Paraclete, A Novel by Stan Rice, part two. Science in Pre-Scientific Days

This essay follows up on the previous essay  about Stan Rice’s novel Paraclete, about Heloïse and Abélard in medieval France. The question I want to focus on in this essay is, Abélard was a priest and Heloïse a nun, but were they also scientists?

Abélard held most of the beliefs of his fellow scholars. He probably thought the Earth was fairly small and probably flat and looked mostly like Europe. This viewpoint is expressed in the crowning mechanical achievement of ancient times, the astrolabe, which looked like a big wristwatch and was used to keep track of the movement of stars, planets, and the moon. Heloïse and Abélard admired this invention so much that they named their love-child Astralabius after it.

Science, as we understand it today, was very uncommon and hidden before early modern times in Europe. Many textbooks have lists of early scientists, all male, with the acknowledgement that some of the Greek and Roman philosophers had started the process of science. As far as ancient and non-European scholarship was concerned, scholarly thought consisted largely of “I am the Great Conqueror, I say the world is flat, and if you disagree, your head will be on a platter.”

But the “scientific method” is more of an attitude, of seeking evidence to test our beliefs. Not just to confirm them, but to give these ideas a real chance to be wrong, and then if they pass the test, we can honestly believe them. People have always done this, and sometimes have gotten away with it. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Roman philosophers such as Lucretius even speculated about evolution, and they sought evidence for it. You can do science too, even though you may not consider yourself a scientist. See my book, Scientifically Thinking: How to Liberate Your Mind, Solve the World’s Problems, and Embrace the Beauty of Science.

In Abélard’s time, scholars were not allowed to disagree with church doctrine. What Abélard insisted on over and over and over was that scholars ought to be allowed at least to question the authoritative doctrines. Just ask about them, that’s all. This was an essential first step. If scholars ended up confirming the doctrines, then our ability to worship God would have been magnified. Whaddaya say to that, Uncle Fulbert? You afraid we might find evidence against those doctrines?

Blood Brain Barrier: Stories from the Borderlands of Science, Story 7. Olga the Science Cat

This collection of short stories by Stan Rice, who is also the author of nonfiction books of popular science and science novels, takes the reader to the frontier between science and worlds of the impossible (see his author website here). Readers of my science blog will appreciate the creative telling of scientifically impossible stories; readers of my religion blog will appreciate the question of whether, even if these things were possible, would they be good?

 

The stories in this collection are The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Light Apparel, Flow of Blood, Wisdom Builds Her House, Rock Bunnies, Entropy (all reviewed earlier), Olga the Science Cat (reviewed here), Doghouse, and Fresh Air.

Rice wrote a book about the scientific method. But how much better it would be to have the scientific method explained to you by a cat! No, not a talking cat like the gorilla in Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. In Olga the Science Cat, the cat com-mew-nicates by grabbing items and leaving them on the floor or table in such a way as to answer human scientific questions. After Olga helps the kids with their science fair projects, she helps save the little girl’s life by dragging a hamburger sack from the garbage, with its evidence of salmonella poisoning.

Rice is not known for juvenile literature. This is the only piece of juvenile literature I have seen from him.

Blood Brain Barrier: Stories from the Borderlands of Science, story 4. Wisdom Builds Her House

This collection of short stories by Stan Rice, who is also the author of nonfiction books of popular science and science novels, takes the reader to the frontier between science and worlds of the impossible. Readers of my science blog will appreciate the creative telling of scientifically impossible stories; readers of my religion blog will appreciate the question of whether, even if these things were possible, would they be good?

The stories in this collection are The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Light Apparel, Flow of Blood (all reviewed earlier in this blog), Wisdom Builds Her House (reviewed here), Rock Bunnies, Entropy, Olga the Science Cat, Doghouse, and Fresh Air.

In Wisdom Builds Her House, Dolores Pector, a very serious molecular biologist, alienated the other scientists at her university. The graduate students, even her own, were terrified of her. But a visiting professor, the happy-go-lucky ecologist Jeremy Duckett, showers her with innocent friendship. When she has a medical crisis, she doesn’t want anybody to know, but Duckett finds out and visits her in the hospital; he actually gets her to laugh. He also explains to her how altruism evolved, and why it is perhaps the most important thing to the human species. Pector tries to shield herself so much from the messy friendship and love that when she has a heart attack in her bomb shelter, nobody knows it.

Rice’s question for his fellow scientists and religious people is, what is science for? Is it a grim search for precise truth, as Dolores sees it, or is it, as Jeremy sees it, part of the human celebration of life? Guess which one Rice, better known as the author of popular science books, believes!

River Weeds: A Novel of Love, Lust, and Poison Ivy, part three

This novel, which I introduced previously, is a kind of novel only a practicing and experienced scientist could write.

Rice explains all the science in the book, even high-performance liquid chromatography, so that anyone can understand it. He does a particularly good job of explaining evolutionary biology, which is not surprising since he is the author of nonfiction books about evolution such as Encyclopedia of Evolution. One example is when one of the characters explains the evolutionary basis of the human aversion to incest. But what Rea’s stepfather tried to do—rape her—is not biological incest, since she is genetically unrelated to him.

