Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science VI

I finally finished the book. Darwin died in 1882 at the age of 73 and Dickinson died in 1886 at the age of 55. I think that Bergland succeeds in evoking the period, which, as she points out, was quite different from the present. I was often reminded of A.S. Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia and her novel Possession, though this book doesn't take such liberties with history.

While I enjoy Bergland's style of writing, her focus seems to be mainly on literary history, so she doesn't devote much space to the psychological makeups of the people discussed. Dickinson's sister, Lavinia, also never married, though, apparently, she was more sociable than Emily. Did their mother tell them that sex was awful and childbirth even worse? Bergland is also a complete blank on economic history, which, in my experience, played a significant role the evolution of the arts in England. In Darwin's case, his family married into the Wedgwood family, which had become wealthy from the manufacture and sale of china and other products. If Darwin had been from a poor family, you would never have heard of him. I think that Janet Browne makes that clear in her biography. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's family on both sides became wealthy from slave labor in Jamaica. William Morris's father was a wealthy English financier. I was also surprised to learn recently that Percy Bysshe Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, was born in Newark, New Jersey and became rich partly from marrying wealthy women. As I've written, money and the arts often go hand in hand.

Dickinson had a portrait of George Eliot by her desk, which almost automatically makes me a member of the Emily Dickinson fan club. I'm not as enthusiastic about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose portrait was also there. I am still feeling sorry for Dickinson, because she didn't get the kind of recognition that she deserved during her life. She was self-conscious about her appearance and had only one know daguerreotype made (from school?). She actually had red hair. For many years it seemed that she was seeking a "Master" who would help guide her through her work and publication. Apparently, the best that she could come up with was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who may have aided her in some ways, but does not seem to have had any sophistication in poetry. To me, he sounds like an active person with many interests, including abolitionism and women's rights. Somehow he took an interest in Darwin and visited him at his house, though I'm not clear what the purpose of that was. Higginson may have been significant to Dickinson, because they began corresponding in the same year that she wrote "I died for Beauty." Bergland parses that poem, which is one of my favorites. I think that Dickinson identifies with Beauty, and her fellow corpse, possibly Higginson, identifies with Truth. Truth says that Truth and Beauty are "Brethren," but Beauty neither agrees nor disagrees. My impression is that Dickinson was less interested in science than Bergland suggests. The enjoyment of flowers seems to be intoxicating to women, and I think that those feelings underlie her reaction to nature. Darwin may have had similar feelings, but, if he did, he was more interested in figuring out how organisms work. That pragmatic quality seems to be absent in Dickinson.

On the whole, my take on Dickinson and Darwin is slightly different from Bergland's. She seems to make Dickinson out to be interested in magic, but I don't see any clear evidence of that. To me, Dickinson is interested in the harmony of nature and the relatedness of organisms, which, for me, can evoke a sense of awe and mystery that does not normally intrude on ordinary life. It is possible that Dickinson did think in terms of "magic," but that isn't exactly how I interpret her poems. I am in closer agreement with Bergland on Darwin, though in that case I find her a little tendentious. Possibly she's been reading too much A.S. Byatt. My impression of Darwin is that he wasn't very literary at all but, from years of living with his wife, Emma, decided that he ought to be more literary. While, at times, he must have felt in awe of nature, it would be inaccurate to describe him as remotely interested in magic. As Bergland herself points out, Darwin was a total skeptic regarding the séance that he attended. He probably felt socially obliged to attend, and that was the only reason why he went.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science V

I am gradually approaching the end of this book and should finish it by my next post. It is literally putting me to sleep on some days. Though I think that the main thesis is flawed, it is still an academic exercise that can be amusing and informative at times. Dickinson seems to me to have been quite lonely and in search of literary friends. In 1862, when she was 31, she began a correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who published articles in Atlantic Monthly. He didn't consider her poems publishable initially. The Civil War was under way then, and, later that year, Higginson enlisted. Her brother, Austin, paid someone else to serve for him. In any case, the war disrupted many people's lives.

When I finish the book, I'll make some final comments. For now, I'll just make some general criticisms. My greatest annoyance is probably that Bergland assumes, without providing any evidence, that Dickinson read On the Origin of Species, absorbed its content, and incorporated those ideas into her poems. I read her poems more psychologically: as a lonely person who spent a lot of time outdoors, she tended to anthropomorphize animals. Frogs are courting her like men. A snake is a "fellow." I like to compare her to my other favorite poet, Denise Levertov. In her poem, "Living," Levertov uses a description of a red salamander to evoke a rather mystical feeling about life: Charles Darwin is nowhere in sight. 

More broadly, I think that, to some extent, Dickinson can be viewed in terms of religious history. In England, Henry VIII kicked out the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-sixteenth century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Calvinists fled the Roman Catholic Church in France and moved to England and America (Henry David Thoreau's family were Huguenots). As I've said, much of New England resembled a Congregational theocracy up until the late nineteenth century. Emily Dickinson herself rebelled against that church. Though I don't think that Bergland is wrong about the intellectual climate in Massachusetts during Dickinson's life, she seems to be placing more weight on Darwin's influence than seems appropriate. She is probably more accurate with respect to how a scientific education may generally have supported Dickinson's theological rebellion.

Another area where I think that Bergland could have done a better job would be in showing how marginalized Dickinson was by her family and how the scope of her life experience was limited from cradle to grave. She had so little to do for much of her life that she went outdoors and identified with blades of grass. If you compare her to Denise Levertov, she barely lived. Levertov was a nurse during World War II, had an abortion, moved to America, established a career as a poet, had a son, protested the Vietnam War, supported her family, and even supported her ex-husband and his second wife after their divorce. I don't think that poor Emily ever even went on a date! It is possible that Dickinson had some psychological conditions that inhibited the progress of her life, but I don't know of any other than shyness, and Bergland has nothing to say on that front.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science IV

When Dickinson returned to Amherst in 1848 at the age of seventeen, she gradually settled into what was to become her adult life. In 1851, there was a spectacular display of the aurora borealis that awed the entire town. At the time, Emily and her friends speculated on mysterious natural forces. They thought that telepathy, as described in Jane Eyre, could be some sort of electrical phenomenon. By 1855, the fortunes of her father, Edward, had improved. He was able to buy back the Dickinson Homestead, and the family returned to it. At that time, her older brother, Austin, was away from home. He eventually became a lawyer and worked at his father's law firm in Amherst. Thereafter, Emily, her mother, father and younger sister, Lavinia, lived at the Homestead. Austin later moved to a house next door. Her mother became ill after the move, and Emily disliked doing the housework.

One of Dickinson's poetic inspirations was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, particularly Aurora Leigh. She also subscribed to Atlantic Monthly, where in 1860 she would have read Asa Gray's review of On the Origin of Species, which was the first in the U.S. So far in the book, Bergland is emphasizing the theory of evolution as a confirmation of the relatedness of organisms, which accords with Dickinson's view in her poems. However, Bergland seems to be downplaying the actual process of natural selection, which can be quite grim. On the other hand, Bergland does a good job explaining how neither Darwin nor Dickinson were anthropocentric in their views of nature. Neither of them seem to have adopted the rigid, ideological tree that I mentioned before, which presents a developmental hierarchy with Homo sapiens at the top.

Even so, I think that Bergland is stretching things a little by emphasizing the similarities between Dickinson and Darwin. Dickinson's poems tend to interweave elements of the personal with elements of the natural world and the mystical. Darwin's work is specifically scientific and attempts to develop biological theories from the observations that he made. Bergland dutifully reports that it was Darwin who first discovered carnivorous plants, and that he spent years studying them. For all of her enjoyment of plants and natural phenomena, Dickinson's projects had little to do with scientific knowledge. Darwin's projects involved more than scientific discovery in the sense that he carefully calculated how to present his ideas in an environment in which he knew that some of his colleagues would be hostile because of their religious implications – he did in fact lose several friends. However, Darwin had a soft side, and at times he seems to have been almost paralyzed by the enormity of his findings. To this day, I don't think that many people can face them straight on.

It may not be Bergland's fault, because there doesn't seem to be much information available, but so far in the book I haven't developed much of a sense of how people who knew Dickinson perceived her. Her family life seems to have been satisfactory, though it was clearly patriarchal. Obviously, Emily was extremely introverted, and her mother and Lavinia may also have been. Emily developed a close friendship with Susan Gilbert, who read some of her poems and offered advice. But, after, Susan married her brother and lived next door, the relationship seemed to decline. Austin and Susan had large parties, which Emily avoided. There is also speculation in this book and elsewhere about Emily's sexuality. There don't seem to be clear answers, though several of her poems seem to be of a sexual nature.

