Prometheus Unbound

This will probably be my last blog post till mid-August—I’m off to England tomorrow with my wife and kids.

I am the salty sea

your once

amphibious

daughters

called home,

and all my vital organs

are here,

in Sodom.

Mother, memories, my heart.

They are packed

in this place,

like loaves

in a crowded cabinet

of bone.

And you, you say

you won’t

look back?

Are you stone,

something cold?

A pillar of salt?

Given that most people do not have advanced degrees in mathematics or the sciences, debates and discussions surrounding evolution and creationism appear in the public square in the form of competing metaphors, similes, and extended analogies.

In other words, we use metaphors, similes, and extended analogies to simplify and grasp issues that might be otherwise inaccessible to us.

Hence we can keep a look-out for the ways in which our use of language, especially metaphorical language, frames and structures discussions of evolution and creationism.

Today’s metaphor comes from Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). At the beginning of the third chapter of Darwin’s book, he declares that his term “Natural Selection” was chosen for its analogous associations with animal domestication and plant hybridization—or, in other words, human selection:

Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection.

But Darwin doesn’t stop his “Natural Selection is like human selection” analogy there, but expands it still further—and with impressive literary flourish—by offering still another metaphor. He says that Natural Selection is to human selection as Nature is to art. Here’s how Darwin sonorously puts it:

We have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of slight but useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man’s feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art.

In other words, human domestic selection on the farm is, like a painter’s canvas, rather limited, and, as it were, ”two dimensional.” The farmer, like the artist, must necessarily focus on just a few things that he or she finds in Nature. As a practical matter, the farmer and artist are simply unable to see or take in all of Nature’s rich variables and capture them and modify them.

Nature, however, is ”incessantly ready for action”—that is, it is ever poised to select an organism’s adaptive traits, wherever and however they might appear. If a modification is beneficial to an organism’s survival, Nature is unlikely to miss it for very long.

Hence, claims Darwin, the power of Natural Selection is vastly superior to its analogous process of human selection, “as the works of Nature are to those of Art.”

Given that most people do not have advanced degrees in mathematics or the sciences, debates and discussions surrounding evolution and creationism appear in the public square in the form of competing metaphors, similes, and extended analogies.

In other words, we use metaphors, similes, and extended analogies to simplify and grasp issues that might be otherwise inaccessible to us.

Hence we can keep a look-out for the ways in which our use of language, especially metaphorical language, frames and structures discussions of evolution and creationism.

Today’s metaphor comes from Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), in which, in his Introduction, he compares Natural Selection to Malthusian economics:

[The Struggle for Existence] is the doctrine of [Thomas] Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

Malthus, it should be recalled, early in the 19th century, made an economic argument against the idea that the general lot of humanity could ever really substantially improve. His argument went thus:

• Wherever humans prosper, they start to rapidly multiply; 
• but the resource base, on which their prosperity depends, tends to be finite, and does not multiply;
• therefore, human prosperity is inherently unstable and fleeting, for it will tend to undermine its resource base through overpopulation.

Darwin took Malthus’s rather bleak economic syllogism, and directed it, not just to humans, but analogically “to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms”—and added this question: Which organisms, exactly, are still alive after a round of competition for limited resources has played itself out?

Darwin’s answer: Why, the best adapted—or fittest—of course!

Given that most people do not have advanced degrees in mathematics or the sciences, debates and discussions surrounding evolution and creationism appear in the public square in the form of competing metaphors, similes, and extended analogies.

In other words, we use metaphors, similes, and extended analogies to simplify and grasp issues that might be otherwise inaccessible to us.

Hence we can keep a look-out for, and notice, the ways in which our use of language, especially metaphorical language, frames and structures discussions of evolution and creationism.

Today’s metaphor comes from the opening of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), in which Darwin, before beginning his argument, quotes Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning:

To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both.

Here Darwin positions his explorations in Nature as an innocent quest for discovery—for God has not written only one book, but two:

• the Bible
• and the book of Nature—or “God’s works”

The metaphor of Nature as a book to be read holds a number of implications. Here’s a few:

• If you refuse to look into a particular book, you must be engaging in willful ignorance, much as the Catholic clergy who refused to look into Galileo’s telescope.
• If you prevent others from looking into a book, you must be a censor.
• If somebody reads a book out to you, and you don’t like what the book is saying, don’t blame the messenger (Darwin), blame the book.