The characters all have a healthy sense of humor—except Earl, of course. For math teachers Conway and Thurman, the sense of humor is an unstoppable spring. Science offers lots of opportunities for humor, especially the Meeh coefficient and the way Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton used trigonometry to measure the buttocks of an African woman rather than to touch her. The Meeh coefficient, the wacky mathematicians insist, requires the measurement of the surface area of a naked human body. Rice takes his fellow scientists no more seriously than did the British humorist David Lodge, author of novels such as Small World: An Academic Romance. The academic world is a place where you can be weird.

Unlike some of Rice’s other novels, this one does not have a lot of religion in it. But, like probably all Rice’s novels, it addresses the meaning of life. As Rea tells her audience at the end, “A happy life consists of doing ordinary things in a grateful manner.”

The New Reality of the Scientific Method: Donald Trump Is Always Right

I outlined the scientific method, which is something in which anyone, not just scientists, can participate, in my previous book Scientifically Thinking. But there is a new reality about science, at least in the United States, which has developed since I wrote the book, and which I will now explain.

For many years at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, I taught the Research Methods course for science graduate students, which was pretty much the precursor of my book. I recently found, in some old papers, that I taught a similar course at The King’s College, in my first faculty job. King’s was and is a fundamentalist Christian college. Soon after I left, it also became a fundamentalist Republican college and, today, is probably a fundamentalist Trump college. When I taught the scientific method, I taught it pretty much the standard way, although technology was different back then (no internet). But that was because my department chair, although he was a leading creationist, was open to free scientific inquiry. He believed that open inquiry would lead a person to accept creationism. He did not, unlike almost all other fundamentalists, impose his views on other people.

But here is what research is usually like at fundamentalist institutions. First, instead of reaching a conclusion, you impose one. For example, you will stipulate up front that there can be no evidence that is consistent with evolution. Next, you selectively gather information that agrees with your conclusion. Last, you draw your “conclusion” from the selectively-gathered information. This is the exact opposite of the scientific method.

The result was predictable. The scientific value of creationist research is nil, for two reasons other than the above. First, creationists used this method to defend not only the Bible but their sometimes highly imaginary interpretations of it. Second, their misuse of the scientific method made their work sloppy even when it had nothing to do with evolution. Their habit of mind was that, no matter what they did, they had to be right. I documented these two things in a pair of articles I wrote a long time ago: in 1988 and  in 1989.

Today we must add another dimension. Not just in creationist or fundamentalist camps, but in all publicly-funded research, the researchers must begin with the conclusion: they must begin with whatever belief the Republican party holds upon the question. For example, is global warming happening, and are humans contributing to it? The answer, fundamentalists think, must be no, even though the Bible does not mention it. The answer must be no because the fossil fuel industry says it is no. This, then, is the conclusion they reach. Are vaccines effective? Again, the required answer is no. Has gun violence reached epidemic proportions? The answer again must be no. Science, then, becomes just a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

It has been this way for a long time, to various degrees, starting mainly with the George W. Bush administration. But now, under Donald Trump, there is yet a new version of science. You begin with the conclusion that Donald Trump is always right. Science has now become a propaganda arm of Donald Trump, and of his chosen spokespeople, such as RFK Jr. who says that vaccination is not necessary. The conclusion is that vaccination is not effective, because Donald Trump, who used to champion vaccination, says so.

For example, even under Republican presidents in the past, the website climate.gov existed. As of 2025, that URL redirects to NOAA where global warming is hidden, although at this point they still admit that today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide level (421 ppm) is comparable to the atmospheric level four million years ago, and much higher than any time during 6000 years of human civilization. But they are not allowed to draw the obvious conclusion that the Earth is getting hotter, only that it happens to be hot right now; certainly they do not blame our use of fossil fuels.

Modern Republicans place Trump in exactly the same position as medieval theologians placed God. Republicans worship Trump. I realize that this is blasphemy, but it is what they are doing, and we might as well say so.

I am glad that I taught and wrote about science before Donald Trump became the sole standard of truth. I am not sure, however, that I am safe. My most recent book, Forgotten Landscapes, provides evidence that Native Americans were civilized and had a significant effect on the North American landscape. This is not the picture of Native Americans that Republicans prefer. They want to claim that Natives were savages and did not deserve to keep the land that was taken from them. Republican opposition did not prevent the publication of my book. But what will happen next?

Yet Another Reason for Conservatives to Hate Global Warming Science

Most scientists, particularly those whose research has established the science of global warming, tend to be on the political left. They have been disproportionately targeted for the termination of federal government positions and funding, under the anti-global-warming leadership of Donald Trump. The outspoken advocacy of global warming science by former Vice President Al Gore particularly motivated conservatives to hate global warming science.

Well, I just ran across a new reason for conservatives to hate global warming science. The possibility of global warming was first discovered by a woman scientist.

And no ordinary woman scientist. She was a vocal advocate of women’s rights, and signed the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. She trespassed into the male territory of science and invention, and then she wanted to vote, too.

