Were it not for his untimely death in 1650, Rene Descartes would be (and fully expected to be) 412 years old by now and more convinced than ever, “I still think; therefore I still am.”
We remember him as the French philosopher who held that mind and body are distinct substances – which makes me think of calf brains and veal.
Actually, Descartes spent most of his adult life not in France but in and around Amsterdam, working as a physician and researching new cures for mental and physical afflictions. These were the days when the Dutch East India Company had cornered a major share of the spice trade, and the herbs they were bringing back from Sri Lanka and the Moluccas were regarded not only as flavorings but, primarily, as medicines.
It was nutmeg for diarrhea, headaches, and colds; ginger for dyspepsia; cloves for toothache; pepper for fever and flatulence. Descartes studied these along with animal organs from the butcher shop. He had also experimented with mathematical methods for curing disease, which fortunately have been lost. He believed that his scientific discoveries might extend his own lifespan to perhaps 500 years.
Cogito ergo sum, sum, sum.
As attending physician to the exiled Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, he treated her chronic headaches, depression, and rashes. His advice, as reported by Steven Shapin: “Take some ‘refreshing broths which contain nothing but kitchen herbs’ and, above all, look on the bright side of life.”
Descartes was not only a philosopher, physician, and psychotherapist but also a formidable mathematician who co-founded analytical geometry and a physicist who advanced the science of optics.
But anyone can have a bad day. In a careless moment, having misplaced his tin of nutmeg as well as the decimal point in his projected lifespan, he died of a chill at 54.
Excerpt from Hilary Mantel’s review of the Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained in the Jan 24 London Review of Books.
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“…If you hang around the anomalous long enough, you see that most people within its range have an unexpressed but quite sophisticated sense of ambiguity. They go to a ‘psychic fair’ in a spirit of temporary suspension of disbelief: it is as if they had picked up a novel. For a limited time, events unfold around them as a powerful second reality … Two hours pass; they close the book or rise from their seat, they shut down that other world, run out into the high street and go looking for a pizza.
“In Britain, where mainstream religion is dwindling into a mix of apathy and superstition, alternative views are not part of the counter-culture but part of popular culture …
“We are only in the market for fun-size beliefs, unlike the US, where the aggressive fundamentalist irrationality of evangelical Christianity moves real money around, affects how children are educated, and darkens believers’ perceptions of other cultures.
“On the whole, we have the better part:
“Superstition is easier to accommodate in the body politic than religion. It is less divisive: no one ever went to war about what you should chant when you see a magpie, or was burned at the stake for denying the reality of the Loch Ness Monster.”
So the White Queen says to Alice, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Lewis Wolpert uses this as the title for his book on the evolutionary origins of human beliefs (Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, W.W.Norton). We can’t do justice to it here, but it’s a fascinating synthesis – tying together three of the milestones on the road to becoming human: tool use, language, and the habit of causal inference. In his schema, the human trait of thinking in terms of cause and effect was engendered, or at least reinforced, by the use of tools, eventually developing the basis of all science and technology.
Trouble is, when we can’t identify the cause, we make one up. Or, we believe some conjecture, fable, or fairy tale that someone else made up – which opens the floodgates to religious and paranormal beliefs, superstitions, miracle cures, conspiracy theories, and political spin.
Folked-Up Medicine
On the subject of miracle cures and believing impossible things, chemistry professor and Washington Post food science columnist Robert L. Wolke has found a treasure trove of examples and shares them with the readers of Skeptical Inquirer in their January issue.
Dr. Wolke ran across an issue of a tabloid called Lighthouse, which calls itself “a chronicle of meaningful living.” Actually, it’s mostly adverttising, and he compiled lists of the therapies being offered, the promises they make, and the academic degrees claimed by their practitioners. A few are recognizable – MBA, MD, PhD, and RN – but then there are ABMP, DMQ, LPC, NBCCH, SSRM, and 21 others including AISI, which I’ve always thought stood for the American Iron & Steel Institute.
