Carl Sagan, Eratosthenes, and Reverend Angel walks into a bar
On believing in science without doing any, and why good explanations come with instructions on how to break them.
I need your help to find a certain report
Before I get on with today’s chronicle, I’d like to ask for your help. I’m working on a video concept that’s a kind of “cover song” for an existing data report out there. Ideally, it’s something published in the last year or so—not too fresh, not too old.
Something good and unintuitive that you feel didn’t get the reach it deserves. I want to take aspects of it and create a really impactful animated informatics video, with fantastic music and beat editing, to give some good data the presentation it deserves.
If you know of a report like that, send it my way (just hit reply to this email; it goes straight to me!).
Eratosthenes was so cool
Anyway, on to the chronicle!
One of my obsessions is how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth almost perfectly back in 200 BC. There was no need to go into space and photograph our blue marble—Eratosthenes achieved this by measuring the angle of shadows and paying someone to pace the distance between Alexandria and Syene (the latter is what caused his calculation of 40,000 km to be slightly off from the actual value of 40,075 km).
How he did this is explained incredibly well by Carl Sagan in this video, which is one of the best examples of pedagogy I’ve ever seen:
Carl Sagan explains how Eratosthenes calculated circumference of the Earth
(A longer clip can be found here: Carl Sagan - Cosmos - Eratosthenes)
The religion of science
The reason I’m so fascinated by Eratosthenes is that I’ve come to realize, in recent years, that I’ve been no better than the religious people I’ve looked down on. If I’m being honest, I’ve been a believer in science. I’ve been a staunch advocate of science my entire life, but I can’t point to a single case where I’ve actually done any scientific verification myself. I just believe in scientists.
Naturally, we all have to do this to some degree—it would be ludicrous for everyone to demand their own time with the Large Hadron Collider to observe the Higgs Boson. But the fact that I haven’t done any basic science myself feels wrong.
If most people are like me and don’t know how to actually verify science, then are they really being taught science? I’ve come to realize that I wasn’t taught a scientific mindset in school so much as I was taught that scientific institutions are trustworthy. My education didn’t provide me with the tools to challenge what I was learning, had it been wrong—and good explanations do that. They come bundled with instructions on how to attack them.
Popping bad explanations
Karl Popper (as interpreted by David Deutsch) tells us that good explanations are courageous because they expose themselves to being disproven.
For example:
* Bad Explanation: The seasons happen in winter because of Demeter’s grief.
* Good Explanation: The Earth tilts on its axis by 23.5 degrees relative to its orbit around the Sun, producing predictable seasonal changes.
The bad explanation isn’t bad because it’s unverifiable (it actually is); it’s bad because it’s inoculated against falsification.
Sam Harris puts it beautifully in this quote from the video below:
“If your beliefs are not falsifiable—if there is no scenario that could convince you your most cherished opinions are in error—then that is proof you did not get them by being in contact with reality.” @ 04:20
Teaching trust instead of scepticism
I believe one big problem today is that science has, to some degree, lost touch with its core and started functioning like a religion. Instead of teaching how science can be inferred, we defer to institutions and authority.
This is necessary to some extent, but if ALL the principles a person holds to be true come from authority, and none are inferred independently, why are we surprised when those principles crumble under the sway of a brighter, louder authority?
Take climate change, for example. Do you believe in it because you understand the evidence or because you trust the people around you? For me, it’s the latter—I wouldn’t confidently explain climate change to a skeptic. But Carl Sagan could:
Carl Sagan testifying before Congress in 1985 on climate change
His testimony in 1985 was incredible. Let’s pause to appreciate the foresight of this man. Cynics in the comments lament the lack of progress since, but I wonder how much worse things might’ve been without this testimony.
Anyway, his key argument is made at 04:13 very cleanly, but what I want to highlight is that at 09:05 in the video, we see an incredible example of Sagan’s pedagogy and down-to-earth (pun intended) scientific communication around the greenhouse effect of Venus’s atmosphere.
Sagan mentions, as a cautionary example, that Venus’s surface atmosphere is about 470 degrees Celsius 470°C (900°F) due to its dense CO₂ atmosphere. While doing this, he explains WHY we can be sure of this:
“Soviet and US spacecraft have landed on the surface and dropped a thermometer down.”
Many communicators would not bother citing sources for the surface temperature of Venus, but I really love that he does here, and it’s very Sagan (just like how he explained that Eratosthenes hired someone to pace the distance between Alexandria and Syene).
It is a really cool move to drop in a couple of credible data points like that, assuming the audience to be skeptical and taking responsibility to cite sources, with a very understandable and plain explanation (given that it is in space).
Now, the two measurements aren’t exactly replicable by the average person, but the two measurements he cites are from two sources that are unlikely to collude (US and Soviet).
Zen and Science
Sagan finishes the testimony with this quote:
“I think that what is essential for this problem is a global consciousness. A view that transcends our exclusive identifications with the generational and political groupings into which, by accident, we have been born. The solution to these problems requires a perspective that embraces the planet and the future because we are all in this greenhouse together.”
Maybe some people feel that I am yapping on about a lot of hippie-dippie-adjacent stuff lately, but I can’t help but think that this statement is eerily similar to something Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams (author of Radical Dharma) said in an interview on Search Engine earlier this month: How do you sit quietly in the middle of a storm? @ 34:36.
Background: Reverend Angel is an ordained Zen priest (which is as close to certified enlightened as one can be) and has, in some sense of the word, gone rogue and returned to society to create broader change than the normal Zen priest route might offer.
Looking at Sagan’s finishing words and hers side by side, there is something very strong and universal about seeing the world for what it is, not what we want it to be that seems to be a core shared value among meditation practitioners and scientists—something we need more of in the world.
Rev. Angel:
“We are not going to be able to deal with the crises of the world and the planet if we don’t have more people mature, right? Become more mature human beings, more kind human beings at a more accelerated rate. And we need something that will operate—forgive me for saying this—at scale.”
PJ Vought:
“Enlightenment at scale!?”
Rev. Angel:
“We need to be able to. I don’t know if we—I don’t think we need a thousand more Buddhas. I think we need millions more people that are, I like to say… aware, more aligned, and more alive. And when we do that, it is not that all of our problems will disappear—but we will learn to conflict well with each other.
We will learn to conflict honestly and with integrity and with a willingness to meet life as it is, and not to abdicate to fantasies and the fictions that we’re creating and getting ourselves looped into.”
I wish you a week of shadows
I’ll leave you with that. When you find yourself walking in the sun this week, take a look and find some time to marvel at the fact that the angle of shadows is data.
PS. In my research this week I learned (and don't even ask why I got on that tangent) about Operation London Bridge which was the codename for elaborate plan in event of the Queens death (and the sub-operation Operation Unicorn which was for if the queen died in Scotland) DS.
Stay Curious.