abstraction hierarchy (AH) lies at the heart of EID.When
Rasmussen sought to understand how the operators he observed moni-
tored and diagnosed a plant, he noticed that their cognitive encounter
with the plant bounced among multiple levels of abstraction: physical,
functional, and teleological, with the latter indicating the purpose that
motivated the plant’s design (e.g. to generate power). Rasmussen had
done due diligence in reviewing the cognitive science literature at the
time on problem solving and found it lacking, exactly because of this
multilevel type of plant representation that appeared to be necessary to
understand operator cognition. For example, Rasmussen reviewed the
influential problem-solving research of Newell and Simon (1972), and
noted that the representation that they had chosen to describe the task
environment, the “problem space,” had two properties that limited its
relevance to power plant troubleshooting and diagnosis.
First, all of the Newell and Simon (1972) research had been con-
ducted in closed worlds of puzzles and games, where the state space can
be defined once and for all. In contrast, a power plant is an open system.
The state of the plant itself can be influenced by external,environmental
factors: the operator cannot be certain that the state of the plant is one
that had been observed previously or had even been anticipated.Second,
with regard to the multilevel representation of the plant necessary to
understand operator cognition as represented in the AH—physical form:
how it looks, feels, sounds, and smells; how it functions; and purpose, or
why it was designed in the first place—Rasmussen noted that, instead,
Newell and Simon had assumed a “flat” or single-level problem space.
Their problem spaces were essentially nodes (states) connected by pos-
sible state transitions that would result by taking actions (e.g. moving a
disk from one peg to another in the Tower of Hanoi puzzle).
Vicente’s notion underlying the creation of EID was to marry the
multilevel,AH representation with Gibsonian direct perception,to make
visible the invisible in interface design. Classical single-sensor, single-
indicator (SSSI) plant interfaces create proximal–distal barriers for oper-
ators, Vicente hypothesized, because they provide information solely
at the level of physical function (e.g. pressures, temperatures, flow rates).
37. Human-tech
14
If the operator wants (or needs) higher-level functional information (e.g.
information relating to the physics governing the plant’s operation),then
he or she has to overcome a cognitive barrier in going beyond the SSSI
interface given.
Ecological interface design also includes a framework for classifying
these barriers.Here,Vicente leveraged the skills,rules,and knowledge (SRK)
framework, also a product of Jens Rasmussen’s research (Rasmussen,
1985). The idea behind SRK is that operators work in three possible
modes, and their activity shifts among these modes as necessary:
• Mode 1:When the operators are continuously responding to continu-
ously displayed signals (e.g. in target tracking or manual piloting or
driving), they are said to be exhibiting skill-based behavior.
• Mode 2:When they are treating displayed information as discrete signs
that trigger practiced actions based on a storehouse of prior experi-
ence, they are said to be exhibiting rule-based behavior.
• Mode 3:When displayed information is inconsistent with their prior
experience (e.g. when diagnosing a novel fault), they treat this infor-
mation symbolically, mentally integrate it with their understanding of
system operation, and are said to be exhibiting problem-solving or
knowledge-based behavior.
A core idea behind EID is to allow the operator to work at the lowest
possible level in the SRK hierarchy.That is, do not design an interface
display that forces an operator to work at any level higher than he or she
otherwise could.
Ecological interface design is obviously a highly original contribu-
tion.But with the benefit of hindsight,I can see now how the collection
of articles reprinted here are also original, yet in a different and perhaps
more expansive sense.Vicente notes in his Preface,“When my students
and I started off with a pressing practical problem, it turned out that the
requisite fundamental research had not been conducted.”These articles,
from the post-EID phase ofVicente’s research career,reflect research done
in a context where a problem had been presented for which available
theory and method were not ready at hand. It is no coincidence, then,
that the articles he proposed to be reprinted here originally appeared in
perhaps the most theoretically oriented journal in the HTI discipline:
Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science.They reflect his primary theoretical
38. The Origins of Human-tech 15
contributions, to complement his original, design-oriented contribu-
tions in EID.
The fruits of this research agenda gave rise toVicente’s The Human
Factor, and the Human-tech approach.As suggested by the framing and
organization of this book, these fruits may provide a point of departure
for all HTI students, researchers, educators, and practitioners who would
like to improve the way we live with technology.What the reader will see
in the articles reprinted here, in contrast to the earlier, EID phase of
Vicente’s career, is the signature of a researcher who has refused to put
the cart of tools and methods ready at hand in front of the horse of a
socially relevant problem or opportunity. The privilege of helping to
design the future world of human experience and the playing field of
human behavior requires an opportunistic attitude toward scientific and
engineering research, one in which all the tools at hand are used freely
and wisely.
It is sometimes said that some areas of the social and behavioral sci-
ences suffer from “physics envy.” Although I do not know how widely
this view is shared, or if it provides a fair characterization of contempo-
rary research practice,there is one aspect of physics that is too rarely seen
in these sciences, in my opinion: when we speak of using freely “all the
tools at hand,” we include application and invention among these tools.
Consider the following illustration, from Dyson (2006: 206).What were
the origins of the theory of relativity?
Einstein grew up in a family of electrical engineers. His father
and uncle ran a business in Munich, manufacturing and selling
electrical measuring equipment. One of his uncle Jakob’s parents
dealt with equipment for electrical control of clocks. Einstein’s
early familiarity with electrical machinery helped him to get
his job at the Swiss patent office, and helped him to do the job
well.As soon as he started work, he was confronted with
numerous applications for patents concerned with electric
clocks and with their coordination by distribution of electric time
signals. In the year 1904, when the theory of relativity was in
process of gestation, fourteen such patents were approved by the
Bern office.The number of applications that were disapproved is
not recorded.
39. Human-tech
16
At that time, Switzerland was becoming a world leader in the
manufacture of precision clocks, and applications for Swiss patents
were pouring in from hopeful inventors all over the world. For
Einstein, analyzing and understanding these inventions was not just
a convenient way to pay the rent. He enjoyed the work at the
patent office and found it intellectually challenging. Later in his
life, he remarked that the formulation of technological patents had
been an important stimulus to his thinking about physics.
I understand that the view of basic versus applied science held by
most scientists (and even some engineers) is that, once the basic science
is done,the applied scientists or engineers begin looking at how this new
knowledge can be put to practical use. Cases of this clearly do occur.
However, scholarship on this issue convincingly demonstrates that this
unidirectional flow of information is highly oversimplified and actually
surprisingly rare. Two of the best critiques of the naïve, unidirectional
model of the relation between basic and applied science are the works of
WalterVicenti (1993) and Donald Stokes (1997). Both authors convinc-
ingly demonstrate that the belief that practically relevant applications
arise solely from pure or basic science is both surprisingly recent and also
at odds with the historical facts.
Vicenti (1993) bases his analysis on the history of research in aero-
nautics. Surely, all of us learned that the Wright brothers, Orville and
Wilbur, invented the airplane, right? Well, it turns out that the answer is
not so simple.AsVicenti convincingly shows, what the Wright brothers
actually invented was human flight (also see Bernstein, 1996). Clearly,
part of what the Wright brothers did was design and assemble a vehicle
that would come to be known as an airplane. Crucially, though, that
vehicle would only attain this distinction if it could be successfully
piloted for a significant duration by a human.BothVicenti and Bernstein
clearly demonstrate that the major barrier that the Wright brothers had
to overcome was creating a flyable vehicle, that is, to overcome the aero-
dynamic stability and control problems that had vexed other would-be
inventors of human flight. It would take a half a century or so until a
mathematical theory of feedback control systems and, more generally,
the field of cybernetics, would be founded by Weiner (1948) and others
40. The Origins of Human-tech 17
such that it became capable of understanding and describing theWright
brothers’ accomplishment in scientific terms.
