One day, we were discussing ancient pyramids, of both
the old and new worlds. You might have noticed that among the very large
structures built by these ancient cultures (Maya, Mesopotamia, and Egypt
mainly) were a variety of pyramids, from step to flat-faced, with the smaller
step ones coming first because they are easier to build, and often evolving, as
in Egypt about 2500 BC, toward the huge, flat-faced structures (e.g., Giza). That this came about by improvements in the
needed engineering skills is fairly certain (I doubt they needed ancient
astronauts, though of course it is possible), and probably also by larger
populations, a decreasing portion of which didn’t have to grow food and so were
available as necessary labor. Better
political and cultural organization no doubt played a role too.
In chatting on the subject, she made a claim which I
immediately found hard to swallow. I can
accept the Egyptians and Mesopotamians influencing each other; the areas are
nearby in the Middle East, while excursions (and even conquests) between the
two are common in history. It’s quite
reasonable to imagine (though I am not certain) the two cultures shared and
contributed to each others’ pyramid construction techniques and
strategies. I am ignorant of whether
this really happened, but it is plausible and easy to believe.
But Egypt/Mesopotamia influencing the Maya? She was quite sure of this; but it was only
because she couldn’t imagine two separate cultures building such common
structures, especially such massive ones, without their being a physical connection. To be fair, the idea sounds superficially
reasonable and even compelling, this idea of Egyptian boats making the trans-Atlantic
voyage to the Yucatan peninsula and instructing the Mayans on the time-honored
art of pyramid building.
What a minute, though.
Ancient Egyptian boats making trans-Atlantic voyages? In fact, this is a real problem. As the Europeans were to find out in the
15’th and 16’th centuries AD (and the Chinese about the same time), there are
huge differences between large ocean-traversing vehicles and those who stick to
rivers, bays, and small seas and lakes.
You need deep, complex keels in the ocean variety to handle the higher
and more violent waters and storms, deep harbor ports to handle such vehicles, which
are larger, sturdier boats (made with hard wood at least, which Egypt had
little of) with more men and much more supplies (to handle journeys of months
instead of days or weeks at most), and so on.
Now, I have never heard of any discoveries of these things being made in
Egypt through the many centuries she was a great power in the western world;
and we certainly would have found them if they’d existed, for there is no lack
of archeological exploration there. What
we do know is that Egyptian boats were mostly made from papyrus and other reeds,
hardly up to ocean travelling needs. Indeed,
these ancient, (mostly Mediterranean and Black) sea travelling boats stuck
close to shorelines for safety, something you couldn’t do in a large ocean.
This would seem to make it virtually impossible for any
ancient Egyptians/Mesopotamians to reach the Yucatan Peninsula in Central
America. Even if one did, by accident
say (this is possible, with incredible luck), why would they carry pyramid
builders and technology with them? They
would have had no ideas what to expect, besides, perhaps, an end of the world
to fall off (the ancient Egyptians didn’t know Earth was spherical, a fact that
was discovered by the Greeks many centuries later).
I think all this alone destroys this hypothesis, though
it is not always easy to make such statements with certainty. For there is still the fact of similar
pyramids in old and new world cultures, something that still needs
explaining. To be complete, the one fact
that fits poorest for my friend’s idea (perhaps even worse than the ship dilemma)
is that the new world pyramids were built many centuries and even millennia
after the old world ones. If an Egyptian
boat were to somehow cross the Atlantic at its pyramid building times it would
not have encountered a culture that could imitate much of the Egyptian/Mesopotamian
technology/political/cultural levels even to save its life. Yet by the time the Mayans (and some other
Central American cultures) were ready for it, the old world was far beyond
pyramids, having acquired the ability to build more complex and useful
structures (oh, say, like the Valley of the Kings, the Greek Parthenon and
Roman aqueducts, maybe even medieval castles).
* * *
Think about it.
You are a well organized, powerful, and highly command-centered Neolithic
stone-age culture, with a good supply of available manual labor (including, no
doubt and, alas, slaves) and rock. Time,
as in decades, you have in abundance too, or so you hope. As the leader of this culture you want to
construct huge monuments to your greatness, both to intimidate the masses and
your neighbors, and to make you remembered for “all of time.” What would you construct?
Your engineering skills are still pretty primitive for
such tasks, so you need the easiest to build, strongest, and most sturdiest
structure you can manage. Is it hard to
see that this would be a pyramid, starting off with small, steps ones and
building them larger, with smaller steps, as your engineering and architectural
skills were acquired over decades and centuries? A pyramid is in fact very strong, with a stable,
a broad, flat bottom combined with tapering construction above it. I’m sure it requires the least engineering
and architectural mastery, as you are just basically carving out (shaped) stones
from a quarry, dragging them to the pyramid, and using scaffolding or levering
to get them on top of the existing stones.
You may or may not have wheels (as in logs?) and animal power to help
you, but that just increases the time it takes.
Enough people, time, and sophisticated enough stone carving tools, and
it can be done in a lifetime or less, maybe a decade or less.
