h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here is an interesting article:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-unleashed-mind&WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

That one speaks of how creative people are often eccentric. Interestingly, the article itself is written in a fairly dry style typical of articles describing scientific studies.

I wonder: we are right now living in times when there is a strong movement of 'skeptics' who are trying to squash 'heresies'. They're going to some lengths trying to combat things like people believing in unscientific fringe ideas: everything having to do with psychic powers, UFO's, Bigfoot, Nessie and other strange beasties. There's also a powerful anti-religious movement, with Richard Dawkins' 'followers' being the most visible exponents. There's a powerful movement of people describing themselves as 'rationalists', with logic and reason being considered supreme.

So in all of this: people who are irrational and weak-minded are the ones who believe in God or gods - of any kind or any description; people who believe in souls, who believe in non-physical realms, who believe in afterlives, who believe in any kind of life after death or apart from material, physical life, who believe in the possibility of psychic powers like ESP or clairvoyance, who believe aliens might exist and might contact earthfolk, who believe in medicine and remedies outside of mainstream pharmacology, who believe in a spiritual dimension to existence, who believe in weird creatures out there that science doesn't yet know of, who in fact believe science can still learn a lot.

Now I don't doubt there are crackpots out there. But the *scientific study* described in the above article says: people who are very creative often have such crackpot ideas! So ... if creativity is in fact a useful thing ... shouldn't 'science' actually be more tolerant of crackpot ideas?

I am not an apologist for full-blown delusions. These things can be and often are HARMFUL. Especially conspiracy theories and paranoia. It's not nice to live in fear and to be suspicious of everybody and everything. Also a lot of questioning science can have bad effects ... such as believing prayer would cure your children better than medicine would. But also I don't believe we should declare war on 'fringe' beliefs. There is a middle ground where we can believe a lot of science but still keep an open mind because truly science DOES still have a lot to learn. It's good to know as much science as possible. It's also good to know a lot of philosophy and to be critical of science as well. Heck, it is possible for one person to hold a number of contradictory beliefs - IF those beliefs are held with less than 100% conviction - which I think is a great thing. I am not 100% sure of anything. I can believe in science and also believe in God and in souls and in different facets of existence, different dimensions, the possibility of alien minds and 'supernatural' phenomena that are actually quite natural but are outside of *current* scientific understanding.

I think more tolerance in this respect will give people more scope for being creative. That doesn't just mean more art and music. That also means more theories pertaining to science, politics, economics, religion, psychology ... some of which might be crazy and far-out ... but some of which might very well be true, or closer to the truth than we are today, in spite of - or BECAUSE of being wild and far-out! Really folks - go look at some of the most cutting-edge ideas in science and tell me that isn't far out, and that we don't actually need people to think in fairly wild and crackpot ways in order to come up with them. Just inspect life and the world ... the truth is not a neat and comfortable thing, it is pretty much as wild and far-out as we can get.

Well said.

I've got a column coming up in a week or two about GB Shaw's 'Androcles and the Lion'. Shaw's notes on that play are interesting.

He pointed out that the Romans were intolerant of Christianity because it was 'eccentric', just as Christians were later intolerant of other beliefs. And in his day, people were intolerant of lots of ideas Shaw and his Fabian Society supported.

When I read that, it finally hit me what was bugging me about these British 'atheist' rudesbies. They're just the good old witch-hunters of old, as irrational as ever, trying to find a scapegoat for their own miseries.

Ignore 'em. It won't make 'em go away, unfortunately - only time will do that - but it will make life infinitely sweeter.

Meanwhile, I rejoice: I can talk to the angels, and they can't, so there.

There is so much in the world that humans don't know, or understand that anyone could be classed as a crackpot if they have unusual ideas. However, go back in time and think of steam engines, telegraph, aeroplanes, space travel, indeed the Internet itself.

Years ago the originators or all those things were regarded as crackpots!

I m just finishing the book 'Roots' about slavery and African Americans based in a time when some of those 'crackpot' ideas were coming to fruition. makes you think.

I believe that there are many things that humans should never learn, because once learnt they have to meddle with it and usually make a hash of things. GM food is a case in point. The consequences of this may be way in the future, but consequences there will be I am sure, so perhaps that makes me a crackpot too or an old fogey?

