George Washington Carver: The Convergence of Art and Science

Many people were surprised that George Washington Carver painted flowers as well as studied them scientifically. But to him, art and science were both ways of approaching the truth, and there was no dissonance between them. Here is a scene from Linda O. McMurray’s book, George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol, page 302:

            [Carver] reached across the table for a tiny green herb. The soil still clung to its threadlike roots.

            “All these years,” the artist continued, looking at the weed in his hand, “I have been doing one thing. The poet Tennyson was working at the same job. This is the way he expresses it:

Flower in the crannied wall

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but it I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is...

            “Tennyson was seeking Truth. That is what the scientist is seeking. That is what the artist is seeking; his writings, his weaving, his music, his pictures are just the expressions of his soul in his search for Truth.

            “My paintings are my soul’s expression of its yearnings and questions in its desire to understand the work of the Great Creator.”

George Washington Carver and the Scientific Method

This essay and the previous also appeared in my science blog [http://honest-ab.blogspot.com/]. However, I will have a third essay about George Washington Carver that is unique to this blog.

I have recently posted a video on this topic.

At the height of his fame, it was nearly impossible to criticize George Washington Carver (see previous essay). He was famous for his personal dedication to using science as a way of helping non-scientists to improve their economic conditions and open their eyes to the beauty and wonder of the world. During the Depression, when his fame was worldwide (even Mahatma Gandhi corresponded with him), people wanted to hear a story of a man—a really and truly good man—who rose up from slavery to fame.

But he did receive some criticism. When I first read about this, I was shocked, but I then understood the reason for it. An editorial in the New York Times claimed that Carver did not follow the standards of good scientific research. This viewpoint was quickly shouted down by Carver’s admirers. But the critic had a point.

Nearly every active scientist in the world is part of a community, in which each scientist builds on the work of others, so that no scientist has to labor in isolation to discover new truths. For at least a century before Carver, all scientists cited, sometimes at great length, the work of those who came before. The reason was quite practical: by citing the work of others, no scientist has to bear the complete burden of credibility. A scientist could show that, because his work agreed with the known facts of science, it was likely to be true. Even revolutionary scientific insights had to do this. Darwin’s Origin of Species had extensive citations, showing that his truly new insight into science agreed with the known facts of geology and biology.

Carver practiced a form of theistic science that is almost unknown today. He would go into his laboratory (which he called “God’s Little Workshop”) and open his mind to a contemplation of God. He felt that God led him to discover truths that God had secretly put into the natural world and that it was Carver’s privilege to reveal. While many scientists today have this feeling, with Carver it was so strong that he did not read the work of other scientists—he considered his discoveries to come directly from God—nor did he even take notes on his work. Not surprisingly, when any company showed interest in one of Carver’s inventions, they could not invest in it because Carver had no written records that the invention actually worked. And when Carver died, no one knew how to make them. His knowledge died with him.

Incidentally, Carver’s theistic approach also greatly contrasted with that of modern “creation scientists.” Carver entered his laboratory with an open mind for discovery, while modern creationists do their work (usually just recycling the work of other scientists) with the express purpose of demonstrating a specific religious doctrine, such as proving that the universe is young or that evolution is impossible.

I admit this characteristic of Carver’s scientific work. I do not believe that scientists, in general, should work this way. But I revere Carver anyway, for other reasons explained above and in the previous essay. The scientific community is large and diverse enough to include unconventional geniuses like George Washington Carver.

George Washington Carver

This essay and the next will also appear in my science blog. However, the third essay in this series about George Washington Carver is unique to this blog.

You have probably heard of George Washington Carver (1864-1943) as the early-twentieth-century Peanut Man who developed hundreds of commercial products from peanuts, and from other southern United States crops, in his laboratory at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. But these products were probably the least important part of his work, at that time and in his legacy today. He is also remembered as the black man who earned respect from whites who might otherwise have dismissed blacks as an inferior, perhaps uneducable, race.

Carver had a brilliant mind for botany and chemistry. He was also a teacher whom his students loved, because he was humble despite his vast knowledge, and he cared individually about each student. He wanted each student to experience scientific discovery for themselves. While most science teachers today take this approach, it was uncommon in Carver’s day.