I should finish this book within two more posts. Although it is entertaining to see Dickinson within the context of scientific progress during the nineteenth century, I prefer to see her as a talented artist who developed her craft in privacy and to very high standards. To some extent, this makes her immediate social environment, which seems a little insipid, of somewhat lesser importance than Bergland suggests. Dickinson seems to me a lot more like Vivian Maier, who developed very high proficiency as a street photographer completely in private, than Charles Darwin, who had few discernible artistic tendencies.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science III

I've reached the halfway point in the book and am enjoying it, but am mainly reading it in bed at night for a few minutes at a time. Not much space is devoted to Darwin's voyage on HMS Beagle, which was a major transformative experience in his life. Through the captain, Robert FitzRoy, and his reading of Charles Lyell on the voyage, he changed his focus from biology to geology. When he returned to England, Darwin became a close friend of Lyell, who helped him launch his career – as a geologist. Bergland does describe Charles's brother, Erasmus, a little and suggests that he may have been gay. Erasmus was a close friend of Harriet Martineau, the most prominent female intellectual in England at the time, and Bergland notes that Charles also knew her and spoke to her. Darwin himself hardly ever mentioned Martineau, and I think the same occurred with George Eliot. It is a little difficult to sort out Darwin's attitude toward women: on the one hand, one might say that he was a complete sexist who thought that the ideas of women had no scientific importance, but, on the other hand, especially for an introvert, he was extremely socially aware and didn't want to make public statements that linked him to specific women who were not members of his family.

Following the voyage, Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, after a completely lackluster courtship, during which she didn't think that he was interested in her. Bergland doesn't mention that he had a potential love interest before the voyage that had evaporated. While Janet Browne isn't particularly sanguine about the marriage, Bergland thinks that it worked very well. As a couple, they had identical social backgrounds, so they were operating on the same model. They each knew their predefined roles and stuck to them. I found this interesting, because it may be an example of a pre-feminism marriage that worked well for both the husband and the wife. Their personality differences seemed to complement each other. While he was highly introverted and disliked most social events and public speaking, she was highly extroverted and socialized a lot. With frequent visits from family members and several children of her own, Emma's social needs seem to have been satisfied. Of course, it helped that they were rich and had several servants. I should also note that, in those days, before radio, films, TV, computers, smartphones and social media, married couples often read books out loud together for entertainment, and this probably added a stability to their relationships. Darwin may have been slightly dismissive of women as thinkers, and Emma thought that he was a hypochondriac – though he may have picked up some very unhealthy microbes on his voyage. They both enjoyed their children a lot, and Darwin liked to compare them to orangutans. I doubt that Emma would ever have wanted to be a business executive or a professional athlete. Bergland makes a strained attempt to show a connection between Darwin and Amherst by saying that Harriet Martineau met the geologist, Edward Hitchcock, in Amherst, and Charles Lyell and Darwin corresponded with him.

The details of Dickinson's development are sparse compared to those of Darwin. Like her mother, also named Emily, she was a very good student across all subjects. However, as an adult, her mother spent more time on housework than on reading. Her father, Edward, tried to control which novels his children read, and the household doesn't seem to have been particularly open to new ideas or perspectives. After finishing at Amherst Academy, Emily studied for a year at Mount Holyoke, which was then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, about ten miles from Amherst. Though the word "seminary" at the time did not imply any religious training, the students were ranked according to their religious standing. The highest rank consisted of members of the orthodox Congregationalist Church. The next rank consisted of those who aspired to become members, and the bottom rank consisted of those who had "no hope" of joining the church: they were called "impenitents." Dickinson became an "impenitent," it seems, based on whatever she said, after careful consideration of her religious views at the time. She stayed at Mount Holyoke for only a year. It isn't entirely clear to me why she left. Her academic performance had been good. Apparently, besides disliking the religious pressure, she felt herself to be on par with the faculty, which, in those days, consisted of people with no college training. She gradually stopped going to church, though the rest of her family continued to go. This is not to say that she wasn't religious: it is evident in many of her poems that she had strong religious sentiments, but that she didn't want to submit to religious orthodoxy simply to conform with those around her. You might say that she wanted to divine the divine on her own.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science II

Because I had such a hard time finding good reading material over the winter, I got out of the habit of reading regularly, and now, with spring, I am, as usual, distracted by new projects. Nevertheless, I do find this book useful and will continue reading it, but at a very slow pace. Since starting this blog, I have found that learning about the cultural and scientific developments of certain periods can be quite interesting. This period is especially interesting to me compared to others, because it includes both the U.S. and England from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, and I've already read a lot about it. Another period that I covered, less thoroughly, the French Enlightenment, was also interesting, but it seems to have ended by the late 18th century, before science really took off. This particular book is somewhat adventurous, because it links subjects that aren't usually associated with each other: poetry and science.

The chapters alternate between Darwin and Dickinson. So far, Bergland seems to be more neutral on Darwin than Janet Browne was in the earlier biography that I discussed. She draws a lot from Darwin's version of events, whereas Browne has a slightly more sociological take on Darwin. Overall, the impression I have is that Erasmus Darwin was thought of as somewhat of a crank by his son, Robert, and Robert attempted to raise his children a little more conservatively. Browne provides more of a sense that Robert considered his older son, Erasmus, smarter than Charles, because he breezed through school and became a doctor, like Robert and his father, whereas Charles wasn't very academic and liked to collect things in the outdoors. However, they were all quite shrewd about money. Robert married into the wealthy Wedgwood family and grew wealthier from his investments, and Charles married his first cousin from the Wedgwood side and never worried about money much. I haven't got very far in Bergland's book, but Browne portrays the younger Erasmus as somewhat of a dandy: though he did well academically, he did not practice medicine and socialized a lot in London, never marrying: there is some evidence that he was gay. I am watching to see how Bergland's account will play out later, but so far she hasn't conveyed the sense that Charles had a slight inferiority complex while he was growing up and psychologically was geared to be very careful about his work as an adult in order not to appear like a failure.

One area where Bergland does a good job is in conveying how the sciences were not widely part of the academic curriculum in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. The Darwin family traveled to Edinburgh and elsewhere for three generations for medical educations, because there was nothing available in England at the time. In this respect, though Dickinson's family wasn't at all scientific, the academic environment in Amherst was far more science-friendly at the time than it was at Cambridge and Oxford, or even Harvard and Yale. Amherst College was founded in 1821, and it may have had a better science faculty than the older colleges. Dickinson attended Amherst Academy for high school, and the curriculum there was atypical for females: it included math and science. While Dickinson's family wasn't poor, it wasn't rich: her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, went bankrupt and moved away to Ohio. The original Dickinson Homestead, where Emily lived initially, had to be sold, and she moved to a lesser property for several years.

Although I've got a long way to go in this book, I am trying to piece together a history of British empiricism and how it intersected with American empiricism. Empiricism in Britain has an extremely solid footing dating from the eighteenth century, from David Hume to Thomas Malthus to Charles Darwin. Though various forms of spiritualism became popular periodically, affecting Robert Owen and Alfred Russel Wallace, and perhaps even George Eliot, Darwin was a complete skeptic and knew from the start that it was all nonsense. With the religious history in New England, Emily Dickinson was also predictably affected. That is something that will interest me in the remainder of the book. For me, it ties in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson reminds me a little of a cult leader: who, today, discusses Transcendentalism as a serious movement? Though Emerson came from a good family, he was poor while growing up. However, his first wife was quite wealthy, and when she died from tuberculosis after just two years, he inherited that wealth. He decided not to work and to form his own intellectual movement. I have never studied it in any detail, but it seems like a mishmash of Romanticism, the enjoyment of nature, and an undefined form of spiritualism. Emerson was not himself a true naturalist and didn't enjoy slogging through the wilderness in search of specimens. I think that he actively recruited people for his movement, and he specifically wanted to develop Thoreau as the naturalist spokesperson for Transcendentalism. It seems that he was often at odds with Thoreau, who was simply too independent and stubborn to follow Emerson's instructions. I suspect that, at heart, Emerson wanted to be seen as an informed evangelist. He actually favored literature and poetry over science, and, though he was twenty-seven years older than Dickinson, she may have made an excellent recruit for Transcendentalism – if he had ever heard of her.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science I

Just as winter abruptly ended, I came across this new book by Renée Bergland, and it suits me perfectly. I'm not sure how quickly I'll work through it, but it discusses topics that interest me and is very well-written. Enormous cultural changes occurred in the mid-to-late nineteenth century in England and the U.S., and this book delves into how Dickinson and Darwin were affected in complementary ways. As a matter of preference, I like the days when poetry was open to science and science was less specialized than it is now. Bergland differentiates natural magic from supernatural magic and discusses how participating in the exploration of natural magic can have a therapeutic effect on people – it definitely does on me – and how it became popular during the period discussed. I already knew a lot about Charles Darwin, but only a little about Emily Dickinson. Darwin's time period (1809-1882) doesn't exactly match Dickinson's (1830-1886) but overlaps for nearly all of Dickinson's life, and they also lived on different continents. Darwin never visited North America and Dickinson never traveled beyond the East Coast. This raises the question of how they could have similarities. The answer is probably that they both came from well-educated families, probably read some of the same things and were both upper-middle-class.

