Frank’s Case Book

Sometimes a cup of coffee represents no more than a refreshment. Other times, coffee fills up more than a little cup of irony. In 1000 AD, an Arab would indulge in a cup of sweetened coffee from Ethiopia. Islamic culture introduced coffee to the world. Without its discovery, there would be no Starbucks and Seattle would be much more laid back.

By the eighteenth century, Europeans had found they could grow the “devils drink” more cheaply in its colonies than could be produced in Ethiopia. In What Went Wrong? eminent Middle Eastern authority Bernard Lewis, points out that by the eighteenth century a typical Turk or Arab would sip coffee that was imported from Dutch Java or Spanish America. For Lewis, coffee represents a metaphor for the decline in the dominance of the Islamic world. This decline and its impact on the western world is the theme of Lewis’s book.

If one visited the world at the beginning of the second millennium, the case could easily be made that the Islamic World was the most powerful, dynamic, advanced and progressive culture on the planet. The Islamic World extended into Europe from both the east and the west, controlled all of Saharan Africa and the east coast of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, east into Asia. Much of ancient Greek knowledge had been assimilated and new insights were learned in contact with the Chinese civilization.

The Islamic culture was self-confident and thus was, for its time, tolerant of other ideas and faiths. Although they would not accept attempts at proselytization, Christians were permitted and Jews prospered and occupied positions of prominence.

The Islamic powers had reason to be confident. They dominated the world militarily, eventually expelling Crusaders from Europe.

Somewhere around the time of the European Renaissance, it became apparent even to Muslims that something was changing. European science and technology was improving, largely due to imperatives of trade and exploration of the New World. The Reformation in Europe alleviated the hegemony of thought, with an emphasis on individualism.

Gradually, Europeans pushed back the geographic limits of the Islamic World, largely expelling it from Europe. As the military superiority of the West improved, Muslims found it essential to adopt Western military weapons and tactics, but felt no real necessity to incorporate large elements of Western culture. Much of the Islamic World believed it could modernize without Westernizing. Ultimately, even these efforts failed.

In the late eighteenth century, Napoleon with superior arms blasted into Egypt and quickly overcame a power at the core of the Islamic World. Ultimately, Napoleon was forced to leave, not by an Islamic power, but by another Western one. Soon much of the Islamic world would become part of the colonial empire of one or another European power.

Today, much of the Islamic world is in poverty, ruled by tyrannical and oppressive leaders, and is technologically and economically far behind the West. If it were not for Western addictions to oil and opium, there would be little of export value from the Islamic World. Muslims also cannot fail to notice that the Eastern powers, Japan and the rest of Pacific Rim, have somehow been able to embrace Western economic culture and in some cases even surpass Western powers in terms of prosperity.

Of course, as Lewis points out, the human response to this conspicuous decline is to ask “Who did this to us?”

According to Lewis, for a long time, the Islamic world blamed the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. However, this explanation is unpersuasive given that many Islamic cultural achievements came after the expulsion of the Mongols.

Many in the Islamic World blamed Western imperialism, particularly by the British and the French. However, this explanation begs the question. It was the decline of economic and military power that allowed Western imperialism to succeed.

After, the formation of a tiny Israeli state in the center of the Middle East, the Muslim world tried to blame Zionism for their humiliation. As Lewis puts it, “… it was humiliating enough to be defeated by great imperial powers of the West; to suffer the same fate at the hands of a contemptible gang of Jews was intolerable. Anti-Semitism and its image of the Jew as a scheming and evil monster provided a soothing antidote.” The Jews were to blame.

Tolerance has come full circle. For much of the last millennium the treatment of Jews in the Islamic World was far more exemplary than their treatment by Christendom. Now Jews are hated in much of the Islamic World. It is ironic that perhaps the best indicator for the success and prosperity of a society and culture may be its treatment of Jews. If this historically persistent minority is tolerated, it implies that the dominant culture is sufficiently self-confident and prosperous that it sees no threat in the acceptance of Jews. It is an unmistakable sign of decline when this tolerance is abandoned.

Most recently, some in the Islamic world have blamed Western culture, and it chief symbol, the United States for undermining Islamic religious values. Islamic fundamentalist seek to explain decline in the Islamic World, by the abandonment of traditional Islamic practices.

