Letters to a Young Scientist (5 page)
Once people thought that Earth was the center of the universe and lay flat and unmoving while the sun rotated around it. Now we know that the sun is a star, one of two hundred million in the Milky Way galaxy alone. Most hold planets in their gravitational thrall, and many of these almost certainly resemble Earth. Do the Earthlike planets also harbor life? Probably, in my opinion, and, thanks to the scientific method, furnished with improved optics and spectroscopic analyses, we will know in a short time.
Once it was believed that the human race arose full-blown in its present form as a supernatural event. Now we understand, in sharp contrast, that our species descended over six million years from African apes that were also the ancestors of modern chimpanzees.
As Freud once remarked, Copernicus demonstrated that Earth is not at the center of the universe, Darwin that we are not the center of life, and he, Freud, that we are not even in control of our own minds. Of course, the great psychoanalyst must share credit with Darwin, among others, but the point is correct that the conscious mind is only part of the thinking process.
Overall, through science we have begun to answer in a more consistent and convincing way two of the great and simple questions of religion and philosophy: Where do we come from? and, What are we? Of course, organized religion claims to have answered these questions long ago, using supernatural creation stories. You might then well ask, can a religious believer who accepts one such story still do good science? Of course he can. But he will be forced to split his worldview into two domains, one secular and the other supernatural, and stay within the secular domain as he works. It would not be difficult for him to find endeavors in scientific research that have no immediate relation to theology. This suggestion is not meant to be cynical, nor does it imply a closing of the scientific mind.
If proof were found of a supernatural entity or force that affects the real world, the claim all organized religions make, it would change everything. Science is not inherently against such a possibility. Researchers in fact have every reason to make such a discovery, if any such is feasible. The scientist who achieved it would be hailed as the Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, all put together, of a new era in history. In fact, countless reports have been made throughout the history of science that claim evidence of the supernatural. All, however, have been based on attempts to prove a negative proposition. It usually goes something like this: “We haven’t been able to find an explanation for such-and-such a phenomenon; therefore it must have been created by God.” Present-day versions still circulating include the argument that because science cannot yet provide a convincing account of the origin of the universe and of the setting of the universal physical constants, there must be a divine Creator. A second argument heard is that because some molecular structures and reactions in the cell seem too complex (to the author of the argument, at least) to have been assembled by natural selection, they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. And one more: because the human mind, and especially free will as a key part of it, appear beyond the capability of the material cause and effect, they must have been inserted by God.
The difficulty with reliance on negative hypotheses to support faith-based science is that if they are wrong, they are also very vulnerable to decisive disproof. Just one testable proof of a real, physical cause destroys the argument for a supernatural cause. And precisely this in fact has been a large part of the history of science, as it has unfolded, phenomenon by phenomenon. The world rotates around the sun, the sun is one star out of two hundred million or more in one galaxy out of hundreds of billions of galaxies, humanity descended from African apes, genes change by random mutations, the mind is a physical process in a physical organ. Yielding to naturalistic, real-world understanding, the divine hand has withdrawn bit by bit from almost all of space and time. The remaining opportunities to find evidence of the supernatural are closing fast.
As a scientist, keep your mind open to any possible phenomenon remaining in the great unknown. But never forget that your profession is exploration of the real world, with no preconceptions or idols of the mind accepted, and testable truth the only coin of the realm.
The potential community of contacts in contemporary human relationships (lines) is illustrated by political blogs (dots) in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. The same applies to disciplines of science. Modified from “The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: divided they blog,” by Lada A. Adamic and Natalie Glance,
Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Link Discovery (Link KDD’05)
1: 36–43 (2005).
T
O KNOW HOW
scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively. Practicing it yourself while you receive your technical training will bring you close to the heart of the scientific enterprise. When earlier I said you can surely succeed, I also assumed that you are able to daydream. But be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages. When a workable idea emerges, the research becomes more routine, and also much easier to think about and explain to others. This is the part I have always enjoyed the most.
Since so much of good science—and perhaps all of great science—has its roots in fantasy, I suggest that you yourself engage in a bit right now. Where would you like to be, what would you most like to be doing professionally ten years from now, twenty years, fifty? Next, imagine that you are much older and looking back on a successful career. What kind of great discovery, and in what field of science, would you savor most having made?
I recommend creating scenarios that end with goals, then choosing ones you might wish to pursue. Make it a practice to indulge in fantasy about science. Make it more than just an occasional exercise. Daydream a lot. Make talking to yourself silently a relaxing pastime. Give lectures to yourself about important topics that you need to understand. Talk with others of like mind. By their dreams you shall know them.