If anything, Darwin's family was considerably more intellectual and wealthier than Dickinson's. Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus (1731-1802) was a key figure in the English Enlightenment. Besides being a doctor, he wrote poetry, invented things, studied flowers and had discussions with members of the Lunar Society, where he befriended Benjamin Franklin, among others. He was also quite politically-minded, and I like this poem of his:

When Avarice, shrouded in Religion's robe,

Sail'd to the West, and slaughtered half the globe:

While Superstition, stalking by his side,

Mock'd the loud groan, and lap'd the bloody tide;

For sacred truths announced her frenzied dreams,

And turn'd to night the sun's meridian beams.

Later, when he met Wordsworth and Coleridge, they thought of him as a "meddling intellect." After Mary Shelley heard Byron and Shelley discussing Erasmus, he may have come to represent to her a type of callous rationalism, which she expressed in the character of Victor Frankenstein. Needless to say, Erasmus Darwin does not fit within the Romantic tradition.

I'm not in a hurry to finish this book, as spring has already arrived, and may linger on it for some time.

The Origin of Language

I did end up reading From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language, by Ronald J. Planer and Kim Sterelny, but overall found it too academic to be enlightening. After over 200 pages, they conclude:

For us, then, the honesty and uniqueness questions become: Why did hominins evolve such cooperation-dependent lifeways? Why did only hominins develop such cooperation-dependent lifeways? Why (perhaps) did only sapiens develop the complex forms of cooperation that required the resources of full language? We have not answered these questions in this book, though we have said a little about the third. Rather, we have embedded our account of the evolution of language within the framework of a broader picture of the evolution of hominin cooperation. We have elaborated and defended that framework, but not here, as it requires book-length treatment in its own right (Sterelny 2012a; Sterelny 2021). If that account of the emergence and changing character of hominin cooperation is seriously wrong, this account of language falls with it. If, on the other hand, it is broadly correct, it answers the honesty and uniqueness questions.

Putting all this together then: we do not claim to have provided even a close approximation of a proper lineage explanation, taking us from an independently supported baseline identifying the communicative skills of the earliest hominins to language-equipped modern humans. But we do claim to have outlined, and in places done a little more than outline, an expandable lexicon, displaced reference, the core cognitive capacities on which syntax depends, the gesture-speech transition (assuming there was one), and the expanded functionality of language.

As you can see, these authors are not exactly bold in their assertions. I am primarily interested in the main process of language acquisition and how it led to what Ian Tattersall calls symbolic reasoning, i.e., intelligence. For this reason, I read another Tattersall essay, "Language Origins: An Evolutionary Framework." This contains the same ideas as "Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition," which I discussed earlier. Homo sapiens came into existence 200,000-300,000 years ago and began to move out of Africa 70,000-100,000 years ago. Tattersall relies on human-made items to judge cognitive ability, and he thinks that although humans may have been relatively modern in a neurological sense 200,000 years ago, modern human cognition did not develop until about 100,000 years ago:

In the period between around 100 and 70 thousand years ago we begin to find, at sites in the eastern Mediterranean and northern and southern Africa, evidence that hominids – almost certainly Homo sapiens – were piercing, stringing, and sometimes ochre-staining small gastropod shells, presumably for use in body ornamentation (Henshilwood et al. 2002, 2004; Vanhaeren et al. 2006; Bouzougger et al. 2010). In all documented modern human societies such ornamentation is redolent with implications of status, occupation, group membership, and so forth; and it is widely accepted as a robust proxy for self-identification and symbolic cognitive processes on the part of humans who decorated themselves....

Tattersall concludes:

Our cognitive and linguistic skills are, of course, built on a foundation of hundreds of millions of years of vertebrate brain evolution; and nothing would be the same today if even one of the innovations that accumulated over that long period had not been acquired. But there is something emergently different about us: something that was not fine-tuned by natural selection over a vast period of time, and that in consequence makes our behavioral repertoire infinitely flexible – just like language itself.

I am reminded of Improbable Destinies, by Jonathan B. Losos, which I discussed in 2018. In his experiments with lizards in the Bahamas, he found that evolutionary changes could occur in just one generation if long-legged ground lizards were pressured to live in the vegetation above due to the introduction of larger, predatory lizards at ground level. Because long legs were disadvantageous above ground level, the lizards immediately evolved shorter legs. Losos doesn't discuss the mechanism for the reduction in leg length – I would think that this would be too brief a period for a genetic change. It seems more likely that the genotype allowed flexible outcomes in the phenotype for situations like this. A similar process may have occurred among humans. It seems plausible that Homo sapiens built up various cognitive skills through the use of language by living in cooperative groups for thousands of years. The advanced cognition of modern humans may have been precipitated by adverse environmental conditions during the late Pleistocene period. It seems unlikely that the extinction of all of the other Homo species alive at that time could have been a coincidence.

I should also add that the emergence of biological phenomena, including neural development, as discussed by Robert Sapolsky, adds a new dimension to how we now think about evolution.

The Controversial Origin of War and Peace: Apes, Foragers, and Human Evolution

I came across this article, by Luke Glowacki, in 3 Quarks Daily. It is an unusually academic article for them to post, but I read it with interest, because war has been so much in the headlines recently. Unfortunately, the article is extremely narrow in scope and focuses mainly on the timeline in the history of war. The questions become "Did war originate with our common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos or later?" and "If it originated much later, was it present among Homo sapiens hunter-gatherers?" I think that the article could have been improved by spending more time defining the role of war and aggressive behavior within a species.

Chimpanzees are known to behave aggressively toward other chimpanzee groups. Bonobos are not as well understood, but they don't seem to be as aggressive as chimpanzees. Glowacki fails to mention that bonobos operate in matriarchal hierarchies, and I think that gender could be a useful lens for discussing war, since female primates are generally less physically violent than male primates, and are accordingly smaller and weaker. Although there is evidence that human hunter-gatherers engaged in warlike behavior, it is somewhat unclear how that manifested itself prior to the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Glowacki does at least mention that, as a practical matter, it would be difficult for early hunter-gatherers to organize and coordinate anything that would resemble a modern army. He finishes by saying:

Recognizing that the capacity for both war and peace may be an outcome of our evolutionary history better explains how our species today can create durable peaceful relationships among societies that encompass billions of individuals but at the same time petty grievances and disputes can precipitate war with little provocation. We carry their evolutionary legacy today in our own struggles to create a more peaceful world, but one in which we all too often turn to violence.

I did not find this saccharine conclusion very enlightening.

My preferred way of looking at human behavior is through the lens of our evolutionary development of eusocial behavior, or, more broadly, cooperation. This occurred in tandem with bipedal gait and, later, the development of language. Through this process, Homo sapiens in effect outcompeted not only chimpanzees and bonobos, but all other hominids. Evolutionary processes permitted humans to achieve greater fitness than all other primate species. Rather than pretty this up for a feel-good moment, I prefer to compare humans to eusocial insects. I am reminded of my earlier post, "The Brutality of Life," in which I described bumblebees:

Every spring, a fertilized queen sets out to start a nest. She finds a site, often a hole in the ground, and begins to lay eggs. The queen emits chemicals that cause all of the eggs to become females that do not reach maturity. The nest then becomes a factory where the queen continues to lay eggs and her daughters tend to the eggs, find food and defend the nest. Toward the end of summer, the queen stops emitting the chemicals that control the development of her eggs and offspring. Some of her daughters mature to adulthood, and some males are born. The daughters start to lay their own eggs. Initially, the queen attempts to eat all of the eggs laid by her daughters, but eventually, her mature daughters attack and kill her. The mature daughters that have been fertilized leave the nest seeking shelter for the winter. In the spring, the process starts again.

It seems to me that scientists often ignore the most basic principles of Darwinism. Natural selection is not a pretty process, and for the most part it's just a numbers game: did a species survive, and, if so, how? We like cooperation and social harmony, but that is only because we have evolved to feel that way. Most species don't, and that includes bumblebees. While, ostensibly, bumblebees are eusocial, like us, the queens exert complete biological control over all of the other members of their hive. Eusociality itself does not imply equality. The end result is that bumblebees are an extremely durable species, while nearly all bumblebees are, in effect, slaves. In his essay, "Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition," Ian Tattersall describes how modern humans evolved in a rather haphazard manner during periods of vacillating climate change. In an evolutionary sense, this means that we just happened to have the right characteristics at the right times, and we could easily have become extinct with slight environmental differences. As a cautionary note to optimists, I often feel compelled to point out that our notions of morality do not correspond with the universe in general and are simply evolutionary characteristics that have helped our species survive. On the other hand, on a more purely rational basis, there is ample reason to remove from office leaders whose aggressive military actions cause the pointless loss of human life and unnecessary humanitarian crises. The long list of offenders includes not just Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, but Benjamin Netanyahu and George W. Bush.  