The true reason for the decline of Islamic civilization has been its growing calcification and refusal to recognize the importance of individual freedom necessary for a modern economic state. Interestingly it may have been the early phenomenal success of Islam that cemented it into rigid religious structures. At the outset, Islam spread quickly and relentlessly. Within a century of Mohammed, Islam extended from Spain to the Caucuses. Islam washed over other local religions like a tidal wave and immediately dominated religious and government structures. Indeed, there was no perceived difference between the civic culture and religious culture. The law was Islamic law and carried the weight of Allah’s authority.

The Christian and Jewish religious traditions arose in a culture of the oppressed. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt and the early Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. Mohammed was triumphant on Earth, while Christ was put to death by local government authorities. From the outset, Christians and Jews realized that the kingdoms of the Earth and religious authority were not co-extensive. In the West, secular and religious power was often allied and sometimes synonymous, but the idea of two separate spheres of authority was at least possible. After the Reformation and a series of religiously-based European wars, it became evident that some mutual distance between the state and church could provide lasting peace. Indeed, with the rise of commercial society, the question of religious affiliation diminished in importance.

The laws and institutional arrangements of man were thus accepted as largely empirically based. What worked to produce civility and prosperity was sufficient. Arrangements could be temporary and flexible according to the needs of the time. Appeals to immutable religious authority were not necessary. This emancipation of the individual and associations of individuals to seek their own goals ignited the growth in wealth and military power that has left much of the Islamic world behind.

There is nothing inherent in the Islamic faith that prevents it from embracing Western culture. The relative prosperity of Turkey is a consequence of its adoption of Western economic and cultural institutions. Nonetheless, there remains a broad sympathy in the Islamic World with the notion that freedom, particularly the freedom that separates civil from religious authority, makes Western powers debauched and self-indulgent. The ultimate fall of these powers under the weight of their own decadence, in the minds of some, will mark Islam’s return to ascendancy.

However, as Lewis concludes:

“If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another alien domination-perhaps from a new Europe reverting to old ways, perhaps from a resurgent Russia, perhaps from some expanding superpower in the East. But if they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies, and resources in a common creative endeavor, they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being, the choice is theirs.”

The popular vision of scientists as wise, well read, erudite, Renaissance men is largely a throw back to the nineteenth century, at least as portrayed in the movies. The truth is that most scientists have narrow fields of expertise. Many scientific disciplines are so academically demanding and time consuming, scientists generally have time for little else than the study of their fields. The scientist with a deep knowledge and appreciation of history and literature is rare. Rarer still is a scientist who can speak and write eloquently for the lay audience about topics as disparate as the Flamingo’s Smile, Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, or Crossing Over Where Art and Science Meet. Harvard paleontologist Stephan Jay Gould, who recently succumbed to a rare cancer, was just such a scientist.

Although his primary expertise was in West Indian snails, Gould became an important voice in many national debates. Gould was blessed with the dual gifts of raising the level of the discussion and of reducing the temperature of discourse. The 1981 book, The Mismeasure of Man proved to be an important cautionary tail. In the book, Gould warned of the inherent difficulty and aborted efforts in classifying human intelligence with a single numerical measure, the so-called Intelligence Quotient, IQ. There is still considerable controversy about measures of intelligence and the final chapter has not yet been written. In 1994, when Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray, published The Bell Curve suggesting correlations between race and measures of intelligence, Gould was a voice of calm and studied critique. However, Gould’s most important contribution in this debate was to explain how even well-meaning and honest scientists can inadvertently bend interpretation of the data to fit preconceived notions and prejudices. It is not that science cannot be neutral; it is just that scientists must be vigilant to maintain objectivity.

Gould had his flaws. His politics were left of center and worst yet he was a life-long New York Yankees fan. Yet, these could be overlooked in light of his persistent honesty in pursuit of the truth.

Gould has always been something of an agnostic with respect to religion, but has never carried an anti-religious chip on his shoulder like other scientists in the manner of Carl Sagan. Indeed, later in life in his book, Rock of Ages, Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, Gould seemed to reach a permanent accommodation with religion arguing that religion and science address different human needs and realms. Gould asserted the Principle of NOMA, Non-Overlapping Magisteria. Specifically:

“[the] magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the universe is made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.”