Furthermore,as demonstrated by Stokes (1997),the accomplishment
of Louis Pasteur was nothing short of the Wrights and Weiner rolled up
into one. Pasteur is famous not only for inventing procedures and vac-
cines that have saved countless lives,but also as one of the founders of the
science of microbiology and the germ theory of disease.To fully under-
stand Pasteur’s accomplishment,Stokes found that he had to abandon the
naïve notion of a unidirectional flow of information from basic to applied
science. Instead, Stokes charted a map of research in two dimensions,
with basic and applied axes at 90 degrees. Pure science, that is, research
focused solely on basic (or so-called, “fundamental”) questions Stokes’
characterized with the model of the great physicist Niels Bohr. Purely
applied research, in contrast, Stokes’ characterized with the model of
Edison. However, in the upper right quadrant of his map, he placed the
work of Pasteur, as it contributed—simultaneously and in a mutually
reinforcing way—to both basic and applied research.As such, the name
Stokes gave to research conducted in this, Pasteurs’ quadrant, is use-
inspired basic research.
To me at least,Vicente’s Human-tech approach, one that “identifies
a human or societal need, and then tailors technology to what we know
about human nature” seems perfectly aligned with Stokes’ concept of
use-inspired basic research. However, and as noted in Chapter 1, a great
deal of research claimed to be relevant to HTI remains occupied in
either Bohr’s quadrant (much of psychology and cognitive science
research) or Edison’s quadrant (much of engineering and computer sci-
ence research)—that is, the discoverers and the inventors.Vicente asks
those us of involved in HTI research to become discoverers-inventors,or
perhaps inventor-discoverers, followers in the intellectual footsteps of
Pasteur, rather than of Bohr or Edison. Or, perhaps more realistically, he
asks those of us involved in HTI research to work together in collabora-
tions of inventors and discoverers in conducting our research.
Will this be possible on a scale urged byVicente? One of the most
accomplished scholars in overcoming the clash of worldviews between
inventors and discoverers was cybernetics pioneer Heinz von Foerster,
who worked with colleagues such as NorbertWiener,John von Neumann,
41. Human-tech
18
andWarren McCullough in the creation of cybernetics. He was also was
director of the Biological Computer Laboratory (discoverers-inventors)
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1958 until 1975.
Here is how von Foerster described the situation, in an invited address
given in Paris in 1990:
Here is the decisive pair of questions:
“Am I apart from the universe?”
That is, whenever I look I am looking as through a peephole
upon an unfolding universe.
Or,“Am I a part of the universe?
That is, whenever I act, I am changing myself and the universe
as well.
Whenever I reflect upon these two alternatives, I am surprised
again and again at the depth of the abyss that separates the two
fundamentally different worlds that can be created by such choices.
Either to see myself as a citizen of an independent universe,
whose regularities, rules, and customs I may eventually discover, or
to see myself as a participant of a conspiracy, whose customs, rules,
and regulations we are now inventing.
Whenever I speak to those who have made their decision to
be either discoverers or inventors, I am impressed again and again
by the fact that neither of them realizes that they have ever made
that decision.
I was once asked the question of how the inhabitants of the
different worlds as I have sketched them, the inhabitants of the
world they discover, and the inhabitants of the world they invent,
how can they ever live together? There is no problem to answer
that … as long as the discoverers discover the inventors, and the
inventors invent discoverers.
I have a dear friend who grew up in Marrakech.The house
of his family stood on the street that divides the Jewish and Arabic
quarters.As a boy, he played with all the others, listened to what
they thought and said, and learned of their fundamentally different
views.
42. The Origins of Human-tech 19
When I asked him once,“Who was right?” he said,“They are
both right.”
“But this cannot be,” I argued from an Aristotelian platform,
“Only one of them can have the truth!”
“The problem is not truth,” he answered,“The problem
is trust.”
44. 21
3
A Human-tech Research Agenda
and Approach
Alex Kirlik
If we can agree withThomas Jefferson that these truths are self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable
rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then it
should also be evident that the abandonment of millions of people in modern
societies to unemployment and destitution is a worse defilement of the earth than
nuclear power stations. If the ethical force of the environmental movement can
defeat the manufacturers of nuclear power stations, the same force should also be
able to foster the growth of technology that supplies the needs of impoverished
humans at a price they can afford.This is the great task for technology in the
coming century.
Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel
In the article reprinted in this chapter,Vicente presents and advocates a
Human-tech research approach and agenda grounded in the tenets of
Jeffersonian, representative democracy. Jefferson, along with others such
as James Madison and Nathaniel Bacon, argued that such a democratic
form is required to prevent tyranny by the majority (i.e. in a modern
research context, “tyranny” cashes out as methodological fetishism or
imperialism,or any crisply formulated—thus necessarily false—distinction
between “basic” and “applied” research). As noted by Koch and Peden
(1993),Jefferson was an advocate of the notion that research should strive
to achieve,and could attain,at the same time both a richer understanding
of nature and practical relevance (e.g. to a farmer). Jefferson was clearly
an advocate of use-inspired basic research.
Vicente’s key message in this piece is that a Human-tech research
approach necessarily requires a broad, catholic perspective on viewing
and selecting one’s research methods and techniques (“working freely
with all the tools at hand, unconstrained by preconceived notions”;
Dyson, 2006).The use of these methods and techniques must be driven
45. Human-tech
22
by the nature and phase of the problem-solving process in which a
researcher is engaged.Doing otherwise gets the cart before the horse.Field
studies, tightly controlled laboratory experiments, quantitative models,
qualitative models, analysis of variance (ANOVA), computational models,
and design and prototyping skills each have their place. And, just as
important, they each have their limitations and boundary conditions.
Vicente challenges us to avoid methodological dogmatism or imperial-
ism, much in the spirit of Danzinger’s (1994) classic critique of psychol-
ogy methodology in Constructing the Subject.
In this article,Vicente, like Stokes before him, puts forth his own
map of the research space, and like Stokes, uses two dimensions or con-
tinua, although not, like Stokes, simultaneously. The first dimension,
depicted in Figure 3, ranges from traditional laboratory experiments,
whichVicente labels as “controlled, but unrepresentative,” to field studies,
whichVicente labels“representative,but uncontrolled.”Representativeness
(Brunswik, 1956) refers the degree to which a research situation faith-
fully represents the psychologically relevant aspects of the target domain
to which the generalization of research findings is intended. Mid levels
of representativeness in Vicente’s continuum are given to “microworld”
research (think video-game style simulation) and “full-scope simulator”
(think Delta Airlines flight simulators used for training and research).
In this context,Vicente marshals Kenneth Hammond’s (1989) “Law
of the Laboratory,”that“rigor is inversely related to the representation of
[environmental] complexity” (in empirical research).Vicente relies on
this notion to interpret his continuum as implying that the human–
technology interaction (HTI) researcher faces a necessary zero-sum
trade-off between rigor (perhaps the detection of cause-effect relations)
and the degree to which these findings will also be relevant to the target
context of generalization.
I believe that it is important to note, however, that Hammond pre-
sented his “Law of the Laboratory” as a false dichotomy: he believes it to
be descriptive of how most psychologists tend to view the matter, but
hardly necessary, and largely an artifact of the confusion that ensued
when psychology took Fisherian statistics (ANOVA, etc.) as the gold
standard for experimental methodology—one instance of the method-
ological fetishism alluded to previously.However,I will not go into great
detail on this issue here,but instead point the reader to the fact that these
46. A Human-tech Research Agenda and Approach 23
concepts are dealt with in much greater depth in Chapter 6: Statistics
for Human-tech Research. For the purpose of the current chapter, it is
sufficient merely to indicate that the demands for both experimental
control and the representation of task complexity need not necessarily
be seen as creating a zero-sum game for the HTI researcher.
Simulation technologies (both actual and virtual) and even “living
laboratories” (e.g. a hospital ICU in which health care providers volun-
teer an afternoon a week to participate in—nearly—in situ, yet highly
monitored and controlled research) are increasingly sapping much of
the zero-sum nature between control and representativeness to which
Vicente points.Yet, although this zero-sum game is not logically neces-
sary, getting around it often comes with a high price. So, the gist of
Vicente’s observations along these lines have merit. I merely want to
stress that what is in play here is a question of resources, and not neces-
sarily a law of HTI research, one that cannot be broken with enough
cash and access to relevant research participants (e.g. experts or people
knowledgeable about various tasks).