His fame was as much for his personal story as for his scientific work. He was born into slavery just before the end of the Civil War, then kidnapped. His owner got him back in exchange for a horse. After the war, George’s owner raised him as one of his own children. George struggled for years to get an education from whatever school would allow a black man to learn. He was the only black student at Iowa State University. His mentors there wanted him to stay as a faculty member, but instead he accepted a call from Booker T. Washington to join the Tuskegee faculty.

For much of his career, Carver labored in obscurity. Tuskegee president Booker T. Washington was impatient with Carver’s disorganized approach to college duties. Whatever Carver accomplished, Booker T. Washington always thought of something more that he ordered Carver to do. At one point, even though Carver spent every waking moment working for the institute, Washington told Carver he needed to repair the toilets. Washington’s regimented and disciplined approach to everything conflicted with Carver’s slower and more thoughtful approach.

Once at Tuskegee, Carver showed his ability to produce excellent work with almost no resources. Though he eventually had a lot of glassware for his teaching and research laboratories, he had literally nothing to work with when he first arrived. So, he found a whiskey bottle at the dump. He tied a string around the middle. He cooled the bottle in cold water, then lit the string on fire. The fire made the cold bottle crack in two. The top half was a funnel, the bottom half a beaker.

Then in 1921, Carver testified before the federal House Ways and Means Committee about all the food and industrial products that could be made from peanuts. The committee was interested because World War I had interrupted many imports into the United States, and they wanted to know what “home-grown” products we could have in the event of a future war. Even though these products ended up not being marketed, the committee was very impressed with this humble and brilliant man. From that point, Carver became a celebrity, and his fame spread worldwide.

By the end of his life, Carver was receiving many prizes and worldwide recognition. Meanwhile, in American society, the legal rights for black people were becoming ever more restricted. After an initial period of openness after the Civil War, southern states found ways to prevent blacks from voting, and blacks ended up with almost no political voice. While Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver were widely admired, most white people considered them individual exceptions from their otherwise benighted race.

Carver never sought fame (though it came to him) or fortune (which he had opportunities to refuse). He lived in a small room on the Tuskegee campus. Books were stacked floor to ceiling in the corner. He had a display case for his crochet work. Rocks and stalactites covered a table, and flowers crowded his window box. His personal space reminds me of my own.

I chose George Washington Carver as my favorite scientist in my recent book, Scientifically Thinking. The main reason was not so much because of his scientific research, which was creative but not of the highest quality, as for his motivation. He believed that scientific research at a university should prove directly helpful to the people living around it, and to the world in general. The inspiration of his peanut research (and also research on sweet potatoes and pecans) was to allow poor farmers to produce value-added products, at home, that they could sell for more money than peanuts. He also did research, and taught local farmers, about how to preserve soil fertility, so that they could produce more from each of their acres. This is also one of my main motivations in teaching and research. Like Carver, I am a mediocre scientific researcher, but my heart is in outreach to the wider community, opening their eyes to the wonders and practical benefits of science.

All this, despite the fact that Carver did not really follow what nearly every scientist in his day and today would consider good scientific method. That is the topic of the next essay.

The One and Only Creationism?

To millions of Americans, there is only one kind of creationism: the Biblical kind that believes everything that Mike Pence believes, including his reverence for Donald Trump.

I have begun publishing a series of articles that explore the humorous side of this kind of creationism. The series is called Creationist Funhouse, because, in order to accommodate their religion to even some of the facts of science, such as the Red Shift, these creationists have to believe that God distorted the laws of nature to make a young universe look old, and a supernaturally created world to look like it evolved. There is no point, I believe, in writing serious refutations of extreme Christian creationism: the creationists will ignore them, and everyone else (even I, who have written many) finds them boring. The first article appeared in the May/June issue of Skeptical Inquirer, and the second in the July/August issue. A few more will follow.

But this is not a problem if you consider a more general kind of creationism. That is, a creationism that does not need to accommodate a strictly literal reading of the Bible. One group of creation myths comes from Native Americans. This was brought to my attention by Scott Hunter, of Phoenix, Arizona, who emailed me about my first SI article. I have edited some of his comments here and post them with his permission:

“The students may have only heard the Jewish version unless they are Native American. I too grew up moderate Christian and knew no other creations until I began studying religions, plural.

