Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

  But the greatest fallacy in, or rather the greatest objection to, teleological thinking is in connection with the emotional content, the belief. People get to believing and even to professing the apparent answers thus arrived at, suffering mental constrictions by emotionally closing their minds to any of the further and possibly opposite “answers” which might otherwise be unearthed by honest effort—answers which, if faced realistically, would give rise to a struggle and to a possible rebirth which might place the whole problem in a new and more significant light. Grant for a moment that among students of endocrinology a school of thought might arise, centering upon some belief as to etiology—upon the belief, for instance, that all abnormal growth is caused by glandular imbalance. Such a clique, becoming formalized and powerful, would tend, by scorn and opposition, to wither any contrary view which, if untrammeled, might discover a clue to some opposing “causative” factor of equal medical importance. That situation is most unlikely to arise in a field so lusty as endocrinology, with its relational insistence, but the principle illustrated by a poor example is thought nevertheless to be sound.

  Significant in this connection is the fact that conflicts may arise between any two or more of the “answers” brought forth by either of the teleologies, or between the two teleologies themselves. But there can be no conflict between any of these and the non-teleological picture. For instance, in the condition called hyperthyroidism, the treatments advised by believers in the psychic or neurosis etiology very possibly may conflict with those arising out of a belief in the purely physical cause. Or even within the physical teleology group there may be conflicts between those who believe the condition due to a strictly thyroid upset and those who consider causation derived through a general imbalance of the ductless glands. But there can be no conflict between any or all of these factors and the non-teleological picture, because the latter includes them—evaluates them relationally or at least attempts to do so, or maybe only accepts them as time-place truths. Teleological “answers” necessarily must be included in the non-teleological method—since they are part of the picture even if only restrictedly true —and as soon as their qualities of relatedness are recognized. Even erroneous beliefs are real things, and have to be considered proportional to their spread or intensity. “All-truth” must embrace all extant apropos errors also, and know them as such by relation to the whole, and allow for their effects.

  The criterion of validity in the handling of data seems to be this: that the summary shall say in substance, significantly and understandingly, “It’s so because it’s so.” Unfortunately the very same words might equally derive through a most superficial glance, as any child could learn to repeat from memory the most abstruse of Dirac’s equations. But to know a thing emergently and significantly is something else again, even though the understanding may be expressed in the self-same words that were used superficially. In the following example 34 note the deep significance of the emergent as contrasted with the presumably satisfactory but actually incorrect original naive understanding. At one time an important game bird in Norway, the willow grouse, was so clearly threatened with extinction that it was thought wise to establish protective regulations and to place a bounty on its chief enemy, a hawk which was known to feed heavily on it. Quantities of the hawks were exterminated, but despite such drastic measures the grouse disappeared actually more rapidly than before. The naively applied customary remedies had obviously failed. But instead of becoming discouraged and quietistically letting this bird go the way of the great auk and the passenger pigeon, the authorities enlarged the scope of their investigations until the anomaly was explained. An ecological analysis into the relational aspects of the situation disclosed that a parasitic disease, coccidiosis, was endemic among the grouse. In its incipient stages, this disease so reduced the flying speed of the grouse that the mildly ill individuals became easy prey for the hawks. In living largely off the slightly ill birds, the hawks prevented them from developing the disease in its full intensity and so spreading it more widely and quickly to otherwise healthy fowl. Thus the presumed enemies of the grouse, by controlling the epidemic aspects of the disease, proved to be friends in disguise.

  In summarizing the above situation, the measure of validity wouldn’t be to assume that, even in the well-understood factor of coccidiosis, we have the real “cause” of any beneficial or untoward condition, but to say, rather, that in this phase we have a highly significant and possibly preponderantly important relational aspect of the picture.

  However, many people are unwilling to chance the sometimes ruthless-appearing notions which may arise through non-teleological treatments. They fear even to use them in that they may be left dangling out in space, deprived of such emotional support as had been afforded them by an unthinking belief in the proved value of pest control in the conservation of game birds; in the institutions of tradition; religion; science; in the security of the home or the family; or in a comfortable bank account. But for that matter emancipations in general are likely to be held in terror by those who may not yet have achieved them, but whose thresholds in those respects are becoming significantly low. Think of the fascinated horror, or at best tolerance, with which little girls regard their brothers who have dispensed with the Santa Claus belief; or the fear of the devout young churchman for his university senior who has grown away from depending on the security of religion.