The second ofVicente’s continua that I wish to question, or perhaps
complicate,is presented in Figure 4,ranging from“knowledge-oriented”
(e.g. basic research) to “market-oriented” (e.g. system development). My
first reason for differing with Vicente’s perspective as displayed here is
that, as discussed in Chapter 1, I prefer Stokes’ two-dimensional map of
the research space, which places basic and applied research at 90-degree
angles, to Vicente’s one-dimensional continuum. This is based on my
own analysis and understanding of the Human-tech approach, which
seems to me to be much in the spirit of use-inspired basic research, for
which I see no comfortable home inVicente’s Figure 4.
My second comment on this issue is that, particularly in the realm
of information and communication technologies, we are now seeing an
even more sweeping democratization in effect, more sweeping in that it
transcends the academic or even corporate research environment.A col-
lege student able to foster a revolution in how peers communicate or
interact has, without collecting a data point or writing a research article,
already had more societal impact than many HTI researchers may ever
hope to achieve.The quality of that impact is still unknown (as compared
to research enhancing, say, aviation or health care safety). But it is impact
nonetheless.
47. Human-tech
24
In accordance with the Human-tech approach that Vicente advo-
cates, we need also to recognize that the design questions in play are not
solely restricted to “high” technology. Enrique Penalosa, the former
mayor of Bogota, Columbia, was recently (June 6, 2008) quoted in The
NewYork Times as saying “when you construct a good sidewalk, you are
constructing a democracy.” Penalosa now works as a consultant for those
officials in Asia and the developing world intent on building the world-
class cities of the future.
In sum,while I mainly supportVicente’s central thesis in the reprint,
I would suggest it should be bootstrapped to further push the envelope
to recognize the full range of opportunities to shape our technology, as
well as the risks or harm that come with doing so.Those participating in
Human-tech advances, when they are made, include not only academic
researchers publishing articles,but also inventors,and others at many dif-
ferent levels (e.g.public policy makers,funding agencies,corporate exec-
utives), who are currently pushing levers that have a direct and often
profound impact on the design of our world.
Toward Jeffersonian Research Programmes
in Ergonomics Science
Kim J.Vicente
Abstract
Thomas Jefferson believed that scientific research could lead to a fuller
understanding of nature, while simultaneously addressing a persistent
social problem of national or global interest.The two-fold ideals of this
“Jeffersonian research programme” fit well with the inherently practical
aims of ergonomics science. However, in the past, basic and applied con-
cerns have not always been well integrated in the discipline.This article
makes a contribution, by proposing a novel metascientific framework
consisting of a two-dimensional research space that addresses this problem.
One dimension is methodological, representing the trade-off between
experimental control and representativeness, while the other dimension
48. A Human-tech Research Agenda and Approach 25
is intentional,representing the trade-off between knowledge- and market-
oriented purposes.The framework helps explain why it has frequently
been difficult to integrate basic and applied concerns, and, at the same
time, it shows that a Jeffersonian research programme for ergonomics
science can be achieved by opening up degrees of freedom for research
that have been comparatively unexplored. The importance of demon-
strating contributions to fundamental understanding and to applied prac-
tice within the same research programme may be essential for survival
and success in a climate of restricted research funding.
1. Introduction
Ergonomics science is different from some other disciplines, because it is
inherently practical. One of its ultimate goals is to design sociotechnical
systems that lead to improved safety, productivity, and worker health.
Thus, generalizability to industry-scale problems is a central consider-
ation. At the same time, however, ergonomics science should also be
concerned with fundamental research questions. Otherwise, cumulative
and unified knowledge—the hallmarks of scientific progress—will be
hard to come by.Considerations of practical use and the quest for funda-
mental understanding have traditionally been referred to as“applied”and
“basic” research, respectively. Using these terms, one can state that both
applied and basic research have important contributions to offer the
ergonomics science community.
Unfortunately, it has proven to be very difficult to solve practical
problems and contribute to fundamental understanding at the same time
(Rouse, 1985; Meister, 1989). Although the boundary between practice
and theory is admittedly a fuzzy one, there seems to be an inherent ten-
sion between applied and basic concerns.The motivation for this article
is that this tension has yet to be resolved in a productive manner by the
ergonomics science community. Somehow, one must be able to develop
research programmes that respect the unique benefits of applied and
basic research without letting one dominate the other.The purpose of
this article is to propose a novel metascientific framework that can foster
research that contributes to the enhancement of fundamental under-
standing as well as the resolution of practical problems in ergonomics
49. Human-tech
26
science. Following the noted historian of science, Holton (1993), I will
refer to this type of research as the “Jeffersonian research programme” in
honour ofThomas Jefferson’s appreciation for research that led to a fuller
understanding of nature,while also addressing a persistent social problem
of national or global interest (Koch and Peden 1993).
How can ergonomics science achieve the two-fold aims of a Jeffer-
sonian research programme? The framework proposed in this article
shows that there are alternative ways of conducting research that have
been relatively unexplored, and that, by exploring these alternatives
within a single research programme, it is possible to contribute simulta-
neously to both basic and applied concerns.That there is a need for such
a framework can be illustrated with a simple case study from research on
translucent human–computer interfaces.
1.1. A case study:Translucent human–computer interface design
Because of the prevalence of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), computer
users have to interact with many different objects, such as text menus,
tool palettes,and overlapping windows.As a result,it is not at all uncom-
mon to find that these interface objects can obscure underlying images
or text that are also of interest to users. For example, Figure 1 shows a
tool palette obscuring a substantial portion of an underlying wire-frame
image. Users may be interested in viewing the obscured portion of the
image while the interface object is still on the screen. In such cases, users
wind up spending a great deal of time managing these interface objects
(e.g. moving palettes back and forth, resizing windows, opening and
closing menus).These activities are overhead tasks, in the sense that they
do not directly accomplish productive work (e.g. creating a 3-D model
of an object).Therefore,one unintended side-effect of a GUI-style inter-
face is that users are not as productive as they otherwise might be if they
were able to spend more time on the central domain task of interest.
Harrison and colleagues (Harrison et al.1994,1995a,b;Harrison and
Vicente 1996a,b) addressed this problem by designing translucent
human–computer interfaces.An example is shown in Figure 2, where a
translucent text menu is superimposed on a solid object.With this type
of design, it is possible for users to divide their attention between the
foreground (i.e.the text menu) and the background (i.e.the solid object)
52. A Human-tech Research Agenda and Approach 29
the task.Therefore, if the position of the commands on the menu was
kept constant across trials, then it is possible that participants might
memorize the position of each command with practice. Under these
circumstances, participants would be able to perform the task accurately
without even reading the text on the menu. For example, if Revolve X
was always the top item on the menu, then participants might be able to
select this item merely by clicking on the top of the menu, even if the
text was illegible due to a high level of translucency.This possibility was
inconsistent with the experimental goal of assessing the impact of trans-
lucency on text legibility.Thus, Harrison and Vicente (1996a) adopted
the counterintuitive choice of randomizing the position of the com-
mands in the menu across trials because it better served the objectives of
their experiment.
This simple example shows that the conflict between experimental
control (to obtain a fundamental understanding of phenomena) and rep-
resentativeness (to solve practical problems) can be subtle, even in the
seemingly most straightforward of cases. Furthermore, recognizing this
subtlety can lead to research decisions that are, perhaps, counterintuitive
from other perspectives.Thus, it is important to try to understand better
the complex relationship between basic and applied concerns.
1.2. Outline
The remainder of this article is organized as follows.First,a methodologi-
cal continuum of research with experimental control on one end and
representativeness on the other will be described.The concept of repre-
sentativeness was originally defined by Brunswik (1952: 30) as follows:
The study of functional organism–environment relationships
would seem to require that . . . situational circumstances should be
made to represent . . . conditions under which the organism has to
function.This leads to what the writer has suggested to call the
“representative design of experiments”. . . . Any generalized
statement of relationship requires specification of a “reference class”
or “universe” from which the material is drawn.
