Psychedelic Apes Read online

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1. COSMOLOGICAL CONUNDRUMS What if the Big Bang never happened?

  Weird became true: radio astronomy

  What if our universe is actually a computer simulation?

  What if there’s only one electron in the universe?

  What if we’re living inside a black hole?

  Weird became true: dark matter

  What if we live forever?

  2. A PALE BLUE PECULIAR DOT What if the Earth is at the centre of the universe?

  What if planets can explode?

  Weird became true: the heliocentric theory

  What if our solar system has two suns?

  Weird became true: continental drift

  What if ten million comets hit the Earth every year?

  What if the Earth is expanding?

  3. IT’S ALIVE! What if everything is conscious?

  What if diseases come from space?

  Weird became plausible: the vent hypothesis

  What if the Earth contains an inexhaustible supply of oil and gas?

  What if alien life exists on Earth?

  Weird became (partially) true: the Gaia hypothesis

  What if we’ve already found extraterrestrial life?

  4. THE RISE OF THE PSYCHEDELIC APE What if the dinosaurs died in a nuclear war?

  What if our ancestors were aquatic apes?

  Weird became true: the out-of-Africa theory

  What if we’re descended from a pig–chimp hybrid?

  What if hallucinogenic drugs made us human?

  Weird became true: cave art

  What if humanity is getting dumber?

  5. MUSHROOM GODS AND PHANTOM TIME What if ancient humans were directed by hallucinations?

  Weird became plausible: beer before bread

  What if Homer was a woman?

  What if Jesus was a mushroom?

  Weird became true: ancient Troy

  What if Jesus was Julius Caesar?

  What if the Early Middle Ages never happened?

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  INTRODUCTION

  This is a book about the weirdest, wackiest and most notorious against-the-mainstream theories of all time. In the following chapters, we’ll explore curious questions such as, Are we living in a computer simulation? Do diseases come from outer space? What if planets occasionally explode? Is it possible the dinosaurs died in a nuclear war? Could humans be descended from aquatic apes? And was Jesus actually Julius Caesar?

  Such notions may sound so outrageous that no one could possibly take them seriously, but they’re not intended as jokes. Over the years, these odd speculations have been put forward in all seriousness by scholars who have argued that, no matter how much they might challenge the conventional wisdom, they could actually be true. Mainstream scientists, of course, strongly disagree. They insist that such ideas are nonsense. Some grow quite incensed that anyone would ever propose them in the first place, let alone believe them. Nevertheless, weird theories are a persistent presence in the history of science. They seem to sprout up constantly from the soil of intellectual culture, like strange, exotic growths.

  As an exploration of unorthodox ideas, this book is part of a very old genre: the history of error. The purpose of this has traditionally been to describe supposedly foolish or incorrect beliefs in order to condemn them, holding them up as examples of flawed thinking to be avoided. That, however, isn’t my intention here. Nor, on the other hand, do I want to defend or endorse these weird theories. My relationship to them is more complicated. I recognize that they make outrageous claims. I’m also quite willing to admit that most, perhaps even all of them, might be entirely wrong. And yet, I’m not hostile to these theories. In fact, they fascinate me, and that’s why I wrote this book.

  On one level, I’m drawn to them because of a quirk of my personality. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a preoccupation with oddities of history, especially ones involving outsiders and eccentrics. From this perspective, the appeal of these theories is obvious, because they’re all the product of peculiar imaginations. Many of their creators were legendary misfits who ended up ostracized from the scientific community because of their insistent championing of aberrant notions.

  I’m also intrigued by these theories because they offer a unique window into scientific culture, which is a fascinating subject in its own right. In particular, they reveal the tension between contrarianism and consensus-building that lies at its very heart.

  Science is a unique form of knowledge in that it promotes scepticism about its own claims. It denies the notion of absolute certainty. It always admits the possibility of doubt, striving to put its claims to the test. For this reason, it places an enormous value on contrarianism, or being able to ‘think different’, as the famous Apple advertising slogan put it. Consider how scientific geniuses such as Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein are celebrated because they revolutionized our understanding of the natural world by seeing it in completely new ways.

