Continuities and Contingencies—Part 2

In the late 16th century, Spain sent a vast armada to invade England and force it back into the Catholic fold (as well as seize the top-dog spot in Europe). The Spanish fleet appeared invincible. Continuity would suggest that the English were in trouble, but storms and other unforeseen accidents helped them to win, even though they were weaker. A most unfortunate contingency for the Spanish!

When we look back on events that happened, I think we can lose sight of the fact that there was nothing inevitable about them. We rarely think about the multitude of other possibilities that could have happened. It can seem as if events are preordained, but they’re not. Once something happens, it gets locked into place (especially in our minds), but before it did, anything could have happened. It could have gone an uncountable number of other directions. Let me count the ways (Ms. Browning).

There are myriad other ways of perceiving continuities and contingencies. For one, the concept of karma (a way of perceiving cause and effect) expresses continuity in life. What is happening to me today is to a large degree caused by what I did yesterday. I mistreated Joe and he strikes back today. I reached out with loving care to a stranger yesterday and life is sweet today.

Similarly, an alternative way of describing contingencies is the expression “Shit happens.” (Or its flip side, “Grace happens.”) Most things are beyond our control. We may try our best to live a good life, hoping that continuities will take care of us, but bad fortune may befall us. The story of Job is such a tale. Likewise, we may make many poor choices (that otherwise would lead us to experience some bad karma) but find that providential things happen to us. Moments of grace come, even when we don’t deserve them.

Yet another (scientific) way to express the play between continuities and contingencies is the wave function that governs the behavior of subatomic particles in quantum mechanics. The state of an object such as an electron is defined by its wave function—which describes the probability that it exists in a given location and moves in a given manner; in essence the wave function addresses the electron’s myriad future possibilities. Once an observation is made of the electron, however, its wave function “collapses” into a specific, determinate state. It’s been locked into place. It has passed through the quantum bottleneck.

How we react to contingencies says a lot about the kind of person we are. Some of us rely on continuities; we expect that things will turn out pretty much as we had planned. We want to believe that the world is predictable, dependable, and explainable. We get upset when surprises come along. We even try to force things, by using power to control events. But contingencies will disrupt our lives, despite our attempts to be in charge. If we fight this process, we can become so inflexible in our desire to control things that these disruptions throw our lives out of whack. Life like this can be very frustrating.

The other extreme reaction is to give up any effort of thinking ahead or trying to plan. Why try to chart a course, when uncertainties seem to govern? My life seems to be out of control, so I’ll forget about trying to arrange anything. One can surrender to the vagaries of life and let chaos reign.

I think it makes sense to seek a middle path. Continuities do exist. Plans can guide one’s life in a coherent direction, so it is reasonable to prepare for the future and hope that continuities will generally prevail. But it’s not the interruptive contingencies in life that matter; it’s how we respond to them. If we relax and go with the flow, acknowledging that we can’t control everything, life can be happier. If we are open to contingencies, putting full attention to the present moment, as they pass through the “bottleneck of the now,” we can respond to their surprises much more wisely. Inopportune contingencies won’t knock us off balance as much as they otherwise might, and we’re in a better position to take advantage of opportune contingencies. In other words, we can roll with life’s punches as well as embrace its kisses.

Ice Duck (Sculptress: Mother Nature)

Continuities and Contingencies—Part 1

Recently I was introduced to the concept of “continuities and contingencies,” as described in an interview with scientist Walter Alvarez in Discover magazine. I had never before thought to have linked these two words, so afterwards my mind was abuzz with numerous fascinating implications. As described by Alvarez, continuities are a logical sequence of events, a historical trajectory—which links the future to the past in a predictable manner. If we look at yesterday’s happenings, we can make a pretty good guess about what’s going to happen tomorrow. If I stayed up and partied last night, there’s a good chance I’ll suffer from a hangover tomorrow morning. Continuities can be good predictors.

A contingency is something completely unpredictable. It’s chance; it’s accidental. It may or may not occur. When a contingency comes along, it can blow your continuity out of the water. It utterly changes everything. Alvarez quoted Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis: “I prefer to think of the present as a singularity… through which the future has got to pass in order to become the past. The present achieves this by locking into place relationships between continuities and contingencies.”

