Paraclete, A Novel by Stan Rice, part two. Science in Pre-Scientific Days

 

This essay follows up on a previous essay about Stan Rice’s novel Paraclete, about Heloïse and Abélard in medieval France. The question I want to focus on in this essay is, Abélard was a priest and Heloïse a nun, but were they also scientists?

Abélard held most of the beliefs of his fellow scholars. He probably thought the Earth was fairly small and probably flat and looked mostly like Europe. This viewpoint is expressed in the crowning mechanical achievement of ancient times, the astrolabe, which looked like a big wristwatch and was used to keep track of the movement of stars, planets, and the moon. Heloïse and Abélard admired this invention so much that they named their love-child Astralabius after it.

Science, as we understand it today, was very uncommon and hidden before early modern times in Europe. Many textbooks have lists of early scientists, all male, with the acknowledgement that some of the Greek and Roman philosophers had started the process of science. As far as ancient and non-European scholarship was concerned, scholarly thought consisted largely of “I am the Great Conqueror, I say the world is flat, and if you disagree, your head will be on a platter.”

But the “scientific method” is more of an attitude, of seeking evidence to test our beliefs. Not just to confirm them, but to give these ideas a real chance to be wrong, and then if they pass the test, we can honestly believe them. People have always done this, and sometimes have gotten away with it. Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Roman philosophers such as Lucretius even speculated about evolution, and they sought evidence for it. You can do science too, even though you may not consider yourself a scientist. See my book, Scientifically Thinking: How to Liberate Your Mind, Solve the World’s Problems, and Embrace the Beauty of Science.

In Abélard’s time, scholars were not allowed to disagree with church doctrine. What Abélard insisted on over and over and over was that scholars ought to be allowed at least to question the authoritative doctrines. Just ask about them, that’s all. This was an essential first step. If scholars ended up confirming the doctrines, then our ability to worship God would have been magnified. Whaddaya say to that, Uncle Fulbert? You afraid we might find evidence against those doctrines?

The Almond Branch: A novel by Stan Rice. Part three. Prophets and Scientists

Stan Rice has recently published another novel, The Almond Branch, in the Under the Sun series. This series poses the question, what is it that God is doing in this world under the sun? The phrase comes from Ecclesiastes, which is the almost-agnostic book in the Old Testament. Rice speculates on answers to this question: in the time of Solomon (Among the Lilies); in the last days of Jerusalem (this novel); in the Middle Ages of Europe (Paraclete); and in a modern Amish community (Blue Wild Indigo).

Here is the author’s summary from Amazon:

In Jerusalem, immediately before its conquest by Babylon, Jeremiah is on his way to succeeding his father as a priest. Even when they are children, Miriam loves Jeremiah, but Jeremiah is clueless about human love even when he grows up. He is borderline crazy and keeps alienating himself from his society. He thinks God speaks to him through puns. Jeremiah’s father has pagan images in addition to Jewish ones, to appease Jebusite neighbors, but Jeremiah destroys them. And it keeps getting worse, until Jeremiah has to live in a cave with the other prophets. Miriam is torn between a marriage proposal from an older but very good man, Saad, and Jeremiah’s invitation for her to join the prophets, though not as his lover.

Even after Miriam marries Saad, Jeremiah still seeks her comradeship. The king counts on Egypt’s help against Babylon, only to be disappointed. A wealthy businessman and his grim brother, modeled after Trump and Pence, cannot save Jerusalem either. While Jerusalem suffers starvation and cannibalism during the Babylonian siege, the king throws Jeremiah into a cesspit, from which he is rescued by a steward modeled after Obama and a court jester modeled after Biden. Jeremiah rejoices when the tension is broken and Jerusalem falls, and all the skilled people, including Saad, are deported. Miriam stays behind and rescues the Old Testament wisdom literature—which is still an embarrassment to conservatives—from being lost.

 

What could Old Testament prophets and modern scientists have in common? I have two answers for you.

First, both have to be observant of everything, all the time, and to ask questions about why things are as they are. When Miriam and Jeremiah are at a little waterfall, where the water drops create a rainbow, they think about why there are water drops. That is, why does water form into drops rather than just falling down to the earth as lots of individual little packets? This is a question that may never have even occurred to you to ask. You have to watch nature very closely and think about it. Jeremiah’s explanation is definitely pre-scientific, saying that almost infinitely small angels are holding onto one another, and they create the rainbow colors. Before you laugh, consider substituting “molecules” for “angels” and “hydrogen bonds” for “holding onto.” Jeremiah’s theory (as invented by Rice) is more like Newton’s theory (as accepted by modern science) than it is like Goethe’s theory.

