Teaching Myth and History: The Battle of Tel Hai

This semester I am teaching a History of Zionism course to three sophomore classes. I have chosen to use this class as an opportunity to explore the nature of historical truth. The Arab-Zionist conflict seems like a perfect case study of this issue not only because there are two competing narratives of the same historical events, but the choice of narrative may have important political implications for the future.

Yesterday, I used the story of the battle of Tel Hai to explore the interaction of myth and history. Students began by reading Benny Morris’s account of the battler. Morris writes describes how following the British withdrawal from the Galilee in 1919 and the French failure to assert sovereignty, rebellious Bedouin tribesmen pushed for control. There were four Jewish settlements in the region. At first, the Arabs announced that they meant no harm to the Jews and attempted to persuade them to join the revolt, but the Jews insisted on neutrality, and therefore, the Arabs began to treat them as enemies.

In January of 1920, two out of the four settlements decided to evacuate until the security of the area was assured. The other two settlements, Kfar Giladi and Tel Hai remained in order to show their commitment to including the area in a future Jewish National Home.

On March 1st, a group of Arabs gained entry to Tel Hai saying that “they wanted to check whether the Jews were quartering French Troops. A fierce firefight erupted, apparently triggered by an unintentional shot by one of the Jewish guards.” In the fighting, six Jews, including the military commander, Joseph Trumpledor, died. Trumpledor’s last words were reputed to have been, “It is good to die for our country.” Following the battle, the remaining settlers withdrew to the south abandoning the settlements (Morris, Righteous Victims, 92-93).

Morris’s account makes the decision of the settlers to stay put seem questionable and dangerous, the circumstances of the battle complicated, and the results inconclusive. However, the battle of Tel Hai quickly became a modern national myth. Trumpledor was seen as the model of a nationalist hero, willing to give his life to defend his country.

Even prior to the attack it seems that Trumpledor himself conceived of Tel Hai in mythological terms. On February 9th 1920, Trumpledor wrote about “a new generation, children of eretz yisrael... prepared to sacrifice themselves in defense of this border.” He goes on to describe how Metulla, one of the already evacuated settlements, “has been almost wrenched from our hands.”

Trumpledor's account seems somewhat melodramatic. First, there was no border. Trumpledor was one of a small group of settlers far from the main population of Jews in Palestine. Furthermore, Metulla had hardly been “wrenched” from the Jewish settlers. As Morris argues, the inhabitants of Metulla had abandoned the settlement realizing the impossibility of securing and defending it.

I asked my students to pick out to summarize key points of the document. They noticed that Trumpledor perceived the situation as a case of small, weak group surrounded by a strong group bent on destruction. I asked them to brainstorm other stories that shared these elements. At first, they stuck to stories in the Jewish tradition like Masada, the story of the Macabees, and the story of the Israeli war of independence. Then they started to get more creative. They added Braveheart, the American Revolution and The Lord of the Rings to the mix. Finally, a student suggested the 2004 Red Sox and their triumph in the ALCS.

Eleven days after the battle of Tel Hai, on March 12, 1920, one of the inhabitants of Tel Hai described Trumpledor's death. After being shot, the settler wrote that Trumpledor,

“asked that someone push his intestines back into his stomach. Not one of us dared to take this duty upon himself. But he reassured us saying, 'No matter: wash your hands and I will show you what to do.' In a wondrous silence and cold calm he watched us push his intestines back inside and wrap the wound with a towel. After we had finished dressing the wound, he said, 'These are my last moments; tell everyone that we defended this place to the last for the sake of the honor of Israel.'”

My students had no trouble identifying the Trumpledor figure in each of the other stories they had mentioned. William Wallace, George Washington, Legolas and Gimli all share some of Trumpledor's superhuman attributes; maybe Curt Schilling does as well.

They realized that the narrative of Tel Hai that in the mind of Trumpledor and in the minds of the other Zionists took on much more significance than the historical account given by Benny Morris.

The next class, we further investigated the relationship between the mythological narrative of Tel Hai and the historical study of Zionism. We read Bialik's poem “City of Slaughter” in which he seems to view the vicitms of the 1903 Kishniev pogrom with contempt.

