When I was in my early twenties I was in love. It was unrequited,
but we still got along well and to this day I still say that she is
one of the finest persons I have ever met. I won’t say it wasn’t
painful – as an aspie I probably just didn’t have the knowledge
and maturity to win her heart (or maybe it just wasn’t “meant to
be”, whatever that means) – but I have always been glad that I
knew her. She was a terrific friend and companion.
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:
Figure
III.
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, 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.