But, maybe, Goethe might turn out to be partly correct. To Newton, colors were physical properties of light of different wavelengths, period. To Goethe, there was a psychological component, in which human perception made the colors different. We now know that the stimulation of the three kinds of color receptors in the retina sends signals to the brain to create the illusion of color. There actually is such a thing as psychological color!

Also, when Miriam and Jeremiah were out at the swamp, they saw a bittern camouflaged in the reeds. They almost didn’t see it, until Jeremiah told Miriam what to look for.

Second, a scientist can be a prophet if s/he explains the political and social consequences of scientific discoveries.  Not every scientist does this. Thousands of scientists studied nuclear physics, but only a few (such as Andrei Sakharov and Albert Einstein) have spoken out to political leaders about the dangers of atomic weapons. A prophet might predict, wrongly (so far) that the world will be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. If prophecy is mere prediction, then Sakharov and Einstein were wrong. But prophets open out minds to recognize the possibilities. In this sense, Sakharov and Einstein were true prophets, and though their predictions were wrong their prophecies helped to save the world, at least so far, from nuclear disaster.

Many prophets, ancient and modern, have been hated by political leaders. Those of us who are prophets about environmental disaster are hated by conservative politicians and by the corporate leaders who support them. Though the attacks sustained by Michael E. Mann have been much more mild then what Jeremiah experienced, they were inspired by the same moneyed interests that drove rich Israelites to hate Jeremiah.

The Green, Green Coast of France, part two: Piles of Green Algae

As described previously, I wanted to go to the north coast of France to see the symbiotic Symsagitiffera flatworms. They should be hard to miss: green worms in shallow water against light brown sand. And, at the time H. G. Wells wrote The Science of Life, maybe they were easy to find. But since Wells wrote the book in 1929, world agriculture, including the agriculture of Bretagne in northern France, has undergone a revolution, about which I read in a French book Algues Vertes: L’Histoire Interdite by Inès Léraud and Pierre Van Hove. Released about 2018, it is a non-fiction BD (bande desinée, or comic strip) book.

In 1929, Brittany consisted mostly of small farmers using manual tools and horses, raising small quantities of food mostly for their local communities. Since World War Two, French agriculture has become intensely productive and they now export a lot of food, especially grains and pork. This was a deliberate part of the post-war Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. But the millions of dollars available to France were not entirely a gift. France was expected to rebuild their agriculture along American lines, using inputs such as intense cultivation, fertilizers, and pesticides. They were to buy these inputs from America, and sell some of their food to America. By the 1980s, most of the Bretagne landscape was corn and hog confinement facilities.

What was there to not like about this? The French were getting rich and helping to feed the world. The authors identified two things in particular that were a negative impact of this intense agriculture.

First, most French were not getting rich from it. The corporate executives of large farms, food processing and distribution companies, and financial corporations were getting very rich, while most farmers got poorer. This was exactly the same thing that was happening in America at that time. The people getting rich included nearly all of the government supervisors, all the way up to several prime ministers and presidents.

Second, a lot of fertilizer was draining into the coastal waters of Brittany, causing massive blooms of green algae, a process known as eutrophication. Some of it was runoff from fertilizer used on cornfields, while much of it was from hog wastes from confinement facilities. The rich executives and government supervisors did not want to reduce the amount of fertilizer in the runoff, because this would eat into their profits. The result was massive piles, sometimes meters in thickness, of the green seaweed Ulva amoricana, known as sea lettuce. The only way to control the green algae was to bulldoze it away and bury it somewhere; or to reduce the use of fertilizer and the production of hog wastes. But this latter solution would reduce the profits of the executives, so it never happened. The massive piles of seaweed were driving away tourists who wanted to see the picturesque north coast of France. But the French government would not, apparently, allow journalists to tell the public about the disgusting piles of seaweed, which would die and rot, and in the process release foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide gas. This link includes a photo.

Occasionally, when the hydrogen sulfide accumulated inside the dry crust of the piles of seaweed, the gas could reach deadly concentrations: to dogs, to wild pigs, and even occasionally to people. In particular, French regional governments would refuse to investigate the deaths, saying that the human victims had heart conditions or were heavy smokers, just as they fell into and suffocated inside of massive piles of seaweed or died right after hauling a truckload of seaweed. Blame the joggers and truck drivers, not the executives. This was the clear viewpoint of the artists, who made the “bad guys” as disgustingly ugly as possible.

The powerful rich insisted that the seaweed was natural (which is true) but refused to address eutrophication, which caused a natural and usually harmless seaweed to form huge piles. Rich people causing pollution that burdens the lives and health of the poor is a story that has been repeated thousands of times in hundreds of places. It is a forbidden story (histoire interdite).

