Here is the latest installment in my series on science questions.
I may think of myself as Science Boy (my secret identity, I have the letters “SB” and a test tube emblazoned on my cape.) But I have dabbled in fiction writing, and I can recognize a good story when I see it.
Question 6: What can scientists learn from Noah’s Ark?
Noah’s Ark is an extraordinarily well-constructed story. If we held a competition for most compelling and memorable story in the Bible, then the ark certainly survives to the medal round. Noah’s Ark is such a good story that many people believe it actually happened. The story offers drama, moral uncertainty, one especially interesting character (God, not Noah,) and events that challenge the rules in a potpourri of science disciplines, incorporating life, Earth, and physical. The story inspires enough brain-stumping questions to entertain anyone for 40 days and 40 nights.
Like all good stories, Noah’s Ark is easy to summarize. If you are older than the age of six, regardless of whether you attended Sunday school, you likely are familiar with the main plot points:
- God tells Noah to build an ark.
- Pairs of animals board the ark.
- They all escape from a big flood.
All other details fill the gaps neatly. If all you knew was the summary presented above, you probably could invent details that closely match the originals.
Another tremendous strength of the story, which I think is not generally appreciated, is the ending. A rainbow appears, signifying God’s promise that this kind of disaster will never happen again. That’s a wrap; time for bed.
The message of the rainbow is so powerful that many people also believe it. Search online, and you will find philosophers who cite God’s rainbow promise to justify polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases or similar actions in need of rationalization. You know, cuz God’s got our back.
The brilliant metaphor of the rainbow overwhelms the consequences of the story’s main event, which is a life-extinguishing, worldwide flood. After disembarking from the ark, Noah and company ought to be dealing with drowned corpses, human and otherwise, spread in all directions. A feast for vultures and hyenas, but fairly disturbing for the rest of us. You might think the ship’s stores of animal feed would need to be extended for at least a month, and probably longer, to let the natural ecosystems recover. Let’s also not ignore whatever spell was cast on the predators—like lions, wolves, and ocelots—to keep them away from their prey— like antelope, sheep, and chipmunks. The ark carried only one mating pair for each species. Perhaps some of the gentler herbivores did not survive the ordeal, which would mean we don’t share the world with them any longer.
Another knotty problem involves a phenomenon called a genetic bottleneck. As a general rule known to biologists and zookeepers, you won’t have much long-term success breeding an animal population from a single mating pair. The lack of genetic diversity causes a bunch of problems in the ensuing generations. Eventually, the population is likely to conk out.
Our story tells us that Noah rode the ark with his wife, their three sons, and the sons’ wives. In theory, that octet provides a broader gene pool than available to the animals. Still, it feels a bit of a stretch to imagine Noah and family as the ancestors of the all races of humanity, distributed across the continents and biomes.
So it’s the rainbow ending that really sells the story, allowing everyone to turn the page and commence the next tale on the docket. Which I think is the Tower of Babel, another winning episode.
I faithfully attended Sunday school (Jewish version) but claim only familiarity, not expertise, with biblical texts. To be quite honest, I have greater knowledge of another serialized collection of stories: the science-fantasy television series Doctor Who, from British television.
Week after week, one production cycle after another, our hero (known to all as “The Doctor”,) travels from planet to planet, across time and space, always meeting up with various outlandish alien villains who threaten humanity with their nasty tricks and evil disposition. Unsurprisingly from an external perspective, the Doctor and his friends return repeatedly to the U.K. in modern times. London is especially popular, as is Wales, where the BBC has studios.
The relevance here is that every Doctor Who serial has a satisfying ending. The Doctor defeats the monsters, everyone relaxes with jokes and necessary exposition, and then the Doctor runs off in his time machine, happy to tackle whatever comes next.