This definition implies that representativeness is always relative because
research must explicitly be representative of some reference class. In the
53. Human-tech
30
case of ergonomics science, the reference class is usually the set of work
situations to which one wants to generalize research results. Note also
that representativeness has several dimensions (e.g. work domain, sce-
narios, tasks, social-organizational structure, participants).A study that is
representative along one dimension may not be on another.Nevertheless,
for the purposes of this article,it is sufficient to discuss representativeness
as if it were a unidimensional construct. Secondly, an intentional con-
tinuum of research with a knowledge-oriented purpose on one end and
a market-oriented purpose on the other end will be described.Thirdly,
these two continua will be used to create a novel metascientific frame-
work consisting of a two-dimensional research space. This framework
will show that ergonomics science has tended to focus on certain areas of
the space and has relatively ignored other areas. Finally, the implications of
this framework will be discussed, showing that it is possible to attain the
two-fold benefits of a Jeffersonian research programme by conducting
research in the unexplored areas of the aforementioned research space and
by adopting a methodologically diverse research programme.
2. A methodological continuum of research
Part of the tension between basic and applied research concerns is well
captured by Hammond’s (1989) Law of the Laboratory, which states that
“rigour is inversely related to representation of complexity”(p.2;see also
Cook and Campbell, 1979). This fundamental trade-off in empirical
research can be used to create a continuum of research types with highly
controlled, but unrepresentative investigations on one end and highly
representative,but uncontrolled investigations on the other end (Vicente,
1997). Figure 3 illustrates this continuum along with four prototypical
research types. In ergonomics science, as well as psychology, much more
emphasis has been given to the controlled but unrepresentative end of
this continuum.This historical trend can be noted by briefly describing
the four categories in Figure 3. Note that both the continuum and the
four types are not intended to be exhaustive or unique.There are many
other ways to categorize research. Nevertheless, these distinctions are
useful for the purposes of this article.
54. A Human-tech Research Agenda and Approach 31
2.1. Types of research
2.1.1. Type 1—Highly Controlled Laboratory Experiments
These studies use simplified tasks and either hold constant, or indepen-
dently manipulate, each factor that may be relevant to the phenomenon
under study to obtain an unconfounded understanding of the effect of
each independent variable.
An outstanding example is the work of Gould et al. (1987).These
ergonomics scientists sought to isolate a single-variable explanation for
why people read more slowly from CRT displays than from paper. To
achieve this goal, they conducted 10 experiments, each of which tried to
isolate the impact of a single independent variable. The conclusion
obtained from this sequence of 10 studies was that the reading speed
difference between CRT displays and paper is likely due to a combina-
tion of variables, probably centred on image quality. The fact that this
highly controlled, reductionistic research was awarded the Jerome H. Ely
Award for the outstanding paper published in volume 29 of Human Factors
shows that this type of work was highly valued by the ergonomics
science community.
2.1.2. Type 2—Less-controlled but more complex laboratory experiments
These studies do not explicitly try to control for every factor,but instead
present participants with more complex tasks thanType 1 research. Most
microworld research belongs in this category, the idea being to have
some experimental control and some representativeness as well, thereby
improving the chances of generalizability to operational settings.
TYPE 1
(Traditional)
CONTROLLED, BUT
UNREPRESENTATIVE
REPRESENTATIVE,
BUT UNCONTROLLED
TYPE 2
(Microworld)
TYPE 4
(Field)
TYPE 3
(Full-scope simulator)
figure 3 A methodological continuum of research showing the trade-off between
experimental control and representativeness (adapted fromVicente 1997).
56. monopoly in the production of certain raw materials; and thus
between these two groups of countries a division of labour and
confederation of powers spontaneously takes place.
List then goes on to explain his theory of the stages of economic
development through which the nations of the temperate zone,
which are furnished with all the necessary conditions, naturally pass,
in advancing to their normal economic state. These are (1) pastoral
life, (2) agriculture, (3) agriculture united with manufactures; whilst
in the final stage agriculture, manufactures and commerce are
combined. The economic task of the state is to bring into existence
through legislative and administrative action the conditions required
for the progress of the nation through these stages. Out of this view
arises List’s scheme of industrial politics. Every nation, according to
him, should begin with free trade, stimulating and improving its
agriculture by intercourse with richer and more cultivated nations,
importing foreign manufactures and exporting raw products. When it
is economically so far advanced that it can manufacture for itself,
then a system of protection should be employed to allow the home
industries to develop themselves fully, and save them from being
overpowered in their earlier efforts by the competition of more
matured foreign industries in the home market. When the national
industries have grown strong enough no longer to dread this
competition, then the highest stage of progress has been reached;
free trade should again become the rule, and the nation be thus
thoroughly incorporated with the universal industrial union. What a
nation loses for a time in exchange values during the protective
period she much more than gains in the long run in productive
power—the temporary expenditure being strictly analogous, when
we place ourselves at the point of view of the life of the nation, to
the cost of the industrial education of the individual. The practical
57. conclusion which List drew for Germany was that she needed for her
economic progress an extended and conveniently bounded territory
reaching to the sea-coast both on north and south, and a vigorous
expansion of manufactures and commerce, and that the way to the
latter lay through judicious protective legislation with a customs
union comprising all German lands, and a German marine with a
Navigation Act. The national German spirit, striving after
independence and power through union, and the national industry,
awaking from its lethargy and eager to recover lost ground, were
favourable to the success of List’s book, and it produced a great
sensation. He ably represented the tendencies and demands of his
time in his own country; his work had the effect of fixing the
attention, not merely of the speculative and official classes, but of
practical men generally, on questions of political economy; and his
ideas were undoubtedly the economic foundation of modern
Germany, as applied by the practical genius of Bismarck.
See biographies of List by Goldschmidt (Berlin, 1878) and Jentsch
(Berlin, 1901), also Fr. List, ein Vorläufer und ein Opfer für das
Vaterland (Anon., 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1877); M. E. Hirst’s Life of
Friedrich List (London, 1909) contains a bibliography and a reprint of
List’s Outlines of American Political Economy (1827).
LIST (O.E. liste, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lijst, Ger. Leiste,
adapted in Ital. lista and Fr. liste), properly a border or edging. The
58. word was thus formerly used of a geographical boundary or frontier
and of the lobe of the ear. In current usage “list” is the term applied
to the “selvage” of a piece of cloth, the edging, i.e. of a web left in
an unfinished state or of different material from the rest of the
fabric, to be torn or cut off when it is made up, or used for forming a
seam. A similar edging prevents unravelling. The material, cut off
and collected, is known as “list,” and is used as a soft cheap material
for making slippers, padding cushions, &c. Until the employment of
rubber, list was used to stuff the cushions of billiard tables. The
same word probably appears, in a plural form “lists,” applied to the
barriers or palisades enclosing a space of ground set apart for tilting
(see Tournament). It is thus used of any place of contest, and the
phrase “to enter the lists” is frequently used in the sense of “to
challenge.” The word in this application was taken directly from the
O. Fr. lisse, modern lice, in Med. Lat. liciae. This word is usually
taken to be a Romanic adaptation of the Teutonic word. In medieval
fortifications the lices were the palisades forming an outwork in front
of the main walls of a castle or other fortified place, and the word
was also used of the space enclosed between the palisades and the
enceinte; this was used for exercising troops, &c. From a
transference of “list,” meaning edge or border, to a “strip” of paper,
parchment, &c., containing a “list” of names, numbers, &c., comes
the use of the word for an enumeration of a series of names of
persons or things arranged in order for some specific purpose. It is
the most general word for such an enumeration, other words, such
as “register,” “schedule,” “inventory,” “catalogue,” having usually
some particular connotation. The chief early use of list in this
meaning was of the roll containing the names of soldiers; hence to
“list a soldier” meant to enter a recruit’s name for service, in modern
usage “to enlist” him. There are numerous particular applications of
59. “list,” as in “civil list” (q.v.), “active or retired list” in the navy or
army. The term “free list” is used of an enumeration of such
commodities as may at a particular time be exempt from the
revenue laws imposing an import duty.
The verb “to list,” most commonly found in the imperative,
meaning “hark!” is another form of “listen,” and is to be referred, as
to its ultimate origin, to an Indo-European root klu-, seen in Gr.
κλύειν, to hear, κλέος, glory, renown, and in the English “loud.” The
same root is seen in Welsh clûst and Irish clûas, ear. Another word
“list,” meaning pleasure, delight, or, as a verb, meaning “to please,
choose,” is chiefly found in such phrases as “the wind bloweth where
it listeth.” This is from the O.E. lystan, cf. Dut. lusten, Ger. lüsten, to
take pleasure in, and is also found in the English doublet “lust,” now
always used in the sense of an evil or more particularly sexual
desire. It is probably an application of this word, in the sense of
“inclination,” that has given rise to the nautical term “list,” for the
turning over of a ship on to its side.