And the metaphor of God as the author of TWO books, not just one, also has a number of implications, such as these:

• The first book (the Bible) is not God’s final word on matters.
• The two books, if they indeed are written by the same author, must be reconciled somehow.
• There are two “priesthoods” that the masses should now attend to—those who can read out the words of the first book and interpret them accurately (clergy)—and those who can read out the words of the second book and interpret them accurately (scientists).
• Darwin, as a discoverer and revealer of some of the secrets of God’s book of Nature, is in the same curious position as the writers of the New Testament. If the New Testament is indeed a new revelation from God, how does one reconcile it with the previous revelation (the Hebrew Bible or “Old Testament”)?
• God’s canon of scripture or revelation to humanity is not closed—for the book of Nature must be read out thoroughly before His two books can be properly interpreted and understood. Since this is not likely to be accomplished by human beings anytime soon—if ever—there is an implication that a rigid and dogmatic belief-system based on a reading of only the first book (the Bible) constitutes a premature conclusion concerning God’s Truth. 

First it was that most famous of outsiders—Jesus—born in a manger.

And now it appears that the light of heaven has shined upon the cranium of Garrett Lisi—surfer dude.

Has God once again shared His deepest secrets with an eccentric outsider—bypassing The Establishment? 

American Garrett Lisi, a single, forty year old, van-dwelling surfer with a graduate degree in physics, may have stumbled upon his discipline’s holy grail—a ‘grand unified theory’ that seamlessly weaves Einstinian relativity with quantum particle physics.

At least Lee Smolin appears to think that he might have. In a long profile of Lisi, in Outside magazine, Smolin is quoted as saying:

“I and other people think the academic world suffers from not being more inclusive of people of this kind,” says Lee Smolin, a highly regarded researcher at the Waterloo, Canada–based Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, who has corre­sponded with Lisi. “We’re not talking about a crackpot. He has a Ph.D. from a good graduate program, and his work is well within the bounds of good research.”

Here’s the link to the full Lisi profile: http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200805/garrett-lisi-1.html

I’d like to offer the above old drawing of Native Americans hunting deer as a kind of parable for the PZ Myers Catholic host stealing incident, and for thinking about the corrosive effect of camoflauge on human relations and discourse.

There are many things that secular and religious liberals agree upon—and one of those things is that discourse and civility are preferable, in disputes with others, to all forms of human objectification, as in 

• war,
• violence,
• cruelty,
• or deceitful manipulation

Part of the problem with what PZ Myers organized and did is that he essentially turned Catholics into “deer”—that is, something to be objectified, treated with disrespect, and manipulated.

Like the deer in the above drawing, Catholics, in their religious services, are on ‘their side of the river’—and in a liberal society, there is an expectation that a group’s boundaries possess integrity and will not be interfered with, or be breached by deceit or outright agression.

By contrast, PZ Myers, or one of his readers, took on the camoflauge of a Catholic, crossed the line of a church’s private property boundary, and made off, under false pretenses, with something that Catholics do not share with unbelievers. Period.

One of the highest ideals of a liberal society is that human beings will talk civilly with one another, and respect, at a minimum, one another’s boundaries, and not deceive one another as to our thoughts and intentions, or to treat one another with cruelty. 

Obviously, our cultural discourse rarely approaches this ideal, and is usually saturated with deceitful advertising, lawyerly manipulation, fraud, cynicism, and cruelty. We see and hear more from people like Mark Penn and Rush Limbaugh than people like William F. Buckley, Andrew Sullivan, Michael Shermer, and Paul Kurtz. 

But we shouldn’t want to see, if we identify ourselves as agnostics or atheists, the public face of our movement look more like Rush Limbaugh than Paul Kurtz.

We shouldn’t be rewarding and defending people who take the neo-atheist movement into illiberal territory—someone like Myers, who can’t apologize for moments of incivility, who is emotionally rigid and inflexible, and who treats his opponents with gestures that are, frankly, inhumane.

As a reminder of the problem that PZ Myers poses for liberal agnostics and atheists, here are his two blog posts—one promoting iconoclastic gestures, and the other narrating his actual doing of them. How does a person who regards himself or herself as liberal, defend this kind of emotional primitivism, incivility, and boorishness?:

Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart. If you can smuggle some out from under the armed guards and grim nuns hovering over your local communion ceremony, just write to me and I’ll send you my home address.

And this one:

OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat…it’s just a cracker. I wasn’t going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.