The explosion of Ulva seaweed is getting worse and worse, and some northern French beaches have been closed as a result even in 2026.

One small consequence, for me, is that if I went to Roscoff to look for green flatworms, I would probably see only massive piles of sea lettuce, especially this year (during a drought) when there is less rain water runoff to dilute the fertilizer. One more thing to strike off of my bucket list because of human pollution.

The Green, Green Coast of France, part one: Green worms

 

I have a relatively short bucket list. It used to be longer, but my health will not permit me to visit every place I have dreamed about. Only two major sites remained: Down House, where Charles Darwin lived and worked; and Roscoff, on the north coast of France, where you can find the famous green worms.

I first read about these worms (called, at the time, Convoluta roscoffensis) in the kind of book that would probably not get published today: The Science of Life (originally published in 1929), the lead author of which was H. G. Wells, known primarily as a fiction writer and secondarily as an historian. Way down the list was his reputation as a scientist. His experience as a fiction writer was supposed to make this book more interesting than the conventional biology textbooks, but I question this opinion.

On France’s north coast, there is a town called Roscoff. If you walk along the beach, says Wells, and you come close to a patch of what appears to be green slime, you will be amazed to notice that this green slime disappears down into the sand.

What you might have thought was microscopic green algae turns out to be tiny worms. Unlike other flatworms, this one (now called Symsagitiffera roscoffensis) does not have a mouth. It does not eat little bits of food from its environment. Its caloric needs are entirely met by the little green alga Tetraselmis convolutae that lives inside the worm’s skin. The algae get the carbon dioxide and minerals that they need from the wastes of the worm itself. The worm makes sure the algae get exposed to sunlight, for photosynthesis, and stay wet.

This is a perfect, and inspiring, example of mutualism, in which two species work together (or in this case merge together) for their mutual benefit. All my life, I have wanted to see these worms, and more recently to make a video of them. I now live in France, and I can get to Roscoff from my home in Strasbourg by train. I just need to avoid the peak tourist season, when the beaches are covered with humans and the train fares expensive.

However, I have given up on this idea, for reasons I will explain in the next essay.

Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part four. A devastated landscape: Solomon’s legacy

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

In order to build his Temple and Palace, Solomon must totally destroy the forests of cedars in Lebanon. They were legendary before him, but today very little remains of the fabled cedars. This photo shows one of the last remaining groves of Cedrus libani today. [photo]

 

The forests are magnificent when Solomon first visits them and contracts with King Hiram to cut down the trees. He just doesn’t understand that a bunch of gilded trunks in a Temple are nothing compared to the living forest from which they came. At the end of the novel, all that remains of the forest is mud, which consumes Elah and Henna and delivers them to their downfall.

History books seldom include the environmental devastation that comes with the fall of civilizations. Early historical records tend to just be a list of kings and battles. Historians now routinely include economics and sociology in their explanations of the rise and fall of civilizations. One of the early historians to include geography in his European histories was Marc Bloch, from Strasbourg, where I now live. But world history seldom includes the environment, something that works like A Forest Journey and Collapse are helping to rectify.

But you can find an environmental explanation for the collapse of societies even in the Bible itself. The Israelites were commanded to let their farmland rest every seventh year (the “sabbath of the fields.”) They apparently never did so. After 470 years, the Israelites owed a debt of 70 years to the land. This law is stated right after the ten commandments in Exodus 23:10-11. In Leviticus 26:34-35, Moses quoted God as saying that if the Israelites did not let the land rest every seventh year, Israel would be conquered by enemies, the land would lie desolate, and then the land would “enjoy its rests.” According to the Second Chronicles 36:21, this is exactly what happened. “The land enjoyed its rests” for seventy years, not incorporated as a part of the Israelite economy, but all at once, after its collapse, during the Babylonian captivity. We have not yet, even today, learned the lesson that we have to treat God’s Earth with respect if we are to survive.

Among the Lilies, a novel by Stan Rice, part three. The taste of bread and true love

Stan Rice has just published another novel, Among the Lilies, the first novel in the trilogy Under the Sun. The central character is Elah, who is the scribe who writes the things that King Solomon takes the credit for: Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, as well as many other Old Testament writings.

The summary from Kindle is:

Elah, the narrator, is a servant in one of King Solomon’s harems. While this sounds like the best job in the world, Elah’s work is way below his mind. He spends all the time he can thinking and writing about what, if anything, God is doing under the sun. But then he meets and loves Henna, the only black woman in Jerusalem. She is confined to her stepfather’s walled garden. Elah risks his life to meet Henna in the garden.