LISTA Y ARAGON, ALBERTO (1775-1848), Spanish poet
and educationalist, was born at Seville on the 15th of October 1775.
He began teaching at the age of fifteen, and when little over twenty
was made professor of elocution and poetry at Seville university. In
1813 he was exiled, on political grounds, but pardoned in 1817. He
60. then returned to Spain and, after teaching for three years at Bilbao,
started a critical review at Madrid. Shortly afterwards he founded the
celebrated college of San Mateo in that city. The liberal character of
the San Mateo educational system was not favoured by the
government, and in 1823 the college was closed. Lista after some
time spent in Bayonne, Paris and London was recalled to Spain in
1833 to edit the official Madrid Gazette. He was one of the founders
of the Ateneo, the free university of Madrid, and up till 1840 was
director of a college at Cadiz. All the leading spirits of the young
generation of Spaniards, statesmen, writers, soldiers and
diplomatists came under his influence. He died at Seville on the 5th
of October 1848.
LISTER, JOSEPH LISTER, 1st Baron (1827- ), English
surgeon, was born at Upton, in Essex, on the 5th of April 1827. His
father, Joseph Jackson Lister, F.R.S., was eminent in science,
especially in optical science, his chief claim to remembrance being
that by certain improvements in lenses he raised the compound
microscope from the position of a scientific toy, “distorting as much
as it magnified,” to its present place as a powerful engine of
research. Other members of Lord Lister’s family were eminent in
natural science. In his boyhood Joseph Lister was educated at
Quaker schools; first at Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and afterwards at
Tottenham, near London. In 1844 he entered University College,
61. London, as a student in arts, and took his B.A. degree at the
University of London in 1847. He continued at University College as a
medical student, and became M.B. and F.R.C.S. in 1852. The keen
young student was not long in bringing his faculties to bear upon
pathology and the practice of medicine. While house-surgeon at
University College Hospital, he had charge of certain cases during an
outbreak of hospital gangrene, and carefully observed the
phenomena of the disease and the effects of treatment upon it. He
was thus early led to suspect the parasitic nature of the disorder,
and searched with the microscope the material of the spreading
sore, in the hope of discovering in it some invading fungus; he soon
convinced himself of the cardinal truth that its causes were purely
local. He also minutely investigated cases of pyaemia, another
terrible scourge of hospitals at that time, and made camera lucida
sketches of the appearances revealed by the microscope.
To realize Lister’s work it is necessary to remember the condition
of surgical practice at that date. About the middle of the 19th
century the introduction of anaesthetics had relieved the patient of
much of the horror of the knife, and the surgeon of the duty of
speed in his work. The agony of the sufferer had naturally and
rightly compelled the public to demand rapid if not slap-dash
surgery, and the surgeon to pride himself on it. Within decent limits
of precision, the quickest craftsman was the best. With anaesthetics
this state of things at any rate was changed. The pain of the
operation itself no longer counted, and the surgeon was enabled not
only to be as cautious and sedulous as dexterous, but also to
venture upon long, profound and intricate operations which before
had been out of the question. Yet unhappily this new
enfranchisement seemed to be but an ironical liberty of Nature, who
with the other hand took away what she had given. Direct healing of
62. surgical wounds (“by first intention”), far from being the rule, was a
piece of luck too rare to enter into the calculations of the operator;
while of the graver surgical undertakings, however successful
mechanically, the mortality by sepsis was ghastly. Suppuration,
phagedaena and septic poisonings of the system carried away even
the most promising patients and followed even trifling operations.
Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences,
so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very
name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own
craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short
time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous
care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the
devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the
weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear.
When Lister was appointed to the chair of surgery in Glasgow the
infirmary of that city was a hotbed of septic disease; so much so
that his hospital visits evidently distressed him greatly. Windows
were widely opened, piles of clean towels were supplied, but still the
pestilence stalked through the wards. The building stands to-day as
it stood then, with no substantial alteration; but by the genius of
Lister its surgical wards are now as free from septic accidents as the
most modern hospital in the land. James Simpson, early in the
’sixties, pathetically denounced the awful mortality of operations in
hospitals, and indeed uttered desperate protests against the hospital
system itself; yet, not long afterwards, Lister came to prove that it
was not in the hospital that the causes of that mortality lay hidden,
but in the operator himself, his tools and his assistants. Happily this
beneficent discovery was made in time to preserve the inestimable
boon of the hospital system from the counsels of despair. When
Lister took up the task speculation was on the wrong tack; the
63. oxygen of the air was then supposed to be the chief cause of the
dissolution of the tissues, and to prevent access of air was
impossible. For instance, a simple fracture, as of a bone of the leg,
would do perfectly well, while in the very next bed a compound
fracture—one, that is, where the skin is lacerated, and access to the
seat of injury opened out—would go disastrously wrong. If the limb
were amputated, a large proportion of such cases of amputation
succumbed to septic poisoning.
On graduation as bachelor of medicine, Lister went to Edinburgh,
where he soon afterwards became house-surgeon to Mr Syme; and
he was much impressed by the skill and judgment of this great
surgeon, and also by the superiority of his method of dressing recent
wounds with dry lint, as compared with the “water dressing” in use
at University College. Yet under these more favourable conditions
the amelioration was only one of degree; in most wounds indeed
“union by first intention” was rendered impossible by the presence of
the silk ligatures employed for arresting bleeding, for these could
come away only by a process of suppuration. On the expiry of his
house-surgeoncy in Edinburgh, Lister started in that city an extra-
academical course of lectures on surgery; and in preparation for
these he entered on a series of investigations into inflammation and
allied subjects. These researches, which were detailed fully in three
papers in Phil. Trans. (1859), and in his Croonian lecture to the Royal
Society in 1863, testified to an earnestness of purpose, a
persevering accuracy of observation and experiment and an insight
of scientific conception which show that if Lister had never
developed the aseptic method of surgery, he would have taken a
very high place in pathology. In his speech in Paris at the Thirteenth
International Congress of Medicine in 1900, Lord Lister said that he
had done no more than seize upon Pasteur’s discoveries and apply
64. them to surgery. But though Lister saw the vast importance of the
discoveries of Pasteur, he saw it because he was watching on the
heights; and he was watching there alone. From Pasteur Lister
derived no doubt two fruitful ideas: first, that decomposition in
organic substances is due to living “germs”; and, secondly, that
these lowly and minute forms of vegetable life spring always, like
higher organisms, from parents like themselves, and cannot arise de
novo in the animal body. After his appointment to the Glasgow chair
in 1860, Lister had continued his researches on inflammation; and
he had long been led to suspect that decomposition of the blood in
the wound was the main cause of suppuration. The two great
theories established by Pasteur seemed to Lister to open out the
possibility of what had before appeared hopeless—namely, the
prevention of putrefaction in the wound, and consequently the
forestalling of suppuration. To exclude the oxygen of the air from
wounds was impossible, but it might be practicable to protect them
from microbes.
