Primer on Natural Resource Science

Chapter 5. Being Humans

CHAPTER 5 Being Humans It is common to explain historic events after the fact in terms of the preoccupation of the historian. Thus the economist finds his pattern in economics, the politician in politics, and the medical man in pollens or parasites. —John Steinbeck (1994:129) Belonging is a primary human motivation: In order to belong, individuals adopt and use the narratives that surround them. —Leslie Brothers (1997:82) The way we experience the world is not “the way it really is” but the way that has proved useful to natural selection for us to perceive it. —Susan Blackmore (1999:112) Here is a sampling of newspaper headlines from March 10, 2006: “Truck Blast Kills Seven Iraqis.” “Pakistani Bus Blast Kills 26.” “Afghan Terrorists Kill Policeman in Gun Battle.” “Nine Die in Suicide Pact.” “Alcohol May Have Fueled Alabama Church Fires.” “Chinese Catholic Leader Condemns Vatican for Anti-communist Cardinal.” “Michael Jackson Fined over Neverland Labor Miscue.” “American Idol Axes Four.” “Syracuse Boots UConn in Big East.” “New Animal Resembles Furry Lobster.” The species that generated these headlines is the same one that aspires to practice natural resource science. The headlines implicitly contain statements on the human condition, and those statements cut across the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, and the aristocracy of thought. All of the killing has roots in sectarianism and myth. It is inevitable that natural resource scientists hold myths because the scientists are members of the human species. Humans of all stations readily subscribe to the cockamamie if it is traditional, trendy, or tribal. In an odd way, the headlines also contain statements on the intense sociality of Homo sapiens. This sociality leads to the tribal behavior that runs contrary to logic, common sense, and empirical virtue, and it is the major mental handicap of the species in its pursuit of scientific truth. Sapiens also has severe physiological handicaps that constrict the breadth of incoming sensory data, which obviously constricts the breadth of information that can be drawn from nature. The species has a marvelous brain. That brain is insufficient, however, for dealing with all but the surface of reality. It is a brain with quirks 47 Being Humans that apparently served cavepersons and their hairy-tailed progenitors , but that inhibits the free flow of ideas and beclouds the perceptions of nature in scientists. This chapter summarizes the tariffs on scientific progress levied by the human condition; these tariffs include physiological, mental, and social handicaps. I assume that if natural resource scientists know about these handicaps, they will be better able to deal with them and inject sound knowledge into mainstream thinking. I also provide some recommendations on how to deal with some human handicaps that impede progress in understanding nature. Physiological Handicaps Of the five senses—sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste—we gain most of the information we use in science through the eyes. We know that our vision is insufficient to observe the vast majority of physical reality, such as the ultraviolet and infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, microwaves and gamma rays. “Science must often transcend sight to win insight” because “many well-documented conclusions of science lie beyond the strictly limited domain of direct observation” (Gould 1993:200). Likewise, we do not hear the infraand ultrasonic sounds that wave through the air. Every dog owner knows there are infra and ultra portions of the nasal spectrum that are beyond human detection. Undoubtedly, nature has befitted its citizens with a gustatory spectrum that contains human ability as a slender subset of the biologically possible. The upshot is that we are physiologically impaired for dealing with physical reality. The physicists and engineers have developed artificial methods of sensing that reality, and we apply them in everything from assaying parts per million of chemical contaminants to training dogs to reheating macaroni and cheese. Indeed, science has expanded all of our senses (Wilson 1998:47). But we still miss most of the events transpiring in nature. Mental Handicaps Mind and culture exacerbate the problems engendered by our physiological deficiencies. Regarding mind, which we use for creativity and conceptualizing, we have at least five maladaptations from the perspective of science: confirmation bias, linear prejudice, inattentional blindness, prototypical thinking, and bounded possibility, which I discuss in order below. 48 Perspectives Humans and animals have a genetically based tendency to view or interpret two events closely related in time as...