  But, simultaneously, science requires consensus building. It would be useless if researchers were forever disagreeing with one another, endlessly producing new rival explanations. At some point, they have to come together and accept that one interpretation of the evidence is more compelling than all the others. In other words, while science may shower its highest honours on those who can think differently, most scientists, most of the time, need to think the same way. As described by the historian Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, their jointly held interpretations, or paradigms, guide day-to-day research, shaping both the questions that get asked and the answers deemed legitimate.

  So, both contrarians and consensus-builders play a necessary role in science, but, as we’ll see, they often clash – though this may be putting it too lightly. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that they often end up despising each other outright.

  The problem, as the consensus-builders see it, is that while contrarianism has its place, it can easily be taken too far. They argue that if a paradigm is supported by overwhelming evidence, then persisting in rejecting it, preferring to promote one’s own radical theory in its place, can quickly degenerate into lunacy. It becomes tantamount to rejecting science itself.

  The contrarians, on the other hand, stress that there are always different ways to interpret evidence and that the evidence might even be incomplete; perhaps a crucial piece of the puzzle is missing. They warn that rigid conformity can pose a far graver threat to science, because it blinds researchers to possible new interpretations.

  I find myself sympathetic to both sides in this debate. I accept that, realistically, the conventional scientific wisdom is almost certainly right. Scientists, after all, are highly trained to evaluate evidence. If it has persuaded most of them to favour one interpretation, it’s probably because that genuinely is the best one. But I have enough of a contrarian in me to find myself happy that the iconoclasts are out there asking awkward questions, stirring up the pot – even if, at times, they may come across as totally nuts. On occasion – maybe not often, but every now and then – the wild, unorthodox theory that seems to defy common sense does end up being vindicated.

  Which leads to the main reason for my fascination with weird theories: sheer curiosity! When someone comes up with a truly outrageous idea that completely flies in the face of orthodox opinion, I can’t help it – I want to know what their argument is, and part of me wonders, Is it possible they could be right? Is their alternative point of view simply crazy, or could it be genius?

  That’s the fun of these theories. They offer up the thrill of unbridled speculation. They tackle some of the greatest questions in scie
nce – about creation, the nature of the universe, the origin of life and our species, the emergence of consciousness and the rise of civilization – while advancing seemingly absurd answers to them. But are the answers really that crazy, given how many unknowns surround all these topics? That’s the element of uncertainty that serves as their hook, giving these theories their power to win converts.

  By exploring these heretical ideas, you can venture briefly into intellectually off-limit areas and you can find out if any of them can (possibly) seduce you to their side. Perhaps they’ll cast doubt on subjects that you thought were entirely settled, or that didn’t even seem to be problems at all.

  It’s my intention to give these theories a chance to persuade you. Therefore, I’ve tried to provide a fair reconstruction of what the arguments for them are, even if that risks making me seem overly sympathetic towards them at times. Although, in every case, I’ve also made sure to explain why these theories are rejected by the appropriate experts. What I won’t do is tell you whether I think any of them are right or wrong. I’ll let you decide their worth for yourself.

  And if you do end up concluding that the conventional wisdom is correct and that these theories really are crazy, I’d maintain that the time spent considering them still won’t have been wasted. The classicist Mary Beard once argued, while discussing the theory that Homer was a woman (which we’ll examine in the final section of this book), that it’s possible for an idea to be ‘usefully wrong’. I fully agree with her. I believe that a provocative idea, even if it’s absolutely mistaken, can jolt us out of our intellectual rut. The exercise of stepping outside of what’s familiar can shake up our thinking and provoke us to question our assumptions, revealing that it might be possible to look at what we took for granted in an entirely new way.

  And, on a somewhat more practical level, these weird theories do offer an offbeat way to learn quite a bit about standard science, because they constantly engage with the dominant scientific schools of thought, even while disputing them. It’s like taking a funhouse-mirror tour of the history of science. The frame of reference may be highly unconventional, but you will nevertheless be exposed to a lot of what is considered ‘correct’ science mixed in with the incorrect. Hopefully, some of these theories might even inspire you to hunt down more information about the topics or to explore a discipline further.

