book #27

I can't remember for sure when or where I bought Alan Lightman's Time Travel & Papa Joe's Pipe (1984; pretty illustrations by Lazlo Kubinyi), but I have a feeling it was during a stay with us by dear friend and wonderful artist Martina Pilcerova. The three of us went out yard-saling and came across a sale where there were lots of yummy science books with very low prices on them. Squeals of delight from Ms Pilcerova and myself; rolling of the eyeballs from Pam. I think most of the contents of that yard sale went back to Slovakia in due course, but a few goodies remained here in NJ, and one of that number was, I believe, Time Travel & Papa Joe's Pipe.

At the time this collection of essays was published, Lightman was at the Smithsonian; he later moved on to MIT and to greater literary fame with the novel Einstein's Dreams (1993).

Time Travel & Papa Joe's Pipe is one of those old-fashioned essay collections that has no real theme to it: it's just a random walk through various scientific topics that for one reason or another caught Lightman's attention. One of the delights of such books, if they're good ones, is that they, as it were, comprise so much more than just their own texts: included also in the package are all the ideas of one's own that the texts spark off.

The essays here were almost all published individually elsewhere before being assembled for this book; one of the two original to the book ("Students and Teachers") stands out as the dullest, the other ("Mirage") is a fantasia that's remarkable for its charm. All in all, the book gave me the feeling I was being entertained over the port by a series of after-dinner conversations with a genial, whimsically knowledgeable host. And from time to time there'd be a passage that whopped me between the eyeballs with its insight. One of these I noted a while back (http://realthog.livejournal.com/36414.html) when I first started the book (I've been reading it an essay or two at a time alongside other books). Here's another, from the last essay in the collection, "Jam Tomorrow", in which Lightman's talking about probability and its laws:

Weighing the odds in personal decisions involves a morass of perceptive and emotional factors seeping past the neat analysis of binomial theorems, combinatorics, and Gaussian distributions. What were the perceptions of the citizens of Tacoma, Washington, who were recently asked to choose between an uncertain risk of cancer from arsenic in the air and the loss of 800 jobs from the closing of a copper smelting factory?

It's a question that stopped me in my mental tracks for a few moments. Although I'm far from any kind of expert in probability and the application of its laws to real life, I've had for years a sort of complacent assumption of working familiarity with the general notion. In a very simple, graceful fashion Lightman had shown me that this assumption of mine was quite false.

It's hard (and anyway pointless) to pick a standout essay among these: they're not all as good as each other, but there are several which are very, very good. The one that's had me thinking the most, though, is "Is the Earth Round or Flat?". A silly question, you might think, because of course we all know the answer . . . yet Lightman points out, perfectly correctly, that with the exception of a very few people we don't know it: we believe it to be the case that the Earth is approximately spherical. Far from all of us have ever observed ships or landmasses disappearing from the bottom up as they recede over the horizon. Very few of us have been astronauts. We've seen the photos that astronauts and space probes have taken, but photos can mislead.

Our belief in the oblate sphericity of our planet is obviously extremely well founded, but there are still a few Flat Earth societies scattered around, and the members of those would doubtless say their belief was well founded, too. (I remember years ago reading a flat-Earther explanation of the bit about ships disappearing from the bottom up: it involved atmospheric refraction.) There are people who believe we live in the inside of a hollow Earth. And so on.

It struck me that here we see a perfect exemplification of the reason why I become so distressed by the constant misapplication of the term "belief system", a misapplication that arises because the word "belief" has more than one meaning: there is its meaning of "rational conclusion based on all available evidence" and there is its almost diametrically opposed meaning of "faith". The former implies an openness to change, perhaps in light of fresh evidence or a reappraisal of the logic that led to the conclusion; the latter implies an impermeability to the notion of change. Products of the latter can, I think, be rightfully described as belief systems. Products of the former are -- like the sphericity of the Earth -- the nearest things we have to cast-iron facts. They are not merely belief systems.

In any contest between a scheme of interlinked rational conclusions (or "theory", to use the term in its scientific as opposed to its popular meaning) and a belief system, the burden of proof lies upon the belief system. There is no need for me to advance a proof that the world is round; if you believe it's really flat, the onus is entirely upon you to do the proving. There is no need for me to prove that the basic mechanism of evolution is by natural selection, or that evolution is (ahem) a fact of life; if you think otherwise, you must present proof -- and a whole stack of astonishingly convincing proof at that. Similarly, rationalism is the default view of the universe, and in no way describable as a belief system; whereas any explanation of reality that invokes the supernatural is. That the Earth is approximately 4.6 billion years old is a statement for which I do not need to offer supporting evidence, because that's a conclusion reached by countless independent researchers working in a multiplicity of scientific fields; that the Earth is some 6000 years old is a statement relying on a belief system -- indeed, on a belief system within a belief system. And so on.