I love the mental image that creates, of viewing the future as containing an uncountable number of possibilities that have to pass through the bottleneck of the present moment to become actuality. Many things might possibly happen, but right now, only this one thing actually occurs. Afterwards we look back and note what happened, and make our conclusions—some valid, some specious. A past event may be perceived to have been caused by either continuity (it seemed logical, given what transpired before) or by an unforeseen contingency (the roll of the dice). If I get run over by a truck on my way home from the party, I’ll never suffer from that hangover.

Continuities are what we rely upon; what we hope (or fear) will happen. We plan for the future, doing things now that we trust will lead to things we expect. We want life to be dependable, for there to be coherence in our world. The laws of nature are continuities—expressed as cause and effect. I hold out a ball in my hand, release it, and expect that it will fall. I go to bed, having confidence that the sun will come up in the morning. Our lives take on patterns and cycles that lean heavily on continuities.

But the best-laid plans can go awry. As the saying goes, “Life is what happens when you had other plans.” In other words, contingencies enter the picture and it’s a whole new world. Contingencies bring unexpected events—both favorable and unfavorable. The mate we end up with is not who we expected. The job we landed was not what we planned to do. The flood (or earthquake or car accident) throws us into a completely different situation.

Shortly after Earth was formed, it collided with a planet about the size of Mars. A major chunk of Earth’s mantle was blown into space and later congealed into our Moon. (The rest of the impacting planet joined with the proto-Earth to become a newer and bigger Earth.) Without the Moon’s subsequent steadying influence on us, Earth would not be nearly as life-friendly as it is. What a fortunate contingency for us!

Another example of contingencies and continuities next time…

Too Much Snow (click on pic for enlargement)

A Harsh Winter

This has been a winter that, even before it’s over, can safely be described as unusually tough and relentless… even harsh. I think we’ve been softened up around here, the last several years, by a series of sweet and gentle cold seasons. But winter’s harshness is relative and I must also admit to an aging factor being involved: winters get longer as I get older. Years ago I scoffed at the snowbirds who fled to Florida or Arizona for the cold months. Lately their trips are making more sense. I’m not ready to travel south (yet), but it sure makes me thankful that I don’t live much farther north.

Winter blahs are usually mitigated around here by splendid gifts of a few isolated warm days scattered across January and February. The sun will shine and the thermometer will climb into the 60s or 70s. (Back in ’94 it hit 84 degrees!) You run outside and celebrate such a day—successfully warding off a bad case of cabin fever for another few weeks. Those glorious days are reminders of what’s coming in March and April. They rekindle one’s hope. They’re messengers that spring really will return… just be patient.

But this winter has offered no such respite. Patience withers. The nights have not been colder than normal, but the days have simply refused to warm up much. On blustery days it makes it so easy to stay inside by the woodstove—sipping tea or wine—rather than face winter’s nastiness.

But the culprit that’s tipped this winter’s balance into genuine harshness is snow—an abundance of the wretched white stuff. (It’s interesting that a modest amount of snow is pristine and beautiful, while a glut of it can become ugly.) We were blasted recently by 40 inches of it. We’ve been due for a big dump and here it is! About every six or seven years we get a snowy winter; the last one was in 02/03. A typical season brings us a total of about two feet in the Valley, with mild winters dropping a foot or less; the greatest accumulation here to date was five feet, in 95/96. This year’s calendar has yet to finish February and we’re already headed towards seven feet!

Once upon a time we had ongoing obligations in town, which made us struggle to surmount the deep (and ugly) snows. An old Willys Jeep with a blade pushed the drifts off our quarter-mile long drive—that is, when I could get it to start. Now the Jeep is slowly sinking into the soil; headed towards becoming the focus of an archeological dig in another few centuries. It refused to start a few years ago—during that spate of mild winters, when it wasn’t needed, and I wasn’t highly motivated to fix it. Now, like an old broken-down horse, it is irretrievably out to pasture.

Luckily, our town obligations are now pretty much behind us. Our food supply is bountiful. We’ve got a good backlog of wine and tea and we believe that we can wait out these storms. Sooner or later it will melt… won’t it? Please?

Switch on side of my meditation hut

Silent Spaces—Part 2

In my noise-reduction career I had many opportunities to see that most machines generate far more noise than necessary. When these machines first were designed, noise was not a priority, so it was therefore pretty much ignored. Thus my colleagues and I were able to bring about dramatic reductions in noise levels of the machines that we studied. When manufacturers were shown how to quiet their products, they usually were pleasantly surprised and even quite willing to incorporate our suggestions (especially those who made the noisiest machines and who sensed that the EPA would soon come knocking).

