Constellations, Easter Island, and the Dilemma of Popular Science
On the train back to Shanghai during the holidays, I was chatting with a few young people in the neighboring seats. When the topic turned to constellations, one older brother said he was “the worst of all the zodiac signs.” It turned out he, like me, was a Scorpio… Alas, being born at that time, what can I do about it?
In fact, I’ve always said I have very little interest in constellations. For someone as broadly interested as I am, “not interested” is basically equivalent to “dislike.” But to say I dislike constellations would not be accurate. Since childhood I have had a special feeling for the starry sky, and I have never forgotten the excitement I felt when visiting the astronomical observatory of Gezhi Middle School in fourth grade. I have always insisted: the starry sky is forever mysterious and awe-inspiring, and it continually gives human beings wisdom and inspiration. Astrology based on solar omens, however, is another matter…
When I was little, I also read books about constellations—starting when Saint Seiya was all the rage. I admit that constellations can sometimes be remarkably accurate. Even now, when I read descriptions of Scorpio personalities, I still feel that they are uncannily on point and fit me very well. Much less when one is young and ignorant: being attracted by the magic of constellations is perfectly natural.
In fact, with a bit more rational thought, it is not hard to see the trick behind it. Try reading the descriptions of other constellations, and suppose you are actually that sign (which may be a rather difficult assumption). I find that the personality of another sign often also fits me very well! The reason is simple: most of the descriptions of each sign are traits that people generally possess anyway—only more or less, more hidden or more obvious. Even supposedly opposite traits such as persistence and casualness, composure and impulsiveness, passion and coldness are by no means contradictory; they often coexist in the same person, differing only in how they manifest under different circumstances and from different perspectives.
If one thinks that the seeming accuracy of constellations is merely the result of playing word games, one is underestimating their magic. It is true that many traits exist in everyone, but there are still differences between what is visible and what is hidden, what is deep and what is shallow. Taking these differences into account, constellations often seem quite accurate—why is that? What is at work, of course, is not astrology; I think the issue here has to do with psychology. First, as just mentioned, the descriptions of each sign’s personality are often present in one way or another, more or less obviously, in every person. So if a young person without sufficient critical skepticism reads an “analysis” of his own sign, he will inevitably compare it with his own character and find points of overlap. And when he learns a friend’s sign, he will of course try to compare that person’s behavior with the analysis for that sign. The result will often be just as it was for me back then when I flipped through books on constellations: it feels remarkably accurate—of course, perhaps if one compared it with another sign it would still feel accurate, but most young people do not think that way. The crucial point comes later: when I think the things said about my sign are remarkably accurate, or even only a little accurate, or even when I still verbally refuse to admit their accuracy, those descriptions in fact leave some kind of suggestion in my mind to a greater or lesser degree! For example, “loyal” and “passionate” are clearly positive words, so of course I gladly accept them. Words like “picky,” “possessive,” and “show-off” do not always sound so good, but in fact they, too, are present in one way or another, more or less, in everyone. And when the stars tell you that you are rather “possessive,” you naturally perform a little self-check. Then, quite naturally, you discover that in many situations you really do behave in a very “possessive” way (which is actually quite normal—who wouldn’t have any possessiveness at all?). So you naturally come to believe in constellations (“half-believing, half-doubting” and “believing” are roughly equivalent when it comes to producing psychological suggestion); then you easily arrive at the suggestion: I am born with a pronounced “possessiveness”; this is my “nature” (perhaps you would not admit it so readily, but “half-believing, half-doubting” and “believing” are not all that different in their psychological effect). Thus, besides frequently noticing the manifestations of your possessiveness, you will also unconsciously indulge it—because possessiveness is so natural and so proper for me! The shame that arises from possessiveness not always being a good word will fade away: it is just the natural expression of my nature! In this way, people who believe in constellations (including those who half-believe, half-doubt) often really do develop in the direction of the personality traits of their own sign. Since those who are interested in constellations are often children and young people, and since they happen to be at an age when their personalities are not yet fixed and are extremely malleable, constellations are indeed “effective if you believe in them”! As for those of us who do not believe in constellations at all, or have never even heard of them, whether we may be indirectly affected by the perspectives and prejudices of people who do believe in constellations, and thus have our personalities altered—this