Putting Flesh on the Bones

Is there any child who does not at some point become interested in dinosaurs?  Any of a number of things about them can intrigue children.  Such as the dinosaurs' often large size (compared to being so small oneself).  And the fact that dinosaurs inhabit a world that cannot be seen, but which children can enter using their imagination.

The first dinosaur statues
(at Crystal Palace Park)

Even the adults who in the first half of the 19th century discovered fossils from large dinosaurs had to use their imagination to try to surmise what the living creatures would have looked like.  Monsters was the first guess. And so one of Britain's leading fossil anatomists, Richard Owen, named the category Dinosauria from the Greek words deinos and sauros, i.e. "monstrous lizard."  A 19th-century London sculptor depicted dinosaurs as so obese and close to the ground that the poor animals could have barely moved.

For people who were children a century later, it was the 1940 Walt Disney movie Fantasia that helped imaginations put life into dinosaur bones, even if that movie was cartoon animation. Disney's cartoon artists, in creating the dinosaur-story segment, drew the animals' complex movements more like living reptiles.  (Rather than turning dinosaurs into clown-like stick figures, as have some marketers of dinosaur-shaped breakfast cereal and canned noodles for children.)

Despite that improvement the Disney studio made, it was still to some degree a projection of our own mental monsters upon those ancient skeletons.  That is because even in the 1800's, paleontologists had possessed fossil evidence indicating that some dinosaurs had resemblances to birds rather than being more lumbering reptiles.  During the 20th century, more and more scientific evidence -- such as birdlike hipbones and fossils with signs of feathers -- has led to a strong consensus of the close lineages of birds and dinosaurs.  The earliest bird-branch of evolution is more like an overlap with some dinosaurs, thus making birds today somewhat like dinosaur descendants.  One biologist explains:  "Biologically [dinosaurs] were perhaps more akin to today's birds and mammals, thus possibly explaining their great success."

Even when envisioned as being in a way reptilian, there is something to be said for dinosaurs. Nevertheless, the word "dinosaur" continues to be used sometimes to mean something extinct, a relic.  The science-writer Stephen Jay Gould complains about that usage:

"I cringe every time I read that this failed business, or that defeated team, has become a dinosaur in succumbing to progress.  Dinosaur should be a term of praise, not opprobrium.  Dinosaurs reigned for more than 100 million years and died through no fault of their own; Homo sapiens is nowhere near a million years old, and has limited prospects,

 entirely self-imposed, for extended geological longevity."

That child playing with plastic toys could have told adults that there was something cool about dinosaurs.

~~~

Did you become interested in dinosaurs as a child?  What do you think about them now?

(The biologist's quote is by Gregory M. Erickson in

 Evolution:  The First Four Billion Years, ed. Michael Ruse, et al., © 2009.  p. 518.)

(The Gould quote is from his collection Dinosaurs in a Haystack, © 1995.  p. 50.)

(Both the statues photo by Jes from Melbourne and the sign photo by Jeremy Thompson

 are used under Creative Commons Attribution Generic licenses.)

Scattered Gifts

Have you ever had an old paperback begin to come apart at its spine, with some of the pages falling out?  What a mess!  It is especially a problem if the book is one you like to return to frequently.  (I resorted to putting one of my books in a plastic bag to prevent the loss of any of its loose pages.)

The Italian poet Dante (1265-1321) turns that loose-page nightmare on its head in the climax of his trilogy The Divine Comedy.  He draws upon the classic "book of Nature" metaphor in the Western tradition, which was a way of expressing how the natural world can be an opening into the Divine, a revelation about God.  Dante imaginatively scatters the "pages" of Nature's book.  He does so as an analogy to the way that there are wonders of Nature scattered all about us wherever we go.  He then brings the pages together, providing us this vision:

"In its depth I saw ingathered, bound by love in one single volume,

 that which is dispersed in leaves throughout the universe: 

...as though fused together in such a way

 that what I tell is but a simple light."

That this is no loose-page nightmare but instead a wonderful vision is underscored by this verse being in the part of his trilogy that is entitled Paradiso -- Paradise.

   Dante holding his own book,
The Divine Comedy,
with vision over his shoulder
   

Even though references to the "Book of Nature" are common in Christianity before the Scientific Revolution, the references to that metaphor are usually somewhat prosaic.  In contrast, in this passage, Dante opens up the metaphor with a grand poetic flourish, like the swirl of the brush on an artist's canvas.  The picture he paints of pages "dispersed... throughout the universe" is so evocative that I can easily see myself, as if in a dream, walking about in a world in which there are large, ornate pages scattered about on the ground.  As I slowly walk, I thoughtfully pick up one page after another, eager to read what is written there.  In real life, if the pages of that book I keep in a plastic bag were blown about by the wind, I would be alarmed.  But turning Dante's vision into a beautiful dream allows me to see the imagery of scattered pages in a different light.  And see the world in a different way.

Dante's imagery also resonates with the way children sometimes spontaneously collect objects from Nature.  One of the "leaves" of Dante's "volume" might be actual leaves from a tree, scattered upon the ground.  Or the child might delight in a found feather,, especially if it is colorful.  Even a rock, plain by contrast, might have something interesting in its shape.  So many objects to discover in this world of countless objects!  It is as if the child who gathers those things together, bringing them home, is somehow desiring to integrate diverse experiences into the whole of their growing life.

Dante points to another way in which the countless things we encounter in the natural world are united:  They are "bound by love in one single volume."  With that single poetic stroke, he draws upon what has been a central concept in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  Namely, that the key to understanding Ultimate Reality is to see the world we live in as if it were full of delightful gifts from One who loves us.