Indeed, those were the heady days. We noise acousticians were excited about the prospect of a future freer of humanity’s din. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Other priorities interfered—the oil shortage shifted priorities in another direction. Shortly after Reagan came to office, EPA’s office of Noise Abatement and Control was first gutted of capable personnel and then closed down in the early 80s. I guess the reversal of the noise tide contributed to my hanging up my sound level meter and migrating to the quieter rural Shenandoah Valley.

Since setting down roots here some 30 years ago, I have come even more to treasure the quietude that surrounds me. But it’s all relative. It may be far quieter here than in the city, but one becomes more sensitive and I find that interfering noise is still far too common for me. In the city I expected it to be noisy, while out here I expect it to be quiet—but that’s not always the case. When I recline in my outdoor tub in the evenings, I especially treasure the quiet. I find airplanes and distant barking dogs irritating. I also am aware that, without the lower background noise around here, I’d not even hear these disturbances.

Despite my annoyance with noise, I am aware that without the much quieter environment that I now live in, I’d miss so many precious aural events. The gentle breeze drifting across the hollows would be missed. The chatter of a distant squirrel or the distant response of an owl to a local’s call would fade into background chatter. I’d never hear the soft swish of the titmouse’s wings, as it glides down to the feeder. These are hushed happenings I’d otherwise miss. I love them.

Like the light pollution that prevents city dwellers from seeing but a few of the brightest stars and keeps them ignorant of the 4000 or so stars they would otherwise see in a dark country sky, incessant noise can inure us to these irritants and disguise the subtle delights of nature. Until that masking visual and aural interference is reduced, we don’t know what we are missing. The loss is tragic. I am deeply grateful that I can see and hear what my rural site allows.

This is MY Feeder (said the goldfinch to the titmouse)

Silent Spaces—Part 1

Last year I read a new book that struck a resonant chord within me. Gordon Hempton and John Grossman wrote One Square Inch of Silence in an attempt to wake people up to the fact that our auditory environment is badly polluted. Most everyone knows that cities are noisy places. Music, traffic, and most every human activity are overly loud. Our ears are assaulted by TV, by the neighbor’s yard machines, by passing traffic, and by constant airplane flights to and from nearby airports.

Hempton and Grossman focused on the incessant human-made noise in the wilderness. Hempton has scoured the country looking for really quiet locations—finding that they are virtually nonexistent. Even the most remote corners of our national parks are not free of the intrusive noise of human activity. Snowmobiles and four-wheel machines invade backcountry. Heavy airplane traffic rains down its continuous noise upon us. Even the most isolated corners get violated several times every hour with overflights. The noise of a jet at 35,000 feet can be heard scores of miles away.

In an attempt to dramatize the situation, Hempton has found a tiny patch of land—one square inch in area—that is, as far as he can tell, the most noise-free spot in the country. He’s trekked into many remote locations with sound level meter in hand and ears at alert, seeking pristine quiet locations.

Hempton’s quietest spot is a one square inch that he found in the Olympic National Park on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula. He lives nearby and often hikes in, to savor the (near) silence in that little patch. Trying to raise awareness of the problem, he drove across country a couple of years ago in an old VW microbus—ending up in the other Washington (D.C.), to meet government officials and try to convince them to take action to lower the volume. It remains to be seen whether or not they heard him. (Is that a pun?)

When I read this book, the location from which the resonant chord resounded in my soul was created during my former career in acoustics. My focus in those days was to investigate how machines generated excessive noise and to conduct experiments to demonstrate how to quiet them. It was the heady days of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—in wake of the Noise Control Act, which charged EPA with the mission of reducing noise pollution. (EPA was also enjoined with reducing air and water pollution.)

Studies showed that noise is far more than an intrusive, unpleasant thing. It’s a health issue—and that’s what got EPA going. Exposure to loud noise can damage the delicate hearing process. But noise is also a psychological problem. It can disorient us (and animals even more), create emotional and physical stress, and interfere with sleep.

