The following is from a book I'm working on about bipolar recovery. This post is a continuation from my previous post, Cognitive Bias: Even Einstein Fooled ...
Our best defense against our cognitive failings is critical thinking. Two iconic figures leading very different lives employed remarkably similar methods. Both were keen observers and relentless appliers of logic, highly disciplined thinkers never jumping to conclusions but always ready to entertain a wild idea. The first is the most famous fictional detective of all time, the second the most famous natural scientist. In looking for role models who know how to use their brains, one can do no better than Sherlock Holmes and Charles Darwin.
Sherlock Holmes
Holmes and Dr Watson have just met. Instantly, Holmes deduces that Watson has returned from military service in Afghanistan. “From a drop of water,” he informs his new fellow lodger, “the logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.”
That drop of water could be a man’s fingernails, his trouser knees, his shirt cuffs - clear give-aways to a person’s occupation and identity, and, perhaps, his or her complicity in a dastardly crime. “The world,” says Holmes, “is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
Time for Holmes first mystery with Watson, “A Study in Scarlet.” The body is on the floor, blood-red letters on the wall spell, “Rache.” Action …
After careful examination of the crime scene, Holmes informs two Scotland Yard detectives that the murderer was a man. Not only that: “He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of life, had small feet for his height, wore coarse, square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar. He came here with his victim in a four-wheel cab, which was drawn by a horse with three old shoes and a new one on his off fore leg. In all probability the murderer had a florid face, and the finger-nails of his right hand were remarkably long.”
Also, the victim had been poisoned, and by the way: “‘Rache,’ is the German for ‘revenge,’ so don’t waste your time looking for Rachel.”
In the course of solving no end of mysteries, Holmes begins to spot a pattern to some of the crimes. It was as if a criminal mastermind were at work, leading a secret crime empire. A far-fetched idea, to be sure, but it turns out to be the only one that makes sense. As Holmes explained to Watson on numerous occasions: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sure enough, the mastermind is unmasked, a certain Professor Moriarty. In a confrontation, Holmes and his nemesis fall off a cliff together. So, with Holmes being temporarily dead and otherwise indisposed, now is a good time to cue up our second role model.
Charles Darwin
Darwin comes from a tradition of gentlemen scientists, who, in their leisure time, bequeathed to us astronomy, physics, biology, geology, economics, and other disciplines, and in the process changed how we regard our universe, not to mention each other. Starting around the beginning of the seventeenth century and continuing into the twentieth, these gentlemen, plus the odd cleric or two (Darwin falls into both categories) took to collecting rocks and butterflies and such and looking up at the sky and taking long walks in the countryside and poking pointed objects at things. With precious few scientific instruments to work with, their greatest lab and field tool proved to be their heightened powers of observation. But it didn’t stop there. Observation may have given them the data, but logic gave them the ability to run with it. Otherwise, Darwin’s best-known work might have been his multi-volume monograph on barnacles. That opus consumed Darwin for seven years. As a true natural scientist, he simply couldn’t help himself.
When Darwin commenced his work on barnacles in 1847, his ideas on natural selection were already well-formed. Back in the 1830s, he spent five years aboard the Beagle as a naturalist. Traveling down the eastern South American coast, he kept observing seashells where they weren’t supposed to be: on towering coastal cliffs, among fossil bones of extinct mammals, deep in the interior. Up the western coast, high in the Andes, he spotted more seashells. His shipboard reading included Charles Lyle’s Principles of Geology. Already, still in his early twenties, Darwin’s brain was being primed to ask big questions, solve big mysteries.
By the time the Beagle reached the Galapagos islands, Darwin’s attention was mostly on geology. He dutifully collected mockingbird and finch specimens, but it was only on later examination that he realized their significance: The mockingbirds separated themselves out by species, depending on location from island to island. The finches displayed a wide variety of beaks, suited to local conditions - one type of beak for feeding on seeds, another for insects, another for fruit, and so on. From a metaphorical drop of water here, a drop of water there, Darwin was beginning to imagine his own Niagara. It was inquiry from the bottom up - based on careful observation - not the top down. Going at it the other way is a bad idea. In the words of our favorite detective: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
The Darwin Reaction
In late 2010, back when I lived in rural San Diego, I took it upon myself to visit the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, 10 or 12 miles from my home. Until Ken Ham’s Creation Museum opened in Kentucky in 2007 and his nearby Ark Encounter park in 2016, Santee was the place to visit for your anti-Darwin fix. According to a display, “Helium Diffusion Dates Earth at 6,000 years.”
