Recently, I received a lovely, self-deprecating question from someone asking if (perhaps? ... maybe?...) their love of thunderstorms could be explained by evolution, like how (perhaps? ... maybe?) the comforting feeling they feel during storms, especially at night, comes (perhaps? ... maybe?) from a time when our ancestors were given a safe reprieve from predation?
Here's the answer I dashed off to them...
Dear [Evolutionary Wonderer],
I share your love of science and how enjoyable and even
thrilling it feels to relate to our hominin (a.k.a. past human) ancestors. I
think your love of science is probably why you say about your question that
“it’s probably a dumb idea that has no bearing on reality”. I take this to mean
that you sense that there is a possibility that your imagination about our
ancestors during storms having something to do with how you feel during storms
may only be that: your imagination and not science. What I mean is, I think
your question is probably, actually, “Is this science?” Well, let’s think about
how we could investigate your idea with science.
Bones and teeth and stone tools and fire pits and all of
what little preserves of the ancient past is not going to help us at all. Even
if everything preserved, that complete material record of the past would not
tell us if our ancestors felt as you wonder they felt during storms, and for
reasons you’ve imagined (instead of, say, because they can stop worrying about
clean drinking water thanks to all this new clean drinking water, or because it
sounds a lot like when they were fetuses and that was a safe worry-free time in
their lives, etc.).
So, maybe we would be tempted to look to other animals to
see if any of them share your feelings and for reasons you imagine our
ancestors might. But no matter what we find out there among other species, like
other primates (note: Jane Goodall recounts chimpanzee “rain dances” that you
might want to look into!), no matter how many other species are also comforted
by storms (if a scientist could elucidate such a feeling), let alone because they
mean a temporary time-out from predation (if a scientist could elucidate such a
reason), that’s still not evidence of how our hominin ancestors felt, let
alone why they felt the way they felt.
So it’s impossible to know if what you’re experiencing is
also what our ancestors experienced. If they did, it’s impossible to know if
it’s for reasons you imagine. And then, to top it all off (here’s the kicker),
it’s impossible to know if what you’re experiencing is due to that experience
being innately carried into the future from our ancestral past. It’s been a
mistake in the (relatively short, so far) history of science to assume that
everything we share with animals is innate. They develop in context just like
we do. As scientists increasingly appreciate, animals are more brilliant and
developmentally complex than our scientific forebears assumed. “Instinct” is an
outdated term now because it assumes too much without evidence. Defaulting to
the belief that specific feelings and the behaviors that ensue could be
inherited from our ancestors isn’t really very typical among scientists. What
you’ve rightly sensed as a challenging question for science is why the field of
evolutionary psychology is so criticized (though you wouldn’t know it from pop
culture where it is embraced enthusiastically).
Nature brings on what some people call the “numinous” which
is often used to describe religious or spiritual feelings but works just as
well, I think, for describing how nature, like storms, can tap us directly into
our very real physical connection across space-time to everything that is alive
now and that ever lived. I live for that numinous feeling! Our understanding of
science can give us that feeling and be part of the satisfaction we find in
making meaning of our lives as earthlings, but that does not make that feeling
or those imaginings, themselves, science. We should all feel free to keep
reveling in those connections, to keep relating to our ancestors, like you do…
while also valuing and doing science, which is something else entirely … even
if its discoveries feed those feelings! For fueling your imagination and
keeping you linked to nature across space-time, especially to our ancestors, I
highly recommend novels like Claire Cameron’s called The Last Neanderthal.
Thanks for your question. I enjoyed imagining along with you,
Holly
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