But much like Noah’s Ark, a typical ending in Doctor Who will leak like a jelly donut if you poke it too vigorously. The problem is that each adventure should leave behind a world that is fundamentally altered. When armies of Cybermen or Sontarans or Daleks[1] march through city streets or cover the sky in toxic smoke or shoot up the neighborhood with zap-zap guns[2], at least a few citizens seem likely to document with photographs and home movies. Later they’ll retell the alarming events from personal perspective, grieve over lost loved ones, and suffer the symptoms of PTSD or other medical acronyms. Each episode of Doctor Who changes the fictional world it inhabits. Later, between episodes, the reset button must be pressed to restore the world to something the audience can recognize.
I think that Noah’s rainbow did more than make a promise. I think it drained the water, dried the land, restored all the dead animals and people, and generally undid the story that was just told. The rainbow was God’s cosmic reset button. That would make more sense than any other interpretation I’ve heard of the subject.
To answer the question that began this essay, the lesson to science from Noah’s Ark is to recognize the power of stories. People learn from stories, they think of themselves as part of a story, they respond to a story that is especially powerful or affirming or vibrant or captivating.
Should scientists incorporate the principles of storytelling in their investigations and reports? No, no, and let me add an emphatic no. Scientists should not be charged with telling stories for the same reason that they shouldn’t be asked to paint pictures, chisel sculptures, weave tapestries, or produce situation comedies. Scientists are not trained in such arts and crafts, and even if they were, the associated rules and conventions do not align with the scientific method.
I can think of only one compelling, memorable story from the past 25 years that the world of science has presented to us. I am not referring to important or awe-inspiring scientific discoveries or ideas; we have had plenty of those, not that they received much attention. No, I mean a story, a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, as well as characters and conflict and plot and action. My one nomination is the story of Pluto, which goes like this:
Pluto was an unusual planet. It was smaller and more distant than the other planets, and it traveled through an orbit that was oddly tilted and stretched. So, the scientists decided that Pluto should not be a planet. They called it a dwarf planet instead. Poor Pluto!
This story works for several reasons, one of which is that Pluto is the central character.
In August, 2006, after the astronomers’ union issued their announcement, a dozen of my friends were writing “Poor Pluto!” in their Facebook posts. Even Neil deGrasse Tyson—whom no one should mess with—said at the time, and I quote, “I think Pluto is happier as a dwarf planet.” Undoubtedly, Dr. Tyson and his colleagues know that Pluto is a hunk of icy rock that would seem to lack the capacity for any emotional reaction. Even any sentient Plutonians, unlikely as their existence may be, ought not to care about the opinions of ape-descended distant neighbors who never come by for a visit. Nevertheless, we anthropomorphize Pluto because it makes a better narrative.
My advice to scientists is to embrace and encourage science-themed stories that the culture produces, no matter how dubious or tenuous the science may be. Science fiction serves to call attention to scientific pursuits and the role of science in society, and they inspire young fans to pursue careers in science. The genre shows that science can take part in the stories we like to tell ourselves.
At least in astronomy and space exploration, the process of honoring fiction has been underway for a while now. NASA has hosted visits from Star Trek[3] cast members. Astronomers named surface features of Pluto after popular characters from science fiction, including Ripley from the Aliens movies. They also connected some distant dots to form new constellations named Godzilla, Incredible Hulk, and the TARDIS.
For obvious reasons, fiction tends to celebrate the adventurous and dramatic. But a lot of science is relatively mundane. Has the character of a humble lab assistant ever become widely popular? Remarkably, the answer is yes.
Question 7: What fictional scientists make the best plush toys?
In 2004, a survey in Britain asked people to identify their favorite fictional scientist. The joint winners were arguably the least accomplished and least qualified of the likely candidates. Instead, they were the most huggable. To this day, you can buy plush toys for these characters, as well as action figures and LEGO models.
The most popular scientists were Doctor Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant, Beaker, both minor characters from television’s The Muppet Show. When the survey was taken, The Muppet Show had already aired its last episode 20 years previously.[4]
I recall seeing plush toys of Honeydew and Beaker for sale at a convention of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), and truth be told, I bought a Beaker doll for my son, age 5 years old at the time. But even while I was handing over the credit card, I could not explain why anyone in science education would find these characters appealing.