is hard to say. However, the influence on interpersonal communication is beyond doubt. Besides telling you about a person’s character, constellations can also offer predictions of “fortune” for each period and many suggestions regarding social interaction and even finding a partner! In any given period, people always have both good luck and bad luck, and in the interactions between any two people there will always be both compatible and incompatible factors. It is easy to imagine the role of psychological suggestion here: people who believe in constellations (including those who half-believe, half-doubt), when interacting with friends whose signs are incompatible with theirs, will consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to the points of character mismatch; the reverse is also true. So even if you don’t believe in constellations, if you are going to socialize with friends who do, looking through a book on constellations is not without benefit…
Perhaps you will doubt whether psychological suggestion can really have such a great effect. Are we really so easily able to “deceive ourselves,” and to be “silently influenced” by things we half-believe, half-doubt? In fact, the power of psychological suggestion is greater than most people imagine! For example, in one experiment in the United States, a seemingly authoritative astrologer mailed each of several hundred people who had sent in their birth dates and other required information a horoscope chart (these charts were actually completely identical). In the follow-up survey, 94% of the participants who received the charts, as well as more than 80% of the participants’ relatives and friends who were surveyed, said that the charts were highly accurate! Never underestimate the strange power of psychological suggestion. For example, if some clear water is dropped onto the skin of experimental subjects and they are made to believe it is a poison, they often really do develop allergic dermatitis! And the same method may even appropriately help treat certain skin diseases: for example, an authoritative doctor applies gentian violet to a patient’s warts and firmly guarantees that the warts will disappear within a week; this method has been “repeatedly successful” in treating warts… Many forms of witch doctor miracle-working can be explained psychologically. What is regrettable is that, compared with the more mysterious and wondrous science, many phenomena and special powers that cannot withstand scrutiny are often more capable of arousing people’s interest… On the other hand, I am not advocating “scientism” here either, because many things are indeed “effective if you believe in them.” We do not need to categorically reject qigong, hypnosis, or even divination-like activities, nor do we always need to dig to the bottom of things—because once these activities are exposed as fraudulent, they will certainly no longer be effective; if their mystery is preserved, they really will have some effectiveness (through the power of psychological suggestion).
It is worth mentioning that treatments such as acupuncture and herbal medicine, although their scientific principles are still not fully understood, do not therefore mean they are unscientific. Their efficacy has been proved through countless trials, and they are also always open to scientific testing—for example, take three groups of patients: one group takes no medicine, one group receives herbal medicine or acupuncture, and the third group takes a placebo claimed to have therapeutic effects (such as ordinary sugar pills). If the group receiving acupuncture or herbal medicine recovers best, then even without knowing why it works, its effectiveness has already been demonstrated. By contrast, those with special powers, witch doctors, and the like can never withstand any scientific test, and therefore should not be lumped together with Chinese medicine.
Because psychological suggestion is indeed useful at times, and because some mild forms of superstition can sometimes serve a public entertainment function—for instance, constellations and the like have become part of the fashionable lifestyle of young people nowadays—it is not necessary to reject all of that wholesale. But we should be clearer about the proper measure: to what extent can we allow non-scientific activities to survive? In what situations must the window paper be pierced and the illusion exposed? To indulge superstition and pseudoscience too much—even by intellectuals and scientific-cultural elites (such as us university students), as well as by the media and popular science workers, who themselves cannot calmly distinguish superstition from pseudoscience and even join in pseudoscientific activities or even promote pseudoscience—is extremely harmful! If intellectuals and mainstream media cannot tell the difference, the damage to the public can be imagined. What intellectuals lack nowadays is not scientific knowledge—middle school students can already learn many scientific commonplaces that Newton himself would never have thought of—but scientific literacy. Even many scientific workers know scientific knowledge and master scientific skills, yet lack scientific spirit and scientific attitude! Here I am referring both to those who cannot distinguish science from pseudoscience and do not understand the spirit of skepticism in science, and to those scientistic types who regard science as supreme. By “scientific spirit,” I mean the broad sense of scientific spirit inherited from ancient Greece’s pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, not the instrumental rationalism of the modern West.