I've spent more wordage here talking about the ideas of mine that Lightman's short essay sparked off than I have about the essay itself. That's exactly as it should be, I feel, with the best of scientific essays: they're not just entertainments or elucidations, they're catalysts.

I wonder if Hallmark sell cards for it?

I'm saying absolutely nothing more about this.

(no subject)

Can't quite remember why I'm on the e-mailing list of Congressman Robert Wexler (https://www.wexlerforcongress.com/index.asp) except that he's among those Dems who seems genuinely to be trying to do his job rather than just toady up to the lobbyists and produce the occasional piece of faux-progressiveness to keep the proles at bay: he is A Good Thing, in other words. And almost every time one of his e-mails arrives I'm mighty glad I subscribe. Today's offering contains a transcript of an exchange he had in the House this morning with Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI:

RWexler: . . . An LA Times article from October, 2007 quotes one senior federal enforcement official as saying quote “the CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the decision not to be involved” end quote. The article goes on to say that some FBI officials went to you and that you quote “pulled many of the agents back from playing even a supporting role in the investigations to avoid exposing them to legal jeopardy” end quote. My question Mr. Director, I congratulate you for pulling the FBI agents back, but why did you not take more substantial steps to stop the interrogation techniques that your own FBI agents were telling you were illegal? Why did you not initiate criminal investigations when your agents told you the CIA and the Department of Defense were engaging in illegal interrogation techniques, and rather than simply pulling your agents out, shouldn’t you have directed them to prevent any illegal interrogations from taking place?

RMueller: I can go so far sir as to tell you that a protocol in the FBI is not to use coercion in any of our interrogations or our questioning and we have abided by our protocol.

RW: I appreciate that. What is the protocol say when the FBI knows that the CIA is engaging or the Department of Defense is engaging in an illegal technique? What does the protocol say in that circumstance?

RM: We would bring it up to appropriate authorities and determine whether the techniques were legal or illegal.

RW: Did you bring it up to appropriate authorities?

RM: All I can tell you is that we followed our own protocols.

RW: So you can’t tell us whether you brought it; when your own FBI agents came to you and said the CIA is doing something illegal which caused you to say don’t you get involved; you can’t tell us whether you then went  to whatever authority?

RM: I’ll tell you we followed our own protocols.

RW: And what was the result?

RM: We followed our own protocols. We followed our protocols. We did not use coercion. We did not participate in any instance where coercion was used to my knowledge.

RW: Did the CIA use techniques that were illegal?

RM: I can’t comment on what has been done by another agency and under what authorities the other agency may have taken actions.

RW: Why can’t you comment on the actions of another agency?

RM: I leave that up to the other agency to answer questions with regard to the actions taken by that agency and the legal authorities that may apply to them.

RW: Are you the chief legal law enforcement agency in the United States?

RM: I am the Director of the FBI.

RW: And you do not have authority with respect to any other governmental agency in the United States? Is that what you’re saying?

RM: My authority is given to me to investigate. Yes we do.

RW: Did somebody take away that authority with respect to the CIA?

RM: Nobody has taken away the authority. I can tell you what our protocol was, and how we followed that protocol.

RW: Did anybody take away the authority with respect to the Department of Defense?

RM: I’m not certain what you mean.

RW: Your authority to investigate an illegal torture technique.

RM: There has to be a legal basis for us to investigate, and generally that legal basis is given to us by the Department of Justice. Any interpretations of the laws given to us by the Department of Justice….
(talking over each other)

RW:  But apparently your own agents made a determination that the actions by the CIA and the Department of Defense were illegal, so much so that you authorized, ordered, your agents not to participate. But that’s it.

RM: I’ve told you what our protocol was, and I’ve indicated that we’ve adhered to our protocol throughout.

RW: My time is up. Thank you very much Mr. Director.

One very obvious point is that the House of Congress practice of limiting so inflexibly the time members are allowed to ask questions is not always in the service of democracy: I can quite understand how the rule came into place, to stop bullyboys with loud voices obstructing all other questioning of a witness, but at the same time it has its drawbacks -- as here: just when Wexler might have been putting Mueller under pressure to cast a little light on the administration of justice (or otherwise) in this fair land, he has to stop.

But a second point, and one that screams to be addressed, is that something has surely gone very awry if the country's major law-enforcement agency is not permitted to enforce the law.