At some point, a fact becomes relevant

 Here’s a little more on thinking and how we form hypotheses when we are on the trail of a problem.

The philosopher Carl G. Hempel tells the classic story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiz, who solved the problem of why so many women died at the First Maternity Division at Vienna General Hospital in the 1840s.

From 1844 to 1846, 7 to 11 percent of the women who came to give birth in the First Division died of childbed fever.

In the Second Division, the rates were 2 to 3 percent.

The answer, of course, was that the hospital was a prestigious institution where medicine was taught. The faculty and students were using instruments in autopsies and then using them in the maternity ward with only superficial cleaning.

The problem is obvious now, and medical practitioners now take care in sterilizing their instruments to prevent infections. But the problem wasn’t obvious then. Semmelweiz solved the problem by testing several hypotheses.

One was that childbed fever was spread by crowding. He checked, and found that the Second Maternity Division actually was more crowded, in part because women were trying desperately to avoid the notorious First Division.

Psychiatry was in its early stages then, and some of Semmelweiz’s colleagues thought that the presence of a priest, going through the wards with a procession of assistants to administer last rites to dying women, might have a distressing and weakening affect on the others. Semmelweiz arranged to sneak the priest through the wards on his rounds. 

The story goes on, but you can see why a scientific problem is not just about getting the facts.

What counts as a relevant fact changes as the hypothesis changes. If you think that crowding might explain childbed fever, the relevant facts involve the numbers of patients on the wards. If you think that stress caused by priestly processions might explain childbed fever, the relevant facts involve the priest and his passage through the wards.

It turned out that the relevant facts involved microbes. But no one suspected that was possible when Semmelweiz set out on the trail. Those facts became relevant when he formed a hypothesis that microbes were somehow causing childbed fever in a way that was not known to medical science at the time.

A fact becomes relevant when it's attached to a hypothesis, that is, to a possible explanation.

• Source: Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,  Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.

A notion, not a hypothesis

 I’ve been thinking about scientific hypotheses and about what a hypothesis is.

Here’s an example of something that looks like one but is not:

About one in every thousand atoms of potassium is in the form of an isotope that has an atomic weight of 40, rather than 39. As the word “isotope” implies, it’s radioactive.

Potassium is an essential nutrient for humans. I couldn’t begin to calculate how many of those isotopes I eat with a diet that includes black beans, lentils, bananas and dark leafy greens.

Presumably, when the earth was younger and hotter with radiation, there was a lot more radioactive substances in the food chain.

Isaac Asimov suggested that the level of radiation of that particular isotope of potassium determines the window of opportunity for the development of intelligent life. Too much, and the long genomes that are characteristic of intelligent creatures would break apart. Too little, and the rate of mutation would slow. After eons, we’d still have snails rather than mammals.

It’s an ingenious and telling idea. Students learn from teachers who think aloud like that.

But that suggestion is not really a hypothesis, is it? Can you imagine going to your academic adviser with a proposal to test it? And if that suggestion is not a hypothesis, what would you call it? A bit of speculation? Just an idle notion?

Carl G. Hempel, a philosopher, used to say that one of the most common misconceptions about science is that it is driven by facts — that scientists let the facts drive their hypotheses. Actually, science is driven by minds that are imaginative, as creative as those of poets and fiction writers.

I think science is full of suggestions and speculations like Asimov’s. I wish we had a richer vocabulary to talk about those kinds of illuminating suggestions.

• Sources: A short summary of Asimov's suggestion is in Theodore Gray's The Elements; New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2009. For a discussion of what we ought to count as a hypothesis, see Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,  Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.

Give me fiction, but hold the novel

 W.G. Sebald said: “I try to write prose fiction but the novel genre is alien to me.”

Alas, it’s so with me.

Few of the “great” novels have stuck with me. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, on the other hand, struck me as a wonder.

I liked Death Comes for the Archbishop. But Willa Cather told anyone who would listen that book  was not a novel.

If you follow this collection of notes, you’ll know that I generally prefer short stories. But this is not just length.

I do like some longer works of fiction. I’d call Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet a wonderful work of fiction. I wouldn’t call it a novel. 

This attitude might just be petty stubbornness and a refusal to grow up. When I was in high school, briefly and without distinction, I had allergic reactions to Fitzgerald and Dickens. I probably behaved badly to those who tried to convince me these were great works.

If I were in charge of the educational system, kids would get a pass on Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby. They’d probably have to read Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.

Fortunately, I’m not in charge.

• Source: “Interview with W G Sebald,” by Sebastian Shakespeare; Literary Review, October 2001.

Saint-Simon looks at technology

 Of the six thinkers that Isaiah Berlin considered in his discussion of the enemies of democracy, Joseph de Maistre is the one I dislike most.

When you attack reason itself, when you no longer believe in giving reasons — and truthful reasons — for actions that affect others, you’re committed to resolving disputes by violence.