The first attempt to realize this idea was made upon compound
fractures; and the means first employed was carbolic acid, the
remarkable efficacy of which in deodorizing sewage made Lister
regard it as a very powerful germicide. It was applied to the wound
undiluted, so as to form with the blood a dense crust, the surface of
which was painted daily with the acid till all danger had passed. The
results, after a first failure, were in the highest degree satisfactory,
so that, as Lister said in his presidential address to the British
Association in Liverpool, he “had the joy of seeing these formidable
injuries follow the same safe and tranquil course as simple
fractures.” The caustic property of undiluted carbolic acid, though
insignificant in comparison with the far greater evils to be avoided in
compound fracture, made it unsuited for general surgery. To make it
65. applicable to the treatment of abscesses and incised wounds, it was
necessary to mitigate its action by blending it with some inert body;
and the endeavour to find the best medium for this purpose, such as
to combine perfect antiseptic efficiency with the least possible
irritation of the tissues, formed the subject of experiments continued
for many years in the laboratory and in the ward. At one stage in
these inquiries an attempt was made to provide an atmosphere free
from living organisms by means of a fine spray of a watery solution
of carbolic acid; for it was then supposed by Lister to be necessary
not only to purify the surgeon’s hands and instruments and the skin
of the patient about the seat of operation, but also to wage war with
the microbes which, as Pasteur had shown, people every cubic inch
of the air of an inhabited room. Under the use of the spray better
results were obtained than ever before, and this success encouraged
its use. But researches carried on for several years into the relations
of the blood to micro-organisms led Lister to doubt the harmfulness
of the atmospheric dust. At the London Congress in 1881 he
narrated experiments which proved that the serum of the blood is a
very unfavourable soil for the development of the bacteria diffused
through the air, and others which showed that the cells of an
organizing blood-clot have a very remarkable power of disposing of
microbes and of limiting their advance. Hence he considered it
probable that in surgical operations the atmosphere might be
disregarded altogether.1 As long, however, as this was only a matter
of probability, he did not dare to discard the spray. But at length, at
the Berlin Congress in 1890, he was able to announce that the
certainty he had so long desired had been arrived at. A careful
consideration of the physical constitution of the spray had shown
him that the microbes of the dust involved in its vortex could not
possibly have their vitality destroyed or even impaired by it. Such
66. being the case, the uniform success obtained when he had trusted
the spray implicitly as an aseptic atmosphere, abandoning
completely certain other precautions which he had before deemed
essential, proved conclusively to his mind that the air might safely be
left entirely out of consideration in operating.2 Thus he learnt that
not the spray only, but all antiseptic irrigations or washings of the
wound also, with their attendant irritation of the cut surfaces, might
be dispensed with—a great simplification, indirectly due to
experiments with the spray. The spray had also served a very useful
purpose by maintaining a pure condition of the entourage of the
operation; not indeed in the way for which it was devised, but as a
very mild form of irrigation. And Lister took care to emphasize the
necessity for redoubled vigilance on the part of the surgeon and his
assistants when this “unconscious caretaker,” as he called it, had
been discarded.
The announcement that he had given up the spray was absurdly
interpreted in some quarters to mean that he had virtually
abandoned his theory and his antiseptic methods. The truth is that
the spray was only one of many devices tried for a while in the
course of the long-continued endeavour to apply the antiseptic
principle to the best advantage, and abandoned in favour of
something better. Two main objects were always kept steadily in
view by him—during the operation to guard the wound against
septic microbes by such means as existing knowledge indicated, and
afterwards to protect it against their introduction, avoiding at the
same time all needless irritation of the tissues by the antiseptic.
Upon the technical methods of attaining these ends this is not the
place to enlarge; suffice it to say that the endowments and the
industry of the discoverer, as seen in the rapidity and flexibility of
mind with which he seized upon and selected the best means, were
67. little less remarkable than the activity of the same faculties in his
original ideas.
To illustrate this opinion, his work on the ligature may be taken. It
had long been the universal practice of surgeons to employ threads
of silk or flax for tying arteries, long ends being left to provide
escape of the pus (invariably formed during the tedious process of
the separation of the ligature) together with the portion of the
arterial coats included in the knot. Lister hoped that if, by antiseptic
means, the thread were deprived of living microbes, it would no
longer cause suppuration, but might be left with short cut ends to
become embedded permanently among the tissues of the wound,
which thus would be allowed to heal by primary union throughout. A
trial of this method upon the carotid artery of a horse having proved
perfectly successful, he applied it in a case of aneurysm in the
human subject; and here again the immediate results were all that
could be desired. But a year later, the patient having died from other
causes, the necropsy showed remnants of the silk thread
incompletely absorbed, with appearances around them which
seemed to indicate that they had been acting as causes of
disturbance. Thus was suggested to him the idea of employing for
the ligature some material susceptible of more speedy absorption;
and the antiseptic treatment of contused wounds having shown that
dead tissue, if protected from putrefaction, is removed by the
surrounding structures without the intervention of suppuration, he
resolved to try a thread of some such nature. Catgut, which is
prepared from one of the constituents of the small intestine of the
sheep, after steeping in a solution of carbolic acid, was used in a
preliminary trial upon the carotid artery of a calf. The animal was
killed a month later, when, on dissection, a very beautiful result was
disclosed. The catgut, though removed, had not been simply
68. absorbed; pari passu with its gradual removal, fibrous tissue of new
formation had been laid down, so that in place of the dead catgut
was seen a living ligature embracing the artery and incorporated
with it. The wound meanwhile had healed without a trace of
suppuration. This success appeared to justify the use of the catgut
ligature in the human subject, and for a while the results were
entirely satisfactory. But though this was the case with the old
samples of catgut first employed, which, as Lister was afterwards led
to believe, had been “seasoned” by long keeping, it was found that
when catgut was used fresh as it comes from the makers, it was
unsuited in various ways for surgical purposes. The attempt by
special preparation to obtain an article in all respects trustworthy
engaged his attention from time to time for years afterwards. To
quote the words of Sir Hector Cameron, who was for several years
assistant to Lord Lister, it required “labour and toilsome investigation
and experiment of which few can have any adequate idea.”
In 1869 Lister succeeded his father-in-law, Syme, in the chair of
clinical surgery of Edinburgh. In 1877 he accepted an invitation to
the chair of surgery at King’s College, London, in the anticipation
that here he would be more centrally placed for communication with
the surgical world at home and abroad, and might thus exercise his
beneficent mission to more immediate advantage. In 1896 Lister
retired from practice, but not from scientific study. From 1895 to
1900 he was President of the Royal Society. In 1883 he was created
a baronet, and in 1897 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lister
of Lyme Regis. Among the Coronation honours in 1902, he was
nominated an original member of the new Order of Merit.
In England Lister’s teaching was slow in making its way. The
leading surgeons of Germany were among the first to seize upon the
69. new idea with avidity and practical success; so early as 1875, in the
course of a tour he made on the Continent, great festivals were held
in his honour in Munich and Leipzig. The countrymen of Pasteur did
not lag far behind; and it is no exaggeration to speak of Lister’s
appearances in foreign countries at this time as triumphal.
The relation of Semmelweiss to Lister is of historical importance.
Lister’s work on the antiseptic system began in 1864; his first
publication on the subject was in March 1867. At this date, and for
long afterwards, Semmelweiss was unknown, or ignored, not only by
French and Germans, but also by his own Hungarian people; and
this neglect broke his heart. The French Academy pronounced
against his opinions, and so did the highest pathological authority in
Germany. In England, till long after his death, probably his name
was not so much as mentioned. In the early ’seventies Lister’s
method was in full operation in Hungary as elsewhere, yet none of
the surgeons of Budapest ever mentioned Semmelweiss; not even
when, in 1883, they gave a great banquet to Lister. It was after this
occasion that Dr Duka, a Hungarian physician practising in London,
wrote a biography of Semmelweiss, which he sent to Lister, and thus
brought Semmelweiss before him for the first time. Thenceforth
Lister generously regarded Semmelweiss as in some measure his
forerunner; though Semmelweiss was not aware of the microbic
origin of septic poisons, nor were his methods, magnificent as was
their success in lying-in hospitals, suitable for surgical work.
In public Lord Lister’s speeches were simple, clear and graceful,
avoiding rhetorical display, earnest for the truth, jealous for his
science and art, forgetful of himself. His writings, in like manner
plain, lucid and forcible, scarcely betray the labour and thought of
their production. With the courtesy and serenity of his carriage he
70. combined a passionate humanity, so often characteristic of those
who come of the Society of Friends, and a simple love of truth which
showed itself in his generous encouragement of younger workers.
(T. C. A.)
1 See Trans. of the International Medical Congress (1881), vol. ii. p.
373.