My heart, she

said,

it goes

out to you

like a pinched wick.

Native Americans hunting in camouflage.

A professor, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, sasses Internet class-taking:

At the most basic level, to be a student has always meant actually dragging one’s exhausted body into class with readings in hand, being (more or less) awake, alert, listening, and ready to open one’s mouth. And to be a teacher, for me, means seeing the faces of the students and how their bodies reflect their thoughts and emotions, hearing the timbre of their voices or the lilts in their dialects, experiencing them before me in the rich mix of ideas.

Are his points valid?

Or:

• Is this Plato bemoaning writing because it weakens the memory?
• Is this simply another technology dinosaur who hasn’t figured out that the delivery of ‘education’ to the masses is changing?

And what about the issue of resources?

• Moving bodies around takes a lot of fossil fuels—aren’t we in an age of energy scarcity, environmental degredation, and global warming?

Rather than short, spaceship travelling creatures with big eyes and big heads, what are the prospects of humanity actually having an encounter with REAL extraterrestrials over the next generation?

The Washington Post today has an article on this scientific question.

First, the negative prospects. Here are some things, according to the Washington Post article, that should make us cautious about assuming that we will discover life beyond Earth anytime soon:

To some, debating the implications of discovering extraterrestrial life is premature at best, because — all UFO “sightings” aside — none has ever been found.

Two Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s to search for organic material did not identify any — although they were unable to dig below the rugged and parched Martian surface into the ground where scientists now think that water and possibly life could be found. In addition, the private group SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has been broadcasting radio messages to hoped-for intelligent aliens for years and listening for a response — sometimes with NASA support — but has been met so far with silence. And what some consider the rush to declare that the meteorite from Mars contained fossil remains has become an object lesson in the importance of confirming the science before making any declarations about extraterrestrial life.

On the positive side, however, are three major things. First,

[R]esearchers say . . . that they know so much more [than in the past] about extreme life-forms on Earth that could quite comfortably live on other planets. In addition to South Africa’s radioactivity-driven bacteria, extremophiles [organisms that 'love' extreme environments] have also been found living near super-hot sulfurous steam vents at the deep ocean floor, in pools composed almost entirely of acid, and recently two miles below the surface of the Greenland ice sheet. All get little or no energy from the sun, which sustains virtually all other life-forms, and their survival makes it more conceivable that microbes could live in the sub-surface ice or water on Mars and Europa.

Second,

Having identified more than 300 planets outside the solar system, researchers are also convinced that planets and solar systems — some probably similar to ours — are present and perhaps quite common, elsewhere in the universe. The next step is to find extrasolar planets in the “habitable zone” of their solar systems; planets whose size, makeup and distance from their sun might allow life to develop.

And third,

[T]he Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments have given researchers new data about the evolution and structure of the universe — information that makes it increasingly appear to be “fine-tuned” for life.

Lord Martin Rees, England’s Astronomer Royal made that argument as the keynote speaker at NASA’s spring astrobiology conference — saying that life could not exist on Earth or anywhere else if the basic physical dynamics of the universe were not almost precisely what they are. Slight changes in the strength of the electrical force that holds atoms together, of the pull of gravity, or of the total mass of the universe would have made it difficult for stars to form and create the heavy elements essential for life, and impossible for them to remain active long enough to support the process of evolution.

Many religious thinkers see this fine-tuning as an argument for the existence of a creator, but Rees and other cosmologists offer a different explanation: that our universe is but one in a world of multiple (or infinite) universes. However it came into being, Rees argued, our universe is inherently life-supporting, and there is no reason to believe that that potential has been realized only on Earth.

Thus, if you believe that we are not alone in the universe, and that we’ll find strong scientific evidence, over the next generation, for life beyond Earth, you’re not irrational to do so.

You’re belief has some warrant, but you still might be wrong.

Here’s the link to the full Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/19/AR2008071901657.html?nav=rss_nation/science&sid=ST2008071902028&pos=

An anti-Vietnam War poster inspired by Aristophanes’s ancient Greek play, Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens and Sparta withhold sex from their men until they make peace. 

Thus spoke Lysistrata toward the beginning of the play:

We’ll paint, powder, and pluck ourselves to the last detail, and stay inside, wearing those filmy tunics that set off everything we have—and then slink up to the men.

They’ll snap to attention, go absolutely mad to love us—but we won’t let them. We’ll Abstain.

I imagine they’ll conclude a treaty rather quickly.

