Fiction: A (Potentially) Long-Lasting Record of the World

Non-fiction, especially science, is an indispensable window on the world. But non-fiction generally has a short shelf-life. They become outdated quickly. For example, Steve Olson’s Mapping Human History, which explained how DNA technology allows scientists to figure out human history (origins, migrations, etc.) was published in 2002. However well-written Olson’s book was, it has been totally eclipsed by books such as David Reich’s 2018 Who We Are and How We Got Here, in which the author explains his own research in this same area but which is based on massive numbers of entire genomes, ancient and modern, from around the world and using new kinds of analysis. Compared to Reich’s work, Olson’s seems based on a mere handful of observations. And however well-written was John Gunther’s 1958 Inside Russia Today, the only people who read it now are professional and amateur historians who wonder what the old communist state was like. Some of the best popular sociology books were the ones written by Vance Packard, but they contain very little information that is relevant today. Old biology textbooks are outdated since they contain no mention of CRISPR-Cas9 systems which are already revolutionizing biotechnology.

Where, then, can one preserve the knowledge of the past, and especially the sense of adventure that the old scientists had in discovering that knowledge?

A few works of non-fiction are still in print after almost two hundred years, not because of their science but because of the authors’ enthusiasm. The example that first comes to mind is Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. You can read it and relive the excitement of a time in history when the evolutionary history of the Earth, and even the Earth itself, were largely unknown. It reads like a story.

Which brings me to my point. It is fiction that can preserve the knowledge of previous generations and the sense of scientific adventure. Perhaps the best example is Jules Verne, as explained by Rosalind Williams in The Triumph of Human Empire. Most of Verne’s novels introduced as much scientific and geographical knowledge, as it was known in the nineteenth century, as possible. What was the bottom of the sea like? The middle of Africa? It wasn’t always Verne’s science fiction that explored the world; Michael Strogoff is not science fiction but introduced readers to the vast regions of Siberia with which they were likely to be unfamiliar. Even as Verne wrote about these places, the blank spots on the map, the realm of the unknown, was being filled in. If Verne had written non-fiction books (and some parts of Twenty Thousand Leagues almost sound like a textbook being recited by the scholarly servant Conseil), they would have fallen off the edge of the world at most twenty years after they were written. But in Verne’s novels, we readers willingly assume the mantle of limited knowledge, we pretend that we really don’t know what is under the sea, and we relive the adventure. We are even willing to overlook Verne’s errors that were based on a total ignorance of undersea plate tectonics (we know Atlantis is not really there).

Even the best works of non-fiction get replaced by new discoveries, just as Carl Sagan’s still-famous Cosmos has largely been replaced by the one by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Few scientists could match Peter Medawar’s thrill of scientific discovery, but when I looked through his Threat and Glory, based on his writings from the 1960s, I found almost nothing with which I could connect.

As I hiked along a trail in an oak forest near Tulsa, as I have done many times, I felt a billowing of enthusiasm about all of the trees, all of the other organisms, and all of the ecological processes that I could see. How could I convey this enthusiasm to others? I could write (and probably have to self-publish) The Flora of Turkey Mountain, which a few people would look at and which would survive, if at all, in a library vault. I could write a more popular book on the same subject. Or I could make it the setting of one of the scenes of a novel, in which the characters advance the plot by exploring the forest. With luck, the novel in which I did this will remain part of the corpus of American literature long after I am gone, assuming it gets published. In non-fiction, I would describe and explain the forest; in fiction, my characters live in it.

Therefore, I hope that, as an aspiring novelist, I can help preserve the history of scientific discovery and enhance the popular appreciation of science.

Another exploration of science and nature in Oklahoma

The spring field meeting of the Oklahoma Academy of Sciences was at Beaver’s Bend State Park in extreme southeastern Oklahoma, very close to Texas and Arkansas. In addition to the trip leader (botanist Gloria Caddell of the University of Central Oklahoma), myself, and a couple of other professors (Bill Caire and Clark Ovrebo), we had four students: David Batton (Grayson Co. Community College), Taylor Walker and Gokul Mariventhan (Southeastern Oklahoma State University), and Tracy Holshouser (University of Central Oklahoma).