Apparently, my friend didn’t think of all these
objections to her “hypothesis” (better just called a belief). She’d stumbled across one fact, the similarities
between old and new world pyramids, and that was good enough for her; there was little or no further researching,
or thinking, or skepticism. I have an
unpleasant feeling that that is the way many if not most people think,
especially B people (As can’t do this).
They find one or two facts (or factoids even) which suggest an exciting
idea, or one that fits a pre-existing idea, and if they look or think further
it is only to confirm the idea, which becomes a simple article of faith from
thereon.
I have used the word hypothesis occasionally here, as
though it is interchangeable with belief or idea, or even speculation, but to
the scientific mind the words hardly approach each other in their
meanings. I haven’t used the word theory
yet, which I will now, for again in many minds sets up an equivalency:
Belief/Idea/Speculation
= Hypothesis = Theory = Truth
It’s clear to me that my friend, though quite
intelligent, thought largely along these lines, while it’s a pretty standard
philosophical approach for most of Earth’s population. Unfortunately, it is wrong, dead wrong, a mistake no scientists worth rock salt would
ever make. I also think it is why B-type
people are much more prevalent than they ought to be. I also connect it with the authoritarian
thinking, mentioned in the last chapter, which can bury human curiosity under a
think, wet, cold, woolen blanket; for it is seriously, and even dangerously,
fallacy supporting. My friend was
intelligent, but she didn’t know how to think or question things. Shame, though I still respect her.
* * *
Belief/Idea/Speculation (BIS) = Hypothesis = Theory =
Truth.
Is this truly the way type Bs (not all, to be fair)
think? Type As, definitely not: they could not perform their jobs, or carry
on with their enthusiams, if they did. But
is it as common as I have implied? And
if it is, what is really wrong with it?
We are pretty much all after the truth, after all, and this could be a
formula for it, one I simply don’t appreciate for prejudices of my own.
Actually I don’t think it is all that too common as pessimism
would suggest, at least not in so pure a form.
But people do routinely make confusions here. This is important: a big part of science is giving words and
concepts precise, accurate meanings, ones that can then be used in almost
mathematical formulations. And so, if we
are to use the words/concepts here in like fashion, we must do the same. Then, perhaps, we can answer the question I
raised at the beginning of the section.
BIS’s are what most of our minds are filled with most
of the time, even, I strongly expect, most scientists. E.g., we Believe in an Idea called God, or
maybe various gods; or if we don’t, we still Speculate about whether our
sentience is a soul, and whether it survives death, by becoming, say, part of
some BIS called “cosmic consciousness”.
Or, to be less esoteric, we have plenty of BIS’s about the people in our
lives, about politics, economics, religion, and the many, many other things we “think
about without thinking about.”
I am not criticizing here. The human mind probably has to work this way,
if for no other reason that if we were as meticulous about science as we are
about everything else, it would be difficult to get anything done! Remember, too, our brains have been largely
wired by genes we’ve inherit from our stone age, uncivilized ancestors. Making “snap decisions” or acting on gut
feeling, without too much asking and exploring, was, for most of our evolution,
the better way to save your life and pass on your genes. But
the result is, we’re stuck with them, at least for the time being.
I think my friend’s idea about Egypt helping with new
world pyramid building is a textbook example of a BIS. It is so easy to bring this Idea down, by
being skeptical and thinking about
it, that she must have never done those things.
No doubt she just liked the idea so much, and, having one fact to
support it, simply assumed that meant it was true. Man BIS’s are based on the one fact fallacy.
* * *
Let’s focus our microscopes on the other three words of
the equation: Hypothesis, Theory, and Fact.
First thing that needs to be said is that, despite all
the = signs, from a scientific view they are not equals at all, but distinctly
different entities. At the same time I’ll
add up front that in fact they are also not really so distinctly different, but
overlap to considerable degrees.
Let’s start with the word hypothesis, and as usual, an
example of it. I think my
counter-arguments to my friend’s idea constitute a valid hypothesis. It is not theory, and certainly not fact, but
simple hypothesis. First of all, after
all I not only attacked the idea (with gusto, of course; all ideas should be
attacked with gusto), but presented counter-ideas of my own; for example why
pyramid building is natural for a well organized, stone age culture at an early
age, and why.
But I did not present any supporting evidence for that,
other than the “it should be obvious and here’s why” implication. Given that, you might dispute my claim to
hypothesis status! But I did give, I
believe, some pretty sound logic for it; more important than that, logic that can
be explored and tested to see whether it holds up to test.
“Whether it holds up to test” is a great deal of what
true hypotheses, the ones in type A minds, concern themselves with. For an hypothesis is a concept that proposes
something, or explains some phenomenon, and
which fits all known facts, contradicts none, and can be further tested (that
is, can it make predictions). I believe
my friend’s pseudo-hypothesis has actually failed this concept (in her defense,
though, she isn’t here to counter her critic, which really isn’t fair), while
mine passes muster – probably; I am not an expert in the subjects and there
could be facts difficult to fit into it – if only by the skin of its teeth. And, to reemphasize, it is nowhere near to
being a theory, or a fact itself.
