Not magic

I got in a friendly argument online a few days ago with someone who finds my reliance on the scientific method "limited."  (His word.)

He accepts science, he said, but added that if that's your only way of understanding, there's stuff you'll miss.  "There are features of reality that science can't, or won't, study," he said.  "Science deals with what is tangible and quantifiable; there are other ways of knowing that allow you to access what is intangible and unquantifiable.  Without those, you're ignoring half of the universe."

The whole thing put me in mind of biologist Stephen Jay Gould's idea of non-overlapping magisteria -- that there are different domains of inquiry, and science only addresses one of them.  (Gould considered religion to be one of those other magisteria -- and that science and religion could coexist just fine unless one chose to tread on the other's toes.)

The problem with this is that science has been progressively chewing away at the other magisteria, as more and more of the universe is explained scientifically.  Phenomena that were thought to be utterly mysterious are now accounted for by rational scientific models -- heredity and tectonic activity are just two of many examples.  (In some realms -- such as legal documents -- we still have vestiges of this older way of thinking, in calling certain natural occurrences "acts of God.")

Even some religious people are uncomfortable with this approach.  Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to it as "the God of the gaps," and pointed out the most obvious problem with it:

How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.  If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat.  We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.

So accounting for a phenomenon using some not necessarily religious, but non-scientific, explanation is basically nothing more than the argument from ignorance; "we don't yet know how this works, so it must be beyond science to explain."

Emphasis on the word "yet."

Take, for example, the bleeding polenta of Padua.

[Image credit: Exploring the Invisible]

In 1819, there were reports of what some were calling a miracle and others a work of Satan -- the appearance of what seemed to be drops of blood in polenta, bread, and other starchy food.  Whatever it was did look convincingly like blood, as you can see from the above photograph.  Italy in the nineteenth century was a devoutly Roman Catholic country, and the phenomenon was considered a "sign" (of what, depended upon whom you asked; some thought it was a harbinger of the end of the world, unsurprising considering how often this claim still comes up).

But a chemist at the University of Padua, Bartolomeo Bizio, firmly believed that there had to be a natural, rational cause for the spots.  He obtained samples of the red-stained food, and very quickly discovered two things: (1) if he put a drop of the red material on a sterile dish of starch, it rapidly developed red streaks as well; and (2) when he looked at some of it under a microscope, he saw cells -- but not blood cells.  Whatever it was might have the same color as blood, but it wasn't blood.

It was, in fact, a bacteria, which Bizio named Serratia marcescens -- the genus name after Florentine biologist Serafino Serrati, and the species name from a Latin word meaning "decay."  The red color comes from an organic compound called prodiogiosin.  Serratia marcescens has been found to be a more-or-less ubiquitous bacteria in soils and on moist surfaces -- it's responsible for the pinkish color that sometimes shows up in spoiled food and around the edges of unscrubbed sinks and drains.

It's a simple example, but it does show how "it happened because of something supernatural" is not really an explanation at all.  It is, in fact, a way to stop thinking.  Bizio started from the standpoint of "let's assume this has a rational cause," and it was only because that was his baseline assumption that he was able to take the step forward into understanding it.

Now, don't misunderstand me; it's not that I'm sure that science can explain everything, and it's certainly not because I think science has explained everything.  It's more that before we jump to a paranormal answer, we'd better make sure we've ruled out all the scientific ones first.  Because in the past two hundred years, the other magisteria have gradually shrunk as science has explained more and more of the universe.

As the inimitable Tim Minchin put it: "Throughout history, every mystery ever solved has turned out to be -- not magic."

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Myths, mammals, and extinctions

It's interesting how the scientific version of urban legends can be incorporated into people's knowledge of how things work, and become so entwined that most folks don't even know which bits are true and which aren't.

Stephen Jay Gould riffed on this theme in his essay "The Case of the Creeping Fox Terrier Clone," which appeared first in Natural History and was later published in his essay collection Bully for Brontosaurus.  He looks at the claim that an early horse species, Hyracotherium, was "the size of a fox terrier" -- something that Gould found quoted in dozens of books on prehistoric animals (and which has therefore been used as a gauge of the animal's size in countless classrooms).  It turns out that it originated with a paleontologist, O. C. Marsh, who said Hyracotherium was the "size of a fox" -- a significant underestimate, as both foxes and fox terriers top out at around twenty pounds, and Hyracotherium weighed in at something closer to sixty.  But the analogy stuck, and people continued to pass it along without checking its veracity -- giving us the impression of tiny dog-sized horses, lo unto this very day.