It was a soft, overcast day with fresh light green foliage all around us. The hickory buds were just beginning to open.

On our various botany hikes, we recognized at least fifty species, and there were many more we overlooked. The canopy trees, much taller than in the central Oklahoma forests, were pines, sweetgums, oaks, and hickories. Lots of hophornbeam and sugar maple grew as understory trees. The last spring ephemerals were finishing up. Perhaps the most striking flowers were the Dodecatheon meadia shooting stars.

One of the students, David Batton, works for the Choctaw Nation and is familiar with some plants of cultural importance to his tribe, as they are also to mine (the Cherokee tribe). We found yaupon holly bushes, which many Eastern tribes used to make the “black drink” for ceremonial purposes (we don’t recommend its recreational use; there is a reason it is called Ilex vomitoria), and one bois-d’arc tree, with strong flexible wood that is superior to others for making bows. We also found river cane, the stems of which are useful to many tribes for making arrows and blow darts.

Our visual senses were satiated with beauty but we used our other senses also. Monarda russeliana leaves had the beautiful fragrance associated with the beebalm genus, and on this trip, as on every other, I never fail to get the students to eat the young shoots of Smilax greenbriar.

The students were very observant. One student noticed that several different plant species, including Oxalis violacea and Monarda russeliana, had red pigment on the undersides of the leaves, which helps plants in deep shade absorb more light for photosynthesis. Another student noticed that the bracken fern leaves had a fractal pattern to them.

But the most observant of us was Clark, who showed us that the easily-overlooked whitish scum on decomposing oak logs was not simply fungal hyphae, as I had assumed, but actual microscopic reproductive structures: the perithecia of the ascomycete Biscogniauxia atropunctata. The natural world reveals wonders to anyone who stops to look closely and ask questions.

There were also zoology field trips. Students and faculty visited the Little River National Wildlife Refuge and Red Slough Wildlife Management Area in McCurtain County. They observed 82 species of birds, as well as herps and mammals. Highlights included American Bitterns at Duck Slough, Anhingas at Red Slough, and Prothonotary, Hooded, and Black-and-white Warblers at Little River NWR. Photograph by Chris Butler.

A Brain Takes a Nature Walk

I am currently reading Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman. It is one of several books based on modern psychology that give us new insights into what our brains are like—insights that are both disturbing and liberating.

I already knew that the brain does not present us with an objective picture of reality. I thought that it processes sensory information into a model of reality, one in which the information from the environment is presented to us in a useful fashion. For example, I knew about sensory fatigue, in which an unchanging sensory input is soon ignored by the brain. This keeps the conscious brain from being overwhelmed by information. I also knew that color is an illusion. The brain uses inputs from three kinds of retinal cones to create a false-color picture of the environment, one in which ripe fruits are red so that they can be easily spotted by hungry animals without having to think about the complex mixture of wavelengths reflected from the environment.

And this is what I have been teaching my classes for almost three decades. But it turns out I might be wrong about this. The brain does not, apparently, process sensory information into a model of reality. Instead, our brains (according to Eagleman) internally generate a picture of reality. That is, what we see, hear, and feel is a model that the brain generates from its own memories and expectations. The brain uses sensory input only to modify and adjust this model as needed.

I took a walk in the woods this morning. It was the perfect time for a walk on Turkey Mountain, just outside of Tulsa. A Tuesday morning is almost the only time the parking lot is not full. The temperature was perfect, the sunlight was clear, and the leaves were light green, soft, and profuse (they will later be dark green, hard, and scraggly). It was also the last time for a while: the abundant rains that have suddenly filled our low reservoirs will return tomorrow. I walked on trails I have explored dozens of times. My mind pretty much knew where to make my body go. My mind utilized sensory input only to modulate where my feet moved so as to position themselves correctly on the rocks that my subconscious mind probably already knew were there. I could not have walked blindfolded, but just a few visual data are all that were necessary to allow me to walk—a few more than usual, since I had to avoid mud holes that others before me had not, and fallen branches and trunks.