That’s the political divide in this country today: those who believe in persuasion and those who are ready to use force.

In discussing Berlin’s book, I didn’t say which of the thinkers I liked most. It’s Comte Henri de Saint-Simon. Mostly, it’s his personality, which oscillated between the sublime and the barmy.

Saint-Simon fought with Washington at Yorktown, somehow survived the purge of nobles when the French Revolution disintegrated into terror, went to Panama to advocate for a canal before it was feasible, and taught his servant to wake him up by saying: “Rise, M. le Comte — you have great things to achieve.”

Some of his ideas were daffy. His followers formed a sect, which had a distinctive costume.

Above all, I like one sentence that Saint-Simon wrote:

I write because I have new ideas.

He had at least one idea that I’m still thinking about. I grew up hearing that human needs are basically fixed — food, clothing, shelter. Saint-Simon thought that human needs change constantly because technology changes. You could make the case that access to the Internet is now a need.

Saint-Simon used a metaphor that strikes me as having been unfortunately influential in our thinking about technology. He talked tools as weapons. The plow is a tool to force the earth to give us what we want. The progression from military tools — swords, muskets, missiles — was to force others to do what we wish.

The idea is wrong and dangerous — and more imbedded in our thinking than we’d want to admit. I hope that seeing that idea clearly in his thinking might help me see it more clearly in mine.

• Source: Isaiah Berlin, Freedom and Its Betrayal; Princeton University Press, 2002. Earlier notes on Berlin’s book appear Sept. 30 through Oct. 2, and Oct. 24.

How can anyone stop at 12?

 If I were putting together an anthology of a dozen short stories, I think I’d pick these:

• Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat,” a story that convinced me that I wanted to be a writer.

• Leo Tolstoy, “What Men Live By,” a retelling of — and an perhaps an improvement on — the gospel through the eyes of a poor shoemaker.

• Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River,” about healing after trauma.

• J.D. Salinger, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,” a story that occurs entirely in a cab in New York City. 

• Gabriel García Márquez, “María dos Prezares,” a story about a 76-year-old prostitute who dreams she is going to die but finds she was mistaken in interpreting the dream. Her dog is one of the great dogs in fiction.

• Roberto Bolaño, “Last Evenings on Earth,” which is unforgivably bawdy and astonishing.

• Jorge Luis Borges, “Borges and I,” which is so short it’s hard to believe it’s so good.

• William Carlos Williams, “The Use of Force,” about a doctor who tests wills with a little girl who’s a terrible patient.

• D.H. Lawrence, “The Blind Man,” a story that contrasts the temperaments of two men.

• Alice Munro, either “Dear Life,” about misperceptions and family lore, “Amundsen,” about the unfortunate ways we seek love, or “Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd,” about an improbable friendship. I can’t decide which.

• Christopher Cook, “Heresies,” one of his many stories about how religious beliefs influence life in Texas.

• Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Speckled Band,” because a literature that excludes Sherlock Holmes is of not for me.

I’ve enjoyed stories by William Trevor, Truman Capote, James Joyce, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Bernard Malamud, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams and Willa Cather, and this list would probably be different tomorrow. It’ll have to do for today.

Thanks, Michael, for the suggestions, and thanks, Christopher, for the note on Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool” and the prompt.

What short stories would you recommend?

 A year ago, I had a series of five notes on one-night reads.

I’m just now exploring Jonathan Gibbs’s site “A Personal Anthology.” It features a weekly newsletter, in which he asks someone what they would choose if they were asked to pick 12 short stories for an anthology. Here’s his introduction to the challenge:

The task is to pick and introduce a dozen stories. These might be their personal favourites, or their undisputed list of the greatest ever; they might make a themed collection, or they might be a literary version of Desert Island Discs: twelve stories that have marked them as readers, and mark their journey through life.

I’ve been thinking about the works we read time and again, and how those works shape us.

Readers, if you’d send me a list I’d be grateful. I’m genuinely curious. I’m also always on the prowl for a good story.

• Sources: Jonathan Gibbs’s site is at https://apersonalanthology.com/. As you might guess from the spelling, he’s based in the United Kingdom. I got a quick introduction here: https://tinycamels.wordpress.com/about/. My notes on one-night reads were published Oct. 29 through Nov. 2, 2021. The one on short stories was No. 4 in the series (Nov. 1, 2021).

A sight that comes and goes

 One more note about Stone Mountain, and then I’ll switch topics for a while: The roads here follow tracks that were made in the days when humans traveled on foot or horseback. They wind through the terrain, which is mostly covered in tall trees.

I grew up in West Texas, where a good view might be 40 miles. Here a view is often more like 40 yards, and often 40 feet. 

And so it is that although Stone Mountain is there, you don’t always see it. I don’t even seen it often.

And then, I’ll round a corner, heading for the coffee shop, and it’s there: a stone face, mostly granite, rising 750 feet above the forest and village. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that.