Nonetheless, Gould’s field is evolutionary biology and it is here that he has been most vocal. He was one of the first to recognize that biological evolution may not proceed at a slow regular pace, but proceed in fits and spurts as species respond to dramatic changes in the environment in a process known as “punctuated equilibrium.” For example, after an asteroid impact, species may quickly change until a new equilibrium is reached.

Recently, Gould has argued that biological evolution is not directed and evolution does not necessarily imply progress. Evolution is popularly portrayed as a progression from simplicity to complexity, culminating in humans. If you measure evolutionary success by ubiquity, Gould argues, bacteria are the evolutionary success story, not humans. Humans are a recent evolutionary development, whereas bacteria have existed for hundreds of millions of years and will likely outlast humans. There is no inherent reason why humans were an inevitable development. A few environmental changes here or there, fewer or more asteroid impacts, and humans would not exist now.

To some, Gould’s argument diminishes the dignity of humans by portraying them as mere evolutionary accidents. If, indeed, the emergence of an intelligence conscious enough to consider its place in the universe is a rare random event that would seem to make its development even more precious. If, in the enormous universe, conscious intelligence is not inevitable, if four billion years of development on Earth does not guarantee a sentient and self-aware species, it seems like an awful waste of time and space.

If humans are an unlikely accident, then any single human is far rarer. Given the 23 genes donated by each parent, over 8 million genetically different children could result from any set of parents. In one such accident in 1941, Stephen Jay Gould was born and we have all been the better for this rare conjunction of genetic material. We are all diminished by the all too early loss of his voice.

The statistics are clear to everyone with even an approximation of an open mind. The presence of a father in the home is highly correlated with the well being of children. Children fortunate enough to have both a father and a mother in the home perform better is school, are healthier, are less likely to live in poverty or commit suicide, and are less likely to become involved in drugs, than children raised by a single parent. On Father’s Day, it is important to emphasize the importance of fathers.

This strong positive social effect does not necessarily mean that the relationships between fathers and sons will always be smooth and easy. Indeed, the father-son relationship can be complex and define the way both interact with the rest of the world.

In an article in the National Review, Mark Goldblatt ruminates over the relationship with his own father. He argues that the natural competition between fathers and sons explains why “Sons are their fathers’ only natural predators.” Goldblatt suggests that the following dilemma confronts fathers and their sons. If a son fails to become as accomplished as his father, the father is disappointed. If on the other hand, the son is more successful, the father is left with sour envy. It is as if the success of the son somehow acts as a reproach of the father. It is almost certain that Goldblatt’s generalization is overly tainted by the relationship he describes with his own father in National Review. Goldblatt’s father lacked a college education and was apparently unsure of his own intelligence. The young Goldblatt was afflicted with the natural arrogance of youth and confident in his own abilities. Perhaps the young Goldblatt even deliberately aggravated his father’s sensitivity. As Goldblatt explains,

“[My father] looked up from dinner one evening and said, `You probably think you’re smarter than me, don’t you?’ So I glanced up at him and replied, `No, not really.’ This was a lie: Of course I was smarter than he was! The issue had been settled so long ago in my mind that I thought he was asking a trick question.”

Goldblatt story is a sad one. Apparently, he has spent the time after his father’s death trying to reconcile himself to the relationship he had with his father.

However, the fallacy of the father’s dilemma as posed Goldblatt lies in the assumption that the success and challenges faced by sons can be separated from those of the father. If a son is very successful, then the father is successful as well. If a son is struggling, then the father shares in the struggle.

It is not that fathers fail to compete with children. Fathers should compete with their sons (and daughters) as a means to build up the competence and confidence of their children, butnot as a way to demonstrate their own vigor and superiority. Children need the challenges posed by parents to develop a sense of their limits and strengths. But their successes and failures are shared by their parents

Nonetheless, when children get a little too confident, it is wise to provide them a little perspective. To my children, I often find myself paraphrasing the words of Sir Isaac Newton. If my children can see farther than their parents, it is because they stand on the shoulders of giants.