Eunice Newton Foote’s experimental demonstration of the possibility of global warming was very simple, and would today be considered simplistic, but it was valid. She took glass cylinders, used an air pump to remove the air, then put air into one cylinder, hydrogen gas into another, and carbon dioxide gas into a third. She had thermometers in the cylinders. (The actual experiment was a little more complicated.) When they had reached temperature equilibrium, she placed them in bright sunlight. The glass trapped the heat of the sun inside the cylinders—that is why it is called the greenhouse effect. The cylinder with carbon dioxide got much hotter than the others, reaching 125 degrees F. This cylinder also took longer than the others to cool off after being removed from the sun. She concluded not only that carbon dioxide held solar heat very well (actually, the infra-red radiation from objects that had warmed in the sun, and, further, that at times when the Earth’s atmosphere had more carbon dioxide—whether in the past or the future—the climate would have been or would be warmer. Years before John Tyndall, and a half century before Svante Arrhenius, who usually get the credit for the discovery of global warming, Eunice Newton Foote had it figured out. Her research, though it remained obscure, did get published. It was presented to the major American scientific society in 1856, though she avoided notoriety by having a man present it for her.

 

 This graphic shows Foote, two of her glass jars, and the sun.

It was difficult, in the nineteenth century, for a woman to publish her own scientific findings, but some, including Eunice Newton Foote, managed to do so. It was legally impossible for a woman inventor to patent her own inventions, because she did not have the legal right to defend her patents from infringement in court. This is why Eunice Newton Foote, like other woman inventors, patented her inventions under her husband’s name. Fortunately Eunice had a supportive husband who was happy to promote her work.

Science, and the world, are better when women are given creative freedom. Most modern conservatives believe this, but they disapprove strongly of modern women who take Foote’s role in modern society.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

This is the phrase that celebrity physicist Richard Feynman used to describe the joy of scientific research. But it also describes the joy of science education. Feynman was as brilliant of a scientist as you could hope to meet, and to him mathematical equations were as obvious as the nose on your face. But he knew very well that science education did not consist of learning piles of facts. He knew it was a matter of joy: professors and students alike should share this joy. This is what I always tried to do as a science educator, even to the extent of trying out what some colleagues thought of as stunts.

This is the reason that Bill Nye the Science Guy is more popular among people in general than any professor could hope to be. Professors try to impress their colleagues; but Bill Nye’s audience is ordinary intelligent people.

Jamy Gormaud is France’s answer to Bill Nye. He started off as a reporter, then discovered the joy of science—just as Carl Zimmer and David Quammen started off as fiction writers and found their calling in science writing. Today, with his YouTube channel, Jamy uses humor—a lot of it—to communicate not only science but also history to a large audience. My wife and I started watching his videos in order to learn French, by slowing down the videos and reading subtitles. But I appreciate his joy of science. In one of his books (Mon Tour de France: Des Curiosités Naturelles et Scientifiques) he has assembled a tour of France to see scientific curiosities. Several dozen videos later, he is still one of our favorite video hosts. Jamy describes the pleasure of learning new things as “la connaissance qui soulève l’esprit” (knowledge that lifts the spirit). He practices “la vulgarisation de la science.” Vulgarization is not a bad word in French, although American professors and writers hate to be accused of vulgarization. It just means making science understandable and interesting to non-specialists.

He takes his readers to old places to see new things. He starts his book in the marshlands of northeastern France mainly because he saw some great sunrises there when he was a kid. This chapter is about why sunrises (and sunsets) are red. Maybe you know why, and maybe you don’t. My answer was mostly right.

Sunlight is intensely white, which results from the mixture of all visible wavelengths of light. But when sunlight encounters atmosphere, it scatters. Blue wavelenths, at one end of the spectrum, scatter more than the others, which is why the sky around the noontime sun on a clear day is blue and the sunlight itself is yellowish: the sunlight is white minus some of the blue color. When sunlight has to travel through more of the atmosphere, as when it comes in at an angle at sunrise or sunset, not only do the blue wavelengths scatter but also the others, except those at the red end of the spectrum. If you did not know this, you might have felt your brain grow a little bit right then. Thanks to Jamy, and maybe to some outstanding science teacher you may have had in the past.

Jamy, and other good science educators, also draws in perspectives from outside of science. It was Isaac Newton who explained that white light is all the rainbow colors mixed together. We do not perceive it as a range of colors, but as bands of color. It turns out, for reasons I explain in my book Scientifically Thinking, that our brains create the illusion of bands of color, which helps our brains make sense of the world. But, Jamy wondered, why did Newton say there were seven bands of color? Clearly there are bands, but can you really see seven bands? Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Long before Newton, Robert Boyle had written that a rainbow has five bands of color. Jamy explained in his book that Newton was very religious—he wrote more pages about religion than about science—and to him seven had great Biblical significance. That is, Newton had a little bit of religious illusion even in his hard scientific observations.

He must be very satisfied in his work. To the extent that my videos fulfill the same role as his, I am satisfied. Even though I have retired, I continue to be a science educator, in the tradition of Jamy Gourmaud.