In my opinion, the major problems that we are facing now are human overpopulation and anthropogenic climate change. Those two conditions alone are generating pointless wars. Most countries, including the U.S., currently lack governments that seem capable of addressing those risks.

Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition

This essay, by Ian Tattersall, from Rethinking Human Evolution, is probably the last I'll discuss from the book. Like the other essays, it challenges conventional wisdom regarding human evolution and makes some good points.

For reasons previously explored both by this author (Tattersall 1997, 2015) and by the editor of this volume (Schwartz 2006, 2016), paleoanthropology has been mired since the mid-twentieth century in the beguiling notion that evolution in the hominid family (hominin subfamily/tribe, if you prefer; the difference is notional) has consisted essentially of the burnishing by natural selection of a central lineage that culminated in Homo sapiens. Yet accretions to the hominid fossil record over the same period have, in contrast, consistently shown that hominid phylogeny instead involved vigorous evolutionary experimentation. Over the seven-million-odd years of our family's existence, new species and lineages were regularly thrown out onto the ecological stage, to be triaged in competition with organisms both closely and distantly related. Extinction rates were high to match. Further, it is by now well established that all this took place in the context of constantly oscillating climates and habitats (deMenocal, 2011), to which steady, perfecting adaptation would not have been possible, even in principle.....the gradualist interpretive framework has tenaciously lingered, leading to the widespread application in practice of a strictly minimalist systemic approach that has often been justified by spectacularly contorted reasoning (see Spoor et al. [2007], and Lordkipanidze et al. [2014] for classic examples).

Tattersall looks closely at brain size in various hominids. The generally accepted narrative, which I've mentioned before, is that our ancestors first became bipedal due to climate change and the replacement of forest with savannah; this led to dietary changes in which meat provided a more efficient energy source, and cooperation increased, leading to language development and increased brain size. Tattersall says that, although brain size did increase generally in hominids, there is no evidence that this increase alone correlates with increased intelligence. One hypothesis is that the demands of human childrearing required higher intelligence. Tattersall adopts a different position. He thinks that the development of language in early Homo sapiens provided the main impetus. By about 100,000 years ago, humans were sufficiently adept in the use of symbolic language that they were able to manipulate symbols in their thinking processes, which roughly corresponds with what we think of as intelligence. So, Tattersall's view is that what we think of as intelligence is an unexpected byproduct of the acquisition of language. And, although brain size did initially play a role, it doesn't necessarily now. For example, the now- extinct Neanderthals had larger brains than us but apparently lacked our capacity for symbolic manipulation. Additionally, human brain size has been decreasing for tens of thousands of years. Tattersall compares this to early brute force computers (such as Deep Blue), which had to be large to solve problems, whereas recent, smaller algorithmic computers solve even harder problems more efficiently. On the whole, Tattersall's point is that the development of human cognition did not occur within a context of steady movement toward a likely end; a more accurate description is that, at any given time, nature seems to be conducting various survival experiments for which no outcome is clear. Additionally, energy usage often plays a role in evolution. Neanderthals had large bodies and brains, so they were energy-inefficient compared to humans. Strangely, we are now running into similar constraints with cryptocurrencies and AI, which are already straining our energy resources. It looks as if the evolutionary model for both animals and machines may be the movement to lower energy consumption combined with higher performance. Without the sun, we wouldn't be here.

These thoughts relate to those of other writers I've discussed. For example, Giorgio Vallortigara has shown that even chicks use basic arithmetic and geometry, but without symbols or language. This is a good example of how a cognitive function can become more useful through the use of symbolic reasoning. There is also somewhat of a connection with the work of Vinod Goel, who discusses the evolution of the human brain, which is actually a wider look than Tattersall's discussion. Tattersall is probably only talking about the prefrontal cortex, which is relatively small, and the rest of the human brain is mostly quite ancient. Looking at this only from the present, the determinists I've discussed may have some relevance, because they specifically emphasize human limitations and the variability of skills within the current population. This group includes Robert Sapolsky, Robert Plomin, David Reich and Kathryn Paige Harden. While Tattersall is apparently happy that evolution managed to allow us to be here today, he doesn't discuss the liabilities that we've inherited from our evolutionary past. Having myself observed human behavior for seventy-four years now, there is a lot not to like about it.

Human and Mammalian Evolution: Is There a Difference?

This short essay, by John de Vos and Jelle W.F. Reumer, is another from the book I'm reading. I found it interesting and will just sum it up.

From ancient times to the present, there has been a conceit regarding the place of humans in the world. De Vos and Reumer state this nicely as follows:

When God created the world, he did so in a succession of different steps. The creation of animals was one such step. The creation of mankind was another one. Ever since, mankind has been considered (i.e., has considered itself) not to be part of the animal kingdom. This notion—that Homo sapiens is a species next to, above, or outside the mammalian world—has long perverted science. Ernst Haeckel's famous "Stammbaum des Menschen/Pedigree of Man," published in 1874, shows "man" in the highest branch of the tree, above the rest of the living world, although part of the apes.

Commendably, these authors prefer to study humans as mammals, and their research shows that, in the past, environmental changes affected humans just as much as other mammals. The Pliocene period, 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, entailed a cooling of the planet, during which forests were transformed to grassy plains in the American prairies, the Eurasian steppes and the African savannahs. Horses and antelopes evolved from smaller, shorter-legged animals to have longer legs, new dental characteristics and increased socialization. The Pliocene, with its increase in grasslands, was also the time of origin for early hominids such as Australopithecus.

Thus, both the evolution of human bipedalism and erect posture on the one hand, and of the long-legged running gait in horses on the other, are the result of Miocene-through-Pleistocene climate change in conjunction with the reduction of forest ecosystems and increase in open habitats....Humans, antelopes and horses are mammals that adapted to a new environment, and their evolution reflects their convergences.

There are also parallels between humans and other mammals seen in studies of island paleontology:

Although the mechanisms leading to observed phenomena remain unclear, these studies have given rise to what is called the "Island Rule." That is, in general, small mammals (shrews, hedgehogs, rodents, leporids) become larger when isolated on islands, and large mammals (elephantids, hippopotamids, bovids, cervids) become smaller....Although until fairly recently one might have wondered if humans would be an exception to the Island Rule, the possibility emerged with the discovery of the remains of a Late Pleistocene hominid on the Indonesian island of Flores....Claims of microcephaly notwithstanding, the specimens are more reasonably seen as evidence of island dwarfing and of a separate species.

During the Late Pleistocene, many large mammals became woolly: the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, musk ox and cave bear. At that time, the climate was cold and dry. But at the end of the Pleistocene, the climate became warmer, and most of the woolly species became extinct. As a speculative matter, the authors suggest that Homo neanderthalensis, which had evolved during the Pleistocene, may also have been "woolly," and became extinct along with the other woolly mammals.

The point of the authors is that large mammals are large mammals, and there are probably convergences when different species experience the same environmental changes. From a scientific point of view, I think this is fairly obvious – though it would be heresy to many.

Sex, Reproduction, and Scenarios of Human Evolution

This is a short essay by Claudine Cohen in Rethinking Human Evolution, edited by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, which is part of a series in theoretical biology. I will probably read several of the essays and comment separately on each one. I am attempting to update myself in a field that I find interesting.

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin speculated that in early human history mate selection was performed by females, based on the physical and social characteristics of males, and that these choices affected the characteristics of males over time. This is the same idea that I mentioned a few years ago, regarding speculation that Dutch men are the tallest in the world because Dutch women selected them, considering tall men better providers than short men. However, Darwin thought that mate selection later became a male behavior, and that women began to adorn themselves so as to make themselves more attractive to men. While Darwin admitted that sociocultural practices can affect mate selection, he thought that, after the early period, males generally tended to dominate women.

From the 1920's to the 1970's, cultural anthropologists rejected biological evolutionary models in favor of human social structures. In the mid-1970's sociobiology was popularized by E.O. Wilson and gene-maximization was popularized by Richard Dawkins. I think that Cohen may conflate Wilson's views with those of Dawkins, because they are not identical. She thinks that Dawkins's support of gene-maximization is reductionistic and provides an unsubstantiated advantage to males. Wilson's views are more concerned with group or multi-level selection, which are different things entirely. In any case, Cohen favors maintaining the importance of socio-cultural factors in human sexual behavior and she seems to dislike genetic explanations of this subject. When she wrote this essay (in about 2016), other deterministic models, such as Robert Sapolsky's, were not well known. I think that the clunky old cause-effect model of determinism, especially through genes, is giving way to a messier model such as Sapolsky's. Under that model, specific behaviors of humans do emerge causally, but we can barely comprehend how. Different sexual behavior does emerge from different social contexts, but those contexts also fit within broader deterministic models. While Cohen does seem to approve of Darwin's views, she does not focus on the central Darwinian idea that species go extinct for a wide variety of reasons: if a species goes extinct as a result of its social practices, it lacks fitness, according to Darwin, and social causes may be just as causal as the earth being struck by a large asteroid. I think that many people, even in the sciences, inject free will into their theories because it provides the feeling that we have control over our destinies – even though we don't. 