2 See Verhandlungen des X internationalen Congresses, Bd. i. p. 33.
LISTER, MARTIN (c. 1638-1712), English naturalist and
physician, was born at Radclive, near Buckingham. He was nephew
of Sir Matthew Lister, physician to Anne, queen of James I., and to
Charles I. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, 1655,
graduated in 1658/9, and was elected a fellow in 1660. He became
F.R.S. in 1671. He practised medicine at York until 1683, when he
removed to London. In 1684 he received the degree of M.D. at
Oxford, and in 1687 became F.R.C.P. He contributed numerous
articles on natural history, medicine and antiquities to the
Philosophical Transactions. His principal works were Historiae
animalium Angliae tres tractatus (1678); Historiae Conchyliorum
(1685-1692), and Conchyliorum Bivalvium (1696). As a conchologist
he was held in high esteem, but while he recognized the similarity of
fossil mollusca to living forms, he regarded them as inorganic
imitations produced in the rocks. In 1683 he communicated to the
71. Royal Society (Phil. Trans., 1684), An ingenious proposal for a new
sort of maps of countries; together with tables of sands and clays,
such as are chiefly found in the north parts of England. In this essay
he suggested the preparation of a soil or mineral map of the country,
and thereby is justly credited with being the first to realize the
importance of a geological survey. He died at Epsom on the 2nd of
February 1712.
LISTON, JOHN (c. 1776-1846), English comedian, was born in
London. He made his public début on the stage at Weymouth as
Lord Duberley in The Heir-at-law. After several dismal failures in
tragic parts, some of them in support of Mrs Siddons, he discovered
accidentally that his forte was comedy, especially in the personation
of old men and country boys, in which he displayed a fund of
drollery and broad humour. An introduction to Charles Kemble led to
his appearance at the Haymarket on the 10th of June 1805 as
Sheepface in the Village Lawyer, and his association with this theatre
continued with few interruptions until 1830. Paul Pry, the most
famous of all his impersonations, was first presented on the 13th of
September 1825, and soon became, thanks to his creative genius, a
real personage. Liston remained on the stage till 1837; during his
last years his mind failed, and he died on the 22nd of March 1846.
He had married in 1807 Miss Tyrer (d. 1854), a singer and actress.
72. Several pictures of Liston in character are in the Garrick Club,
London, and one as Paul Pry in the South Kensington Museum.
LISTON, ROBERT (1794-1847), Scottish surgeon, was born
on the 28th of October 1794 at Ecclesmachan, Linlithgow, where his
father was parish minister. He began the study of anatomy under Dr
John Barclay (1758-1826) at Edinburgh in 1810, and soon became a
skilful anatomist. After eight years’ study, he became a lecturer on
anatomy and surgery in the Edinburgh School or Medicine; and in
1827 he was elected one of the surgeons to the Royal Infirmary. In
1835 he was chosen professor of clinical surgery in University
College, London, and this appointment he held until his death, which
occurred in London on the 7th of December 1847. Liston was a
teacher more by what he did than by what he said. He taught
simplicity in all operative procedures; fertile in expedients, of great
nerve and of powerful frame, he is remembered as an extraordinarily
bold, skilful and rapid operator. He was the author of The Elements
of Surgery (1831-1832) and Practical Surgery (1837), and made
several improvements in methods of amputation, and in the dressing
of wounds.
73. LISZT, FRANZ (1811-1886), Hungarian pianist and composer,
was born on the 22nd of October 1811, at Raiding, in Hungary. His
appeal to musicians was made in a threefold capacity, and we have,
therefore, to deal with Liszt the unrivalled pianoforte virtuoso (1830-
1848); Liszt the conductor of the “music of the future” at Weimar,
the teacher of Tausig, Bülow and a host of lesser pianists, the
eloquent writer on music and musicians, the champion of Berlioz and
Wagner (1848-1861); and Liszt the prolific composer, who for some
five-and-thirty years continued to put forth pianoforte pieces, songs,
symphonic orchestral pieces, cantatas, masses, psalms and oratorios
(1847-1882). As virtuoso he held his own for the entire period
during which he chose to appear in public; but the militant
conductor and prophet of Wagner had a hard time of it, and the
composer’s place is still in dispute. Liszt’s father, a clerk to the agent
of the Esterhazy estates and an amateur musician of some
attainment, was Hungarian by birth and ancestry, his mother an
Austrian-German. The boy’s gifts attracted the attention of certain
Hungarian magnates, who furnished 600 gulden annually for some
years to enable him to study music at Vienna and Paris. At Vienna he
had lessons in pianoforte playing from Carl Czerny of “Velocity”
fame, and from Salieri in harmony and analysis of scores. In his
eleventh year he began to play in public there, and Beethoven came
to his second concert in April 1823. During the three years following
74. he played in Paris, the French provinces and Switzerland, and paid
three visits to England. In Paris he had composition lessons from
Paër, and a six months’ course of lessons in counterpoint from
Reicha. In the autumn of 1825 the handsome and fascinating enfant
gâté of the salons and ateliers—“La Neuvième Merveille du
monde”—had the luck to get an operetta (Don Sancho) performed
three times at the Académie Royale. The score was accidentally
destroyed by fire, but a set of studies à la Czerny and Cramer,
belonging to 1826 and published at Marseilles as 12 Études, op. i., is
extant, and shows remarkable precocity. After the death of his father
in 1828 young Liszt led the life of a teacher of the pianoforte in
Paris, got through a good deal of miscellaneous reading, and felt the
influence of the religious, literary and political aspirations of the
time. He attended the meetings of the Saint-Simonists, lent an ear to
the romantic mysticism of Père Enfantin and later to the teaching of
Abbé Lamennais. He also played Beethoven and Weber in public—a
very courageous thing in those days. The appearance of the violinist
Paganini in Paris, 1831, marks the starting-point of the supreme
eminence Liszt ultimately attained as a virtuoso. Paganini’s
marvellous technique inspired him to practise as no pianist had ever
practised before. He tried to find equivalents for Paganini’s effects,
transcribed his violin caprices for the piano, and perfected his own
technique to an extraordinary degree. After Paganini he received a
fresh impulse from the playing and the compositions of Chopin, who
arrived in 1831, and yet another impulse of equal force from a
performance of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique, épisode de la vie
d’un artiste,” in 1832. Liszt transcribed this work, and its influence
ultimately led him to the composition of his “Poèmes symphoniques”
and other examples of orchestral programme-music.
75. From 1833 to 1848—when he gave up playing in public—he was
greeted with frantic applause as the prince of pianists. Five years
(1835-1840) were spent in Switzerland and Italy, in semi-retirement
in the company of Madame la comtesse d’Agoult (George Sand’s
friend and would-be rival, known in literary circles as “Daniel Stern,”
by whom Liszt had three children, one of them afterwards Frau
Cosima Wagner): these years were devoted to further study in
playing and composition, and were interrupted only by occasional
appearances at Geneva, Milan, Florence and Rome, and by annual
visits to Paris, when a famous contest with Thalberg took place in
1837. The enthusiasm aroused by Liszt’s playing and his personality
—the two are inseparable—reached a climax at Vienna and Budapest
in 1839-1840, when he received a patent of nobility from the
emperor of Austria, and a sword of honour from the magnates of
Hungary in the name of the nation. During the eight years following
he was heard at all the principalcentres—including London, Leipzig,
Berlin, Copenhagen, St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw,
Constantinople, Lisbon and Madrid. He gained much money, and
gave large sums in charity. His munificence with regard to the
Beethoven statue at Bonn made a great stir. The subscriptions
having come in but sparsely, Liszt took the matter in hand, and the
monument was completed at his expense, and unveiled at a musical
festival conducted by Spohr and himself in 1845. In 1848 he settled
at Weimar with Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein (d. 1887), and remained
there till 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court
concerts and on special occasions at the theatre, gave lessons to a
number of pianists, wrote articles of permanent value on certain
works of Berlioz and the early operas of Wagner, and produced those
orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a
composer mainly depends. His ambition to found a school of
76. composers as well as a school of pianists met with complete success
on the one hand and partial failure on the other. His efforts on behalf
of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the
first performance of Lohengrin on the 28th of August 1850, before a
special audience assembled from far and near. Among the works
produced for the first time or rehearsed with a view to the
furtherance of musical art were Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Der fliegende
Holländer, Das Liebesmahl der Apostel, and Eine Faust Overtüre,
Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, the Symphonie Fantastique, Harold en
Italie, Roméo et Juliette, La Damnation de Faust, and L’Enfance du
Christ—the last two conducted by the composer—Schumann’s
Genoveva, Paradise and the Peri, the music to Manfred and to Faust,
Weber’s Euryanthe, Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, Raff’s König
Alfred, Cornelius’s Der Barbier von Baghdad and many more. It was
Liszt’s habit to recommend novelties to the public by explanatory
articles or essays, which were written in French (some for the
Journal des débats and the Gazette musicale of Paris) and translated
for the journals of Weimar and Leipzig—thus his two masterpieces of
sympathetic criticism, the essays Lohengrin et Tannhäuser à Weimar
and Harold en Italie, found many readers and proved very effective.
