The Penguin Equation
I should tell my loyal readers that obviously I intend to spend the rest of my adult life kvetching about the Drake Equation. Sad, but manic obsession can strike anywhere, and at any time. I blame Carl Sagan.
Doc Rampage writes:
““Haste makes waste” is not an equation for the trivial reason that it does not express an equivalence but rather a causal relationship. “
Thank you. I think we can agree on this point, as well as on the point that “Slithy were the borogroves” is not really a sentence despite having the appearance of the subject-verb-object form of a declarative sentence. I also agree that God=Love is not an equation for the reasons you give, that the nouns in the sentence are not mathematical operands.
I will make the further statement that in order to be a “scientific equation”, the operands must refer to something science can define or measure, such as the number of stars which produce planets. When you get to concepts that involve a judgment call of something which cannot be reduced to a measurement, such as the definition of life or the definition of civilization or the lifespan of a civilization, we are no longer talking about something in the realm of physics.
Instead saying “The Drake Equation is not an equation” I will now, armed with the distinction you have given me, rephrase my bitter complaint:
I myself take it to be true that the more stars there are, the harder it is to believe that life, if it arises naturally and automatically, will not arise among the stars in their countless myriads. If there were fewer stars, it would be easier to believe we are alone. But the so called Drake Equation does not express an equivalence but rather a causal relationship.
The equation offends me, because it looks like science, it looks like an statistical expression of something like Mendeleevian genetics.
The Drake so-called Equation is actually more like taking a birdwatcher to a marsh, and saying, “The more birds that there are in the marsh, the greater your chances of seeing an ostrich or a penguin” without knowing whether or not those who species, or any species, inhabit that particular marsh.
It is true that it is harder to believe that a marsh crowded with birds will not contain the one rare bird you seek; and if the marsh were small, your hopes would be easier to dash. But it is not true that the relationship between the unknown number of birds, the size of the marsh, the number of bird species on Earth, and the chances of seeing a penguin can be expressed in an Equation.
And I use this analogy advisedly: the “Birdwatcher Equation” is nonsensical because it does not take into account that penguins and ostriches are not marsh dwellers. It does not mention climate or habitat at all.
Let us define “P=Ms x Bs x Wt” where P is the chance of seeing a penguin, Ms is the size in acres of the marsh, Bs is the number of bird species on earth and Wt is the time the bird watcher spends watching. Surely it is a matter of common sense that the more bird species there are on earth, the greater is the bird watcher’s chance of seeing a penguin in the marsh, and also the larger the marsh the greater his odds, and also if he watches longer, the greater are the birdwatcher’s chances of spotting the elusive marsh penguin.
Nonetheless, “P=Ms x Bs x Wt” is simply not an equation. It does not measure anything or express an equivalence except, perhaps, that all tautologies are equivalences. The fact of the matter is that penguins are not found in marshes. The birdwatcher equation uses the word “chances” the same way the Drake Equation does: NOT as an expression of how many trials out of one hundred we have a result, but only as a common sense feeling that if there are more birds in the air, the harder it is to believe that a penguin is not flying among them. But, again, this is just a feeling that we in English happen to use the word “chance” to express. In reality, penguins do not fly, so the “chance” of seeing a penguin flying over a marsh is exactly zero, if we define “chance” scientifically rather than emotionally.
Likewise, the Drake Equation lists some factors that common sense says may have something to do with the origins of life, but we do not even know whether “x” is one of those factors or not (and x could be anything from star type to orbital width to moon size to nickle-iron core to free oxygen in the atmosphere to the arrival of cometary amino acids).
And, in the spirit of the last few posts, I will now post a picture of a penguin:
And what would Penguin be without Catwoman?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