The catalogue of therapies, products, and services runs to 156 entries, so we can only cite a few: ioncleanse detoxification, lymphatic therapy, Lomi Lomi (I and II), mandala assessment, angel cards, group angel parties, hermetics (comes from the Greek for “We ain’t telling”), Vedic vibration technology, and regression therapy (disclosure: in a prior incarnation, I was a dial tone).
And what wonders might you experience from such esoteric nostrums? Again, a few of many promised epiphanies:
Being in touch with your totem animals, freedom from undetected obstacles to your soul, stronger connections to guides and angels, enhancement of your stem cells, the opening of your third eye (and the procurement of new glasses?), the clearing of your aura, and of course health, wealth, strength, success, and fulfilled desires.
All this, and trembling in anticipation of Lomi Lomi III.
Chimps vs. People
Creationists bristle at any mention of the fact that we share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees. Well, they had better stop bristling and hit the books because they’re being left in the dust by five year old chimps.
Japanese researchers set up a carefully monitored match of young chimps vs.young adult humans in tests of short-term memory, and the chimps won. These particular chimps had been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, which may be more than some creationists have mastered, but the chimps had to compete against bright college students. Shown a screen displaying the numbers in random arrangement, the chimps and humans were to touch each one in numerical order. But when they touched #1, the rest turned into blank squares, so to finish the job they had to remember where each number was positioned.
On that test, the chimps made the same number of errors as the humans but finished faster. On a similar test using only five numbers – flashed on the screen for just two to four tenths of a second — a chimp named Ayumu beat all nine student competitors by a wide margin.
One consolation: Ayumu’s mom did even worse than the college students. Apparently, this is a skill that dissipates with age in both species.
Glowing Report on Cat Cloning
If anyone asks permission to clone your cat, say no.
South Korean researchers from two universities report they have cloned three Turkish Angora cats, modifying them in the process. They took skin cells from a cat and inserted a gene that codes for a red fluorescent protein before transplanting the modified cells into eggs.
Result: the cats glow in the dark. What an achievement.
It’s the first time cats with modified genes have been cloned, and the scientists say that such animals will be enormously useful in developing new cures for genetic diseases.
Me, I saw that report and threw out every red fluorescent protein in my medicine cabinet.
Mike Huckabee is a Baptist minister from Arkansas, and I happen to know from personal experience that the Baptists invented waterboarding.
When I was a kid, they used to come down to our swimning hole at McKissock’s farm, on a bend in Glade Run creek, and chase us all out of the water so they could baptize their new recruits.
There was no Passenger Bill of Rights for the Baptist Rites of Passage. They held each one of them underwater three times and mumbled things until the lucky inductee was damn near drowned. I was a Catholic kid. We used a “font” in the back of the church and just sprinkled some water on babies’ heads, so I thought the Baptists were barbaric.
I won’t vote for Huckabee even if his running mate is Mitt Romney, a loyal American who believes that the Garden of Eden is in the Middle West, not the Middle East. Or at least that’s what he’s supposed to believe, because Mormon founder Joseph Smith proclaimed that Eden is in Missouri and said that, after the Fall, the descendants of Adam and Eve moved down the Missouri and Mississippi valleys.
That would suggest that Noah was actually Huckleberry Finn, and I’m not going to waste my vote on that. I mean, even aside from the waterboarding, Noah was just a fictional character.
Last night God told me not to send a contribution to Oral Roberts University to help them out of their financial jam. I was so disappointed.
I reminded her that Richard Roberts – Oral’s son – had just reported to the students that God had told him to resign. She just laughed.
I mentioned that Richard had quoted her. He said God had told him, “We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit…is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”
God said, no, she doesn’t talk like that. She said when she really does talk to people she says things like, “Thou shalt not embezzle money that good people have donated to do the Lord’s work.”
She said she used to talk to Richard’s dad, Oral, but that it was just a joke.
“I was thinking, what would happen if we assembled 5,000 of the most gullible kids in America all in one place, and then zapped them with about 30 more points of IQ?”
I asked when the zapping would happen.
“It won’t,” she said. “I changed my mind. Since I know everything, I know that if you suddenly turned 5,000 young Republicans into young Democrats in Tulsa, there would be bloodshed.”