Regarding the mainstream media’s misleading of the public in understanding science, I would like to cite a newly thought-of example—the mysterious giant statues of Easter Island. Many people heard about them in childhood. It is a mysterious island, isolated from the world. When Western navigators discovered it, there were only about 2,000 natives there. They did not have a very advanced civilization, and on the whole of Easter Island there were only three or four crude little boats, and even cannibalism existed. Such a backward island, and yet it had more than 800 huge stone statues standing on it! How were these statues built? How were they transported? How were they erected? And why were so many of them toppled? What about the wooden tablets engraved with mysterious writing that the islanders themselves did not understand? … How amazing, isn’t it? Such mysteries very easily became material for media hype—could it have been a highly developed prehistoric civilization? Could it have been aliens?… Even in the past few days I have still seen documentaries like this on CCTV’s “Exploration • Discovery,” and many books titled things like “World Unsolved Mysteries” published in the early twenty-first century still inevitably mention the stone statues of Easter Island. But in fact, there is nothing mysterious about the mystery of Easter Island. As far as I know, at least in books published in the early 1990s one can already find reasonable explanations; those questions had long since received fairly clear answers! In fact, the making of those statues was nowhere near as difficult as the media, with all its embellishments, made it sound. Using stone axes discovered in local quarries (why is it that documentaries about unsolved mysteries so rarely mention those stone axes?), even the largest statue could be completed by 20 people in a year; and for transportation, by using wooden sledges placed on a row of logs, several dozen people could finish the job; erecting and toppling them was of course no difficult matter either, and there was no need to rely on any more mysterious unknown power! The question is, why did the island’s savages erect and topple the statues? On an island with only sparse shrubs, where did all the logs needed for transport come from? Of course, these questions too had long had answers. Archaeological discoveries show that there really once was a highly civilized society on Easter Island, and that this barren island was originally a dense subtropical forest, growing many big palm trees that could reach 25 meters in height and 2 meters in girth, and that have now gone extinct on the island. The Polynesians on the island used the palm trees to make large boats that could sail in deep waters and catch dolphins, creating a prosperous civilized society. The statues were part of their religious rituals, and the “mysterious writing” carved on those wooden tablets merely recorded their sacrificial and creation stories (these writings were deciphered in 1996). So why did such a civilization decline and disappear? Why could its descendants, having returned to savagery, no longer remember the purpose for which they had erected the statues? The answer is not mysterious either—ecological destruction! Because of prosperity and abundance, the island’s population grew without restraint. In order to build boats and to keep erecting statues endlessly, people cut down the forest on a massive scale, ultimately destroying it entirely! Once the forest disappeared, large numbers of seabirds no longer came, and people were also unable to make the large boats needed for sea fishing. Easter Island fell into famine, and people began attacking one another, toppling the statues of other tribes, robbing and slaughtering one another, and even resorting to cannibalism to obtain protein… The killing never stopped, the island’s population dropped sharply, the original religion and culture could no longer be sustained, and severe famine drove people back into barbarism, eventually turning them into the state seen by the Westerners who discovered Easter Island… This is not an intriguing unsolved mystery that arouses curiosity, but a tragedy that gives one pause! Easter Island is a miniature human society. Although “Earth Island” is much larger than Easter Island, it is in fact even more isolated than Easter Island! Humanity has only one Earth; if we do not learn the lessons of Easter Island, abuse resources, and destroy the ecology, then in the end we will inevitably escape the fate of decline. Ironically, such a story with such profound implications is rarely of interest to either popular books or television media! (It was only when I recently went looking specifically for books on ecology that I had the good fortune to learn about it.) And these scientific facts had been unveiled at least ten years ago, so why do the media, the internet, and popular books still today always delight in talking about the “mysterious island”? Which is more meaningful: exposing the truth of ecological destruction, or hyping mystery and wonder? Which one is truly responsible?
Indeed, exposing a merciless truth is far less effective at catching the public eye than whipping up hype around “mystery” and “the unknown,” and that is precisely what the media and publishing industries pursue. Even when the truth has long since been laid bare, they can still continue, without blinking, to hype the “mysterious island”; so what about those matters whose truths have not yet been fully revealed by science? It is easy to imagine that to spice them up, distort them, and conjure things out of thin air, they will be even more shameless! Whether in the United States or in China, the media are always “irresponsible,” and I have never had much hope in this regard. What I want to say is that when we are influenced by the media, books, and the people around us, we must keep a clear head! We need to distinguish what is scientific and what is merely “entertainment.” Things like horoscope divination and unsolved mysteries are purely for entertainment; after reading or hearing them, one can only smile and let them pass, never take them seriously!
July 26, 2005
References
“The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” [US] Carl Sagan / author Li Daguang / translator Jilin People’s Publishing House October 1998
“Jellyfish and Snails: A Notebook of Biological Observations (Sequel)” [US] Lewis Thomas / author Li Shaoming / translator Hunan Science and Technology Press December 1998
“The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal” [US] Jared Diamond / author Wang Daohuan / translator Hainan Publishing House Sanchuan Publishing House May 2004
“A Green History of the World” [UK] Clive Ponting / author Wang Yi Zhang Xueguang / translators Shanghai People’s Publishing House
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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