Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about big cities, but we ignored him. Now modern science confirms Jefferson’s concerns. From Newsweek:
Humans are not well adapted to live in modern cities—and this may be having a big impact on our health and wellbeing.
This is the claim of evolutionary scientists from Loughborough University, England and the University of Zurich, Switzerland who say “rapid industrialization” has reshaped human habits so dramatically that our biology may no longer be able to keep up.
“For most of human history, our biology was shaped by natural environments, but industrialization has rapidly transformed the world around us—faster than our bodies can adapt,” Danny Longman, senior lecturer in human evolutionary physiology at Loughborough, told Newsweek.
Jefferson regarded densely populated cities as threats to human health and happiness, as well as being detrimental to the morals and liberties of citizens. He saw big cities as a threat to the agrarian, self-sufficient lifestyle he saw as fundamental to a republic. City mobs, warned Jefferson, not only spread disease, as he witnessed in the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia in 1800, but contributed to alienation from nature and other citizens.
Again, science confirms Jefferson’s fears. From the Newsweek article:
“Day-to-day, chronic background noise, crowds, traffic, digital overstimulation and limited access to natural spaces keep the stress response system switched on. This elevates anxiety, worsens sleep and impairs concentration. Over time, these constant stressors contribute to mental-health problems, cardiovascular strain, cognitive impairment, immune dysregulation and reduced reproductive health,” Longman explained.
What’s the solution? Cities aren’t going away, but we can mitigate the harm they do by making our surroundings more natural and conducive to socializing and proper exercise. Pedestrian-friendly walkways and nature trails are a great start. And each of us must open our eyes to who and what we really are.
I was hooked in quickly by this conversation featuring astrophysicist Adam Frank, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, and biologist Michael Levin. Barrett, the neuroscientist, had this to say:
“I’m not sure that materialism is actually the culprit here. … For a long time, the main alternatives to traditional realism were idealism. This is the idea that reality is all in your head. Empiricism is the idea that we can only study what we can sense and we shouldn’t even be making metaphysical um assumptions. But there is a third option which is the idea that there is a single reality, but that reality exists in relation to some perspective. So it’s inherently perspectival. And this is the notion of relational realism. It’s the belief that reality consists of the relations between interacting signals that can constrain or enhance one another.”
And I absolutely agree. All life is interrelated. We cannot understand reality until we grasp the complex interactions between biological organisms and their environments. Those interactions shape how living beings function, evolve, and adapt in a changing world. Rather than the universe being created for humans, humans are just one of millions of living things shaped by the environment. This insight is validated by common ancestry, as our shared DNA demonstrates, and our dependance on the biosphere for our survival and well-being.
You might wonder why someone who writes about man’s place in nature would publish so many stories set in outer space. My latest published story, “At The Edge of the Crater, “ takes place on the grim but fascinating asteroid 16 Psyche. While I do celebrate nature, I do not idealize it.
A vital step in understanding ourselves is to recognize both our nobility and fragility, and most important, to see our world for what it is, a dazzling and gorgeous home that is both refuge and battlefield. We are, at our core, “bad-weather animals,” in Robert Ardrey’s famous phrase. We are fighters and survivors.
Yet in that fight, we are not alone. We are individuals but we are also social beings, creatures who are “fulfilled only in the natural associations built upon common experience, upon the ties of blood and friendship, common enterprise, resistance to common enemies, and a common faith, ” as Mel Bradford described us. Survival is a struggle, but we don’t have to wage it alone.
Space is the perfect backdrop to focus our attention on human characters caught in that struggle. In “At the Edge of the Crater,” the severe setting magnifies the brave, foolhardy, and tenacious protagonist as he discovers who he is and what he is made of.
Here’s the message we need on Earth Day: The more we know about ourselves and our home, the more we must recognize that the only planet that can sustain us is the one we evolved on. From Arwen Nicholson and Raphaelle Haywood:
“We are complex lifeforms with complex needs. We are entirely dependent on other organisms for all our food and the very air we breathe. The collapse of Earth’s ecosystems is the collapse of our life-support systems. Replicating everything Earth offers us on another planet, on timescales of a few human lifespans, is simply impossible.”