When Barack Obama spoke in Berlin this past week, he spoke of the improbable journey that has brought the grandson of a house servant, and the son of a Kenyan goat farmer, to center stage in an American presidential election.

But we are, every one of us, on an improbable journey.

I’ve been watching on DVD the NOVA series titled Origins: 14 Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, hosted by Dr. Neil deGrassi Tyson, and it has frankly unnerved me.

Do you realize the threads of contingencies and improbabilities on which our lives have been hung on?

One fact, from the science documentatry, to keep life in perspective:

The earth, several billion years ago, was smaller than it is today, and had a molton sea more than a hundred miles deep.

Fortunately for us, Earth was hit by a large planetoid, perhaps the size of Mars.

The result is that we now live on a planet large enough, and with enough stored heat energy, to have sustained, to this day, a molton core.

Why is this important?

Because without a molton core that moves about under the ground, our planet would have no magnetic field, and without a magnetic field deflecting the sun’s “solar wind,” our atmosphere and oceans would rapidly evaporate, scorched away by the sun’s radiation.

Mars once had an atmosphere like Earth’s, with liquid water running on the surface, and a denser atmosphere, but because it’s a smaller planet than Earth, its molton core has now cooled, and its surface is barren. It has no magnetic field to deflect the sun’s “solar wind” as it moves through its orbit. 

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin, in a 1965 lecture titled “The Roots of Romanticism,” once said that:

[Y]ou become aware of the self, not at all in the act of cognition, but simply though being impacted upon. This Fichte called the Anstob, ‘impact’, and it appeared to him to be the fundamental category which dominated all experience.

In other words, our identity is discovered by us, and formed by, as it were, chance smashings into other people and things. 

Likewise, the Earth had an improbable chance smashing, and it is now a planet with the following identity markers:

• a molton core,
• an atmosphere,
• and an ability to sustain life on its surface

Because of its chance meeting, billions of years ago, with a planetoid the size of Mars, these three things make up part of the Earth’s identity.

The encounter even threw off the debris that, by gravity, coalesed into the moon.

Yes, the moon is in the sky as a direct result of a cosmic smash up four billion years ago. It is the thrown up debris of a giant crash.

So when you see the moon at night, you might think of Earth’s distant planetoid impact, and the improbable series of events that it set into motion.

Barack isn’t the only improbable, and contingent, thing in the universe.

So are you.

The above photo is from Dionysus in 69, a stage play of Euripides’s Bakkhai, performed in New York City in 1968. The play garnered a good deal of public controversy for the display of nudity in the performance.

Euripides’s Bakkhai  is, in part, a meditation upon the nature of Dionysian metamorphosis, and the director brilliantly portrays Dionysus, at the beginning of the play, sliding through a birth canal embodied by naked men and women (as shown above).

At the end of Dionysus in 69, Pentheus, a king who does not properly believe in Dionysus’s virgin birth, goes to his death passing in reverse order through the “birth canal.” Here’s one scholar, Froma Zeitlin, on the power of the birth and death scenes:

One of the most striking effects in Schechner’s reworking of Bacchae was the introduction of the so-called ‘birth ritual’ just after the formal opening of the play. . . . This ritual followed the entrance of Dionysus, when he introduced himself to the audience and announced he was about to be born. Modelled after an Asmat rite of passage in New Guinea, the ritual passed Dionysus through a ‘birth canal’ composed of four women in alternating formation with five men. The very same ritual, but in reverse, was matched at the end of the play as a ‘death ritual’ for Pentheus. ’Now, instead of facing away from Pentheus, the women faced toward him; instead of helping him through, they raised their bloody hands over their heads. Front and back were reversed in this formation in a perfect symmetrical counterpoint with its opposite, and taken together, these two rituals served as unifying elements of the entire play.’ (Dionysus Since 69, Ed. Edith Hall, Oxford 2004)

It has been said that great art is frequently akin to blasphemy and pornography, and Dionysus in 69 is an example of a director who risks bringing eros overtly to the surface, while still managing to control it within the boundaries of a play.

According to an Australian news service (news.com.au), Dr. Edgar Mitchell, 77, one of the astronauts on the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, and the world record holder for space walking (over nine hours), stunned an Australian radio interviewer, making the claim that ETs exist, and have visited earth.

The interviewer, Nick Margerrison, is quoted as saying:

I thought I’d stumbled on some sort of astronaut humour but he was absolutely serious that aliens are definitely out there and there’s no debating it.