Another example of this, from the same field, is that mammals were small, few in number, and low in biodiversity until along came a meteorite that for some reason selectively killed all the dinosaurs, leaving the mammals to throw a great big party and evolve like mad into the species we have around today.  This is incorrect on a variety of levels:

1. The K-T (Cretaceous/Tertiary) Extinction of 66 million years ago seems to have been caused by a double whammy -- the aforementioned meteorite, which left the Chicxulub Crater in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, and the formation of the Deccan Traps, a lava field from a colossal supervolcano eruption, all the way around the Earth in what is now India.
2. Dinosaur biodiversity had been decreasing for some time before the K-T Extinction, and in fact by some estimates was already down 40% from its peak during the mid-Cretaceous.
3. ...however...  All the dinosaurs didn't go extinct 66 million years ago, and I'm not talking about Nessie, Ogopogo, and Mokélé-Mbembe.  We still have dinosaurs around, we just call 'em birds.  The evidence is now incontrovertible.  Think about that next time you're putting out sunflower seeds for the chickadees.
4. The extinction hit pretty much every taxon that existed at the time.  The hardest-hit were large carnivores -- a vulnerable spot in the food chain at the best of times -- but no one escaped unscathed.  In fact, one group that got wiped out completely were the ammonites, a cephalopod mollusk that had thrived for 350 million years before getting clobbered during the K-T Extinction.
5. Most pertinent to this post, the mammals weren't just skulking around waiting for their opportunity; they'd been thriving alongside dinosaurs since the Triassic Period, 154 million years earlier.  This was the topic of a paper released a couple of months ago in Biology Letters by Tiago Bosisio Quental of the University of São Paulo and Mathias Pires of the University of Campinas.

What Quental and Pires did is a thorough survey of mammalian fossils, analyzing biodiversity as a function of time in three of the four big lineages of mammals -- Eutherians (most of the mammals you're familiar with), Metatherians (marsupials), and Multituberculates (an odd group of rodent-like mammals that were only distantly related to the rest of Class Mammalia, and which were one of the most common groups of mammals for almost two hundred million years).  They didn't include the fourth lineage -- the Monotremes, or egg-laying mammals -- only because they are extremely rare in the fossil record.

A late Cretaceous multituberculate, Catopsbaatar [Image licensed under the Creative Commons, Artwork by Bogusław Waksmundzki. Article by Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska and Jørn H. Hurum, Catopsbaatar, CC BY 2.0]

What they found -- predictably -- is that the dynamics of the extinction, and the years following it, is far more complex than it's usually represented.  "All these mass extinction episodes are heterogeneous," study co-author Pires said.  "They occurred for different reasons and unfolded in different ways.  Their impact on life forms was not absolute but relative.  Some groups suffered more, others less.  Some disappeared, while others took advantage of the new environmental conditions after the catastrophe to diversify rapidly."

Even within groups, the extinction didn't have uniform effects.  "Extinctions were concentrated among the specialized carnivorous metatherians and insectivorous eutherians," Pires said, "whereas more generalized eutherians and multituberculates survived and maintained higher diversity."

He added, "This means that studies of macroevolutionary phenomena focusing on broad taxonomic groups may miss a much richer macroevolutionary history, which can be perceived only at finer taxonomic scales."

Which can more generally be summed up as "the simple explanation is usually wrong."  It'd be nice if things weren't so complex, especially for we non-scientists.  But like Gould's fox-terrier-horse, many of these oversimplifications are flat-out incorrect -- and the truth is so much more interesting.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is one of personal significance to me -- Michael Pollan's latest book, How to Change Your Mind.  Pollan's phenomenal writing in tours de force like The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire shines through here, where he takes on a controversial topic -- the use of psychedelic drugs to treat depression and anxiety.

Hallucinogens like DMT, LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin have long been classified as schedule-1 drugs -- chemicals which are off limits even for research except by a rigorous and time-consuming approval process that seldom results in a thumbs-up.  As a result, most researchers in mood disorders haven't even considered them, looking instead at more conventional antidepressants and anxiolytics.  It's only recently that there's been renewed interest, when it was found that one administration of drugs like ketamine, under controlled conditions, was enough to alleviate intractable depression, not just for hours or days but for months.

Pollan looks at the subject from all angles -- the history of psychedelics and why they've been taboo for so long, the psychopharmacology of the substances themselves, and the people whose lives have been changed by them.  It's a fascinating read -- and I hope it generates a sea change in our attitudes toward chemicals that could help literally millions of people deal with disorders that can rob their lives of pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Irreconcilable differences

The optimistic amongst us talk about a reconciliation between religion and science.  "You can believe in a higher power, and still accept science as valid," they say.  "There's no reason why religion and science have to be in opposition."  No less a thinker than evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould felt that the "two ways of knowing" could peacefully coexist, because they are designed to study different realms.  In his essay "Non-Overlapping Magisteria," he says:

The position that I have just outlined by personal stories and general statements represents the standard attitude of all major Western religions (and of Western science) today. (I cannot, through ignorance, speak of Eastern religions, although I suspect that the same position would prevail in most cases.) The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly...  I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA [non-overlapping magisteria] solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectual grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance.