Science fiction fantasy, from Star Trek to Star Wars, assumes we can flit about the universe and make ourselves at home any darn place we please. But as Nicholson and Haywood explain, that’s impossible.
The notion of humans as intergalactic cosmopolitans arose from the current mindset of radical individualism, which sees humans as discrete beings who thrive when the restraints of society and tradition are severed. But what really happens when we lose our connections to people and places is an uprooted alienation not just from others, but ourselves. That’s what’s driving the simmering rage and mutual antagonism of modern politics and culture.
This Earth Day, let’s take the time to renew our connections to our roots. Time is running out–because there is no Planet B.
Sometimes otherwise smart people don’t stay in their lane. Trouble begins when they imagine they’ve discovered earth-shaking truths in fields unimagined by people trained in those fields. It’s called epistemic trespassing.
Ezra Pound revolutionized modern poetry but turned into a crank spouting bizarre economic theories. Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize in chemistry before taking up quack medicine. Here’s the latest: Theodore Beale is an accomplished fantasy author who claims he’s destroyed Charles Darwin and natural selection. Writing under the name Vox Day, he’s released a book titled Probability Zero: The Mathematical Impossibility of Evolution by Natural Selection.
Here’s the description of his book from Amazon: “By subjecting the big ideas of Darwin, Haldane, Mayr, Kimura, and Dawkins to the pitiless light of statistical and mathematical analysis, Day demonstrates that the Modern Synthesis isn’t just flawed—it is absolutely impossible.”
And that’s it. Vox Day has made no ground-breaking research, no new discoveries, and offers no evidence from any science. He thinks he’s bypassed all that by claiming natural selection is so statistically improbable, it can be dismissed as impossible.
In other words, he only recycles the creationist “Junkyard tornado” argument that no scientific evidence can overcome the odds against life arising and developing naturally.
Okay. What would happen if we decided probability trumps evidence when making inquiries? I can “prove” it’s impossible my wife and I could have ever met and married. But a better example comes to mind.
Remember the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte last August ? A lawyer could use statistics alone to shoot down the prosecution’s case against DeCarlos Brown Jr., who is accused of stabbing Zarutska on a late-night train.
Consider: Of the 8.3 billion people in the world, Brown allegedly murdered a woman born in Ukraine, 5,200 miles away. Every day on Earth, only 120 people are killed by strangers. That means the probability of a homeless man in Charlotte killing a woman from Ukraine is 0.00000144578313253 %. And since only 1.5 % of Charlotte residents use the light rail, the odds of Brown encountering and killing Zarutska would be reduced to practically nothing.
Should a jury ignore the so-called DNA and eyewitness evidence and let Brown roam the streets of Charlotte again? Hopefully, when DeCarlos Brown Jr. gets his day in court, the jury will judge him based on the evidence, which tells us that despite the odds, Zarutska was on that train when Brown killed her.
The theory of evolution is also backed by evidence–abundant evidence from many branches of science.
But here’s the kicker–Day doesn’t deny the evidence for evolution. He even cites an example of human evolution:
“The primary European lactase persistence allele (LCT-13910*T) is estimated to have arisen approximately 7,500–10,000 years ago, coinciding with the advent of dairying in Neolithic Europe. This mutation confers a significant nutritional advantage in cultures that practice animal husbandry, as it allows adults to digest milk—a rich source of calories, protein, fat, and calcium that would otherwise cause gastrointestinal distress” (p. 110).
If you’re puzzled, re-read the book’s subtitle: “The Mathematical Impossibility of Evolution by Natural Selection.” Creationists will be disappointed thinking the book is a refutation of evolution. So what is Day arguing? In the book’s foreword, Frank Tipler, a professor of mathematics, spells out its purpose: “Mr. Day will demonstrate that, since evolution cannot have occurred by unintended means, evolution must have been directed.” In other words, Day accepts the overwhelming evidence for evolution, but claims natural selection is not the cause.
Even though he doesn’t use the term, Day is arguing for Intelligent Design, a pseudoscience cobbled together as a front for creationism. ID emerged after the bad publicity following Edwards v. Aguillard, in which the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism is an unconstitutional attempt to establish a particular religion. While creationism argues that scripture justifies the belief that life was created by a divine being, ID co-opts large chunks of science in an attempt to assert some mysterious, unknown intelligence — maybe aliens! — created life. Day calls his version “Intelligent Genetic Manipulation.”