~~~

Are there some threads by which you make sense of your experiences of the world?

(The quote is from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, 

 [La Divina Commedia, 1321], Paradise, XXXIII, 85-90.)

(The portrait of Dante by Bronzino is  in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

Friendly Competition by Fahrenheit

The United States is positioned on latitudes that stretch from semitropical climates in the south to winter temperatures in the north that approach those of Russia.  That wide range within a single nation with one main language allows for some friendly competition during winters and summers. When winter extremes hit more northern states, those who live in balmier climates can tweet, email, or phone their northern friends, bragging about relatively comfortable environments.  Of course, the danger is that come next summer, those in the north will get their revenge by communicating long-distance about their refreshingly cool nighttime temperatures while those in the south are baking.  Another way to try to gain advantage in this friendly game is for me to turn my own weather extreme to my advantage by bragging about the hardship I am enduring!

 "Various Meteorological Phenomena" (1856)

Comparing weather notes in some fashion is nothing new.  The 18th-century British lexicographer Samuel Johnson observed:  "When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather."  Our modern means of communication, however, allow us to share simultaneous but dissimilar experiences of weather, all within our single nation.

Behind the extremes of winter and summer lies a larger truth about life on planet Earth.  Namely, that species on this planet have evolved so as to be able to usually live within such extremes.  Even more broadly, some scientists have put forward the "anthropic principle" as a way of pointing to a kind of "fine-tuning" of certain characteristics of the universe that match the conditions necessary for life.  Such as the forces that make possible certain chemical elements in the universe.  The extremes of weather and the extremes of what various species can tolerate are, however, one place we can observe directly a "fit" between life and its environments.

We humans, with our complex cultures, tool-making, and accumulation of knowledge have stretched our natural limits.  We have found ways to dress ourselves for extreme colds, and invented ways to artificially warm or cool our burrows.

We might ask though: Can we also extend ourselves spiritually to encompass the extremes that press in upon our lives?  The friendly game of contrasting temperatures sometimes needs to be set aside.  When the extremes of weather bring injury, or even death, we need to shift to another mode, remembering the religious leader Paul's reminder to "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."

Thus, the extremes we endure can call us to rise above a concern centered just upon ourselves, recognizing that the element of unfortunate chance can strike any life.  Rising above a narrow self-concern can be something like rising above this planet's surface to see all of it as a whole. The Saudi Arabian astronaut Prince Sulatan Bin Salmon Al-Saud described his experience with fellow astronauts this way:

"The first day or so, we all pointed to our countries.

The third or fourth day,
 we were pointing to our continents.