Every person who was on the trail had a different mental image of it. Some joggers noticed only where the rocks and mud were, as they ran along listening to headphones. Some hikers saw little more than this, perhaps being aware of the vaulted canopy of branches overhead, as they concentrated mainly on their own animated conversations. The brains of dirt bikers had to do quick calculations of velocity and momentum, not having time to notice anything else.

And then there was me, the botanist. I noticed all the different kinds of trees: no matter how many times I see them, I feel like they are old friends. I wonder how many other hikers realize just how many kinds of trees there are. I also noticed the spatial patterns of the trees: the post oaks in higher and drier spots, the red oaks in the lower and wetter spots. I also noticed that poison ivy and aromatic sumac (with which it can be easily confused) never grow in exactly the same place, the former preferring shadier and wetter microclimates. Moreover, pollinating insects do not get poison ivy and smooth sumac (whose flowers look almost alike) mixed up since poison ivy is blooming right now and the smooth sumac flowers won’t open until at least next week; and they cannot confuse either of these with aromatic sumac, whose flowers open before any of the leaves have come out.

Here are photos of poison ivy flowers, and the gigantic leaves!

I also notice the bark of each tree. My daughter thinks I have a picture of every tree trunk in Oklahoma, but I know I’ve missed more than half of them. Bark is beautiful, each species having its own kind, each life stage having its own kind, and each tree having bark that reflects its own personal story of experience, growth, and recovery, as in this post oak that has had to start its life over again at least twice:

I see the forest as a functioning system in space and time, rather than as a backdrop for my own human activities. My brain noticed all these things because I consciously decided to look for them.

But my brain ignored a lot of things that other scientists could have pointed out to me. I am sure there were lots of insects, and insect galls, that I did not even see. To me, an insect-damaged leaf was one to ignore when taking photos, instead of a vital piece of information to understand the food chain of the forest. It was only by chance that I noticed a wild bee pollinating a Phacelia flower.

As for birds, you have to look closely to see the indigo buntings, whose blue backs appear black at first glance. A geologist would be able to explain how processes millions of years ago produced sandstone in some places, and shale in others, on what is now Turkey Mountain, and until recently I walked right past fossilized impressions and even petrified wood of prehistoric lepidodendrid trees without even seeing them. My brain was in plant mode just as the joggers’ brains were in don’t-slip-in-the-mud mode. I, too, entered the forest with an internally-generated model of what it was supposed to be like.

I would like to leave you with this thought. You can always enjoy a place more if you look closely and start noticing things. If you keep your brain in energy-savings mode, so that it responds only to threats and inconveniences, you are  missing the joy of being alive. Of course, I do not need to say this to anyone who is reading this essay right now! And the people who come to the forest only to jog might, in fact, find themselves surprised and pleased at discovering something about the forest through which they had merely intended to run.

A Visit to Buffalo National River

My wife and I just got back from a visit to Buffalo National River in Arkansas. It is a beautiful place to see nature at work. We stayed in an old hotel in Harrison, and planned our days in such a way that we could work around the intermittent and unpredictable rains. (I recommend the 1929 Hotel Seville in Harrison as a place that is close to the river but inexpensively elegant in case you have to sit around in the lobby during rain.) We did all of our hiking between rains on May 28. One of the main attractions of Buffalo National River is the green forests—which you cannot have without lots of rain.