I am taking a conservative approach here, as should all
scientists. At heart, we’re curmudgeons who
hale from Missouri and often don’t believe things even when we see them with our
own eyes (not a good reason to believe just about anything, by the way). Propose something to a scientist and the best
you’re likely to get is, “That’s interesting” along with appropriate body
language, or something like that.
Believe it or not, it’s a compliment.
Such are the basics behind hypotheses. So, next time some fascinating sounding
thought comes to you, wait until you’ve checked it against all the facts and
logic you can find, and think of some ways it could be further tested, before
you announce it to the world. Not that
the thought is automatically useless if you don’t; but then, you’ve just been
lucky. My friend was not lucky.
* * *
Theory and fact are more difficult to pin down, because
they really have multiple, sometimes interlocking, meanings. In common parlance, and often in science too,
theory just means an explanation for something, even if not a necessarily
proven true one (though it must have good evidence for it); in the former, common
parlance, case, but decidedly not for scientists, it is not even a necessarily clear,
well-supported explanation. So if, for
example, I propose an explanation for how stars form (already been done!), and
it passes the hypothesis examinations, people will call it a theory. But they might not call it a fact because it
still hasn’t passed enough testing.
Charles Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection
was initially an idea, then a hypothesis, and is now, as it is usually called,
a theory. It’s an explanation, true; but
it is also, because it has passed so many tests and has so much evidence on its
side, a fully-fledged fact as well.
Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity also get similar,
justified, status. As does the atomic
theory of matter. They’re explanations and they are facts. Nobody seriously disputes this.
At the same time, as a theory is in another sense also just
an hypothesis that has stood up to further testing and observation, such that it
can be a claim to fact that may or may not (though most facts do) explain other
facts, or support other theories. I’ll
put Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift in this arena. The theory says that the different continents
move around on the ocean beds, occasionally joining each other and then breaking
up, as shown below:
In fact, for much of its existence this theory wasn’t
even taken seriously even as an hypothesis by most of the scientific
community. This was partly Wegener’s
fault, for he proposed causes for continental drift that were clearly absurd –
I emphasize however that this really should not be regarded as evidence against
an hypothesis – and mostly (I believe) that community’s fault for not
supporting an out of league player (Wegener was a meteorologist by training,
not a geologist).
Currently, the theory now is not only clearly true, but
is a theory in both senses: continental
drift is a fact (with clear, proven causes), and it is a theory that explains
many other phenomena about Earth, ones that had puzzled scientists for a long
time. We now call it rightfully the theory of plate tectonics, after the true
causes of drift.
* * *
Fact. Now, don’t
go thinking that fact means “naked observation by the senses” or anything like
that. I already alluded to this, but
this is a good time to go further. If
observation really is equal to fact, then the (fact? – maybe you’re lying, or
psychotic) that you just saw someone walk through a wall of solid concrete
without smashing it apart in someway a fact, or merely an observation – that is
to say, a visual illusion? I’m sure you’ll
conclude the latter, even if you have no idea how the illusion was pulled off
or how convincing it is.
This may put us in a pickle. Facts aren’t observations, but don’t they
have to be, somehow, supported by observations?
But how do we know whether we’re being fooled or not by these other
observations?
One of the problems of science is that it really can’t make
indisputable proclamations about the universe.
This makes science vulnerable to “straw men” arguments, often easy to demolish,
but unfortunately inevitable if we want to keep it pure. Yet we can still make real progress here. For example, sticking with our
concrete-traversing man scenario, what would happen if we were to view it from
all viewpoints, even those slowed or speeded up in time? Why, somewhere the illusion would certainly
be revealed, for a lot of magic is based on the magician having his/her
audience in a chosen viewpoint. The
brain insists on interpreting sensory
input in certain ways, another evolutionary trap which actually is reasonable
but sometimes leads us to error.
This suggests a good way of determining fact (if not
with infinite certainty). We make our
observations from as many viewpoints as we can, and compare the results. If they agree, especially repeatedly, we
accept them as true; otherwise, they are spurious observations, fascinating
possibly but of little scientific value.
Of course, this is not always easy to do! Do two astronomers, gazing at the same phenomenon
a billion light-years in space, really constitute two viewpoints? In some ways yes, in others certainly
not. But it is the best we can do in
this case.
* * *
One conclusion of this chapter is that the dividing
line between hypothesis, theory, and fact is not always clear, in fact it can
be quite broad and grey, the subject of innumerable, passionate, debates. But, I maintain, the line between the first
part of the equation, the BIS, and the others is night and day. And, I emphasize further, this is the line
that is so precise in type A’s minds, but can get so muddled in type B’s. I think this is the main cause of why B’s
(say they) don’t get science and math, beyond any natural talents in either
areas.
So remember: you
can have all the ideas you want, but if you want them widely accepted as true,
you must eschew the BIS approach and embrace the scientific one. And good luck to you, for it can be and often
is a hard trek.