While in a cavalcade to the cedar forests of Lebanon, which he intends to cut down to make his palace, The King (who resembles Elvis) elevates Elah to the position of chief scribe. When The King sees Henna, he decides to add her to his stable of wives. Meanwhile Gomer, who becomes the woman in charge of the royal kitchens and is an expert in poisonous wild plants, is not at all pleased. She wants Elah for herself, and doesn’t she try to do something about it. But she cannot keep Elah from meeting Henna again. His quest fails.

Elah becomes a leader of revolutionary forces against The King. Elah finally finds Henna in the muddy eroded landscape that used to be the forests of Lebanon. The King captures Elah and offers him the choice between death and not quite being dead.

Is true love like fine wine, or maybe whiskey? Or like exquisite candies? In Rice’s novel, true love turns out to be more like fragrant bread.

Gomer is the little woman who bakes the bread and eventually becomes the Head Baker. She wants Eli as her husband and will stop at nothing to get him—even while he still pines for Henna. Elah resists Gomer, until she sacrifices herself to save his life. Eli guards Gomer’s secret: she is a runaway Hittite slave. Eli realizes that Gomer’s love is what he really wants. This love story is as good as the love between Elah and Henna.

Even when Elah says that what he really wants is to die, since he cannot have Henna, Gomer is his ally. She knows desert wildflowers, and Elah has to trust her that she knows the difference between regular lilies and the visually-similar death lilies.

One of Elah’s tasks as head scribe is to find all Israelite folk stories and write them down. These stories, once organized, become much of the Old Testament: the stories of Lot, Barack, Gideon, Jotham, and Samson. Gomer is his comrade in collecting these stories. When Eli is banned from Jerusalem, he joins the rebel general Jeroboam, whom the Israelite people support. Gomer joins him.

But at the end temptation to have Henna is Elah’s downfall. The fact that Henna wants Eli is totally irrelevant to Solomon, who just smiles as she spits in his face.

Creativity in Hypothesis Generation: A Story about Leaves

A hypothesis needs to be testable. It does not need to be right. Almost any statement you could make, if testable, is a hypothesis. Silly hypotheses, which are very likely to be wrong, are a waste of time, but that is the only thing wrong with them.

Sometimes scientists focus on their own narrow research so much that they cannot dig themselves out of it unless they have a great deal of creativity. There are many examples of creative scientists. Today I give you Tom Givnish, now at the University of Wisconsin.

Some plants have mottled leaves. That is, their chlorophyll is patchily distributed in the leaf, rather than being a solid shade of green. An explanation for this is not possible within just the realm of photosynthetic physiology. You have probably seen a lot of mottled leaves. They may have patches or lines of white rather than being a solid green. Plant breeders cherish these plants, because they are decorative and people like to plant them in their yards. But occasionally you will see a stem with solid green leaves emerge on a plant that “is supposed to be” mottled. These are the stems that the horticulturalist cuts off and throws away.

But why should a plant out in nature have mottled leaves? Givnish came up with a creative answer. We cannot know if it is true unless we rerun the clock of evolution and watch mottled leaves evolve, or prevent them from evolving. But we can analyze their patterns and suggest believable answers. This is what Givnish did in an article in Functional Ecology in 1990.

He noticed that leaves that were evergreen in an otherwise deciduous environment are more likely to be mottled than other leaves. In particular, plants with mottled leaves are frequently evergreen plants near the ground in deciduous forests. Givnish used examples from North America, but I saw an example in a forest in Alsace, France: the Italian arum Arum italicum.

One thing that is strikingly obvious about evergreen herbs in a deciduous forest is that it is almost impossible for them to hide. They would therefore be an almost irresistible target for any herbivores in the forest (that had not migrated or hibernated). Givnish suggests that the plants, by producing mottled leaves, are hiding. It is camouflage.

It might seem easier for the leaves to just die back to the ground, the way most of the perennial herbs of the forest floor do. But there is an advantage to the plant to have leaves that are active in the winter and early spring. On the rare (and increasingly less rare) days that are warm in the winter or early spring, these plants can carry out a lot of photosynthesis in the bright sunlight that is not yet blocked by tree leaves that may not open for weeks or even months. In spring ephemerals, almost their entire year’s worth of food production is in the early spring before the tree leaves expand. How much more so with an evergreen plant on the forest floor.

Leaf mottling, by breaking up the line of vision that might make the leaves obvious, might make poor-sighted herbivores less likely to eat them. This is the same principle on which the camouflage of soldiers and hunters is based.