Bialik writes,

“Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay,
The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead.
Proceed thence to the ruins, the split walls reach,
Where wider grows the hollow, and greater grows the
 breach;
...
On wreckage doubly wrecked, scroll heaped on manuscript,
Fragments again fragmented—
...
Come, now, and I will bring thee to their lairs
The privies, jakes and pigpens where the heirs
Of Hasmoneans lay, with trembling knees,
Concealed and cowering,—the sons of the Maccabees!
The seed of saints, the scions of the lions!
Who, crammed by scores in all the sanctuaries of their shame,
So sanctified My name!
It was the flight of mice they fled,
The scurrying of roaches was their flight;
They died like dogs, and they were dead!”

I asked the students to summarize the key points of the document. They noticed how Bialik uses references to Jewish history to mock the victims and to indict them for inaction. He talks about the “cowering sons of Macabees,” and calls them “mice, roaches and dogs.” We again brainstormed similar stories. They quickly noticed that the theme of the weak, oppressed, and exiled Jew. They were able to mention stories from the destruction of the temple to the holocaust that had similar elements. They realized that the story of the oppressed Jew is almost directly opposed to the narrative of Trumpledor and the battle of Tel Hai.

According to Yael Zerubavel, “Trumpledor emerged as the first national hero of the young Hebrew society in Palestine” (Recovered Roots, 43). But why did this story become a myth rather than a different story? Zerubavel quotes Eliade as saying, “For something genuinely new to begin, the vestiges and ruins of the old cycle must be completely destroyed.” Zerubavel argues that it was precisely the old myth of the exilic Jew with which the story of Tel Hai contrasted to create a myth of a new Jew ready to fight and die to defend his country. In the absence of the old myth, the new myth could never have formed.

I asked the class to consider the relationship between history and myth and to reflect on which one is more important? By the end of class, students discussed the extent to which the mythological narrative of Tel Hai is important. Some argued that even if the story is exaggerated and even if it took on a significance that exceeded the objective historical facts, stories can be important for giving people hope and helping them make sense of their place in history. Other students pointed out that it is important to learn the objective historical facts when making political decisions because while other groups have different myths, they will have the same facts. One student questioned whether it is possible to distinguish history from myth and whether all history is to some extent informed by myth. His classmates disagreed.

Dealing with the "gender gap": Do we need affirmative action for men?

Although recent reports show that the gender gap is leveling off, women still outnumber men in college 57% to 43%.
Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, speculates on the social implications of failing to deal with the “gender-gap”:
“The marriageable-mate dilemma, whether white women decide to "marry down" to less-educated males, will be a long-term impact of these gender gaps, and probably the biggest impact. Black women have long faced the marriageable-mate dilemma, and college-educated black women have low marriage rates and high out-of-wedlock birth rates. The question is whether more white women will start making similar choices.”
Sounds like if we don't do something about this soon, we could face serious repercussions.
What is the root of the gender gap? Why are girls attending college at such higher rates than boys?

Whitmire says, “the reforms launched by the nation's governors more than 20 years ago to get more students college-ready had an unintended consequence: Most girls adjusted nicely to the intensified verbal skills demanded in the early grades; most boys didn't.

Lionel Tiger and his Foundation for Male Studies blame feminism, “a well-meaning, highly successful, very colorful denigration of maleness as a force, as a phenomenon.”

Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men, writes, “It's a bad time to be a boy in America... Boys are less likely than girls to go to college or do their homework.” Hoff Sommers goes on to paint a bleak view of the future: “There have always been societies that favored boys over girls...Ours may be the first to deliberately throw the gender switch. If we continue on our present course, boys will, indeed, be tomorrow's second sex."

So is the hype deserved? Should we fear a future in which women dominate men and relegate them to the status of a “second sex?”

Well, before answering this question, let me quote one more educational theorist. G. Stanley Hall, former president of Clark University, and a vocal opponent of coed education, was “deeply distressed by the evils… of a rising divorce rate, a declining birth rate… and the appearance of feminized men.” Hall seems to confirm Whitmire's, Tiger's and Hoff Sommer's fears.