I found Cohen a bit more enlightening in other areas. The fact of concealed ovulation in humans, but not in other primates, had been a puzzle to me. Was it to conceal paternity? There is a convincingly simple hypothetical explanation for this: bipedal gate. The genital exposure of female humans is much less conspicuous than that of other primates, not attracting as much attention. So it is quite conceivable that, with the gradual development of other erogenous zones in the female body, the role of sexual signaling from the vulva gradually declined. The increasing complexity of human social structures, including the use of clothing, may also have reduced the desirability of conspicuous estrus:

In the absence of visible estrus, human sexual behavior and reproduction become disconnected (Godelier, 2004). Consequently, the uniquely human manifestations of eroticism and sexual pleasure (see Bataille 1957, 1961), coexist with, and may even replace, the physiological function of procreation (Zwang 2002).

More generally:

The acquisition of concealed ovulation has been viewed as a key event leading to the transformation of gender relationships and roles in human groups. If it was related to the acquisition of Hominin bipedal gait, its roots lie well before the origin of the genus Homo. Understanding concealed ovulation – its origin, causes, and effects – is likely fundamental to understanding human evolution and the emergence of social structure, as is reflected in its being the starting point of several scenarios of "hominization."

Another interesting area that Cohen delves into is the social and other effects of the demands of raising human babies. The workload is so high that a male partner is generally needed to at least provide food. But cooperation spills over into the surrounding group, leading to general cooperation within that group. More interestingly, humans are the only primates with menopause, and other female primates remain fertile up to their deaths. 

Whereas young female apes leave their mothers to join their male partners' territories (patrilocality), the positive role of grandmothers is favored by matrilocality, that is, the cohabitation of daughters with mothers (in contrast to cohabitation of the son's mother and his wife). In turn, this leads to a close and harmonious distribution of roles for caring and educating children. In humans, matrilocality permits a better environment for raising young children. Older women, freed of reproductive constraints, can achieve the status of a wise and dominant figure, and contribute to the welfare of their group, by virtue of the knowledge and experience they acquired over a long period of time, one that extends well beyond the cessation of fertility.

In this vein, Cohen suggests that figurines such as the Venus of Willendorf (28,000-25,000 BCE) are not symbols of fertility, but represent the importance of postmenopausal women in those societies.  

Silent Spring

I recently read a short piece by Rachel Carson, and she is quite a good writer. Since Silent Spring, which was first published in 1962, is a classic of the environmental movement, and my edition has an afterword by E.O. Wilson, I decided to give it a go. The book is dedicated to Albert Schweitzer, who said "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth." That was a rather prophetic statement, I think.

Carson provides many examples of biological research that confirm that idea, but the main ones concern the widespread dispensation of insecticides and herbicides. She thinks that Dutch elm disease may have been caused by their clustering in towns as decorative trees, and that this led to fungal infections that traveled everywhere. The fungi were spread by native beetles, which carried the fungi into the trees. That blocks circulation within the trees, and they usually die as a result. The initial response was to spray the trees with DDT, which killed the beetles. However, the unintended consequence was the killing of much of the wildlife in the vicinity of the trees. The title comes from the fact that so many songbirds were killed in some towns that very few returned the following spring. Dutch elm disease is still quite common today, but there is less effort to eradicate it. The accepted practice now is to circulate a fungicide within the trees. One of the reasons why DDT wasn't effective was that the fungus remained in the dead trees, and they weren't disposed of properly. Another example is the attempted eradication of fire ants, which were an invasive species that started spreading in the South. The insecticides used to kill them also killed wildlife in the area. Carson doesn't think that fire ants required eradication, because they were merely a nuisance.

Also mentioned are the poisons that were included in household and gardening products. Several different poisons were present in moth killers. Regarding gardening, she says:

As an example of what may happen to a gardener himself, we might look at the case of a physician – an enthusiastic spare-time gardener – who began using DDT and then malathion on his shrubs and lawn, making regular weekly applications. Sometimes he applied the chemicals with a hand spray, sometimes with an attachment to his hose. In doing so, his skin and clothes were often soaked with spray. After about a year of this sort of thing, he suddenly collapsed and was hospitalized. Examination of a biopsy specimen of fat showed an accumulation of 23 parts per million of DDT. There was extensive nerve damage, which the physicians regarded as permanent. As time went on he lost weight, suffered extreme fatigue, and experienced a peculiar muscular weakness, a characteristic effect of malathion. All of these persisting effects were severe enough to make it difficult for the physician to carry on his practice.

Of related interest is the fact that Rachel Carson herself died at the age of fifty-six, less than two years after the publication of Silent Spring, from breast cancer.

Later in the book, Carson discusses some of the underlying failures that caused the inappropriate use of chemicals for extermination. There is a lack of recognition that ecosystems are what actually control species populations, and the disruption of an ecosystem can have many unintended consequences. Reproduction of one species is affected by the populations of other species. Furthermore, species can, and often do, develop resistance to chemicals:

Darwin himself could scarcely have found a better example of the operation of natural selection than is provided by the way the mechanism of resistance operates. Out of an original population, the members of which vary greatly in qualities of structure, behavior, or physiology, it is the "tough" insects that survive chemical attack. Spraying kills off the weaklings. The only survivors are insects that have some inherent quality that allows them to escape harm. These are the parents of the new generation, which, by simple inheritance, possesses all the qualities of "toughness" inherent in its forebears.

One method of insect control of which Carson does approve is the release of sterile individuals into a population.

At various points in the book, Carson implicates the chemical industry for the aggressive use of dangerous chemicals. One way that they do this is by sponsoring research at universities that supports their business models. These days, they are probably just as likely to fund the campaigns of politicians who support their interests. The corporatization of the federal government is continuing as I write, with the Supreme Court ruling against the regulatory authority of government agencies. I am often amazed to watch decisions regarding complex biological processes being turned over to scientifically illiterate people who wear silly robes.

In the afterword, E.O. Wilson sums up some of the effects of this book. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970, and the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973.

Since Silent Spring's publication the United States has come to understand that it is a major player in the deterioration of the global environment. Rachel Carson, who was a quick learner, would be ahead of us in understanding the devastating effects everywhere of still-rocketing population growth combined with consumption of natural resources, the thinning of the ozone layer, global warming, the collapse of marine fisheries, and, less directly through foreign trade, the decimation of tropical forests and mass extinction of species. She would regret, I am sure, the sorry example the United States set with its enormous per capita appropriation of productive land around the world for its consumption – ten times that of developing countries.

A Clarification on Randomness and Determinism

On some of my posts, I've referred to evolutionary and other processes as random. It is possible that that is correct in a strict sense, but in keeping with my general view of determinism using Robert Sapolsky's model for biological processes, I think that some further explanation is in order. A problem arises because we may not always be able to explain the exact events that cause specific speciation. On a basic Darwinian level of explanation, we can now see how Homo sapiens outcompeted other Homo species. Since we may never know exactly how this was inevitable, and, given the nature of the language that we use to describe biological processes, "random" is probably an acceptable term for describing that evolutionary event. However, if you look at this process through the lens of physics, randomness may apply only to subatomic particles that have no effect on macro biological processes. It is possible that we may never be able to understand exactly why there was never any chance that we would not come into existence.

I think that, because of our cognitive limitations, evolution may always appear directionless, i.e., undetermined. So, going forward, it may be necessary for scientists to discuss evolutionary events with explicit warnings regarding human cognitive limitations in their understanding of complex biological processes over long periods of time. Because of this development, my use of the term "random" may apply primarily to subatomic events. In reference to biological and evolutionary events, "random" may simply mean that we lack the capacity to describe them deterministically. So, when I say "random," that may just mean "we have no way of knowing."

This is a fairly significant distinction. Our languages themselves came about as evolutionary adaptations, so the context for their applicability is somewhat limited and is primarily related to the survival of our ancestors. As I've said, there was no evolutionary advantage to understanding some of the fundamentals of the universe. It is possible that this is one area in which AI may eventually surpass human cognition.