“I have several books on Native American tribes, and they detail the extensive creation myths of the tribes. There may have been hundreds. Oklahoma tribes may have several creation myths. Indian creations are as bona fide as the Judeo-Christian myths.  I belong to most national non-believing groups plus NCSE. I continually remind others to never argue or debate Creation vs Evolution. If they do, they are playing in the Christian ballpark.  If others wish to debate or argue creation with you, I suggest that you refuse unless they agree to include the other creations existing. This gives the god fellows wobbly knees and they desist. They prefer to propagandize their own peculiar version of the creation stories.  

“The secular groups are gaining strength and time to take the wind out of that Creation fantasy. These innocent little kids have that myth almost tattooed into their brain once they enter Sunday school. Even as adults we are almost bombarded with this myth. It seems to pop up out of anywhere.

“Jewish tribal leaders not only created their own god, created their creation, but created their scriptures and laws. These tribes were minuscule and dominated by a succession of large controlling empires through most their history. There may have been dozens of other creation myths in the lands surrounding their tribal areas. Although brutally subjugated by both Christians and Muslims, Jews today would be just another nondescript nation alongside Lebanon, if the Christian faith had not picked up their scriptural stories.”

As a member of the Cherokee tribe, I can appreciate many of Scott’s comments. Most Cherokees have been Christians, more or less, since about 1800. I am not aware if any original Cherokee religion remains in circulation in the tribe. If it does, it is probably kept secret. I talked with a member of the United Keetowah Band of Cherokees recently, who does not wish to be identified. He told me two things: first, some original Cherokee creation myths; second, that the main tribal government does not want him talking to me about them.

I should have known this a long time before I finally learned it. Back in 1976, when I was an extreme creationist, our little band of creationists sponsored a debate between the two leading creationist propagandists of the day (Duane Gish and Henry Morris) vs. two scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara (Aharon Gibor and Preston Cloud). To everyone’s astonishment, ours not the least, the debate sold out, filling the main hall at the university.

One point that Aharon Gibor made was, which version of creationism are we supposed to consider? He was not only a plant cell biologist, but an expert on Jewish theology. Indeed, he later took a faculty position in religion at the same university. He said that there was a Polynesian tribe that believed the universe was inside of a giant, invisible coconut shell. Should we believe them, or believe Gibor’s Jewish predecessors, or someone else, in choosing a “creation model”? I was addled by creationism at the time, and chose to ignore his question. But, as you can see, I remember it.

When creationists present themselves as the only alternative to atheism, they are just trying to get publicity.

Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled

When I heard Sean Hannity say this on Fox News in 2019, I was astonished. I thought the conservatives would try to pretend it didn’t happen. But a little searching on the web (for example, here) revealed that he has been saying this since at least 2012. (I do not have television service. I never listen to Fox News. But it was on the giant TV screen at a restaurant where I ate while traveling recently.)

The original quote was when Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” It is obvious to me that Sean Hannity thinks he is playing the role of Jesus in the modern world. Hannity is a blasphemer.

And Hannity’s worshipers believe in Him as passionately as Christians claim to believe in Jesus.

The Republican Party has rejected Jesus and accepted Trump as their new God and Hannity as their new Jesus.

There Is No Quiet Place in America

Well, almost no quiet place. I realized this when I made a pilgrimage to one of the quietest places I can remember ever having visited: Mantle Rock, a Nature Conservancy site in northwest Kentucky.

Mantle Rock is one of the largest natural rock arches in the eastern United States. But in 1838 it was also on one of the main routes of the Trail of Tears. Numerous contingents of Cherokees, forced (in some cases literally) at bayonet point to leave their homes in the east and walk to what is now Oklahoma. My great great great grandmother, Elizabeth Hildebrand, was in one of these groups, the Hildebrand Contingent, which camped for weeks near Mantle Rock in the winter to wait for the Ohio River to open up so they could ferry to the Illinois side. Certainly, at that time, there was plenty of noise.

When I visited, in late June 2019, Mantle Rock was utterly quiet. The paved road had almost no traffic, much less traffic than a typical dirt road in Oklahoma, where I live. I was the only visitor that morning. Maybe one airplane flew overhead. There wasn’t even any wind. I was alone with the trees, my thoughts, and my severe tinnitus.