A large scale model of the Ark there illustrated the plausibility of floating a zoo in a wooden boat. According to a display, after the flood waters receded, Noah’s sons, together with the Ark’s animals, went their separate ways and across the oceans, via land bridges formed by a Flood-induced ice age. Actually, the ice age - according to creation belief, there was only one.
Another display asserted that Neanderthals were modern, “descended from Adam and Noah.” Their explanation: “Some compare Neanderthals to Eskimos. That would be consistent with humans who lived during the Ice Age.”
The museum makes a show of masking its talking points in science. Thus, the first law of thermodynamics and the principle of homeostasis are cited in support of the proposition that creation is constant and cannot be added to. It also boasts of a number of geologists affiliated with the museum. A large display shows how recent cataclysms such as Mt St Helens better account for the formation of the earth than the more time-consuming processes of plate tectonics.
It’s almost as if creationism were the true science. Indeed, we are informed that belief in evolution stemmed from “evolutionary religions,” ones that “reject the existence of a personal god who created all things.” A portrait gallery reveals the “bad fruits of evolution.” Alongside Charles Darwin, we have Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler.
In the bookstore on the way out, I came across a book titled Dinosaurs or Dragons? You can’t make this stuff up. But a 2018 reviewer on TripAdvisor leaves us with an entirely different impression: “We toured this museum in late December,” she wrote, “while visiting San Diego from PA.” She goes on to say: “Being lovers of science, natural history, world history, and Biblical truth, we knew we had to visit here. We thought the quality displays and fascinating content throughout could rival any secular museum, and we really appreciated the reprieve from the unsubstantiated "evolution" and "Big Bang" origins nonsense we find at typical museums (talk about "anti-science"!). Sure, there is a fair amount of reading required to get the most out of this museum (learning does take some mental effort, after all). … We highly recommend this museum if you want to learn and expand your knowledge of truth!”
It would be easy to write off the correspondent as some kind of crackpot, but again, being human she is contending with the same brain as the rest of us, loaded with the same cognitive traps. Moreover, her views almost certainly fit more inside mainstream opinion than those who watch TED Talks and listen to NPR. According to a 2018 Pew survey, only one in three adults in the US say man evolved through natural processes. An additional half are prepared to accept evolution, provided it is guided by God or a higher power.
By all means, continue to believe in God, but also keep yourself open to the possibility that our existence here - on this infinitesimally small plot of time and space - may be nothing more than a random series of accidents. The second book in my Bipolar Expert Series series, IN SEARCH OF OUR IDENTITY, goes into this in considerable detail. Knowing, for instance, that we are working with the same neurons as snails, with brains organized like those of rats and mice, with almost identical genomes to our primate cousins, we gain invaluable insights into how we think and feel and behave. The wisdom gained from these insights gives meaning to our experience and points the way to our recovery. Armed with our new tools of critical thinking, we dare to turn, “I think, therefore I am,” into something greater: “I think, therefore I will be.” A new you, at peace with yourself, at peace with the world. Take home message: Worship God, think like Darwin.
Final Word
We can’t leave Darwin without a brief word on “falsification.” Recall how Darwin observed seashells where they weren’t supposed to be. Now imagine another seashell find, again in an unexpected place, this time in the Canadian shield embedded in rock strata from the pre-Cambrian, when the earth was only just beginning to solidify. Such a find, most indubitably, would torpedo evolution, as any fan of Darwin would readily acknowledge. This type of acceptance of the rules is what keeps the game honest. Science works on the principle that while there may be experts in the field, there are no authorities. From the perspective of someone arguing from authority, though, it makes no difference where the seashells turn up - their conclusion will always be the same. The facts don’t matter. They are bound by no rules. It’s a fixed game.
To bring this down to earth, the greatest inquiry in your life will be into yourself. You need to be your own Darwin. When those metaphorical seashells in your world turn up in unexpected places, you need to be asking yourself hard questions, and you need to be doing it with the urgency of someone whose life depends on it. It does.
To the end, Darwin remained the keen and meticulous observer. His two block-busters - On the Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man - may have changed the world, but his last published book, a 326-page volume, reveals a man true to his roots, dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, forever a servant to the facts. The title: The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits.
John McManamy is the author of Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder and is the publisher of the Bipolar Expert Series, available on Amazon.
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