Canoeists and kayakers revere the Buffalo National River for its scenic limestone cliffs:

But to an evolutionary ecologist, the river is also a living system. Along the river itself we saw lots of seedlings and re-sprouted saplings of box elder, sycamore, sweetgum, catalpa, birch, and persimmon. I do not know why, but we saw not a single cottonwood. These trees grow in areas disturbed by strong floods. If they get a chance, they grow into forests, at least the boxelders, sycamores, and sweetgums; the catalpas do not live long enough to become canopy trees, and the persimmons spread horizontally by underground stems rather than upward to reach the canopy. In a floodplain forest long undisturbed by floods, we saw very large birches and sweetgums, along with southern red oaks. This photo is of a very tall birch, but it was still leaning halfway over the way it did when it was a riverside sapling.

When we hiked along Mill Creek, we saw some floodplain forests that were almost monospecific stands of box elder:

The riverside forests and the bluff forests were very different. Some species, such as sweetgum, grew in both; but the bluff forests had no box elders. On a bluff, we saw at least one tree species that seemed out of place: a chittamwood tree, which I associate with drier forests. The bluff presumably provided an ecological refuge for this tree, which would not be able to compete with the tall oaks (white, northern red, southern red, and chinkapin) and hickories. Some trees such as pawpaw specialized on open spots on the forest floor. Mesic forests and drier forests have different conditions and different dominant tree species; but because of dry microenvironments, trees more common in drier forests can find a foothold in these mesic forests—this is one reason that mesic forests have such high biodiversity. (We did not, however, see any post oaks.) We recognized 42 flowering plant families; there must have been more. (It’s nice to have a spouse who, though not a professional botanist, loves plant families as much as I do.)

To accommodate search engines that may search for information about these trees, I will list some of the Latin names. Those of you who are not interested in Latin names, please skip to the next paragraph.

Acer negundo (Aceraceae), box elder

Asimina triloba (Annonaceae), pawpaw

Betula nigra (Betulaceae), birch

Catalpa bignonioides (Bignoniaceae), catalpa

Diospyros virginiana (Ebenaceae), persimmon

Liquidambar styraciflua (Altiginaceae), sweetgum

Platanus occidentalis (Platanaceae), sycamore

Quercus alba (Fagaceae), white oak

Quercus falcata (Fagaceae), southern red oak

Quercus muhlenbergii (Fagaceae), chinkapin oak

Quercus rubra (Fagaceae), northern red oak

Sideroxylon lanuginosa (Sapotaceae), chittamwood

We saw more than just plants, of course. It was also the perfect day for this beautiful species of fungus:

 

On the rainy day we visited Mystic Caverns, which are very beautiful:

And delicate: the oil from even one finger-touch can disrupt mineral deposition. Some of the stalagmites resembled Schmoos from an Al Capp cartoon; in fact these caverns used to be owned and operated by Dogpatch USA, a now bankrupt and vine-engulfed amusement park right across the highway.

The leader was a preacher and handgun instructor who preached us his guns and creationism gospel. He pointed out, quite correctly, that calcite deposits can form quickly; he should know, as he has watched them form. But he also showed us a limestone rock with crinoids in it, and claimed that they could only have come from The Great Flood. He did not consider the possibility that the crinoids were in the limestone parent material upon and around which the calcite deposits formed. I did not ask him any of a thousand possible questions. What would have been the point? Besides, I was the guy who belted out “Deep River,” an old gospel song, in the echo chamber (at the manager’s invitation). This was where the orchestra used to stand in the 1930s when this cavern had a moonshine still in the back and a dance floor. (Presumably some of the people, drinking moonshine, thought they were dancing until somebody stepped on their hands.) I chose to sing Deep River rather than to argue against a creationist. I was, after all, on vacation. Most of the people on the tour were what Mark Twain called Arkansaurians and would not have believed me; the others were young people, including a Japanese couple, who got rained out of their rock climbing plans and presumably already agreed with me. So this was not what one would call a teachable moment.

The Buffalo National River is a beautiful place to visit and to observe the natural world closely.