Dr. Honeydew, named after his melon-shaped head, is a pompous nitwit. His goofy demonstrations always go wrong, his explanations are meaningless, and he treats his lab assistant as an expendable stooge. One of the gags is that Honeydew removes his eyeglasses to reveal no eyes underneath. He literally is blind to the world in front of him.
Then we have Beaker, who lacks a proper name among other human attributes. His head merges with his neck into a single cylinder. He speaks mostly in meep-meep noises, perhaps because his mouth can barely open. Completing his image are a pale-green lab coat, a shock of orange hair, and an egg-shaped orange nose, which make for a jarring color palette.
If your life’s mission is to teach science and encourage interested students to pursue science careers, I would think you would not cite Honeydew and Beaker as role models.
Yet, such logic appears faulty, or at least misses the point. Of course the characters are not role models, that was never their purpose. They were meant for silly and lighthearted entertainment, at which they succeed. Maybe the pair show that anybody, no matter how much of an outcast or ding-a-ling, can make a life for themselves.
I think the science community, or at least a healthy swatch of it, has embraced Dr. Honeydew, and especially Beaker, because the characters are innocent, well-meaning, and above all, stereotypes. “Of course I have a nerdy side,” might say the self-styled science guru, “so my mascots are that trait in extreme.”
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That’s all for this edition. Thank you for reading…Confounding Questions in Science!
[1] All popular Doctor Who monster/aliens
[2] All popular Doctor Who plotlines
[3] For more than 50 years, reviewers have been deconstructing Star Trek into more pieces than anyone would deem necessary. Here’s my offering.
As English teachers have taught us, the hero’s journey is a storytelling structure that has been popular since Ancient Greece, if not earlier. Modern examples include Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings. However, the hero’s journey did not work as a model for 1960s television. Each episode needed to stand alone, be viewable in any order, and be accessible to everyone. These rules limited the characters and their potential adventures.
Each episode of Star Trek was introduced with the mention of a “five-year mission,” but Captain Kirk had no Golden Fleece or Holy Grail to define him. Instead, Kirk’s job was more like everybody else’s. Kirk showed up to work every day, sat in a big office chair, and tried to deal with whatever nonsense came his way. Had the show not been canceled, Kirk would have continued doing the same job until he was fired or promoted, or he quit or died. The U.S.S Enterprise and its weekly adventures may have presented opportunities for personal growth, but not for achieving it.
So, instead of developing as a character, Kirk used his two sidekicks to supply character development for him. On one hand is Mr. Spock, the science officer, who offered cold logic supported by endless facts and statistics. In opposition stood “Bones” McCoy, the medical doctor, prone to righteous outbursts for good causes, and representing what the show framed as humanity. Kirk could never sway too far in either direction, but he could always call on either viewpoint as needed. The conflict between logic and emotion was at the heart of the appeal of Star Trek. Had Kirk been flanked by a more traditional pair of officers—such as a gung-ho military tactician and a peace-loving diplomat—then the show might have had less to say and have been less interesting.
It’s telling that Spock was an alien, and a stuck-up alien at that. Spock seemed to privately view all humans (with the notable exception of his captain) as inherently inferior. The result is that we viewers look at Spock—and the science knowledge and skills he embodies—as just beyond our capabilities, but still worthy of our aspiration, at least partially. We might benefit by channeling Mr. Spock, but not for an evening on the town or a weekend getaway.
The concept of bookending the hero has been applied elsewhere on television. Talk-show host Johnny Carson surrounded himself with announcer Ed McMahon and bandleader Doc Severinsen. Ed dressed conservatively and could be called upon for loyal if pedantic support, while Doc dressed flamboyantly and led a fun-loving bunch of musicians. For 30 years, Carson succeeded by playing in the physical and metaphorical space in the middle.
[4] Our two science heroes in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mggl7cC8iys
