As indicated in the previous
chapter, testable assertions are the hallmark of science, and I’ll expand on
this scientific property within the context of political action later in this
chapter. But for the moment, we should remember that in the political arena,
assertions are testable only within an historical framework. In other words,
politics is an historical discipline with its own rules of evidence that may
not match those of proximal or normal science, i.e., the kind of science that
does experiments with material amenable to experimentation. Within the realm of
history, you can’t really do “experiments,” as we properly define the term; you
can only assess the validity of some assertion by looking back on what actually
happened when you acted as if that assertion was true. There is no better
example of this kind of historical assertion testing than the Iraq war that
began with the invasion of that nation by a group of other nations, led mostly
by the United States,
in 2003. The assertion was that Saddam was developing, or had, and intended to use “weapons of
mass destruction,” the assertion that Iraqis would quickly adopt an
American-style democracy once their dictator was overthrown, the assertion that
Iraq would be a business-friendly working environment shortly after hostilities
ceased, all were tested and shown to be false. But unlike a real experiment,
say involving bacterial metabolism, you can’t go back and start over with Iraq.
The vast majority of all
politicians rely on public approval to sustain their employment. In addition,
once in office, the trappings of power can become quite seductive. These two
facets of political life are among the main reasons that politicians are so
scientifically illiterate, or at least act as if they are. Nevertheless, most
if not all positions occupied by politicians also involve major
responsibilities, compliance with various laws, ceremonial activities, and
nowadays, public scrutiny of religious beliefs and behaviors demonstrating
“faith.” Nobody who professes to be an
atheist should be so stupid as to spend money running for public office in the
United States of America, no matter how lowly that office might be or how
qualified the individual. Elected membership on the Lancaster County, Nebraska,
Weed Control Authority comes immediately to mind; no self-proclaimed secular
humanists need apply. Thus politicians are scientifically illiterate, or act as
if they are, because the demands of public office, the need for public
approval, and the constant scrutiny of their faith-based behavior, all
job-related phenomena that work to make such literacy a liability instead of an
asset.
Besides the factors of
responsibility, approval, and scrutiny, it is also important to remember that
mobs want answers and solutions, not questions and problems, from their
leaders. In general, science tends to produce more questions and problems than
answers and solutions. This tendency derives from the fundamental nature of
science as an activity. Elsewhere in this book I use the metaphor of an island
of understanding in a sea of ignorance to explain why science produces more
problems than solutions. Remember that as an island grows in size (increase in
understanding), its shoreline (the boundary between understanding and
ignorance) also grows. All the questions and problems lie along this boundary.
In addition, to continue with the metaphor, the larger an island gets, the more
geographically diverse it tends to become. If that geographic diversity
involves mountains, then we have a high perch from which to observe the sea of
ignorance. Routinely such observation shows that sea to be much larger than we imagined
when we were only down on our hands and knees in the sand studying nature at
the [metaphorical] shore.
The familiar case of New Orleans vs. Hurricane
Katrina beautifully illustrates all these points about breadth of knowledge,
comparative thinking, observations, history, and the basic properties of
science. Breadth of knowledge is perhaps the most important factor that should
have been considered in the political decisions involving the Mississippi Delta
ecology. Thus a broadly educated politician would never simply ask how much
money an ecological project—for example, a system of levees and an artificial
river (the New Orleans shipping channel)—costs, or how much money the public is
willing to spend on such a project. Instead, as a minimum, a broadly educated
politician considers history, socio-economic conditions, the probability of
disaster, the quality of expertise consulted, whether or not that expertise is
in agreement with other expertise from diverse sources, the nature of
observations, the process of analysis, and whether the process itself has
obvious flaws or internal contradictions. In other words, to really assess the
adequacy of New Orleans
levees, one would have to study the Mississippi Delta using approaches that
would be quite familiar to any evolutionary biologist.
Research over the past half
century, i.e., activity increasing both the size of our island of understanding
and the length of its shoreline boundary with the sea of ignorance, clearly
revealed (produced) more questions and problems about the Mississippi Delta
region than answers and solutions. Such research involved new technologies such
as satellite imagery, geographic information system software, and
socio-economic analysis, as well as experience derived from study of the Achafalaya
River and its basin using more conventional methods—measurement of stream flow,
sedimentation and erosion rates, pressures on diversion dams and gates, etc.
Over the years, the scientific community came to realize that the initial
problem and its solution, namely, keeping water out of New Orleans by building
levees, was actually only a small part of a much larger problem, specifically,
long term management of the interrelationship between a nation’s economy and
one of the world’s largest rivers. This kind of collective activity, in which a
truly massive ecosystem is the primary player at the center of a highly
integrated, far-reaching, transportation and financial network, does not lend
itself to governance by mobs that want answers and solutions, not questions and
problems, from their leaders. Instead, this kind of system requires almost
Jeffersonian dignity, patience, foresight, and breadth, traits that don’t
survive well in our Third Millennium media-driven electioneering environment.
Such a broad education, and its
use in a public arena, is therefore a lot, indeed probably too much, to ask of
any modern politician. But then, of course, it is the job of any newspaper
reporter half-way qualified for his or her job to ask the right questions of
elected officials in order to reveal their breadth of knowledge, in situations
involving natural phenomena, or, in the best of all worlds, to inspire those
politicians to acquire knowledge, wisdom, and some decent honest advisers who
are not just sycophants. Sadly, perhaps for reasons that are deeply embedded in
the human DNA, as a general rule we are not patient with careful analysis,
complex interactions between elements of nature, varying degrees of
probability, and leaders who are honest about the chances that disaster will
befall us. Instead, we seem to admire leaders who are strong advocates of
actions based on our beliefs and desires, who inspire us to be courageous, and
who tend to simplify a complex universe down to issues and explanations we can
understand. And leaders who can convince us we are in danger, and seem to be
fighting that danger in an obvious way, are the ones we seem to admire the
most. None of this typical interaction between a population and its chosen
leaders promotes scientific literacy or honesty about the relationship between
nature and people.
INTELLIGENT DESIGNER is available on kindle, nook, and smashwords.com, and as a nice paperback from createspace.com