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will III

I can't say that I enjoyed the remainder of the book, and I didn't spend much time on it, because I thought that Sapolsky was just rambling, and little new information of any real importance emerged. There wasn't even a noticeable conclusion either. Sapolsky, clearly an academic, is best on neurological matters. After he made a strong case for determinism and the absence of free will, he seemed to drift off into a series of anecdotes about how individuals are different from other individuals, and there is nothing that they can do about it. He is critical, for example, of those who pass judgment on fat people, because he thinks that fat people have little or no choice in the matter. Somehow, crime and punishment seem to interest him a lot, and there are countless stories about how criminals are perceived and treated by the public, often in a way that ignores the inevitability of their behavior. He seems to have the classic liberal college professor stance in which tolerance should be the norm, and people shouldn't be allowed to let their prejudices run wild. Many of his examples are old news that I've known about for decades, so I was quite disappointed when I arrived at the end of the book and determined that it did not include what I would consider to be an action plan or any useful recommendations.

In my view, Sapolsky, though he does have a good understanding of human nature, is demonstrating no interest in the rather significant implications of his findings. Those are the kinds of things that I've been writing about since I started this blog. There are two areas in particular that I've discussed repeatedly. If people are all different through no fault of their own, with widely varying intellectual abilities and prejudices, all of which are relatively intractable, how do we define equality and to what extent can a democratic process produce a coherent government? The other area is capitalism, which, despite mountains of evidence, continues to produce an increase in wealth inequality while destroying the environment. Currently, income inequality is spilling over into unruly populist movements in the West, with incompetent, opportunistic leaders who are not being filtered out by the existing democratic processes, and climate change is advancing unabated. I would have appreciated the book more if Sapolsky had devoted a few pages to those topics rather than taking jabs at Sigmund Freud, Bruno Bettelheim and other bad scientists and making fun of the public's prejudices. He seems merely to be reciting the now-popular "compassion" mantra without actually making any useful suggestions. I wasn't attempting to find religion when I started reading the book, and I'm not about to now.

I won't regurgitate all of the things that I have written previously, but I still think that the best long-term option is going to be an AI-based world government that, rather than depending on an unreliable democratic process or the whims of a dictator, maintains the planet for the benefit of Homo sapiens in an orderly fashion, based on what we know about ourselves, including the idea that we are a socially cooperative species and value equality. The point is that we collectively are not doing a good job at self-governance and ought to be taking a hard look at other options. If Sapolsky decides to write a separate book on that topic, I may read it, but I do find the current book too limited in scope and bloated in the wrong places.

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will II

I am moving along more slowly than usual, because, besides Sapolsky's writing style, this is not an easy book to read and encompasses the subjects of neuroscience, biology, physics and philosophy. One chapter is devoted to chaos theory, which some have used as a basis for saying that free will exists. Sapolsky concludes that "chaoticism shows just the opposite of chaos, the fact that there's less randomness than often assumed and, instead, unexpected structure and determinism...." He then moves on to a chapter on the subject of emergent complexity. Here again, some have thought that this phenomenon is a proof of indeterminism in nature, something akin to magic. I found this chapter highly informative, because it explains how the development and behavior of organisms emerges from "simple constituent parts having simple local interactions, all without centralized authority....These systems have characteristics that exist only at the emergent level—a single neuron cannot have traits related to circuitry—and whose behavior can be predicted without having to resort to reductive knowledge about the component parts....Not only does this explain emergent complexity in our brains, but our nervous systems use some of the same tricks used by the likes of individual proteins, ant colonies, and slime molds. All without magic." In this area, Sapolsky is especially insightful, because he understands how biological systems actually work – and this is not at all the way that most people think about them. He concludes that both chaos theory and emergent systems are consistent with a deterministic world.

These chapters are followed by the chapter "Does Your Free Will Just Emerge." Sapolsky concludes that free will does not emerge for the following reasons:

a. Because of the lessons of chaoticism—you can't just follow convention and say that two things are the same, when they are different, and in a way that matters, regardless of how seemingly miniscule that difference; unpredictable doesn't mean undetermined.

b. Even if a system is emergent, that doesn't mean it can choose to do whatever it wants; it is still made up of and constrained by its own constituent parts, with all their mortal limits and foibles.

c. Emergent systems can't make the bricks that built them stop being brick-ish.

In Chapters 9 and 10, the subject changes to quantum indeterminacy. This is the same topic discussed by Sabine Hossenfelder in Existential Physics. Physics is one of Sapolsky's weaker areas, but he also makes a compelling argument that random events at the subatomic level have nothing to do with free will, which is similar to Hossenfelder's view. He concludes:

Quantum indeterminacy is beyond strange, and in the legendary words of physics god Richard Feynman, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

It is perfectly plausible, maybe even inevitable, that there will be quantum effects on how things like ions interact with the likes of ion channels or receptors in the nervous system.

However, there is no evidence that those sorts of quantum effects bubble up enough to alter behavior, and most experts think that it is actually impossible—quantum strangeness is not that strange, and the quantum effects are washed away amid the decohering warm, wet noise of the brain as one scales up.

Even if quantum indeterminacy did bubble up all the way to behavior, there is the fatal problem that all it would produce is randomness. Do you really want to claim that the free will for which you deserve punishment or reward is based on randomness?

The supposed ways by which we can harness, filter, stir up, or mess with the randomness enough to produce free will seem pretty unconvincing. If determined indeterminism is a valid building block for free will, then taking an improv acting class is a valid building block for, à la Sartre, believing that we are condemned to be free.

I still have several chapters to go and should finish up on my next post. Of what I've read so far, I am most impressed by the concept of emergence, with which I was not very familiar previously. In the biological world, this is a far more useful perspective than that of physics. Emergence in nature is something that one can easily pick up intuitively simply by spending time outdoors – which is exactly how Darwin came up with his theory of evolution through natural selection. Emergence is also a good way to understand Vinod Goel's model of the human brain as discussed in Reason and Less. That model takes into consideration the fact that our brains evolved over millions of years and still contain elements from the distant past which are incompatible with reason, because they came into existence long before rationality became a feature of our species.

In some ways, I am coming to see arguments for free will as an unnecessary nuisance. I think that free will is nothing more than a necessary illusion that we maintain in order to believe in the validity of our thinking processes. You might say that we have evolved to believe that we have free will even though we don't. Thus, informed thinkers such as Sapolsky and Hossenfelder are forced to address spurious arguments that unconvincingly link free will to randomness in nature. The idea of free will is probably linked to the idea of rational agency, which is also under attack now. At the moment, both neuroscience and behavioral economics are telling us that we are hardly rational, and to confirm that these days, one need only follow the news.

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will I

I finally received this new book by Robert Sapolsky and have read about a third of it so far. That section is largely a restatement of information that was provided in his last book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, discussed earlier. Sapolsky looks closely at how the human brain develops and functions neurologically, and in this instance attempts to demonstrate how events prior to and after birth, over which an individual has no control, determine their behavior in various situations. At this stage in my readings, this was rather obvious to me, as was the idea that free will does not exist in a meaningful sense. In later chapters, he writes about the implications of these ideas for legal systems, which may expose their inadequacies by showing how individuals may have little control over their own behavior. 

As before, I am not a fan of Sapolsky's writing style. He often strains to sound un-academic and inserts too many frivolous footnotes. Given the complexity of the subject matter, I think that he makes the material more difficult to absorb than it has to be. For example, I think that both Daniel Kahneman and Vinod Goel make the functioning of the prefrontal cortex of the human brain a little more understandable than he does, though they offer somewhat simplified models. Also, Sapolsky sometimes brings up specific research only to dismiss it a few pages later. He does this with the research of Benjamin Libet, who showed that when a person makes a choice, their brain makes it before they are aware of it. That research has been claimed by some to demonstrate that people do not have free will. Sapolsky takes about twenty pages discussing this only to conclude that Libet's study is irrelevant to the topic of free will because it doesn't establish intent.

One section that I found more useful was his discussion of the effects of collectivist cultures versus individualistic cultures on individual behavior. Neuroimaging studies indicate that the prefrontal cortex activates differently in people from East Asian cultures from people in Western cultures. East Asians are activated equally by pictures of their mothers and pictures of themselves, whereas Westerners are activated more by pictures of themselves. East Asians are also more active in emotional regulation and understanding other people's perspectives than Westerners, who exhibit more emotional intensity, self-reference and capacity for strong emotional disgust or empathy.

In general, collectivistic-culture individuals prefer and excel at context-dependent cognitive tasks, while it's context-independent tasks for individual-culture folks....

East Asian collectivism is generally thought to arise from the communal work demands of floodplain rice farming. 

It appears that recent Chinese immigrants to the U.S. have been more independent than their population in general and self-selected to emigrate to the U.S. This type of self-selection can ultimately affect local gene pools, making them more collectivist or more individualistic.