Hall was also concerned with the fact that women outnumbered men at some large state universities including California, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Washington. He suggested that educational reforms could solve the problems caused by too many women going to college and the social forces “feminizing” men.

Of course, Hall was writing in 1907.

Let me repeat that. Women first began to outnumber men at large state universities in 1907. The ratio began to favor men again during the forties and fifties (perhaps due to the passage of the G.I bill.) Starting during the sixties, the ratio began swinging back towards women.

What I find so fascinating is that the fears about the dangers of female education and the social implications of female achievement have not changed in over a hundred years. Just as Hall did a hundred years ago,Whitmire fears the effects of the gender gap on the institution of marriage. Just like Hall did a hundred years ago, Sommers fears “male-averse attitudes” and the political incorrectness of masculinity.

How long are we going to use the rhetoric “reverse oppression” as an excuse to keep down the educational achievement of women?

You can read more about the ideas of G. Stanley Hall and his proposals for educational reform in Maxine Seller’s “G. Stanley Hall and Edward Thorndike on the Education of Women: Theory and Policy in the Progressive era” (it is interesting throughout, but unfortunately not available to the general public).

Are insects conscious? Well, it depends...

Scientists sometimes use words in strange ways. Newspaper and magazine articles that report thrilling results like the discovery of a “gay gene,” homosexual behavior in animals, or the biological roots of dreaming can often be misleading if not read carefully. When you see a word in a scientific context, you have to ask what does the scientist mean by this? Only then can you be sure that you understand the significance of the finding.

This is one reason why scientists are often reluctant to speculate about the implications of their work. They worry about using human terms like “gay” to describe animal behavior, for example.

Recently, I have thought about this issue in relation to the question of whether insects are “conscious.” There are scientist who cite experimental evidence in support of this assertion, but in order to understand the significance of their results, we first must ask what they mean by “consciousness?”

Reducing Suffering linked to "Consciousness in a Cockroach", a Discovery Magazine article about insect consciousness. The article discusses the work of neurobiologist Nicholas Strausfeld, who has spent his career analyzing the structure of insect brains.

Strausfeld says, “Many people would pooh-pooh the notion of insects having brains that are in any way comparable to those of primates.” But, on a deep level, Strausfeld argues, insect brains are organized according to similar principles as our own.

One journal asserts that research of this kind may provide insights into “the remote roots of consciousness.”

The article goes on to quote Christof Koch, a Caltech neuroscientist: “"We have literally no idea at what level of brain complexity consciousness stops…Most people say, 'For heaven's sake, a bug isn't conscious.' But how do we know? We're not sure anymore. I don't kill bugs needlessly anymore." Koch assumes that if an insect is conscious, it has some sort of right to life, and therefore, that it is wrong to kill it needlessly.

What is the connection between “consciousness” and a “right to life?” Why do conscious things (like people and animals in this case) deserve to live while “unconscious” things (like plants?) do not?

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two answers to this question: first, it may be that consciousness implies the capacity to feel pain. A human and an animal can feel pain, while a plant cannot. Alternatively, consciousness may imply self-consciousness. If a being can be aware of losing its life, than it is wrong to kill it. I am not sure that I buy either of these arguments as they are. Both seem to require further elaboration.

The problem is that it is not clear if science can tell us whether an insect has a capacity to feel pain or whether an insect is self-aware. Consciousness is a tricky concept to work with, and therefore, before we can draw social and political implications from a scientific result that insects are conscious, we must first ask, what do scientists mean when they say that insects are conscious? Do they mean that an insect brain looks like a human brain? That is, that there is a structural similarity between human and insect brains? Is it that insects exhibit certain types of behaviors?

In his article, “What in the world is consciousness?” published in Progressive Brain Research, Adam Zeman reviews the different scientific approaches to the study of consciousness. He draws a distinction between “easy” and “hard” questions about consciousness. The former involve “the underlying neurobiology of wakefulness and awareness, and the latter the allegedly more mysterious process by which biological processes generate experience.” The easy definition of “consciousness” equates it with “awareness.” The hard definition of “consciousness” equates is with “experience.”