Under the Wahhabi Islamists who hold sway in Saudi Arabia, the Koran doubles as the Saudi constitution and Sharia is its law – stoning for adultery, beheading of witches, lesser penalties or none for wife beating and rape.
The judges – all Muslim clerics – believe their own interpretations represent the will of God.
Sound like anyone we know? (hint: he wears a robe.)
On the U.S. Supreme Court, the loudest of the Wahhabi Wook-Awikes uses his own peculiar construction of the U.S. Constitution as his Koran and believes his interpretations represent the will of the framers – except, of course, when he has to turn activist (Shazaam/Boom) to stop the recount in a presidential election so that the losing Republican can be installed in the White House (Mecca must be kept free of infidels).
But let’s not take facetious liberties with anointed literalists. Though Scalia, like Islamic fundamentalists, wants us all to return to a past that never existed – free of gays (like Iran?), free of uppity minorities, free of people named Ruth Bader Ginsburg – in truth, there is a difference between Sharia and Scalia. The Saudis are actually trying to reform their court system.
They’re reducing the power of their own right-wing justices – the Judiciary Council, which is packed with the most extreme reactionaries in the whole reactionary kingdom.
Those guys will be reassigned to administrative work, and a new Supreme Court will be appointed. Who might turn up on that body remains to be seen, but we’d be happy to help. We have four or five Wahhabi Wook-Awikes we’d love to trade, say, for a low draft choice or a barrel of oil apiece.
It’s time for Hollywood to come up with a Scalia movie starring Danny DeVito.
I wish I had better news to report, but – as usual – the latest dispatches from the world of science are relatively useless. Still you should know what they’ve discovered.
1. Viruses are Republicans. No brains. No morals. Nasty, brutish, and short.
2. Enzymes are Democrats. Natural catalysts, except the ones currently in Congress, which consists almost entirely of adipose tissue.
3. Bacteria are Independents. They freely exchange DNA, switching sides to gain small advantages rather than waiting to evolve. Examples: e -coli and j-liebermania.
4. Energy Crisis?. There isn’t any. All the energy our nation could possibly use is pent up in road rage, airline rage, and anti-Bush/Cheney rage. The trick is to harness this latent force for useful work, a project currently blocked by fatty deposits in Congress.
5. An Electronic Black Hole. TV writer and blogger Chris Kelly of L.A. has discovered an anti-Hillary website (StopHerNow.com) that is so weak it drains your computer battery, house wiring, TV, and refrigerator.
6. Watched water boils after all.
7. Orangutans ride bicycles. No, check that. Orangutans have been observed to display bipedalism in Sumatra. That throws into a cocked hat the prevailing theory that more modern hominids were the first to stand erect, thus freeing the hands and paving the way for touch-typing, eyebrow pencils, AK47s, and cognitive dissonance.
8. One for the Gyppers. Turns out the Korean team caught faking evidence of stem cell cloning in 2005 had accidentally made an even more significant breakthrough. They had produced stem cells from an unfertilized mouse egg – thus removing the process from all religious objections since no embryo was involved. But they didn’t realize they had done it.
Moral: Had he not used steroids, Barry Bonds might be celebrating his 900th home run instead of his 756th.
9. You can grow your own brain. Not in a terrarium, in your head. For decades, we’ve been taught that we’re stuck with the brain we were born with. Now it turns out you can grow new neurons, even if you’re old and sick (as the experimental subjects at Salk Institute were). What factors promote neuron growth? Exercise, estrogen, antidepressants, marijuana, stimulating environments, and high social status. Take your pick.
What factors retard neuron growth? Aging, stress, sleep deprivation, barren environments, and Ritalin. As to the well known correlation between shrunken brains and right-wing politics, researchers have yet to determine which is the cause and which is the effect.
10. Abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work. We all knew that, but the Bush League spent $170 million in 2005 alone on such programs. Then the CDC determined scientifically that all the money was wasted. Of course they were soon bulldozed into removing those findings from their website.
It takes two wrongs to make a right wing.