Like the old creationists, however, Day argues for a “First Mover” and “Designer” as the hidden driver of evolution and specifically posits the Abrahamic God as its guiding force. Addressing the argument that structural defects — the eye’s blind spots, for example — disprove intelligent design, Day offers this totally scientific explanation:
“perhaps demons might manipulate genetics in opposition to it, or for purposes of their own that align with neither divine nor human interests. This could explain certain puzzling features of biological design: not mere suboptimality, but apparent malevolence. Why do parasites exist that can only reproduce by causing horrific suffering to their hosts? Perhaps because something wicked designed them” (pp 219-220).
This is not science. This is an attempt to smuggle religion into the schools and devolve our understanding of life and ourselves back to the Iron Age.
If you want a more technical yet imminently approachable critique, I recommend Dennis McCarthy’s excellent response, Why Probability Zero Is Wrong About Evolution. As McCarthy puts it, Vox Day’s “best-selling anti-evolution book misuses mathematics and spreads misinformation.”
“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
Charles Darwin’s landmark book On the Origin of Species was first published on this date in 1859.
We haven’t been the same since.
As E. O. Wilson tells us, science provides “more solidly grounded answers” to life’s mysteries. Not only has the theory of evolution transformed science, it has also given us a powerful lens for examining ourselves. Sadly, we remain blind to Darwin’s foundational message, that humans are not invaders but a part of nature. This continued isolation from the natural world has dire consequences, as this recent article from Science Daily warns us:
“A new study by evolutionary anthropologists Colin Shaw (University of Zurich) and Daniel Longman (Loughborough University) argues that the pace of modern living has moved faster than human evolution can follow. According to their work, many chronic stress problems and a wide range of contemporary health concerns may stem from a mismatch between biology shaped in natural settings and the highly industrialized world people occupy today.
That means the mismatch between our evolved physiology and modern conditions is unlikely to resolve itself naturally. Instead, the researchers argue, societies need to mitigate these effects by rethinking their relationship with nature and designing healthier, more sustainable environments.”
What to do? We must recognize our relationship with nature. The places we live must be reimagined and revamped so they resemble our hunter-gatherer past. More green spaces, more walkways, less dependence on cars, more opportunities to see nature maturing and blossoming before us.
But the first, most essential step is to open our eyes and see what we truly are.
“The kids say you gotta touch grass and that’s a real thing. I just came from the forest in Japan, and I’m in awe, like, ‘What are the birds doing? What is the little bug doing on the grass?’ It’s something that was here before us and will be here when we go away.”
Earth Day reminds us there are responsibilities to being the apex predator. Many fool themselves into believing being on top means we have the right to gorge ourselves. It does not.
Others imagine we’re ghosts trapped in physical form who should dominate and use the Earth according to our will.
Those are delusions. Harmful delusions.
For one thing, Homo Sapiens’ self-serving narrative of being nature’s capstone is as fanciful as the name we gave ourselves. (Man the wise? Spare me.) Dinosaurs dominated the planet for 165 million years. Homo Sapiens has been around for about a quarter million years, and for most of that time, struggled to cling to a precarious existence.
Maybe a little prudence and humility are in order.
Instead of making choices based on other-worldly criteria –what should be, instead of what really is — maybe we should take the time to reevaluate our goals and choices so they contribute to long-term survival rather than short-term gain.
Here’s an article and some stories to spur that reevaluation:
The Barbarian and the Playwright – We’ve tried fooling ourselves about our true nature, and look where that brought us. In this essay, I suggest it’s time to look at ourselves realistically, with help from the unlikely team of Robert Ardrey and Robert E. Howard.
Hunting Ground – A fantasy tale exploring the dangers of fracking and the mindset that Earth exists to supply us with raw materials.
A Tree Amid the Wood – An inventor finds a way to meet human needs while protecting that which sustains us – if only he could remember it.
Notes from the Underground – A rock-music dystopian tale exploring what could happen to a species that fouls its own nest.
Mirrors – Earth Day shouldn’t be all doom and gloom – we as a species have some good qualities we can build on.