The Discovery article only addresses the “easy” questions. It summarizes results about how the brain structure of insects leads them to exhibit behaviors that imply awareness. That is, if you try to swat a fly, certain neurons will fire and it will fly away, demonstrating that it is aware of your hand. However, Koch’s decision not to kill flies needlessly seems to rest on an assumed answer to the “hard” questions. That is, he seems to assume that science will someday unravel the “mysterious process by which biological processes generate experience.” Zeman assumes that there is a process that allows purely biological processes to generate experience (although it is mysterious), and Koch assumes that science will someday (although admittedly not today) unravel that process.

I agree that if a fly experiences the world like I do, I shouldn’t kill it (needlessly). However, merely demonstrating awareness does not seem necessary or sufficient for establishing experience. People who are sleeping are unconscious in that they are unaware, but they are conscious in that they, presumably, still have experiences (dreams for instance). Similarly, a plant will respond to changes in temperature and light, implying some level of awareness, but a plant (presumably) does not have experiences.

Confusing “easy” consciousness for “hard” consciousness can lead to political and social implications for human behavior. Just as I don’t believe that discoveries about the physiological correlates of dreams have implications for their meaning, I don’t necessarily believe that discoveries about the neurobiological correlates of awareness have implications for morality.

What do you mean by "gay?"

Last Tueday, Stephen Colbert interviewed Jon Mooalem, author of the New York Times article “Can Animals Be Gay?” which discussed observations of homosexual behavior in animals. In the interview, Mooallem summarized the findings: “There have been observations of same sex activity in about 450 different species.”

He goes on to give a few characteristic examples: “You've got female Koalas that will mount each other. You've got male dolphins who will penetrate each other in the blow hole.” The crowd groans and Colbert looks shocked. Mooallem adds, “We don't know how sporadic or how frequent this is.”

Mooallem is careful to counsel against hastily drawing implications for humans from animal behavior. Later in the interview, Colbert confronts Mooallem directly asking, “Are they gay or not?”

“Well let's talk about the word 'gay,'” Mooallem replies. “Gay is a sexual orientation. It's more than a behavior. How are you going to know if an animal is gay? How are you going to show that?”

“I would say, penetrating each other's blow holes might be one way to show that.” The audience explodes with laughter. Both Colbert and the audience think that blow hole penetration is so obviously a “gay” behavior that it is absurd to question whether dolphins who engage in the practice are gay.

But Mooallem is less convinced. “Is that dolphin perpetually attracted to other male dolphins?”

It seems to me like Mooallem and Colbert are dancing around the question “What does it mean to be gay?” We can ask this question about humans or animals. Listen to what they say and you can figure out what each of them means by “gay.”

First of all, it is interesting to note that neither of them seem to think that defining the word “gay” is at all difficult. At least when it comes to humans, both treat “gay” as well-defined. This doesn't seem to unusual. I think most people imagine that defining a word like “gay” is pretty easy. But as I started to think about it, things quickly became complicated.

From Mooallem's question about whether the dolphin is “perpetually” attracted to other male dolphins, he seems to define “gay” as “consistent same sex behavior.” Of course, later he says its an “orientation,” that is, it is “more than a behavior.” So how can we tell if an animal is gay? For Colbert, one example of a “same sex behavior” (such as blow hole penetration) is sufficient, but for Mooallem, the behavior must be consistent. I assume that the reason the consistency of the behavior is so essential for Mooallem is that one time could be a fluke, due to environmental stress, etc. But consistent same sex-behavior is indicative of an “orientation.”

However, while Mooallem and Colbert seem to disagree about how often an animal must engage in “same-sex behavior” in order to count as “gay,” they apparently agree on what counts as “same-sex behavior.” Two examples of same-sex behavior given in the interview are female-female pairs of albatrosses raising a chick with each other, rather than the somewhat more typical female-male pairs, and male dolphins penetrating each other's blow holes.