More noise next time…

Door frost at -4 degrees

Superorganism Ann—Part 2

Like all creatures, Ann also has some qualities that uniquely define her. She is deaf and blind—but in compensation, she possesses superior senses of smell, taste, and touch. Living underground in one location all her life, she neither needs to see nor hear. But oh, her sense of smell! For instance, she can emit some 12 different chemical signals, which she can combine in a highly skilled manner—deciding when, where, and why to release pheromones, as well as to mix them on certain occasions. She has a chemical communication system analogous to the chemical signals our guts and brains emit, as they successfully carry out their functions.

Ann could be perfectly happy if she never met another being of her kind. She is a hermit (I can relate to that). But similar beings do live nearby. She knows they’re out there and she occasionally encounters one of them. And they are usually not friendly meetings—as she and each of her rivals (I’ll call them Judy and Sally) need a minimal amount of territory to survive. Evolution has seen to it that there is plenty of competition for the available space and food. When Ann was younger she was robust and virile. Neither Judy nor Sally dared to challenge her then.

But when Ann reached 30, something fateful happened: the queen died. It was as if one of our vital organs became diseased and began to shut down. Our intelligent bodies would try to fight off the problem, but if the disease seized the upper hand or if we are simply too old to keep up the struggle, we will at some point succumb.

Ann began to falter and weaken. Judy lived right next door and began to sense her advantage. At first, Judy tentatively challenged, as Ann bravely put up a front. But in time Judy sensed her rival’s frailty and launched an all-out invasion. In a matter of a few days Ann lost the battle and perished. Judy now prospered with her expanded territory. Ann had lived a full and lengthy life. She did well. But like all creatures, death is the final destiny.

I like thinking of an ant colony as a specific individual. It puts the story of the life of this superorganism on a par with that of a bird or a rabbit. I can ponder the intelligent behavior of the colony and not get stuck with the unlikely image of how a collection of dumb creatures could possibly do all that. Instead, I imagine Ann, and her amazing accomplishments then seem more reasonable to me. (Besides, it’s fun.) The next time I come upon an anthill, I’ll picture the blind and deaf creature who lives down there—a creature whose sense of smell is just amazing. Thanks, Ed Wilson!

Icy Etchings

Superorganism Ann—Part 1

In the January 25 issue of The New Yorker is a wonderful article of “fiction” by E.O. Wilson. I’ve written here before about Wilson, a preeminent writer-biologist who is quite likely the world’s leading expert on ants. His article in The New Yorker is “fiction,” only in the sense that he is describing the life of a hypothetical ant colony—how it began, how it thrived, and how it expired. It is a delightful story that pulls the reader into the heart of a prosperous community of 10,000 ants and the workings of its complex society.

Wilson describes how the queen of his imagined community flew from her birth colony, became inseminated, and initiated her own colony. She is the vital center of the community, which Wilson calls a “superorganism.” I have written before about the phenomenon of emergent intelligence (1/28/09 and 5/7/09) and how a tight-knit group of creatures exhibits intelligence far beyond what any one of them possesses—a kind of superorganism.

As I pondered Wilson’s story—titled “Trailhead”—I found myself thinking of his superorganism of ants, not as a collection of cooperating insects that achieves its remarkable feats, but as a specific being; like a frog, or a dog, or even a human being. I imagined the colony as an intelligent individual—one that encompasses all the discrete insects, much like our bodies encompass multitudes of cells, organisms, and organs. Our bodies are a cooperative collection of countless beasties, and so is an ant colony. So let me think of the colony as being a being. I’ll call her Ann.

Ann possesses essentially all the qualities of any intelligent creature. (I’m using the word intelligent here to mean the skillful accomplishment of complex tasks of living successfully—a much broader definition than just a measure of cerebral capability.) Ann was conceived at some point, was born, has thrived for 30 years (30!), and will someday perish—just like all critters. She forages for food, possesses a superb digestive system, defecates, and skillfully disposes of her wastes—often using it to fertilize her gardens. Ann’s immune system fights off disease and she successfully repels periodic invaders. As long as her multitudinous elements cooperate with one another and luck is with her, she lives a long and healthy life. Similarly, as long as our various organs work together and fortune smiles upon us, we stay healthy.

Ann inherently knows how to respond capably to varied circumstances. When food is plentiful she grows fat and robust. When provisions are lean she hunkers down and loses weight. Some of Ann’s components periodically sacrifice themselves to maintain her health—much as some of our white blood cells attack invasive bacteria and perish in the process. It’s all for one and one for all.

More on Ann’s qualities next time.