First, full disclosure. I took eight credits in theology and minored in Thomistic Philosophy at a Catholic university. No, not OPtimistic philosophy – Thomistic, as propounded by Thomas Aquinas, who was later canonized but fortunately escaped unharmed.
Later, I converted to Avarice, Concupiscence, and Sloth; but the point is, I do know about angels, saints, sinners, virtues and vices, mortal sins (felonies) and venial sins (misdemeanors).
The cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, the practice of which, at the moment, risks federal prosecution or, at the very least, vituperation on talk radio.
The Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity, to which some moralizers have added patience, humility, and what used to be called long-sufferingness, later rebranded as suffering catfish.
Abstinence, quite properly, was never part of the deal. Abstinence is a counterfeit virtue developed at the James Dobson hypocrisy factory and espoused by right-wingers and extreme fundamentalists as God’s own political solution to teenage pregnancy and retro-viruses.
Now I learn that among Evangelical Christians, according to several recent studies, teenagers tend to have sex sooner (and with bigger grins on their faces) than mainstream Protestant kids.
Of course people who preach abstinence don’t necessarily practice it, and kids wise up to that fact early on. As for people who do practice it, nobody listens to them anyway. How else would they have become abstinent? So, back to my original question:
Do angels have sex? And, if so, do they sire baby angels to populate the earth?
Empirically, how many angels do you know? And where else would you look for angels – in the loftiest realms of society? How many angels do you see in the White House, the Congress, and the great mega-corporations who decide what you’ll have to pay for gasoline, health care, or cable TV?
And, by the way, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? None, you idiot; stick to the point.
In Darwinian terms, a non-reproducing species is not long for this dog-eat-dog world. (Do dogs eat dogs?) Clearly, angels are absent. Inferentially, either they are abstinent or they use condoms. Or, they never came down from the clouds after all. Absence of evidence is not evidence for abstinence.
Bottom line: there is a significant cleavage between preachment and practice, and teens with significant cleavages are subjected to temptations that militate not only against abstinence but against the very existence of angels.
So what is there left to believe in?
If you’ve tried hard to be a good parent, you should believe in your kids.
There is nothing political in this post. It’s purely intellectual.
Cows have two stomachs. Dinosaurs had two brains, the second one a nest of ganglia mostly devoted to keeping the back feet from stepping on the tail.
Human males are also of two minds. The cranium houses one of them, and the penis has a mind of its own. One of these is much studied. The other has yet to be identified under the microscope, though its autonomy and capriciousness have been thoroughly documented down through the centuries. And now half of all such ruminations – the depressing, anxiety-ridden half – have been collected into a book called Impotence: A Cultural History, by Angus McLaren.
One writer. That’s how many chroniclers were needed to render the definitive history of what penises do on their day off and how people of one age and culture or another have reacted to this state of affairs. All the other writers are frantically busy accounting for what penises do the rest of the time, elegantly distilled in Robin Williams’ succinct summation: the penis has one eye and no conscience.
Those who wish to devote further study to the minds of man can read Stephen Pinker on the cranial mind and brain (he says the mind is what the brain does) or McLaren on the mutinous neurology of the lower lobes.
Our own report concludes with the newly minted Law of Single-Mindedness, which eerily echoes that of quantum entanglement. It is this:
When either mind starts working, the other one shuts down.
Rather than actually write anything today, I thought I should lift some wonderful stuff from the ABC News website. Who knew that a spark of delight still lingered in a TV news network?
I went to a page where the lead story was how the Pentagon spends money to do research on developing armor that renders soldiers invisible (We already had that when I was in the army; it was called AWOL) and arming sharks with implants and cameras to work as spies.
The headline is “Fringe Science Yields ‘Gay Bombs’ and Psychic Teleportation.”
But what clinched my decision to steal rather than write anything is the series of headlines listed under “Related Stories.”
1. Robo-Lobsters and Mind-Controlled Sharks
2. Panel: Case Not Yet Made for New Nuke
3. Non-Lethal Weapon Makes Targets Feel Like They’re on Fire
4. Pentagon Hires New Spokesman