But should we count both these behaviors as “same-sex behavior?” In the Times article, Mooalem wonders whether “we may be grouping together a big grab bag of behaviors based on only a superficial similarity.” In the case of the albatrosses, the birds do everything together except have sex. In the case of the dolphins, they only penetrate each other's blow holes. Why should both these behaviors be considered “same-sex?”

Clearly when we talk about “same-sex behavior,” we are only talking about certain kinds of behaviors. We are not talking about any behavior in which two animals of the same sex engage. For example, in many species of horned animals, pairs of males fight each other, but we probably would not be inclined to call fighting between pairs of males “same-sex behaviors.” The two examples on the table are blow hole pentration and chick rearing. We have to assume that these behaviors have something essential in common. That is, on some level, they are the same type of behavior.

Perhaps the implied definition of “same-sex behavior” is “when a same sex pair does something that is typically only done by heterosexual pairs.” If blow hole penetration is assumed to be a version of sex, which is typically done by male-female pairs, then this definition covers both blow hole penetration and chick rearing (which is also typically done by male-female pairs).

But this definition too, leaves something to be desired. One problem is the word “typical.” Lindsay Young, the biologist described in Mooallem's article, found around 30% of all albatross pairs in the colony she studied were female-female pairs. If a third of a population is doing something, it can hardly be called atypical.

Perhaps instead of “typically,” we could say, “normally.” That is, there are certain behaviors that only heterosexual couples should do. A male and a female should raise a chick together, but two females shouldn't. A “same sex-behavior” is when a same sex pair does something that would only be normal for a heterosexual pair. To me, this implies that lying at the heart of the definition of “gay” is the idea that there are normal and abnormal sexual behaviors. Are Mooallem and Colbert implicitly defining “gay” as “engaging in abnormal sexual behaviors?”

How can we define normal? As Freud points out in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sexuality, the normalcy of a sexual behavior is sometimes determined by whether or not it counts as foreplay. Someone who wants to look at their partner naked before having sex is normal, but someone who finds total sexual satisfaction merely from looking at his or her partner would probably be considered abnormal. Other times, the normalcy of a behavior depends on location. Two men who lie on top of each other and roll around on the floor are considered normal if they are in a wrestling match, but might be considered abnormal if they are in a bedroom.

Is it possible to define the word “gay” without implying a clear-cut distinction between “normal” and “abnormal” sexuality?

This whole discussion does not even begin to address Mooallem's notion that “gay is a sexual orientiation. It's more than a behavior.” Mooallem seems to think that a behavior becomes an orientation when it is frequent, but don't we normally think of sexual orientation as something internal? Couldn't a person be gay without every acting on it? Think of people who are “closeted.” On the other hand, could someone who frequently engages in “same-sex behavior” be straight? Perhaps we would put certain prisoners in this category.

Furthermore, this discussion also does not address why blow hole penetration seems to be the archetypal example of gay animal behavior for Colbert and his audience. What's that about?

Male Studies: investigating the force of "maleness"

Last Wednesday, Wagner College announced the creation of The Foundation for Male Studies as well as a proposal for a new discipline of Male Studies. Inside Higher Ed reports:

“Lionel Tiger, a Rutgers Anthropology Professor and co-chair of the Foundation for Male Studies said, “the field takes its cues ‘from the notion that male and female organisms really are different’ and the ‘enormous relation between ... a person’s biology and their behavior’ that’s not being addressed in most contemporary scholarship on men and boys.

I am concerned that male-averse attitudes are widespread in the United States and that masculinity is becoming politically incorrect,” said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.”

The announcement provoked a range of reactions many of which negative:

Sally Benz at Feministe wrote, “The people advocating for this seem to believe very strongly in it, but really, their arguments just make me laugh.”

Amanda Hess at The Sexist wrote, “Apparently, Male Studies was formed in order to study [the phenomenon of maleness] without the distraction of also occasionally thinking about women.”

Much of the discussion has also focused on the distinction between the discipline of Male Studies and the discipline Men’s Studies, which began in the 1980’s as a counterpart to Women’s Studies.