Websailor

Some exceptionally crackpot ideas have in fact made it to the mainstream of science. Special and general theory of relativity are completely crackpot ideas. Quantum theory again another crackpot idea. The key is that science is essentially a methodology to test ideas. If the ideas come through the tests then they will be "accepted", if they don't they will be rejected. If the idea cannot be tested then it will have to be left on the side as a "possible" - awaiting new techniques for it to be tested. If the idea is in principle non-testable then the idea will remain outside the bounds of science.

Ideas are generated as part of a non - rational process (in general), i.e. creativity is a non-rational process. Science provides a rational mechanism for testing those ideas.

ps things like Nessie and bigfoot are likely hoaxes - there is no evidence for their existence. Dodgy photographs and individual testimonies do not by themselves qualify as scientific evidence.

I should add that people claiming to represent science may in fact not be representing science. For example Richard Dawkins doesn't represent "science" when he is campaigning against religion. When Richard Dawkins is studying some aspect of evolutionary biology, collecting specific data, analysing it and interpreting it, writing up the work, submitting it to a scientific journal for publication ... then he could be said to be "doing science".

Hello Websailor, thanks for your comments! I don't actually think there's anything that in itself is bad to learn ... but what is important and what is being neglected is really thinking carefully of possible consequences. And for that imagination and creativity is needed! It's a big part of what I'm trying to do in my life.

Stone Aart, I believe in being as informed as possible. About science and also about all sorts of things around and outside science. I think there are many things that can be scientifically testable, but there are as you say things that cannot even in principle be tested - not scientifically at least, but I am highly certain that many such things can be evaluated philosophically.

Anyways: I've read and thought a lot about things like aliens, bigfoot, Nessie and so on ... and I like to try and imagine the ways in which there could be very important phenomena in spite of all indications that there are hoaxes behind them. At the very least there are psychologically interesting things we can learn by trying to find out why so many people believe in these things AND why people actually perpetrate hoaxes. But in line with what I said at the start - we might even need people to fully believe such things even if they're completely wrong because belief in such things might also help stimulate people's creativity. For instance trying to explain how aliens could be contacting us without leaving any tangible evidence.

I have to remind myself to save messages before clicking on "post message" because it is three times now I have lost medium sized comments when trying to post on these h2g2 threads in recent times

In your wildlife art do you attempt to convey any messages? For example have you ever been attempted to convey a clear preservation message in them, perhaps juxtaposing the animals/plants habitat with the "intruding" human landscapes of urbanisation and mining etc

tempted not attempted.

Stone Aart, have you checked my column 'Colours of Wildlife'? I speak a lot about conservation in my articles. But in a single painting it's impossible to convey a useful message of conservation ... for that I need to write because people today don't understand anything about conservation: not what we need to conserve, not why, or how. That all needs to be explained at length. If people don't understand it right then our conservation efforts won't help, or even make things worse. But in my individual paintings I just want to make people aware that these things I'm portraying do exist and that they're beautiful - which as I see it is the first step. Of course I also paint things that don't exist but then I make that clear too! In the end - I want to inform people but not manipulate them. They need to form their own opinions.

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Willem, that is a very sweeping statement and perhaps does apply to where you are, but there are many, many thousands of people, even in the most unlikely countries, who do understand and are fighting to make a difference and turn the tide of destruction.

Unfortunately, the power and money is in all the wrong hands of people who care only about themselves, money and 'progress'!

I just hope they wake up before it is too late.

Websailor

Hi Websailor! I know it's a sweeping statement but I think I have justification. As to us not knowing what to conserve: us humans - everywhere and I include myself - know next to nothing about life on this planet. We don't know how many species there are - we don't even have a ballpark figure. Of most species that at least we know exist, we know next to nothing except that they exist. We don't even really know what a species is. We don't know how evolution works and we know next to nothing about the history of life on this planet. We don't know much about ecology, we don't have anything more than the barest conception of the interrelationships of species in a food web or habitat. We don't really know how and over what sort of time frame organisms and ecosystems respond to climate change. So: do we aim to preserve species, or habitats, or the global ecology, or biodiversity, or 'pristineness' or do we try and preserve a stable global climate - how can we answer the question of what we should conserve when we know so very little about all those things?

Next - we cannot really answer 'why' when we can't even say what ... but still: should we conserve animals because they are cute and fluffy? (Then of course we'll focus on things like pandas and ignore many other things equally in need of conserving). Do we conserve species because we want to exploit them? Take in my country where hunting is a big thing. This makes conservation almost totally focused on large mammals ... so what about smaller things, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects - PLANTS? So ... if we think all these other things also should be conserved we have to come up with a 'why' that is strong enough to convince people. Which the way things go now is very, very difficult.

