- gpmoakley
- Aug 16
- 4 min read
As mentioned in my last blog, I had the pleasure and privilege of being interviewed by Don McCauley for “The Author’s Show” (you can find a link to the interview at https://www.georgemoakley.com/new-events if you scroll down to the bottom of the page).
And, as I’ve mentioned, many of the questions were quite thought provoking.
For example, he asked whether there was a central message to the book.
My response was that I read to be entertained, so I write to entertain.
I find ‘preachy’ novels tedious.
That said, my stories do reflect my values, and there are a number of tropes I avoid. Such tropes include the notion that the peril confronting our heroes is the result of ‘the scientists’ messing with something they shouldn’t and having the peril compounded by the naiveté or outright stupidity of key characters.
Believable, sympathetic characters will, like all of us, have their strengths and weaknesses, but there’s a difference between smart people working their way through a problem, learning along the way, and people taking cringingly stupid actions.
In my novels, the characters each of their respective areas of expertise. When confronted by a novel peril, they have to figure it out. They make mistakes, costly mistakes, but they’re understandable mistakes based on what they do and do not yet know when they make these mistakes.
And part of the fun, at least for me as a reader, is feeling like you’re part of the discussion as these experts struggle, together, to understand and address the threats they face, especially if this includes learning a thing or two along the way.
Dealing with the existential threats the Eden colonists face in ‘Kraken of Eden’ and ’Tides of Eden’ requires understanding the biology of the threats, applying the scientific method, and sound and practical engineering.
In particular, they have to apply, as discussed in another of these blogs, the part of the scientific method that deals with paradigms.
This all came to mind, recently, as I scrolled through a social media ‘debate’ regarding evolution.
There were, of course, participants that dogmatically reject evolution entirely.
But there were also quite a few lay people whose understanding of evolutionary theory was sufficiently superficial that, despite their best efforts, they could not effectively engage in the debate.
And, really, that shouldn’t be an issue. Most people really don’t need to be experts in evolutionary theory, any more than they need to be, say, experts in automotive transmission design or carpentry or quantum theory.
We each have our areas of expertise worthy of others' respect, and we each should respect the expertise of others.
But, these days, as exemplified in far too many debates, we are experiencing not only a denial, but an outright disdain for expertise.
Consider attending an entertainment event. Buying a ticket to see a movie, or a concert, or a sporting event.
The fact that you’re willing to spend money on such a ticket indicates that you recognize and value that other people have not only an innate talent but have also invested considerable time, energy, and resources to nurture that talent.
You certainly wouldn’t spend money on a ticket to watch me play tennis, I assure you.
Why is it that we’re willing to acknowledge, celebrate, and, as measured by ticket prices, value the expertise of entertainment and sports figures, yet far too many of us reject the expertise of scientists or economists or any of the other areas of expertise relevant to so many of the important issues we face?
For example, one of arguments made against evolutionary theory was the entropy argument. Why do we see increasing sophistication of life forms, such as the progression from single cells to humans, if there’s not a divine force driving this progression?
This argument presumes that there’s a progression, which is a popular misconception driven by the depictions we’ve all seen of a sequence of figures, typically left to right, starting with either a crouching ape or a fish crawling up a beach and ending with a dude in a suit or carrying briefcase or something along those lines.
Yes, especially in popular literature, we tend to depict evolution in hindsight. We start with the modern form, then depict, before it, its evolutionary predecessors.
But that’s NOT how evolution works.
Evolution is not a linear progression.
Evolution is a bush.
Life forms diversify randomly through their inherent variability and through mutations.
Sometimes, especially as environmental conditions change, these variabilities affect reproductive success, and some do not. At any given time, the individuals we see are the descendants of the individuals whose variability favored their reproductive success.
If you look at the history of life on our planet, sure, you see, AMONG MANY OTHER THINGS, an increasing sophistication of some life forms.
But such 'advances' are far, far outnumbered by the proliferation and diversification of the rest of the planet’s biology.
There are, for every advancement, a LOT of new bacteria, virus, and so forth.
Let’s look at this another way.
If you decided to flip a coin 10 times, the odds that you’ll get 10 heads are pretty poor.
But if you decided to flip a coin 10 times, and you decided to repeat that exercise 1,000 times, I guarantee you that, at least once, you’ll get 10 heads.
When we depict evolution in terms of the ancestral forms of a modern sophisticated species, we aren’t seeing divine intervention in our coin flipping.
We’re just ignoring all the coin flips that didn’t produce the kind of exceptional result that captures our attention.
People that have studied evolution understand this and could explain it, but, when we don’t respect expertise, we don’t listen.
And this IS important!
One of the reasons scientists find this frustrating is that evolutionary theory isn’t just a theory. It is a conceptual framework, a paradigm, within which biology makes sense. Evolutionary theory provides the context within which scientists can make and test useful predictions.
Want to improve crop yields? Want to detect and prevent, or at least respond to, a pandemic? Want to breed a new, really cute breed of dog or cat?
Evolutionary theory provides the foundation for that work.
So, yes, I read to be entertained, so I write to entertain.
But, in my novels, experts and their expertise are not only respected, they are essential to the plot…