  As a matter of fact, whoever employs this type of thinking with other than a few close friends will be referred to as detached, hard-hearted, or even cruel. Quite the opposite seems to be true. Non-teleological methods more than any other seem capable of great tenderness, of an all-embracingness which is rare otherwise. Consider, for instance, the fact that, once a given situation is deeply understood, no apologies are required. There are ample difficulties even to understanding conditions “as is.” Once that has been accomplished, the “why” of it (known now to be simply a relation, though probably a near and important one) seems no longer to be preponderantly important. It needn’t be condoned or extenuated, it just “is.” It is seen merely as part of a more or less dim whole picture. As an example: A woman near us in the Carmel woods was upset when her dog was poisoned—frightened at the thought of passing the night alone after years of companionship with the animal. She phoned to ask if, with our windows on that side of the house closed as they were normally, we could hear her ringing a dinner bell as a signal during the night that marauders had cut her phone wires preparatory to robbing her. Of course that was, in fact, an improbable contingency to be provided against; a man would call it a foolish fear, neurotic. And so it was. But one could say kindly, “We can hear the bell quite plainly, but if desirable we can adjust our sleeping arrangements so as to be able to come over there instantly in case you need us,” without even stopping to consider whether or not the fear was foolish, or to be concerned about it if it were, correctly regarding all that as secondary. And if the woman had said apologetically, “Oh, you must forgive me; I know my fears are foolish, but I am so upset!” the wise reply would have been, “Dear person, nothing to forgive. If you have fears, they are; they are real things and to be considered. Whether or not they’re foolish is beside the point. What they are is unimportant alongside the fact that they are.” In other words, the badness or goodness, the teleology of the fears, was decidedly secondary. The whole notion could be conveyed by a smile or by a pleasant intonation more readily than by the words themselves. Teleological treatment which one might have been tempted to employ under the circumstances would first have stressed the fact that the fear was foolish—would say with a great show of objective justice, “Well, there’s no use in our doing anything; the fault is that your fear is foolish and improbable. Get over that” (as a judge would say, “Come into court with clean hands”) ; “then if there’s anything sensible we can do, we’ll see,” with smug blame implied in every word. Or, more kindly, it would try to reason with the woman in an attempt to help her get over it—the business of
propaganda directed towards change even before the situation is fully understood (maybe as a lazy substitute for understanding). Or, still more kindly, the teleological method would try to understand the fear causally. But with the non-teleological treatment there is only the love and understanding of instant acceptance; after that fundamental has been achieved, the next step, if any should be necessary, can be considered more sensibly.

  Strictly, the term non-teleological thinking ought not to be applied to what we have in mind. Because it involves more than thinking, that term is inadequate. Modus operandi might be better—a method of handling data of any sort. The example cited just above concerns feeling more than thinking. The method extends beyond thinking even to living itself; in fact, by inferred definition it transcends the realm of thinking possibilities, it postulates “living into.”

  In the destitute-unemployed illustration, thinking, as being the evaluatory function chiefly concerned, was the point of departure, “the crust to break through.” There the “blame approach” considered the situation in the limited and inadequate teleological manner. The non-teleological method included that viewpoint as correct but limited. But when it came to the feeling aspects of a human relation situation, the non-teleological method would probably ameliorate the woman’s fears in a loving, truly mellow, and adequate fashion, whereas the teleological would have tended to bungle things by employing the limited and sophisticated approach.

  Incidentally, there is in this connection a remarkable etio logical similarity to be noted between cause in thinking and blame in feeling. One feels that one’s neighbors are to be blamed for their hate or anger or fear. One thinks that poor pavements are “caused” by politics. The non-teleological picture in either case is the larger one that goes beyond blame or cause. And the non-causal or non-blaming viewpoint seems to us very often relatively to represent the “new thing,” the Hegelian “Christ-child” which arises emergently from the union of two opposing viewpoints, such as those of physical and spiritual teleologies, especially if there is conflict as to causation between the two or within either. The new viewpoint very frequently sheds light over a larger picture, providing a key which may unlock levels not accessible to either of the teleological viewpoints. There are interesting parallels here: to the triangle, to the Christian ideas of trinity, to Hegel’s dialectic, and to Swedenborg’s metaphysic of divine love (feeling) and divine wisdom (thinking).

  The factors we have been considering as “answers” seem to be merely symbols or indices, relational aspects of things—of which they are integral parts—not to be considered in terms of causes and effects. The truest reason for anything’s being so is that it is. This is actually and truly a reason, more valid and clearer than all the other separate reasons, or than any group of them short of the whole. Anything less than the whole forms part of the picture only, and the infinite whole is unknowable except by being it, by living into it.