Sapolsky's perspective on free will and determinism is somewhat different from what I'm used to. I usually read about determinism in terms of physics and astronomy. At this stage, Darwinism encapsulates not just organisms, but the entire universe. Planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies and galactic clusters all evolve, and the question is whether this is all predictable. Currently it appears that there are still random quantum events at the subatomic level, but I don't think that the existence of those events necessarily rules out rigid determinism. To me, this means that every event, at least since the Big Bang, was destined to occur. That may or may not prove to be the case, but I don't think at this point that we have the right tools to know the answer. On a much smaller scale, it is of some practical value to understand how human behavior originates. That information is essential for developing appropriate laws, social systems and governments. As I've been saying for several years, my ideal would be to develop a human-compatible program that manages the Earth's biosphere for the benefit of mankind. Obviously, due to the complexity of such an operation, AI would have to play a major role. I would argue that the traditional democratic republics now in place globally can safely be described as obsolete in light of the psychological research findings of the last few years. 

I will probably make at least two more posts on this book.

Theories and Models: Understanding and Predicting Societal Collapse

This is a chapter by Sabin Roman in the new book, The Era of Global Risk: An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies, which can be downloaded at no charge. Existential risk is now a well-researched academic subject and is certainly worthy of attention. I may comment on other chapters, but this one attracted me first. 

Generally, societal collapse is associated with decreasing complexity. The chapter breaks down societal collapse into types. Exogenous factors and one-time events are one type. These include resource depletion, such as the deforestation of Easter Island as described by Jared Diamond, and soil degradation for the Maya civilization. They also include competition with other societies. And one-time events include volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts and solar flares. Roman sums up:

Overall, arguments based on competition with other societies, intruders, or catastrophes neglect the fact that these types of events have previously been encountered by a given society but no collapse occurred, e.g. earthquakes in Minoan civilization, barbarian attacks on the Roman front, or competition between the Mayan centres. In addition, these theories have the added difficulty of placing the drivers of the collapse outside of the society in question, which is incomplete from an epistemological perspective without accounting for changes in social structures and dynamics.

Another type is social structure and class conflict. This has been written about since 1377, by Ibn Khaldun, Edward Gibbon in the 18th century, and Arnold Toynbee in 1961. Many of the theories in this group include class conflict. Roman summarizes the limitations of this approach as follows:

The main difficulty in the explanations above is that they force the cause to be considered a single factor and posit the causal mechanism as a direct, linear process. Given the complexity of the systems involved, collapse is often a multi-faceted process that requires accounting for multiple interrelated factors. Simply listing the different contributing phenomena is insufficient to give us additional insight....

This leads to the third type of approach: feedback mechanisms. These were pioneered by Thomas Malthus in 1798, with his description of the relationship between agricultural productivity and population growth. More recently, this theory has been refined to argue that growing societies tend to reach a period of diminishing returns that may precipitate their collapse, and the increasing complexity of a society may eventually make it unmanageable. Roman writes:

A theory of collapse built on feedback mechanisms describing social dynamics is consistent with the nature of a complex system, wherein multiple interacting factors are present, the evolution is non-linear, and causality cannot be assigned to singular aspects of the system.

The fourth and final approach starts with the third and is based on quantitative models, which are broken down into two classes:

(a) agent-based models (ABMs), which represent individuals (or communities) as agents with set attributes and behavioural rules, such that a realistic rendering of relevant behaviour is desired with the aim of obtaining larger scale emergent phenomena. Often, they also explicitly model the spatially extended features, such as terrain; and 

(b) integrated world models, which employ a wide variety of modelling techniques (system dynamics, econometrics, etc.) and aim for an accurate, detailed representation of the system under study. They are complex models that use a large number of variables and parameters.

Several different quantitative models have been developed in recent years. The 'Limits to Growth' study by Donella Meadows focused on three 200-year scenarios from 1900 to 2100: one fitted to historical data, one to environmental sustainability and one to technology and industry:

The first and third scenarios led to a peak industrial output in the 21st century and a subsequent decline in economic activity and demographic levels. The sustainable case manages to reach a steady state with little loss of life, but it requires parameter choices that, in the real world, would require drastic action to curtail pollution and population growth.

Roman says that the economic-based models are hampered partly because "the fundamental assumption of rational human behavior is not justified empirically." So far, the quantitative models are not widely accepted by sociologists. He concludes:

If a common set of historical mechanisms can be found throughout multiple time periods and a modelling framework with a toolkit of methodologies adaptive to different scenarios can be built, then the science-fiction discipline of psychodynamics that Asimov imagined would be within reach.

I am glad that people like Sabin Roman are doing this work, because we are already seeing multiple examples of environmental decline, climate-related catastrophes, geopolitical tensions and poorly-informed populist movements. I agree with Martin Rees, who says in the preface that action must start with voters, because politicians have little incentive to address events that will play out after they have left office. Unfortunately, most voters don't respond to theories and models, and, more often than not, are scientifically illiterate. That is why I often conclude my posts with the hope that AI will soon come to the rescue and replace both capitalism and democracy. Though people may respond as conditions get worse, it is important to remember that capitalism brought us to where we are now and that democracy is not a foolproof system for addressing complex issues.

Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist

As with Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, I found this more recent book by Frans de Waal somewhat informative, but, at the same time, annoying to read. The informative aspects relate to his expertise in primates, while the annoying aspects relate to his anecdotal style of writing. Most of his research experience comes from observing primates, and when he writes about them it seems as if he is describing friends and family members who happen to be chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, baboons, orangutans or macaques. Rather than focusing on conceptual issues, which are my main interest, he loves to describe the variability of primate behavior within species and between species. In this instance, I think the book would have been more effective if he had stuck to humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, which are closely related.

Socially speaking, we are not that different from chimpanzees and bonobos. Chimpanzee males are larger, stronger and more physically violent than females. They form hierarchies led by alpha males and maintain territories, which involves attacking and killing members of other groups. Males and females spend most of their time living with their own sex. Social tensions are relieved by grooming others. Alpha males usually have a broad range of social skills and do not rule by brute force; they are often respected by others. The dynamics are quite different in bonobo groups, because, though they are also hierarchical in structure, they are led by alpha females instead of males. Bonobo males are closer in size and strength to females and can be controlled by females who work in concert. The females can be violent and aggressive when necessary, but are usually less so than male chimpanzees. Bonobos stand out from other primates in that, comparatively speaking, they are sex maniacs. They behave in a bisexual manner. Females, who have evolved large clitorises, spend a great deal of time with other females in the missionary position rubbing their clitorises together.

To the extent that there is any theme to the book, it is that gender is not a social construct, and that most primates follow similar gender behavioral patterns. Males focus on physical activities and are not interested in child rearing. Females focus on child rearing and self-decoration. Humans differ from other primates mainly in the development of nuclear families. De Waal thinks that the nuclear family arrangement can cause domestic violence, particularly when there are external stresses, such as the pandemic. The book also touches on transgender issues and notes evidence of transgender behavior in one chimpanzee. 

The general outlook that de Waal seems to advocate is that we are primarily biological entities, and, as such, many of the categories and classifications that we come up with to explain human behavior are crude oversimplifications or misrepresentations that don't capture the complications of the underlying biological processes. One idea that he specifically rejects is mind-body dualism, which allows people to think that they are not their bodies. As I myself have said before, Simone de Beauvoir herself is guilty of this error. Although de Waal describes himself as a feminist, he says that he has had conflicts with ideologically rigid feminist women.

One observation that I found interesting was that, while male chimpanzees attempt to resolve conflicts with other males, female chimpanzees do not attempt to resolve conflicts with other females:

Given that four out of five female conflicts go unreconciled, it's fair to say that female chimpanzees are touched more deeply and are less willing than males to get over their disagreements. In the wild, too, females rarely make up after fights. They tend to disperse, which makes for an easy solution.

This helps explain why some of the females I've known became dogmatic and inflexible when disagreements arose. There was no discussion, and they simply left.

I was a little disappointed by the limited treatment of transgender issues in the book. This is probably because not much research has been done on the subject. The opposite is true for homosexuality and bisexuality, which are now widely accepted and understood. Some aspects of transgender identity may be explained by genetic differences at conception or hormonal exposure during fetal development. In theory, transgender issues could be handled in exactly the same manner as homosexuality or bisexuality. However, if, like me, you adopt a completely materialistic view of the universe and human life, it seems that you are your body. As a materialist, I have difficulty understanding why someone would make risky physical changes to their body through surgery and hormone therapy in order to match their perceived gender identity to their body. It is possible that further research may justify those procedures, but I am a little concerned that, without proper guidelines, children, left to their own devices, may make poor decisions. For example, at this moment, there are probably millions of socially awkward children who erroneously think that becoming transgender would make them more popular. I think that some research-based guidelines are in order.

If Science is to Save Us

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting much lately. This isn't a permanent change but does reflect my recent lack of interest in reading or writing. I would like to maintain a certain level of activity for the blog, but keep in mind that I have been retired for fifteen years, this does not produce any income for me, and I get little contact from readers, though the volume has gradually picked up since 2014. If you have suggestions or requests, you can contact me by emailing me at doubttheexperts@gmail.com.

