Tffls View of Liff 



In the Mind of the Beholder 



For one observer, the fossil record reveals "a world stunning and fascinating 

 in its chaotic complexity and historical genesis " 



by Stephen Jay Gould 



A variety of ancient mottoes proclaims 

 thiat no principle of aesthetics can specify 

 the gorgeous and the ugly to everyone's 

 satisfaction. "Beauty," we are told, "is in 

 the eye of the beholder"; "There is no ac- 

 counting for tastes" — an observation old 

 enough to have a classical Latin original, 

 De gustibus non disputandum, and suffi- 

 ciently universal to boast a trendier ver- 

 sion in our current vernacular, "Different 

 strokes for different folks." 



Science, by contrast, is supposed to be 

 an objective enterprise, with common cri- 

 teria of procedure and standards of evi- 

 dence that should lead all people of good 

 will to accept a documented conclusion. I 

 do not, of course, deny a genuine differ- 

 ence between aesthetics and science on 

 this score: we have truly discovered — as a 

 fact of the external world, not a preference 

 of our psyches — that the earth revolves 

 around the sun and that evolution happens; 

 but we will never reach consensus on 

 whether Bach or Brahms was the greater 

 composer (nor would scholars in the field 

 of aesthetics ask so foolish a question). 



But I would also reject any claim that 

 personal preference, the root of aesthetic 

 judgment, does not play a key role in sci- 

 ence. True, the world is indifferent to our 

 hopes — and fire bums whether we like it 

 or not. But our ways of learning about the 

 world are strongly influenced by the social 

 preconceptions and biased modes of 

 thinking that each scientist must apply to 

 any problem. The stereotype of a fully ra- 

 tional and objective "scientific method," 

 with individual scientists as logical (and 

 interchangeable) robots, is self-serving 

 mythology. 



Historians and philosophers of science 

 often make a distinction between the logic 

 and psychologic of a scientific conclu- 



sion — or "context of justification" and 

 "context of discovery" in the jargon. After 

 conclusions are firmly in place, a logical 

 pathway can be traced from data through 

 principles of reasoning to results and new 

 theories — context of justification. But sci- 

 entists who make the discovery rarely fol- 

 low the optimal pathway of subsequent 

 logical reconstruction. Scientists reach 

 conclusions for the damnedest of reasons: 

 intuitions, guesses, redirections after wild 

 goose chases, all combined with a dollop 

 of rigorous obsei"vation and logical rea- 

 soning to be sure — context of discovery. 



This messy and personal side of science 

 should not be disparaged or covered up by 

 scientists for two major reasons. First, sci- 

 entists should proudly show this human 

 face to display their kinship with all other 

 modes of creative human thought. (The 

 myth of a separate mode based on rigorous 

 objectivity and arcane, largely mathema- 

 tical knowledge, vouchsafed only to the 

 initiated, may provide some immediate 

 benefits in bamboozling a public to regard 

 us as a new priesthood, but must ulti- 

 mately prove harmful in erecting barriers 

 to truly friendly understanding and in 

 falsely persuading so many students that 

 science lies beyond their capabilities.) 

 Second, while biases and preferences 

 often impede understanding, these mental 

 idiosyncrasies may also serve as powerful, 

 if quirky and personal, guides to solutions. 

 C. S. Peirce (1839-1914), America's 

 greatest philosopher of science, even 

 coined a word to express the imaginative 

 mode of reasoning involved in such men- 

 tal leaping: abduction, or leading from 

 (one place to another), to confi-ast with the 

 more sedate and classical modes of deduc- 

 tion, or logical sequencing, and induction, 

 or generahzation from accumulated par- 



ticulars (all from the Latin ducere, to lead). 



This general theme leapt (or crept) into 

 my mind as I contemplated the three 

 hottest paleontological news items of 1993 

 (I am purposely excluding Jurassic Park, 

 and anything else with the slightest odor 

 of dinosaur, for personal reasons of over- 

 saturation to the point of brontosaurian 

 boredom; if someone could grant me a 

 two-year's sabbatical from all contact with 

 them, I might even like dinosaurs again.) 

 In particular, I noted a discordance, com- 

 mon to all three items, between their cov- 

 erage in the press and my personal reac- 

 tion to the claims. All three were described 

 as particularly surprising (they would not 

 have ranked as "hot" items otherwise) — 

 whereas I found each claim intensely in- 

 teresting but entirely expected. This led 

 me, naturally, to wonder why these (to me) 

 perfectiy reasonable claims seemed so un- 

 usual to others. 



One might posit that my lack of surprise 

 only recorded the professional knowledge 

 of all practicing paleontologists — and tiiat 

 the discordance therefore lies between 

 public and professional perception (thus 

 reinforcing the myth of an arcane and en- 

 lightened priesthood of scientists). But 

 many, probably most, of my professional 

 colleagues were surprised as well — so the 

 reasons for my expectations must be 

 sought elsewhere. 



I then recognized an abstract linkage 

 among the three news items and finally 

 understood the coordinated source of my 

 complacency and the surprise of others. 

 On an overt level, the three items could not 

 be more different — for they span a maxi- 

 mal range of time and subject in the evolu- 

 tionary history of multicellular animals 

 (and this disparity provides an added ben- 

 efit in making their conjunction a good 



14 Natural History 2/94 