The sign [see image] indicated that I was standing on a preserved remnant of the original Trail of Tears, most of which has now become private property and highways. It was 780 miles long and most Cherokees walked the entire way. I looked down the trail into the woods. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by emotion, and wept briefly as I remembered all that I have read about this dark period of American history.

This almost certainly could not have happened if I had been part of an American tour group where the tour guide must keep everybody happy all the time, and where everyone speaks loudly. Or if this site had been on a highway that had even a little bit of traffic. At large highway convenience stores, American families debouch from their cars and lumber inside to get sweet snacks, a posse of noise riding in. Americans love vehicles that make lots of noise. These vehicles waste energy, for every bit of noise represents energy that does not help to propel the vehicle forward. Efficient cars are quiet. Or if this site had been under the flight path of small, loud airplanes, such as my house in Oklahoma, where pilots enjoy making noise while the residents below receive no compensation.

Part of being quiet is to move slowly. If I had rushed forward in a hurry the way most Americans do, I would never have noticed the diversity of trees along the path, and how some of the tree species grew in different places than others: sugar maples down by the arch, post oaks out by the edge of the prairie. You cannot look and think if you are talking loudly about something other than the natural world surrounding you. The voices of the titmouse birds could not compete with a loud American larynx.

In America it is okay to make a lot of loud electronic noise at a party, heedless of the effects on the neighbors. This is not the way it is in France, where if a party (in a rented facility) makes too much noise, the electricity automatically shuts off; or where the clink of glass bottles at recycling facilities is supposed to be limited to daylight hours, to avoid “nuisances sonores” (see the text in red).

In France, and probably other foreign places I have not seen, respectful moderation of sound is the social norm, reinforced by law which needs seldom to be enforced.

I have to sleep with noise—a fan and/or a white noise generator, to hide the constant noises around me at home. I am so accustomed to this that I did not notice my daily exposure to noise until I stayed in a very noisy motel, and when, the very next day, I encountered utter silence on a remnant of the Trail of Tears.

Most American Christians think that God has spoken to humankind. But they believe this occurs only through the booming voices of big-time evangelists, who rush through sermons so fast that nobody has time to think, “Now, wait a minute, what is your justification for saying that?” Modern Christians would never, like Elijah, hear God in the “still small voice.”

Just Go Straight

Back when I was a fundamentalist member of a Church of Christ sect, I listened to a lot of sermons by a man named Orvil who had little formal education but who studied the Bible a lot. But he did not study it with an open mind. He studied the Bible in order to take each verse, each word, in an absolutely literal manner, and in addition to force it to fit into the sect’s doctrine. He did not believe that the Bible had any figures of speech, any approximations, or any human context of interpretation.

This is not always what the fundamentalist Churches of Christ say. Back in the 1980s I attended some lectures by John C. Clayton, who headed up the “Does God Exist?” ministry of the Church of Christ. I was surprised to hear that he is still alive. In one of his magazines, Clayton said that literalism does not mean that the Bible cannot have figures of speech or approximations. But Orvil would have considered Clayton to be misguided and flat-out wrong. Clayton was, after all, a member of one of the branches of the Church of Christ that ours thought was in error. If Clayton’s church used multiple cups for communion instead of a single cup as Jesus did (I am not making this up), then what else might they be wrong about?

One time, Orvil was telling me about a road trip he took with his wife in their mobile home. He had driven most of the way, and he wanted to rest. He asked his wife to drive. They were on a major interstate and he told her to just go straight.

He awoke to some heavy bouncing. He found that his wife had driven the RV out onto a dirt road. The interstate had curved, but this road was the one that was closest to going straight ahead so she took it. (Even she did not go absolutely straight.)

Orvil told this as a funny story, but if his interpretation of Truth was correct, what his wife did had to be the right thing. She was the literalist in this instance.

Sometimes to follow a road “straight” you have to curve all around, sometimes (as in my recent drive through northeastern Kentucky to visit Cherokee sites) in lots of tight circles. You could call it “Kentucky straight,” although this sounds like a kind of whiskey. For me, the “straight” road is no longer one of doctrine, but of love. I can see Love in the distance, and I want to get there, but there is no straight road to it. All I have to make sure of is that I do not do unloving things during the journey toward it, something at which I have occasional success.