The current book, which I just finished, by Martin Rees, is a slight disappointment. Though it might be useful to young scientists, seasoned academics or government officials, I felt that Rees stretched himself to the limit and has revealed his limitations to some extent. It appears that he led a successful career as an astrophysicist, then became an academic administrator at Cambridge, and was later made a Life Peer in the British House of Lords. In astronomy it seems that his main contribution was finding that large black holes are the source of quasars, and as a public intellectual he helped start CSER, which I think is a useful institution.

The research at CSER focuses on the major risks facing mankind, and, as in his previous book, On the Future: Prospects for Humanity, which I discussed in 2018, he lays out the principal risks that are being studied there now. This time, Rees is regurgitating most of the same information, while also describing the nuts and bolts of his career, in which, after establishing himself as a scientist, he endeavored to help the institutions that engage in science education and promote the acceptance of science-based decisions in the public sphere. I applaud his advocacy of science, but currently think that he is missing the mark, at least as far as my thoughts are concerned.

Although I generally support the scientific method, I don't necessarily think that science is the primary solution to the problems currently facing mankind. To be sure, we need solutions to global warming, potential asteroid strikes, AI security, pandemics, etc., but the main threat, in my opinion, is political incompetence, and although CSER theoretically covers that risk, as a respected scientific authority and MP, Rees is not in an appropriate position to advance those kinds of government policy changes. While a scientific understanding of the world would be beneficial if it were more widespread, with the Internet and social media it is misinformation that has become widespread, and voters can no longer be expected to vote in a rational manner, given the pervasive distortions of facts. Because of the realities of the current situation, I think, for example, that, within democratic systems, an emphasis should be placed on qualification requirements for heads of state. The most obvious example is Donald Trump. If he had been required to pass a knowledge test or a psychiatric test, he would probably not have become president. Besides those two areas, there was ample evidence before his election that he had engaged in mismanagement and possible criminal behavior for decades. A congressional act or constitutional amendment to safeguard the U.S. from such incompetence would probably be of greater practical value than all of the research done by CSER. Some of Trump's failings can be seen in Boris Johnson, and similar safeguards could have been beneficial to the U.K. too. One need only look at the social and financial costs of the recent pandemic and how those costs might have been reduced by competent leadership. Another obvious major risk is the presence of dysfunctional autocrats worldwide. If the U.S. and U.K. were able to amend their systems of governance to protect themselves from inappropriate leaders, if nothing else, they could provide a better model to other countries. I am appalled that Vladimir Putin still rules Russia.

With all this said, I am not completely dismissive of Rees. At present, he is an elder statesman of the British scientific community, and in this capacity he is doing a better job than others, Richard Dawkins, for example. Part of the problem with Rees, I think, is that he has no background in cognitive psychology. The serious problems facing the U.S. and U.K. are best seen as the result of the cognitive failures of voters. I think that Rees emphasizes the kinds of physical risks facing us that could easily be solved by scientists and engineers, when in fact human cognition actually presents a more dangerous and intractable risk. He is doing his best while not quite possessing the right qualifications for the job. This isn't really his fault, and, as he points out, the days of great polymaths are essentially over in the sciences, because specialization and the replacement of individuals with large teams renders that impossible.

Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions

I just finished this new book by Sabine Hossenfelder. It has similarities to her last book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which focused on how physicists entertain exotic theories that are difficult to link to actual observable events, and how this emphasis on mathematical aesthetics is contributing to a slump in the development of useful new theories. The new book continues the pragmatic emphasis of the last book, but covers a broader range of topics. Although Hossenfelder writes clearly and concisely, the subjects are quite abstruse, so, whether she likes it or not, the content is way over the heads of most readers, though, if they make an effort, they may get the gist of it. Even so, though I think it's much more interesting than A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking's bestseller, I don't think it will sell as well. That is probably one of the least-read books on people's bookshelves. From a marketing standpoint, it might have helped if she had ALS and used a speech synthesizer. However, Hossenfelder has already established herself as a credible science pundit, and this book will enhance her career.

Some of the topics interested me more than others, and I'll focus on those. As in the last book, there are interviews, but I didn't find them enlightening. They are entertaining when, for example, she critiques her host's housekeeping and hints that she may dislike men with long hair. Some of the subjects are difficult, and covering them in brief chats doesn't do them justice, though her publisher probably encouraged her to keep it as light as possible. She seems more confident in her interviews than before, when, for example, she was intimidated by Steven Weinberg, but I doubt that she will ever rake an interviewee over the coals. In some ways, she is refreshing, because she doesn't have a gigantic male ego and is simply attempting to educate people.

Chapter 2 is "How Did the Universe Begin? How Will it End?" In this chapter, Hossenfelder concludes that we may never know. To me, some related questions are "How many universes are there?," "Are universes structurally similar?," and "Can the laws of physics in a particular universe change?" I don't think that we will ever know anything about this, except in the sense that we may eventually discover that the laws of physics in this universe are constant. I dislike the psychological impact of these kinds of questions because, if we want to think that our lives are significant, what if there is an infinite number of lives, and an infinite number of those lives are identical to yours? This hardly boosts one's sense of importance. In one universe, your equivalent may have made a slightly different decision, and the consequences may have been significant. I'd rather not think about it.

Chapter 6 is "Has Physics Ruled Out Free Will?" Hossenfelder concludes:

According to the currently established laws of nature, the future is determined by the past, except for the occasional quantum events that we cannot influence. Whether you take that to mean that free will does not exist depends on your definition of free will.

Although I'm hardly qualified on this topic, my feeling is that it is possible that "quantum events" may also be found to fit a yet-to-be-discovered deterministic model. This would mean that everything that has occurred in this universe was predetermined, i.e., free will does not exist.

"Is Consciousness Computable?" is an interview with Roger Penrose. Penrose thinks that consciousness may not fit within a deterministic model. I think that it does. This is one of the areas in which physicists are prone to making mistakes. My feeling is that physicists are not generally competent in biology. I think, for example, that most mammals have a consciousness quite similar to ours. This means that, if consciousness is unique, we're no more unique than chipmunks. One of the main themes throughout human history has been to show how humans are somehow superior to other animals. We're not that different. I think that Roger Penrose has seen better days as a thinker.

Consciousness is also discussed in Chapter 8. There, Hossenfelder makes a good point in a rather amusing way:

We don't yet know exactly how to define consciousness, or exactly which brain functions are necessary for it, but its a property we observe exclusively in physical systems. Because, well, we observe only physical systems. If you think your own thoughts are an exception to this, try thinking without a brain. Good luck.

In some respects, Hossenfelder is more tolerant of ideas that she disagrees with than I am. For example, she doesn't agree with Nick Bostrom's idea that the universe could be a computer simulation. I agree with her and would not even have bothered to discuss Bostrom's ideas. Similarly, although she is not religious, she is reluctant to criticize religious people. My view is that religions serve an evolutionary purpose for humans. Historically, we have needed them both to help maintain cohesive groups and to provide a kind of assurance of our place in the universe, given that we are conscious and the answers are beyond our comprehension. I think that Hossenfelder's understanding of evolution is similar to mine, but that, because she is not a biologist, she may not understand all of the implications of being a biological entity. To me, this means that everything about us has come to be for survival reasons. Physicists tend to see mathematics as an objective way to discuss reality, whereas I see it as an evolutionary development that is dependent on biology for its existence.  In my view, mathematics exists only because humans communicate with language, and mathematics is the most precise language that we've developed. I would not have given space to Max Tegmark, who thinks that the universe is a mathematical entity. In the books I've discussed by Frans de Waal and Giorgio Vallortigara, evidence is provided that other animals are conscious and even have rudimentary mathematical skills. My interpretation is that consciousness is nothing special and is simply a byproduct of sophisticated brains. Without evolution, mathematics would not exist.

I should mention an anecdote that I read many years ago. When asked how he came up with an idea, Einstein described how he had an odd sort of physical reaction when it occurred to him. It had nothing to do with mathematics, and sounded to me like an intuitive insight. The process of expressing it mathematically was separate, and sometimes he needed help with that.

One area that Hossenfelder doesn't specifically discuss is morality. For me, it is important to understand that morality is also a product of evolution. I have been writing about this for several years now and am amazed that no one else seems to have this opinion. A lot of time could be saved by ignoring philosophical treatises on morality, free will and consciousness. Contemporary physics pundits can get into ruts if they indulge their philosophy colleagues too much.

Towards the end of the book, there is a discussion of AGI, and Hossenfelder's views are similar to mine. I think the main danger is that it will fall into the wrong hands, not that it will inherently be a menace to us.

On the whole, I found reading this book to be an interesting and challenging exercise. However, if you're like me, you may not have anyone to discuss it with. Most people never think about these topics, and they can be quite scary.