New Scientist, 28 September 2013

New Scientist, 28 Sept 2013.

I picked up this edition up on the way back from an enjoyable visit to Wales. The cover which mentioned an article on ‘The doctor taking on America’s gun epidemic’ attracted me. We had been discussing this topic in Wales and I tried to track down a lecture I watched back in January; it was by Jim Attwood who went into the subject pretty thoroughly. The NS article is by an emergency room doctor. Since gun violence takes more than 30,000 lives a year in the USA it is clearly a major problem but research is tied because it would be criminal to talk about the policy implications of any findings. Nevertheless, although gun ownership is not allowed to some people, e.g. to felons, the doctor thinks it would help if some other risky people were also excluded from owning firearms.

That was interesting but then I saw an article about how people respond to scientific evidence. This can become a serious philosophical discussion but it is clear that if something appears to threaten a person’s value system they are likely to react with reasons and arguments to oppose the science or its implications. They may join like minded people who have made dissent into an industry. And the scientists fight back and the result is trench warfare and deadlock. Climate change is the example discussed in NS and in spite of increasing scientific confidence that human activity and climate change are closely linked there is an increase of apathy and outright denial of these findings. The recent IPCC report will add to the factual arsenal but Adam Corner, a psychologist, considers that this will simply intensify the war because ‘the argument is not really about the science; it is about politics and values.’ [New Scientist, 28 September 2013, p. 28.] With that in mind he suggests that discussions on this subject should proceed from values to science.

Something on those lines probably applies to the gun control issue mentioned above as it did with cigarette smoking years ago. And it seems relevant to another matter that I came across in this issue of NS. Rosie Waterhouse, a journalist, is also a PhD student researching myths about Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and satanic ritual abuse (SRA). She describes how MPD, SRA, false memories of abuse and alien abductions are all of a kind. They are created by such processes as suggestive questioning and/or the influence of media presentations of these matters. Waterhouse follows the story of ‘Carol’ who had years of therapy which helped her to recover repressed memories of many kinds of trauma as well as enabling dozens of personalities to emerge. ‘Carol’, and many others, have now realised that they were totally misled and in the USA where all this started there is now a backlash against MPD diagnoses. A 2006 report by memory researchers and psychologists regarded repressed memory and MPD as ‘pernicious myths’. Satanic abuse claims are also regarded as mythical but in the UK many therapists believe such accounts are usually accurate. Indeed, ‘there remain overlapping networks of believers in MPD, recovered memories and satanic abuse... who publish books, run websites and meet up at conferences.’ [New Scientist, 28 September 2013, p. 49.] Waterhouse’s PhD supervisor, Chris French, hopes that the UK will follow the USA in rejecting the MPD diagnosis.

This may happen but things are not that simple. Indeed, I suspect that even in the USA there are many people, professional and lay, who use various techniques to ‘recover’ hitherto hidden memories of trauma, usually of some kind of abuse. An impressive edifice of theory, practice, compassion and commitment has been built on sincere testimonies of such ‘unblocked’ trauma. This is not surprising because it has been the prevailing view for a long time. However, research into memory, especially over the last 25 years, shows quite clearly that traumatic events are not repressed but are remembered all too clearly, that memory is reconstructive and malleable and that people can be induced or otherwise led to believe sincerely in events that never happened. Although this undermines theories and practices that depend on releasing ‘blocked’ memories the sincere testimonies produced by that approach are so convincing that counter views, no matter how well supported by facts and research, are ignored, minimised or brushed aside by the supporting sub-culture of intertwined networks mentioned earlier. Overall, the result is again a kind of trench warfare and deadlock. Would starting from values as Corner suggests help to break the deadlock here?

My opinion is that living and our approaches to issues are value driven. I don’t believe that science offers a complete panoply of values and it may be driven by many kinds of value from greed to altruism that are hard to disentangle but science does offer truth about the material world. Where this kind of truth is relevant to some issue then the findings of scientific research have to be taken very seriously indeed.

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)

I first heard of Tylor many years ago when I was researching Edwin Smith (1876-1957) who became President of the Royal Anthropological Institute in the 1930s. I read anthropological books which pointed back to Tylor and his minimum definition of religion as 'the Belief in Spiritual Beings' and his view that culture/civilisation covers all human activity. I studied Edwin Smith for many years but only looked more closely at Tylor a few years ago after we moved to Wellington, Somerset, in 2006. I read about the town's history and discovered that Tylor had lived here for some time and was buried in the local cemetery. I agreed to speak on him at the Nynehead Local History Society so this prompted me to look more closely at his life and work. I gave the talk last Friday (12 April) and it went very well. Here is a very brief account of Tylor and his work. I had to cut out a lot of material to speak on Tylor for an hour so what follows is a very brief summary.
Edward B Tylor was born at Camberwell to a Quaker family of London brass founders. Tylorstown in South Wales is named after his brother Alfred, an eminent geologist, who started a coal mine there. Edward Tylor attended a Quaker school in North London before working in the firm's office. Signs of tuberculosis started in the 1850s and he travelled in the United Stated to recuperate. When he went on to Cuba he met a fellow Quaker, Henry Christy, who persuaded him to tour Mexico and introduced him to the emerging discipline of anthropology. Tylor studied this subject so enthusiastically and comprehensively that he would become the leading British anthropologist of the late nineteenth century. In 1858 he married Anna Rebecca Fox whose family had a textile manufacturing business in the town. They would settle at Linden, his in-laws' home on the outskirts of Wellington. He was described as an 'armchair anthropologist' and his armchair was about half a mile from mine!

 He and his wife left the Society of Friends in 1864 but remained on good terms with their Quaker family and friends. Tylor read widely and wrote articles and books. All his books were published during his time in Wellington including his most famous title, Primitive Culture (1871). He lectured at the local Literary Institute and many other places, chaired the Wellington School Board and served as a magistrate until appointed Keeper of the Oxford University Museum in 1883. This included moving the huge Pitt-Rivers collection of artefacts from London to Oxford. He was Reader in Anthropology and became Oxford’s first Professor of Anthropology. He was twice President of the (now Royal) Anthropological Institute, received many academic honours and was knighted in 1912. After retiring in 1910 he returned to Wellington where he died in 1917.
Tylor's anthropology is dated now but he did a lot to create and give credibility to what is now regarded as a serious and important discipline. 
He was buried in Rockwell Green cemetery and the headstone is most unusual in being imbedded in a tree.

 Is there something symbolic about this?
Tylor has been commemorated recently in Tylor Place off Mantle Street in Wellington.