  A thing may be so “because” of a thousand and one reasons of greater or lesser importance, such as the man oversized because of glandular insufficiency. The integration of these many reasons which are in the nature of relations rather than reasons is that he is. The separate reasons, no matter how valid, are only fragmentary parts of the picture. And the whole necessarily includes all that it impinges on as object and subject, in ripples fading with distance or depending upon the original intensity of the vortex.

  The frequent allusions to an underlying pattern have no implication of mysticism—except inasmuch as a pattern which comprises infinity in factors and symbols might be called mystic. But infinity as here used occurs also in the mathematical aspects of physiology and physics, both far away from mysticism as the term is ordinarily employed. Actually, the underlying pattern is probably nothing more than an integration of just such symbols and indices and mutual reference points as are already known, except that its power is n. Such an integration might include nothing more spectacular than we already know. But, equally, it could include anything, even events and entities as different from those already known as the vectors, tensors, scalars, and ideas of electrical charges in mathematical physics are different from the mechanical-model world of the Victorian scientists.

  In such a pattern, causality would be merely a name for something that exists only in our partial and biased mental reconstructings. The pattern which it indexes, however, would be real, but not intellectually apperceivable because the pattern goes everywhere and is everything and cannot be encompassed by finite mind or by anything short of life—which it is.

  The psychic or spiritual residua remaining after the most careful physical analyses, or the physical remnants obvious, particularly to us of the twentieth century, in the most honest and disciplined spiritual speculations of medieval philosophers, all bespeak such a pattern. Those residua, those most minute differentials, the 0.001 percentages which suffice to maintain the races of sea animals, are seen finally to be the most important things in the world, not because of their sizes, but because they are everywhere. The differential is the true universal, the true catalyst, the cosmic solvent. Any investigation carried far enough will bring to light these residua, or rather will leave them still unassailable as Emerson remarked a hundred years ago in “The Oversoul”—will run into the brick wall of the impossibility of perfection while at the same time insisting on the validity of perfection. Anomalies especially testify to that framework; they are the commonest intellectual vehicles for breaking through; all are solvable in the sense that any one is understandable, but that one leads with the power n to still more and deeper anomalies.

  This deep underlying pattern inferred by non-teleological thinking crops up everywhere—a relational thing, surely, relating opposing factors on different levels, as reality and potential are related. But it must not be considered as causative, it simply exists, it is, things are merely expressions of it as it is expressions of them. And they are it, also. As Swinburne, extolling Hertha, the earth goddess, makes her say: “Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I,” so all things which are that—which is all—equally may be extolled. That pattern materializes everywhere in the sense that Eddington finds the non-integer q “number” appearing everywhere, in the background of all fundamental equations,35 in the sense that the speed of light, constant despite compoundings or subtractions, seemed at one time almost to be conspiring against investigation.

  The whole is necessarily everything, the whole world of fact and fancy, body and psyche, physical fact and spiritual truth, individual and collective, life and death, macrocosm and microcosm (the greatest quanta here, the greatest synapse between these two), conscious and unconscious, subject and object. The whole picture is portrayed by is, the deepest word of deep ultimate reality, not shallow or partial as reasons are, but deeper and participating, possibly encompassing the Oriental concept of being.

  And all this against the hot beach on an Easter Sunday, with the passing day and the passing time. This little trip of ours was becoming a thing and a dual thing, with collecting and eating and sleeping merging with the thinking-speculating activity. Quality of sunlight, blueness and smoothness of water, boat engines, and ourselves were all parts of a larger whole and we could begin to feel its nature but not its size.

  15

  ABOUT noon we sailed and moved out of the shrouded and quiet Amortajada Bay and up the coast toward Marcial Reef, which was marked as our next collecting station. We arrived in mid-afternoon and collected on the late tide, on a northerly pile of boulders, part of the central reef. This was just south of Marcial Point, which marks the southern limit of Agua Verde Bay.

  It was not a good collecting tide, although it should have been according to the tide chart. The water did not go low enough for exhaustive collecting. There were a few polyclads which here were high on the rocks. We found two large and many small chitons—the first time we had discovered them in numbers. There were many urchins visible but too deep below the surface to get to. Swarms of larval
shrimps were in the water swimming about in small circles. The collecting was not successful in point of view of numbers of forms taken.

  That night we rigged a lamp over the side, shaded it with a paper cone, and hung it close down to the water so that the light was reflected downward. Pelagic isopods and mysids immediately swarmed to the illuminated circle until the water seemed to heave and whirl with them. The small fish came to this horde of food, and on the outer edges of the light ring large fishes flashed in and out after the small fishes. Occasionally we interrupted this mad dance with dip-nets, dropping the catch into porcelain pans for closer study, and out of the nets came animals small or transparent that we had not noticed in the sea at all.