In response to the Wagner College announcement, the President of the American Men’s Studies Association, Robert Heasley said, “Men’s studies came out of feminist analysis of gender, which includes biological differences….[The Male Studies] argument is that they’re inventing something that I think already exists.”

As I have followed this story, I have tried to get clear on what precisely is the difference between Women’s Studies, Men’s Studies, Gender Studies and Male Studies. The main difference seems to be that while the first three listed disciplines share certain basic concerns, methodological principles, and general ideological orientations, the founders of Male Studies define it in opposition to those concerns, principles and ideological orientations.

Gender Studies, which perhaps can serve as an umbrella term for both Women’s and Men’s Studies, investigates gender as a historically constituted concept, which differs temporally and geographically. It examines the political and social implications of diverse conceptions of gender and sexuality for society today. One of the central goals of the discipline are to unearth, examine and critique the subtle interconnections between gender (and sexuality) and power and privilege.

Male Studies could not be more different. Instead of critically examining the extent to which society is shaped by historically relative conceptions of masculinity, Male Studies seems to focus entirely on grounding male behavior biologically. Lionel Tiger explicitly stresses the “enormous relation… between a person’s biology and their behavior.”

I read “grounding male behavior biologically” as “justifying male behavior biologically.” Tiger and his colleagues are formulating an argument that male behavior is fixed. The natural conclusion of this line of reasoning is that men cannot be held accountable for their behavior because, after all, there is an “enormous relation… between a person’s biology and their behavior.” Men certainly can’t control their biology, can they?

Given the recentness of Male Studies, it is too soon to tell what direction it may take. However, I can think of potentially disastrous consequences for an “academic” discipline of this kind. Would Tiger attempt to defend a rapist by arguing that rape is a natural (and therefore justified) means of production? Some evolutionary psychologists already have. Can we justify the overrepresentation of men in certain professions by appeal to biological predestination?

What are the potential consequences of a discipline that attempts to place men, who have monopolized social power for millennia, as an oppressed minority?

When Scientists Attack (Each Other's Theories)

Neuroskeptic asks, “Why do we dream?” He goes on to discuss a theory proposed by Hobson and McCarley that dreams are simply “side-effects of brain activation.” In their 1977 paper, “The Brain as a Dream State Generator," the authors argue that “many formal aspects of the dream experience may be the obligatory and relatively undistorted psychological concomitant of the physiological brain state called 'dreaming sleep.'” What this means in plain English is dreams are simply the mental by-product of your brains attempt to deal with random physiological fluctuations in your body while your asleep.

The authors, however, do not raise this possibility as simply an interesting hypothesis to explain the origins of dreams, they explicitly frame it as an attack on the psychoanalytic orthodoxy of the 1970's. From the first line, their antagonism toward psychoanalysis is clear. They write, “Since the turn of the century, dream theory has been dominated by the psychoanalytic hypothesis that dreaming is a reactive process designed to protect consciousness... from the disruptive effects of unconscious wishes.” In other words, psychoanalytic theorists claim that, in order to release unhealthy tension, dreams allow you to do while sleeping all the things you wish you could do while you are awake. The authors go on to assert that “modern neurophysiological evidence... necessitates important revisions in psychoanalytic dream theory” (1335). Throughout the rest of the paper, they seem to assume that if they can find a physical process that explains the origins of dreams, then they will have raised a serious challenge to Psychoanalysis.

The details of their theory are not that important to me. I am willing to assume that they succeed in offering a plausible physiological account of the origins of dreams. My question is the following: does finding a physical process that parallels a psychological process, discredit the pyschological account?

In a very interesting figure (1346), the authors translate the elements of the psychoanalytic theory into their “activation-synthesis” model . The figure consists of one set of three boxes labelled “the psychoanalytic model” above a second set of three boxes labelled “activation synthesis model.” The second box of the psychoanalytic model reads: “Ego: wishes to sleep...day residue stirs up unconscious wish...” The second box in their model reads: “Activation of sensory neurons, motor neurons, and 'visceral neurons.'” The arrangement of the picture implies that the each stage of the psychoanalytic model parallels one of the three stages of their model, almost as if they are saying, “What you thought was an unconscious wish is actually just the activation of a visceral neuron.” This is the moment of the paper where the authors overthrow the psychoanalytic theory by translating each of it's stages into a stage in their own theory.