I would say the 'why' is because every living thing is wonderful and interesting in its own right, because the other living things are in fact our relatives, because we should have compassion on them - they have a claim on this planet too, so keeping that in mind is ethically the right thing, and because we are all part of a single living system that is glorious and that I want to know more about ... but we are destroying the system faster than we can study it - which in my view is horrendous. But how can I convince other people of this? When we have problems like poverty and war and crime and so on? How can I convince humans that animals and plants are important, too - when it seems human lives are not even regarded as being important?

Then: the HOW - and this is hardest of all. We can't even figure out how to safeguard rhinos! In this country we are arguing over whether to legalise hunting rhinos and trading their horns or not. In your country you're arguing about culling badgers. There are thousands or even millions of other very pressing matters we don't know how to solve. Habitat destruction. The bushmeat trade. Bees dying out. Amphibians dying out. Overfishing and the destruction of marine environments. Pollution. And these are just small issues in the overall big issue of what the hell us humans are doing to the other living things on this planet. And perhaps - probably - to future generations of human beings as well. My view: if we cannot make a radical and fundamental change in how we see things, ourselves included, and how we go about, we are creating a dystopia that is going to be very horrible for everyone and everything. Is this realistic?

Personally, I think human consciousness needs to become more holistic.

The real problem in questions like 'why?' is that it really means, 'What's in it for me personally?' Now, that's a terrible approach.

I've spent the last week writing and rewriting a book section on honeybees for fairly low-level ESL students worldwide. I learned a lot about bees, just trying to get the language down into a logical, simple way. And I found out some interesting things about them.

Honeybees don't have a metasystem, of course: they don't know how to think or talk about being bees. No bee philosophers, no 'I buzz, therefore I am.' But they do things right.

- They all work for the good of the whole.
- There's just one queen per hive, because that's all they need to reproduce. But there are a LOT of workers. And the drones that just do sex don't hang around that long.
- They communicate what they need to know. But they don't gossip.
- They're self-sacrificing. A honeybee dies when it stings, but if the hive is threatened, the bee attacks.
- They have interesting ways of settling arguments: if one bee dances, 'Let's go here,' and the other bee thinks, 'Nah, that's not right,' she butts the first one with her head, and it shuts up. Then the swarm follows the better path.

No wonder the Bushmen thought that humans came from bees. We could learn from them.

Now, somebody's going to come along and say I'm advocating socialism...just wait...

'Now, somebody's going to come along and say I'm advocating socialism...just wait '

or a monarchy

My preference is for preservation not conservation, but I recognise conservation is better than nothing (and preservation is probably "economically" unrealistic).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilderness#Conservation_vs._preservation

Hi Willem, I agree we first need images of wildlife in their natural habitat first and I hope you are able to get your work on show both physically (schools, local and regional exhibitions) and as an on-line resource (for educational purposes). But with time maybe a new series could be started looking at wildlife in their changed environments.

I also see human culture and peoples as a form of wildlife under threat from the dominant all pervasive culture of money and exploitation (but that's a separate issue). I wonder would you at some point be interested in painting peoples in their own "natural environment", I am thinking of African tribespeople, native American "Indians", "aboriginal" Australians etc. However much of this I suspect has already been lost.

Homo sapiens were so called as the "wise" ape, but personally I think a lot can be understood about the world if we assumed this ape in fact was not particularly wise. As many folk realised in the past wisdom, intelligence and ethics are separate entities.

Here is some design work by people famous in other forms of creativity:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/29/cross-disciplinary-creativity/

Hi folks and thanks for all comments! Dmitri, I agree we need holism ... what we have now is assholism. As for bees ... pity they're doing badly these days! But they seem to be all right in my garden.

Stone Aart, I'm at present just concentrating on the 'Colours of Wildlife' project. My biggest challenge right now is just getting an audience ... I have a huge number of ideas but they mean little if no-one is listening.

Elektra, thanks a lot for that! I knew about many of those but it was still interesting to look at. I especially appreciate the art of Richard Feynman ... one of my favourite scientists and also an interesting example because though he called himself an atheist there was what I would call a religious dimension to his appreciation of science. And there was also a lot of art in his science as well, so it is interesting to see his paintings and sketches and to see his aesthetic principles at work there also.