Speaking of dreams, I once had dinner with Michael Crichton, the renowned thriller and science fiction writer. We talked about our respective professions. The movie
Rising Sun
, based on his book of the same name, had recently been released, and at the time we met it was stirring criticism over its perceived political message. The plot was about the effort of a Japanese high-tech corporation to expand its control in American industry by espionage and cover-up. At the time of the movie’s release (1993), the Japanese economy was surging and its companies were buying pieces of America, from Rockefeller Center to Hawaiian real estate. The overreaching theme that might be read into the story was that Japan, having failed to build an empire through force, was now trying to build one through economic dominance.
Crichton knew of earlier struggles over my 1975 book
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
, which created a firestorm of protest from social scientists and radical leftist writers. They were incensed by my argument that human beings have instincts, and therefore that a gene-based human nature exists. At times the protest reached the level of interruption of my classes and public demonstrations. One in Harvard Square demanded my dismissal from Harvard.
Crichton asked, “How did you handle all that pressure?” It was embarrassing at times for me and my family, I said, but intellectually not difficult. It was obviously a contest of science against political ideology, and past history has shown that if the research is sound, science always eventually comes out on top. And it did this time, in favor of sociobiology, already at the time of our dinner conversation a well-established discipline. I suggested that the controversy over
Rising Sun
, which in any case is a work of fiction, was not a bad thing. It helped to sharpen different viewpoints over an important issue. Better to let it play out than encouraged to fester.
I took the opportunity to share with Crichton a thought experiment I had conducted that had been stimulated by his book and the movie
Jurassic Park
, the latter released the same year as
Rising Sun
. In
Jurassic Park
a billionaire hires a paleontologist and other experts to create dinosaurs for a park he wants to set up. This being science fiction, the project of course succeeds. The method devised was ingenious. First acquire pieces of amber formed as fossilized tree resin at the time of dinosaurs. Some of the fragments will contain well-preserved remains of mosquitoes. That much works in principle: I’ve studied hundreds of real fossil ants in amber from the Cretaceous Period, near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. The next step in the plot was to find mosquitoes that still hold remnants of blood sucked from the veins of dinosaurs. Extract the dinosaur DNA they contain, and implant it in chicken eggs to grow dinosaurs. This is good science fiction. Each step verges on the far end of probability even though it is almost (notice that as a scientist I say almost!) certainly impossible.
I told Crichton of a somewhat similar experiment I had imagined that was really and truly possible. In the Harvard collection are large numbers of ants preserved in amber from the Dominican Republic, roughly twenty-five million years in age (younger than hundred-million-year-old dinosaurs, but still
old
). I had analyzed this fossil collection thoroughly and described a number of species new to science. Among these the most abundant was one I named
Azteca alpha
. A living species
Azteca muelleri
, which appears to be a direct evolutionary descendant or otherwise close relative of
Azteca alpha
, still lives in Central America. These ants use large quantities of pheromones, acrid-smelling terpenoids, which they release into the air to alarm nestmates whenever the colony is threatened by invaders.
I told Crichton that I might be able to extract remnants of the pheromone from the
Azteca alpha
remains, inject them into an
Azteca muelleri
nest, and get the alarm response. In other words, I could deliver a message from one ant colony to another across a span of twenty-five million years. This had Crichton’s attention. He asked if I planned to do it. I said, not yet. I didn’t have time, and still don’t. In this particular dream there is too much of the circus trick and too little of real science—too little chance, that is, to discover something really new.
I’ll end this letter by telling you how I conceive of the creative process of both a novelist like Crichton and a scientist. (I have been both.) The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper. Keep in mind that innovators in both literature and science are basically dreamers and storytellers. In the early stages of the creation of both literature and science, everything in the mind is a story. There is an imagined ending, and usually an imagined beginning, and a selection of bits and pieces that might fit in between. In works of literature and science alike, any part can be changed, causing a ripple among the other parts, some of which are discarded and new ones added. The surviving fragments are variously joined and separated, and moved about as the story forms. One scenario emerges, then another. The scenarios, whether literary or scientific in nature, compete with one another. Some overlap. Words and sentences (or equations or experiments) are tried to make sense of the whole thing. Early on, an end to all the imagining is conceived. It arrives at a wondrous denouement (or scientific breakthrough). But is it the best, is it true? To bring the end safely home is the goal of the creative mind. Whatever that might be, wherever located, however expressed, it begins as a phantom that rises, gains detail, then at the last moment either fades to be replaced, or, like the mythical giant Antaeus touching Mother Earth, gains strength. Inexpressible thoughts throughout flit along the edges. As the best fragments solidify, they are put in place and moved about, and the story grows until it reaches an inspired end.