Although they are careful to add that their theory doesn't “imply that [dreams] are without psychological meaning of function” (1346), that certainly seems to be the suggestion that they are making. Rather than being psychological events, they argue, dreams are more basically, physiological events, and therefore, they do not necessarily mean anything.

They translate the psychological into the physical and argue that by doing so, they have made the psychological problematic. But isn't this move a little like arguing that because you can translate Spanish into English, English is somehow more basic? Scientists often make this move. They argue that if you can find a physical process that mirrors a psychological process, somehow you have raised serious questions for anyone who wants to speak the psychological language. But why do we necessarily assume that a physical process is more basic than a psychological process?

How to Ask a Scientific Question

“Just about everything starts with a question. Usually, scientists come up with questions by looking at the world around them. "Hey look! What's that?" See that squiggly thing at the end of the sentence? A question has been born.”

“Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much, and so much only, as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”

The first of these quotes is from an educational website for children. The second quote is from one of the first modern philosopher's of science. Francis Bacon, the 17th century author, wrote the Novum Organum (The New Method), one of the first books about how to do science.

Although Bacon writes in more abstract language, he agrees that “everything starts with a question.” He asserts that a person is “the interpreter of nature” and that the only way to interpret nature is to observe it. In Bacon's view, nature generates questions for the scientist. Nature calls out for interpretation. Both quotes paint a picture of a person who observes an aspect of nature that requires explanation.

Both quotes assume that questions about nature will come up. “Everything starts with a question.” Nature is something that obviously calls for interpretation. But as soon as we start asking questions, as soon as we begin to develop interpretations,we have to make difficult choices. How should we decide what aspects of the world are worth explaining? Which phenomena require interpretation and which are just common sense?The scientists who research albatross mating behavior and who develop hypotheses to explain why there are female-female pairs, have decided that female-female pairing is a phenomenon that requires interpretation. We have to explain why two female albatrosses would work together to raise a chick, but we don't have to explain why a female and a male albatross would work together to raise a chick. The fact that there are female-female pairs says something about us, but the fact that there are female-male pairs doesn't. Female-male pairs don't seem worthy of investigation on their own.

Scientists ask the questions they do because a phenomenon strikes them as being unusual. What might be anthropomorphically called “homosexual” behavior in animals seems like something we have to explain only because we assume that “heterosexual” behavior is the norm. Scientific disciplines often generate questions as they go along. For example, one cannot ask which gene causes homosexuality if one doesn't know what a gene is. However, scientific disciplines need to start from somewhere. A question has to seem worth asking. And what questions seem worth asking will depend on what culture a person lives in.

For example, there have been societies where sexual activity between men is commonplace and accepted. Would scientists from these cultures find homosexuality in nature worth investigating? Perhaps they would want to investigate species that don't exhibit “homosexual” behavior.

Because scientists have to choose which questions to ask and which questions have common sense answers, scientific research necessarily bears the mark of the society that produces it. A society that assumes homosexuality as an aberrant behavior, will have a different science than a society that assumes homosexuality as a normal, “natural” behavior. But how different? Different in what ways?

What do these lesbian albatrosses say about us?

The cover story in this week's Times magazine asks, “Can animals be gay?” Several years ago, during her doctoral work observing a colony of albatrosses at Kaena Point in Oahu, biologist Lindsay Young noticed that “a third of the pairs at Kaena Point actually consisted of two female birds” rather than the slightly more typical male-female pairings. The writer goes on to point out that same sex pairings in the animal kingdom are quite common in the animal kingdom, “[having] been recorded in more than 450 different species of animals.”

When Young published her observations of the albatross colony, she became embroiled in a fierce debate on the implications of her findings for humans. Some commenters “celebrated Young's findings as a clear call for equality,” while others denigrated them as “'pure propaganda' and selective science at it's dumbest.” Young, herself, refuses to address the question, “What do these lesbian albatrosses say about us?”