Much as I would like to agree, I think Gould is wrong.   Religion and science are, at their bases, incompatible with each other.  For people that exclusively derive their ethics and morals from religion, and their understanding of nature from science, there may be no conflict; but this is not the situation for a great many people, including Christians who are biblical literalists (which includes most Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, various "Full Gospel" sects, and others, not to mention a significant minority of "mainstream Protestants" such as Methodists), fundamentalist Muslims, and orthodox Jews.  For them, the two "ways of knowing" do come into conflict, on a variety of grounds (natural and ethical), and however Gould might hope for a concordat between them, it is impossible.  Science and religion get at the truth in opposite ways, and if they are in conflict with each other, you have to choose one or the other.  There is no possible way to reconcile them.

Let me illustrate with a story that I read recently on Hemant Mehta's wonderful blog The Friendly Atheist.  In his post called "After Teacher Preaches in the Classroom, Superintendent Reveals Himself to be a Creationist," Mehta describes the controversy around Wynnewood (Oklahoma) Middle School social studies teacher Betty Carter, who taught her students that the bible was the sole source of proper morality, that the U. S. Constitution derives directly from the bible, and that evolution was false and evil.  She also had numerous posters with biblical verses in her classroom.  Clear case of violation of separation of church and state, right?  Well, when the Freedom From Religion Foundation brought the situation to the attention of the district superintendent, Raymond Cole, he responded with an email that said the situation had been "taken care of," but ended thusly:

A couple of questions I would ask you is;
If you believe in evolution, why did we stop evolving? I mean, people are generally larger today than 2000 years or millions of years ago, but we haven’t lost a toe or little finger, etc.
What happens when you die, if you”re wrong? If I’m wrong, when I die I just die, but if you’re wrong, when you die….
I have a degree in science and I’ll admit some things were very confusing, or hard to understand, but in the end my faith in God forms my belief. I have seen God work in my life and I truly feel his presence. There have been many times in my life where I have fallen short but I know in my heart that God loves me and forgives my short comings, or sins.
I dont want to jump to any conclusions, perhaps you and many of your group are Christians and are just trying to keep Church and State separate. I would submit that the single greatest reason for the violence in our schools today is this so called separation, and that the further we separate God from our schools the nearer we bring violence and evil.

Well, the FFRF weren't going to take that lying down, and their spokesperson, Andrew Seidel, responded with a blistering rebuke that took Cole and Carter to task for acting in an unconstitutional fashion and for discriminating against the children who were there, in Carter's captive audience, and who didn't believe the nonsense she was spouting.  Cole, probably sensing a losing battle should the issue go to court, backed down, and sent out a blanket email to all staff instructing them not to make religious statements in the classroom.

Now, so far, we simply have yet another in the long line of people trying to sneak religion into public schools; what of it?  I think this illustrates the impossibility of reconciling a naturalistic/scientific way of knowing with a religious one.  Because, given Cole's and Carter's belief in a religious worldview, how did you expect them to act?

Here's what I mean.  Suppose you really, honestly, and sincerely believed that there was one source of Truth out there; and the way the universe was set up, if you don't believe that Truth, you are going to be doomed to an eternity of horrible torture.  Furthermore, there is an evil agency that is capable of acting through humans, many of whom do not realize that they are not acting under their own power -- that this evil agency is using them as unwitting pawns.  So wherever the dictates of this Truth conflict with any other understanding, however it is derived, the Truth is going to win; the risk of making a mistake, of being fooled, is just too high.

Now, let's say that you were a teacher or school administrator.  You presumably got into the field because you care deeply about children.  And because of your beliefs, you see before you, every day, dozens of kids who are in danger of falling into the trap of disbelief.  You look at their innocent faces, and picture them being subjected to torment, not just for a little while, but forever.  What would you do?  Wouldn't you do anything in your power to try to prevent this from happening?

And that said, do you really believe that the victory scored by the FFRF will be any more than a temporary advance?  If I were a betting man, I'd bet a significant amount of money that within a couple of months, Carter will be back at it -- perhaps in a more subtle way, but still pushing her beliefs on her students.  Given how she sees the world, it really is the only moral choice open to her.

This sort of thing is why there never will be a reconciliation between religion and science.  It's why mountains of proof will never sway the True Believer.  Religion teaches that you arrive at knowledge through faith; science that you arrive at knowledge through evidence and logic.  If they give different answers, you are forced to decide between them.  It's also why once you've bought that the theistic worldview is literally true, that trumps everything; since evidence is no longer the touchstone, anything contrary to what your faith tells you is immediately suspect.  So Gould was correct -- but only for those religious individuals (I would suspect that they are the minority) who derive nothing from their religion but their ethics and morals, and who let "science be science."  For the vast numbers of humans who see religion as the foundation of their understanding of the entire universe, there is no middle road.  Science and religion are fighting for the same territory.  It's either keep your feet planted where they are -- or abandon ship entirely.