Science Could Use More Magical Thinking

The first person to put feathers on their arrows couldn't have really known what they were doing. It didn't matter.

I like to joke that I’m really glad I wasn’t around for the invention of the arrow, because I’d have made an absolute fool of myself.

“I agree, Pag, we want the stick to fly good. And yes, the things with the feathers fly good. But there’s clearly more to it than putting a couple of feathers on the stick! How would that even work? Are you going to put little wings on it that flap, too?”

A short while later: “Oh, huh. Look at that. Well…you got lucky.”

Twenty thousand years later, our understanding of aerodynamics is more advanced, more subtle, and infinitely more communicable, now that we’ve developed the language of mathematics around it. But even though we’re now sending rockets to other worlds, I think it says something that the layout is still pretty much “pointy stick with feathers on the back”, and that we made it that far without concepts of laminar airflow, Reynolds’ number, or anything much more than vibes.

I was reminded of this line of thinking on a recent trip to the coast of Maine with some friends. There was no sand at the seashore, only stone, and we climbed over enormous, craggy boulders of black granite crisscrossed with mineral inclusions. When we sat down, my eye was caught by a bright blue-green crack in one of the nearby rocks. It was so vivid that, at first, I thought it must be spray paint from an aborted attempt at graffiti.

“Oh!” I said, “I’ll bet you that’s some kind of copper!”

And I realized that, like the arrow, this must be how the first metal was made. Some Pag, insisting “I know, I know, nothing interesting happened with the last fifty rocks we tried to burn, but it must mean something that this one looks so different!”

And when they sifted the ashes of the fire, and found a lump of this strange new material — hard like stone, shining like water — it changed the course of human history. All at once, we were across the threshold of the Bronze Age. It probably also inspired an enormous wave of enthusiasm for chucking random things into the fire to see what happens. Maybe they tried it with the red soil from down by the river — but refining iron from its ore requires much higher temperatures than copper. That one would have to wait.

One takeaway from this is that, at the core of all scientific endeavors is the exercise of one simple principle: “fuck around and find out”. You don’t have to know all the details, and thinking that you do can be counterproductive. It’s enough just to indulge the instinct of “this must mean something” that you get when you see a striking phenomenon, whether it’s a bright blue rock or a feather falling from the tail of a bird in flight.

I think certain video games can encourage this kind of thinking. They put you into a world that was consciously created, where everything has a purpose. If you come across a stone in a video game that moves on its own, or looks different from all the other stones…it’s probably important, and you’re probably supposed to pick it up. A tree with showy, bright-yellow fruit? That’s health, right there. Go pick it!

Interestingly enough, I think religion can have the same effect, for exactly the same reason: it’s a world deliberately created for us, by a mind something like our own. Everything has a purpose, and it’s up to us to find it. Even if that’s not true, there’s value in the kind of trusting, experimental mindset it creates. I think the curmudgeonly reductionist viewpoint which seems to dominate modern atheistic thinking — that the universe is random, cold, and uncaring — sacrifices some of that, to its detriment.

There is magic in this world. Sure, it’s just science that we haven’t figured out yet — but the thing that makes it magic is that you don’t need to understand it to use it.

The magic of flight is there in the feather. You just have to be willing to try.

—🖖🏼💩