Many people are fascinated with questions about the origins and nature of homosexuality. It feels like every month the mainstream media and the blogosphere bat around a new scientific study claimed to be a major breakthrough in the science of homosexuality. Several years ago, scientists found that with genetic manipulation, they could cause male fruit flies to exhibit female typical mating behavior. This finding led to a flurry of headlines like, “The Gay Gene?” and “Scientists Make Fruit Flies Gay.”

Hypotheses about the implications of same-sex mating behavior in animals for humans abound, but few writers, if any, wonder whether these lesbian albatrosses say anything at all about us. The whole genre of using (and perhaps abusing) research on animal behavior to draw social and political conclusions rests on the assumption that research on animal behavior is relevant to human behavior.

Even assuming that animals of one sex exhibit behavior that is typical of the other sex, does it make sense to describe that behavior as "gay?" What are the social and political implications of using words usually applied to humans to describe animals?

Maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing. Perhaps journalists are simply writing in an engaging way, and I shouldn't worry too much about it. But scientists themselves are aware of the pitfalls of anthropomorphic language. According to the writer of the Times article, “Young would never use the phrase 'straight couples'” to describe animals. “And she is adamantly against calling the birds 'lesbians.'” The writer explains that the question of whether the birds are lesbians is “meaningless to her; it has nothing to do with her research.” In Young's own words, “'this study is about albatross... this study is not about humans.'”

Young's comments evoke a familiar analysis of the relationship between science and journalists' account of science in the media. The distinction is clearly drawn between the scientists, who are restrained, rational, and methodologically precise and popular science writers, who are hyperbolic, ideological and who distort technical scientific papers. 

But some scientists question whether they and their colleagues are able to maintain objective detachment. According to the Times article, biologist Bruce Bagemihl discusses biologists’ “heterosexist bias,” saying, “Individuals of a species are considered entirely heterosexual until proven otherwise.” In his book, “Biological Exuberance,” Bagemihl quotes one biologist saying '“I still cringe at the memory of seeing old D-ram mount S-ram repeatedly.” To think, he wrote, “'of those magnificent beasts as ‘queers’ — Oh, God!'” Bagemihl points out that some scientists, even ones well-respected by their peers, fall into precisely the error of describing animal behavior in human terms that Young works so hard to avoid. The ram biologist which Bagemihl quotes, goes so far as to call these rams “queers,” a word which not only describes the rams in human terms, but which also includes negative connotations.

The most illuminating moment of the article comes in the final paragraphs as the writer describes a day when David Leonard, an ornithologist and friend of Young's, tagged along: “He was here as a bird lover, not a bird researcher, and wasn't overly interested in scientific detachment. When Young pointed out a male albatross whinnying at every female that passed overhead, Leonard shook his head and joked, 'I feel your pain, dude.'” A couple paragraphs later, Young observes a male and female about to mate: “ 'Will anyone see me if I cheat?’ Young said. “I’m not sure if he’s taking her up on it, or just going, ‘Why are you in my spot?’ She was doing the bird’s interior monologue, narrating for one blameless, anthropomorphic moment.”

There is a tension here. Even the scientists like Young, who refuse to fall prey to the temptation to describe animals in human terms, sometimes cannot help themselves. Clarifying Leonard's role to make explicit that he was merely a bird lover not a bird researcher, exonerates him. He is no longer on the hook for the crime of anthropomorphic description. I am not sure how to read the word “blameless” in the final sentence. Is it blameless because Young doesn't blame herself or is it blameless because describing animals in human terms isn't actually that bad? Young argued that anthropomorphic descriptions distort scientific truth. But the final paragraphs indicate that Young (and Leonard) fight the temptation to describe animal behavior in human terms, and that when they indulge themselves, they do see animal behavior in human terms. 

The Times article leaves me with two main questions: How should writers balance between the reflex to describe animals in human terms and the feeling that doing so somehow distorts scientific observations? What are the pitfalls of anthropomorphic descriptions?