By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth."

~~~

How do you deal with the shifting seasons psychologically or spiritually?

(The quote by Samuel Johnson [1709-1784] is taken from

 Bloomsbury Treasury of Quotations, ed. John Dainith, © 1994, p. 763.)

(The quote by Paul is from Christianity's New Testament, Romans 12:15 [NRSV].)

(The Prince Al-Saud quote is from Weather: How It Works and Why It Matters by Arthur Upgren, p. 42.)

Swimming with Hippos

When I first heard about swimming with hippos, it evoked in my mind an animated-cartoon image of a child playfully floating in colorful, bubbly water.  The cartoonists would probably make the hippo bubble-shaped too -- chubby and cute, with tiny ears that would excitedly spin.  After my imagination got back down to Earth, I thought that it might not be that nice having potentially smelly hippos (maybe dirty too?) in the water in which people were swimming. But that was not how some people in Africa experienced it.  To them, having hippos in their swimming and bathing water was a true lifesaver.

I understood how that could be when I read about an experience described by C. Dean Freudenberger.  The people in Africa who swam and bathed in the river began to lose some hippos when the animals were shot by soldiers for food.  Without the usual hippo population feeding on marsh grasses and reeds, those plant populations exploded, trapping more silt, and thus slowing the water's flow a the edges of the river.  In that altered environment, snails flourished -- along with parasites called liver flukes, which need snails for part of their life cycles.  Sadly, humans are another part of the life cycle of liver flukes (Schistosomiasis). People began dying, ultimately due to the deaths of life-saving hippos in the water in which they bathed.

I know this environmental story is one of many.  To me, though, there was an added poignancy as I pictured in my mind the relative sizes of the three creatures involved:  Microscopic fluke, human, and hippopotamus so huge it could be fangerous to people, but in this case was an ally against the tiny.

Reading Freudenberger's account made me remember seeing a mother hippo in a zoo with her baby, half-immersed in water.  I was struck by the massive solidity of their bodies.  Even the creature people were calling "the baby" seemed too large for the man-made pond.  And it seemed that a pond the size of Africa would be the right size for the mother.

Those solders in  Freudenberger's story were not the first people to have hunted hippos.  Most Biblical scholars think the Behemoth described in God's speech to Job in the Old Testament is a hippopotamus.  In that part of the narrative in the Hebrew Bible, God mentions the way hippos were hunted with harpoons.  God is not, however, interested in giving any hunting lesson. Instead, God seems to be trying to lift Job out of his self-centered perspective on himself.  God does so by describing such animals as the awe-inspiring hippo:

"Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. 

 Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly....

 It is the first of the great acts of God -- only its Maker can approach it with the sword.

 For the mountains yield food for it where all the wild animals play.

 Under the lotus plants it lies, in the covert of the reeds and in the marsh.

 The lotus trees cover it for shade; the willows of the wadi surround it.

 Even if the river is turbulent, it is not frightened"

~~~

Is there a particular animal you find awe-inspiring or humbling? Which one?

(Freudenberger's account about the hippos is related by

Calvin B. DeWitt in DeWitt's Song of a Scientist, © 2012.  p. 224,.)

(The Bible passage quoted is Job 40:15-16, 19-23a [NRSV] © 1989.)

Being an Animal, for Awhile

Over the course of my lifetime, there has been an increase in the number of Halloween costumes that are gory.  I am not a professional psychologist, but I would speculate that the increase in bloody, gruesome depictions has something to do with the increase in experiences of random violence (broadcast over TV) and truly violent movies.  Perhaps wearing a gory costume helps some children and youth face their inability to prevent random violence. Nevertheless, I would like to put in my vote for another type of costuming:  Animal masks and costumes.

What am I?

Of course, there are still some non-gory costumes among the trick-or-treaters who ring my doorbell.  An occasional princess. Or a cowboy.  Nevertheless, I think some animal costumes could add some variety and sparkle to trick-or-treating.  Even a simple animal mask might provide a psychological channel for children in their learning to adjust to the world and their own emotions.  As Paul Shepard writes:  "Putting [a mask] on and taking it off is a becoming.... The principle which they embody is like the assertion 'I am a young man, but I am also a frog' or 'I am a maiden, yet I am also a bird,' a way of saying 'I am both physical and spiritual, animal and human, good and bad.' "

Most every parent who has purchased or checked out of a library some children's books has encountered this uncanny ability of small children to identify with animal characters.  In children's stories, as also in many folktales, animal characters are both similar and dissimilar to the real animals they pretend to represent.  And they are both similar and dissimilar to our human selves.

"Bye, Baby Bunting"
from
  Denslow's Mother Goose

Somehow, an animal enables a child to name -- and thus perhaps unconsciously address -- their multiple emotions.  The complex emotions of human adults can be baffling to a small child (and sometimes inscrutable even to a teenager).  In contrast, a children's book's depictions of animals, even though oversimplified compared to the real animals they are derived from, help children to begin to name their emotions. For example:  I sometimes feel hungry like a bear.  I sometimes feel happy like a singing bird.

Paul Shepard, who was quoted above, is actually an ecologist, although of an unusual type.  He has studied and explored not so much our actions upon the environment as the reverse: the effects of the natural world upon humans, our psychology, and cultures.  Sometimes, as in the matter of humans' use of masks, those effects are subtle and too often overlooked.

There is another side of the coin to this matter of our identifying with animals, even if that identification simplifies the animal's nature.  Namely, that we can have an ambiguous response to most animals.  Not only do I experience myself as both "good and bad,"  but I can experience most animals as either good or bad, both beneficial to me and a possible danger to me.  Is that perhaps the way I can also experience many a human being?

~~~

As a child, did you ever wear an animal costume?  Do you ever feel  like any animal?

(The Shepard quote is from The Others, © 1996.   pp. 131-132.)