In the interview, Dr. Mitchell made six claims, specifically that:

1. Extraterrestrials have visited earth “on several occasions.”
2. Dr. Mitchell knows people at NASA who have had contact with the aliens, and that they described them to him as ”little people who look strange to us.”
3. Aliens have small bodies, large eyes, and big heads.
4. Aliens have technology far in advance of ours, and that they’re intent is not hostile—otherwise, he said, “we would be gone by now.”
5. The government has been covering up alien Earth visitations for 60 years.
6. Of late, alien visitations have been happening “quite a bit.”

And what, exactly, did Dr. Mitchell offer in support of these astonishing claims?

Nothing, or essentially nothing.

If we’re generous, he offered the following very weak supports:

• With regard to his general alien visitation claim, and what they look like, he has no firsthand knowledge. He claims only to know of people inside NASA who have said to him that they have such knowledge. Dr. Mitchell, tellingly, did not provide the names of the people who have supposedly made these claims to him.
• With regard to the aliens not being hostile, Dr. Mitchell offered an inductive inference, saying that otherwise “we would be gone by now.” But obviously, humans still being on Earth is consistent with another, simpler, interpretation: No aliens have ever visited us.
• As for recent alien visitations, Dr. Mitchell offers this piece of evidence:

I’ve been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes—we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it’s been happening quite a bit. 

It’s not clear what papers Dr. Mitchell has been reading. Is he talking about classified documents, or public newpapers? If he cannot produce copies of these papers, we are left wondering if he is merely delusional.   

According to the article, NASA categorically denies Dr. Mitchell’s claims:

Officials from NASA . . . were quick to play the comments down.

In a statement, a spokesman said: “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe.

If you presume, like me, that aliens have not visited Earth, then what are we to make of poor Dr. Mitchell? Are we to offer the harsh conclusion that the man is a liar—or even a lunatic? I’d like to offer two gentler possibilities:

• He may be suffering, in his dotage, some dimentia. In other words, he may be utterly sincere—and a bit deluded—but not crazy.
• He may have a very vivid imagination, and carry a deep longing for alien life to exist. Who can blame a person for wanting life to be more interesting and meaningful than it often appears to be, and for thus believing something extraordinary based on little evidence? Don’t religious fundamentalists do this all the time? Maybe Dr. Mitchell just has a deep need for something akin to a religious meaning to existence—a feeling that we are not alone. In other words, maybe Dr. Mitchell is simply human. 

In any event, here’s a link to the original article, which is dated July 24, 2008: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24070088-13762,00.html

Whether you are a liberal or a conservative, religious or secular, William F. Buckley can be a role model, for he embodied civility and thoughtfulness.

A.C. Grayling is a British philosopher. He is a friend of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and although he is not as well known as these two authors, his latest book, Toward the Light of Liberty (2007) is every bit as valuable as the writings of his secular compatriots.

Grayling does an excellent job explaining how the West moved from the Spanish Inquisition (in the 1500s) into the relative daylight of liberty enjoyed in contemporary democracies.

One of the highlights of Prof. Grayling’s book is his clear explication of the importance of John Locke in the story of liberty.

Wheras Hobbes’ argued that human life in a state of nature is “nasty, brutish, and short,” Locke argued that what is most important about individual human nature is not its violence, but its unique capacity (among animals) for reason and freedom. This shifted the debate concerning the role of the State from the Hobbesian one (the State is a “Leviathan” that a people surrenders its rights to in the name of collective safety and protection) to a Lockean one (in which the State is at the service of protecting the ability of individuals to reason and exercise freedom).

The book thus lays out clearly what is at stake for the West if we collectively succumb to the temptation (in the name of security) of conceiving of our world as a Hobbesian one (as opposed to a Lockean one).

According to Grayling, we have to be very careful not to erode our hard won liberties in the name of “the war on terror,” or mute our freedom of speech in the name of multicultural and religious sensitivity.

Grayling is a liberal in temperament, not a conservative, and he deals with these issues in a moderate and nuanced fashion, while nevertheless emphasizing the frailty of our liberties, and reminding us of how difficult they have been to attain, and how easy they might be lost in a time of economic or war-time crisis.

Grayling is not as polemical as Dawkins or Hitchens, but he is every bit as intelligent and interesting to read.

Here’s the book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Light-Liberty-Struggles-Freedom/dp/0802716369/ref=cm_cr-mr-title