They are now included, together with articles on Schumann and
Schubert, and the elaborate and rather high-flown essays on Chopin
and Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (the latter
certainly, and the former probably, written in collaboration with
Madame de Wittgenstein), in his Gesammelte Schriften (6 vols.,
Leipzig). The compositions belonging to the period of his residence
at Weimar comprise two pianoforte concertos, in E flat and in A, the
“Todtentanz,” the “Concerto pathétique” for two pianos, the solo
sonata “An Robert Schumann,” sundry “Études,” fifteen “Rhapsodies
Hongroises,” twelve orchestral “Poèmes symphoniques,” “Eine Faust
77. Symphonie,” and “Eine Symphonie zu Dante’s ‘Divina Commedia,’”
the “13th Psalm” for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra, the choruses
to Herder’s dramatic scenes “Prometheus,” and the “Missa solennis”
known as the “Graner Fest Messe.” Liszt retired to Rome in 1861,
and joined the Franciscan order in 1865.1 From 1869 onwards Abbé
Liszt divided his time between Rome and Weimar, where during the
summer months he received pupils—gratis as formerly—and, from
1876 up to his death at Bayreuth on the 31st of July 1886, he also
taught for several months every year at the Hungarian Conservatoire
of Budapest.
About Liszt’s pianoforte technique in general it may be said that it
derives its efficiency from the teaching of Czerny, who brought up
his pupil on Mozart, a little Bach and Beethoven, a good deal of
Clementi and Hummel, and a good deal of his (Czerny’s) own work.
Classicism in the shape of solid, respectable Hummel on the one
hand, and Carl Czerny, a trifle flippant, perhaps, and inclined to
appeal to the gallery, on the other, these gave the musical parentage
of young Liszt. Then appears the Parisian Incroyable and grand
seigneur—“Monsieur Lits,” as the Parisians called him. Later, we find
him imitating Paganini and Chopin, and at the same time making a
really passionate and deep study of Beethoven, Weber, Schubert,
Berlioz. Thus gradually was formed the master of style—whose
command of the instrument was supreme, and who played like an
inspired poet. Liszt’s strange musical nature was long in maturing its
fruits. At the pianoforte his achievements culminate in the two books
of studies, twice rewritten, and finally published in 1852 as Études
d’exécution transcendante, the Études de concert and the Paganini
Studies; the two concertos and the Todtentanz, the Sonata in B
minor, the Hungarian Rhapsodies and the fine transcriptions of
Beethoven’s symphonies (the 9th for two pianofortes as well as
78. solo), and of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, and the symphony,
Harold en Italie. In his orchestral pieces of Liszt appears—next to
Berlioz—as the most conspicuous and most thorough-going
representative of programme music, i.e. instrumental music
expressly contrived to illustrate in detail some poem or some
succession of ideas or pictures. It was Liszt’s aim to bring about a
direct alliance or amalgamation of instrumental music with poetry. To
effect this he made use of the means of musical expression for
purposes of illustration, and relied on points of support outside the
pale of music proper. There is always danger of failure when an
attempt is thus made to connect instrumental music with
conceptions not in themselves musical, for the order of the ideas
that serve as a programme is apt to interfere with the order which
the musical exposition naturally assumes—and the result in most
cases is but an amalgam of irreconcilable materials. In pieces such
as Liszt’s “Poèmes symphoniques,” Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne
(1848-1856), after a poem by Victor Hugo, and Die Ideale (1853-
1857), after a poem by Schiller, the hearer is bewildered by a series
of startling orchestral effects which succeed one another apparently
without rhyme or reason. The music does not conform to any
sufficiently definite musical plan—it is hardly intelligible as music
without reference to the programme. Liszt’s masterpiece in
orchestral music is the Dante Symphony (1847-1855), the subject of
which was particularly well suited to his temperament, and offered
good chances for the display of his peculiar powers as a master of
instrumental effect. By the side of it ranks the Faust Symphony
(1854-1857), in which the moods of Goethe’s characters—Faust,
Gretchen and Mephistopheles—are depicted in three instrumental
movements, with a chorus of male voices, supplying a kind of
comment, by way of close. The method of presentation in both
79. symphonies is by means of representative themes (Leitmotif), and
their combination and interaction. Incidents of the poem or the play
are illustrated or alluded to as may be convenient, and the
exigencies of musical form are not unfrequently disregarded for the
sake of special effects. Of the twelve Poèmes symphoniques, Orphée
is the most consistent from a musical point of view, and is
exquisitely scored. Melodious, effective, readily intelligible, with a
dash of the commonplace, Les Préludes, Tasso, Mazeppa and Fest-
Klänge bid for popularity. In these pieces, as in almost every
production of his, in lieu of melody Liszt offers fragments of melody
—touching and beautiful, it may be, or passionate, or tinged with
triviality; in lieu of a rational distribution of centres of harmony in
accordance with some definite plan, he presents clever combinations
of chords and ingenious modulations from point to point; in lieu of
musical logic and consistency of design, he is content with
rhapsodical improvisation. The power of persistence seems wanting.
The musical growth is spoilt, the development of the themes is
stopped, or prevented, by some reference to extraneous ideas.
Everywhere the programme stands in the way. In much of Liszt’s
vocal music, particularly in the songs and choral pieces written to
German words, an annoying discrepancy is felt to exist between the
true sound of the words and the musical accents. The music is
generally emotional, the expression direct and passionate; there is
no lack of melodic charm and originality, yet the total effect is
frequently disappointing. In the choral numbers of the five masses,
and in the oratorios Die Heilige Elisabeth and Christus, the rarity of
fugal polyphony acts as a drawback. Its almost complete absence in
some of these works makes for monotony and produces a sense of
dullness, which may not be inherent in all the details of the music,
but is none the less distinctly present.
80. Omitting trifles and all publications that have been cancelled, the
following list of compositions may be taken as fairly comprehensive:
—
Pianoforte Pieces.—Études d’exécution transcendante; Études de
concert; Zwei Etuden, Waldesrauschen, Gnomentanz; Ab Irato;
Paganini Studies; Années de Pélerinage, 3 sets; Harmonies
poétiques et religieuses, 1-10; Consolations, 1-6; Ave Maria in E;
Sonata in B minor; Konzert-Solo in E minor; Scherzo und Marsch;
Ballades, I. II.; Polonaises, I. II.; Apparitions, 1-3; Berceuse; Valse
impromptu; Mazurka brillant; 3 Caprices Valses; Galop chromatique;
Mephisto-Walzer, I., II., III. and Polka; Zwei Legenden, “Die
Vogelpredigt,” “Der heilige Franciscus auf den Wogen schreitend”;
“Der Weihnachtsbaum,” 1-12; Sarabande und Chaconne (“Almira”);
Elegies, I., II. and III.; La lugubre Gondola; Dem Andenken Petöfi’s;
Mosonyi’s Grabgeleit; Romance oubliée; Valses oubliées, 1-3;
Liebesträume, 1-3 (originally songs); Hexameron; Rhapsodies
Hongroises, 1-18.
Pieces for Two Pianos.—Concerto pathétique (identical with the
Konzert-Solo in E minor); Dante symphony; Faust symphony;
Poèmes symphoniques, 1-12; Beethoven’s 9th symphony.
Pianoforte with Orchestra.—Concertos I. in E flat, II. in A;
Todtentanz; Fantasie ueber Motif aus Beethoven’s “Ruinen von
Athen”; Fantasie ueber Ungarische National Melodien; Schubert’s
Fantasia in C; Weber’s Polacca in E.
Fantaisies de Concert for Piano Solo.—Don Juan; Norma;
Sonnambula; I Puritani; Lucia, I., II.; Lucrezia, I., II.; La Juive;
Robert le Diable; Les Huguenots; Le Prophète, 1-4. Paraphrases,
Auber, Tarantella di bravura (Masaniello); Verdi, Rigoletto, Ernani, Il
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