Contingency or Coincidence?—Part 2

In fact, I like to speculate about what our world might be like, if a given major event had not occurred. For example, what if that contingent asteroid 65 million years ago had not blasted into Earth? At the time, the dinosaurs ruled the planet, and they had successfully done so for more than a hundred million years. (Try to wrap your head around that time frame: that's some 500 times longer than we humans have been a species!) At thatsmall mammals—from which we humans evolved—scurried around in the dark, trying to keep from being trampled upon or eaten by the big lizards. In the aftermath of the collision, the dinosaurs died out and the age of mammals began. How would life on Earth have been different, if that asteroid had missed the planet? Might today's dominant species be an intelligent lizard, rather than Homo sapiens?

In 2000 Al Gore lost the US presidential election... but he really didn't. Some nefarious activities by George Bush's brother Jeb, Florida's governor at the time, managed to prevent thousands of Floridians from voting—most of whom, since they were either black or poor, would have voted for Gore. George Bush would thus have been relegated to history's trash bin. By coincidence (well, actually with the aid of a biased US Supreme Court), Bush became president. Had Gore won, it's doubtful that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan would have happened. It's also likely that the US would have assumed a leadership role in dealing with global warming, rather than deny that it is happening. Surely history would have taken another path, had Gore become president.

Let's look at a third alternative possibility. Certain contingent events hundreds of years ago placed European countries in a position to dominate the planet—both economically and militarily. As Jared Diamond demonstrated so well in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Europeans gained the upper hand, when competing with all other societies on the planet. Europeans defeated and controlled peoples in the Americas, the Middle and Far Easts, and Africa. The European way came to dominate. But how radically different would today's world appear if, for example, Africans had held the upper hand? Or if the Aztecs had been stronger than the conquistadors? What if the mighty Islamic empire of the Middle East had won its rivalry with the West in the 1400s? Play history over again and the world would be a very different place.

I find this a fascinating game to play. Of course, there is no way to realistically guess how these and countless other contingencies may have altered the world of today. In a similar manner, I cannot begin to speculate who I might be if my parents had never married. I simply would not be!

This kind of musing is fun for me, but has no real point to it, other than reminding me that it didn't have to be this way. There was no destiny or cosmic intent involved in how things played out. Our future is not fixed by fate. Things simply happen, and they don't happen because they were supposed to. There is no plan. The future remains unknown and even random. The world wasn't destined to be what it is. May I let go the need to want to see some purpose that determined it all and simply accept and be thankful for what is.

Contingency or Coincidence?—Part 1

I am fascinated by the role of chance in the unfolding of history (as well as prehistory, before we humans came upon the scene). When we look back at events that occurred in the past, we can see that many (if not most) of them were flukes: complete surprises that no one could have foreseen. And when they occurred they dominated the course of events. Had they not happened, the present would have unfolded in an entirely different way. Had not Jack Kennedy been assassinated, for example, how differently would American history have unfolded? Had the Soviet Union not dissolved a quarter century ago, what would the world look like today?

The asteroid that crashed to Earth 65 million years ago and terminated the reign of the dinosaurs is another (prehistory) prime example. Another is the ice age of 10-20 thousand years ago that provided a pathway for Asian wanderers to inhabit the Americas. And, to bring it closer to home, what about that time when, as a teenager, I nearly trashed the family car? Had I expired in the accident, this blog (or my kids) would never have been.

I have tended to classify these events as being either an example of a coincidence or a contingency. They both describe similar happenings. To be more specific, a coincidence usually refers to a couple of events that occurred simultaneously, but with no apparent causal connection. A contingency usually describes a single incident that seems to have been unanticipated. In either case, it's a surprise, a chance, a random happening, a fluke, an unpredictable event.

It is a human tendency, however, to interpret most of these unforeseen events as neither coincidental nor contingent. We dislike having things happen for no apparent reason. We rebel against chance and arbitrariness. We want reasons for things. We read intent into incidents and want to believe that things happen for a purpose. We are inclined to look for patterns, or for the hand of God or some other superhuman cause. Something must have caused this significant thing to happen—it couldn't simply have been chance!

Many people wonder how they are to live their lives, if they concede that the universe is simply a chance unfolding. As Einstein once quipped, “God does not play dice.” He was referring to random events at the quantum level, but many people feel that his comment applies to a much wider range of events.

Having a scientific bent, I have fun speculating about events throughout history; looking at them as if they were quite random and unpredictable. When I let go the inclination to see a particular happening as caused by some powerful agent, I can ponder the many alternative scenarios that could have transpired instead. It helps me to grasp and appreciate just how fickle this world is.

More on contingencies and coincidences next time...

Scarce as Hen's Teeth

Most everyone knows that birds come with a hard beak, empty of any teeth. Thus the old saying I often heard my mom say, when something couldn't be found: “It's as scarce as hen's teeth.” Little did Mom know that hens—or, rather their deep ancestral forebears—once did have teeth. In fact, those toothy critters were birds' very deep ancestors (actually, dinosaurs), who lived over 100 million years ago.

In that ancient time the ancestors of today's birds were small, toothed dinosaurs that cohabited the planet with the really big toothy dinosaurs, like the formidable T-Rex. A great many species of dinosaurs presided over all living creatures on Earth, until that fateful day when an asteroid crashed down near the Mexican Gulf coast, 65 million years ago. The resultant disruption to Earth's climate soon wiped out the great dinos, but the smaller, feathered ones managed to squeak through.

Well before that asteroid crash, however, those bird ancestors had already lost their teeth. How do we know? New genetic analyses show that the toothed dinos long ago first lost their teeth at the front of their jaw, and the tooth loss then gradually moved rearward on the jaw. As this loss progressed, the hard beak slowly developed (I guess to give them something hard to mash their food with).

Bird evolution continued to occur, as the proto-birds also evolved flight feathers and even began to sing. As a fascinating example of how genes are shared across species (good evidence that we all co-evolved from even more primitive critters), the 50 or so genes that permitted birds to begin to sing are shared by us humans. These genes give us the ability to speak—and yes, sing, but certainly not like a bird.

But back to hen's teeth: Was a toothless bird more suited for surviving the asteroid impact than the dentally-equipped large dinosaurs? It was more likely a case of their larger size and the over-specialization of the huge dinos that did them in. In any case, the surviving proto-birds found countless available niches, after their dino cousins disappeared. When many niches are available, a species can rapidly multiply into many new species. That's why Earth currently supports more than 10,000 species of birds.

So, the proliferation of birds happened because the big dinosaurs, some 65 million years ago, became scarcer than hen's teeth.