  The genre of weird theories is vast and sprawling. It would have taken multiple volumes to explore it completely. To make things more manageable, I applied some filters.

  First and foremost, I eliminated any theory that I didn’t believe to be genuinely contrarian in spirit. Right off the bat, this removed from consideration two ideas that are widely associated with resistance to scientific orthodoxy: creationism and climate-change denial. Many of the theories we’ll examine in this book have been accused by critics of being similar to these two. But I think the comparison is misguided.

  Creationism is inspired by a rigid commitment to an ancient religious orthodoxy. That’s the opposite of contrarianism. Climate-change deniers similarly represent a powerful interest group: the fossil-fuel industry and all its allies.

  A true scientific contrarian, in my mind, hasn’t simply embraced an alternative, pre-existing orthodoxy. They’re not the attack dogs of some well-entrenched faction that perceives itself to be threatened by the scientific consensus. Instead, they’re genuine oddballs who have carved out their own peculiar niche. Whatever else one may say about them, there’s no cynicism or ulterior motives lurking behind their stance. They’re honestly passionate about seeking the truth, as they perceive it. And while they’re definitely opposed to specific scientific ideas, they’re not anti-science. Just the opposite. They view themselves as the legitimate upholders of scientific values, fighting against the rise of groupthink.

  As a corollary to this, I believe that ignorance is not the same as contrarianism. A true contrarian has to know the science they’re rejecting. There’s an entire genre of crackpot science in which people dream up elaborate theories, apparently never having read any of the relevant scientific literature on the topic. I view that as a separate phenomenon – interesting in its own way, but not what I want to examine here. All the theorists we’ll look at have, I feel, made an effort to understand the paradigms they reject. In fact, quite a few of them were highly respected figures in their disciplines before, to the bewilderment of their colleagues, seeming to go completely off the rails.

  Even with this filter, our topic remains huge. So I further narrowed down the focus to the historical sciences: cosmology, geology, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, anthropology and the social sciences, such as archaeology and history. This is in contrast to the experimental sciences, such as physics and chemistry. (I let two physics theories slip through because they’re both relevant to cosmology.)

  I chose this selection because, for my money, the historical disciplines produce the best (i.e. most outrageous) weird theories. They’re home to some of the all-time classics of the genre. They’re inherently more speculative than the experimental sciences and so theorists can really let their imaginations fly.

  Concentrating on the historical sciences has also allowed me to add some structure to the book. While each chapter stands on its own, and you can read them in any order you wish, if you do choose to read the book from front to back, the topics will proceed in a rough thematic sequence. We’ll start with the widest-scale view possible, the entire universe, and then we’ll progressively zoom in closer: on to the solar system, then the Earth, the origin of life, the evolution of humans and, finally, the emergence of civilization. In this way, I’ve designed the book to offer a kind of alternative history of the cosmos, from its creation right up to the dawn of the modern era.

  For the sake of variety, I’ve also thrown in along the way a few examples of weird-became-true theories: concepts that were initially rejected by the scientific community, but were eventually accepted as correct (or, at least, plausible). I did this to show that it is indeed possible for theories to make that journey from being outcast to being accepted.

  Finally, let me add a note about terminology. The word ‘theory’ has a specific meaning in science. It’s defined as an explanation that’s strongly supported by evidence and generally accepted by the scientific community. This contrasts with a hypothesis, which is more like an educated guess based on limited evidence.

  A problem arises because, in popular usage, a ‘theory’ means any kind of supposition or idea. The term is interchangeable with a hypothesis or speculation. This creates a source of tension because some scientists can be very particular about the usage of these words. In fact, they’ve been waging a campaign for over two centuries to try to get people to stop referring to hypotheses as theories. They worry that, if the public perceives a theory to be any old idea or conjecture, then they won’t attach sufficient weight or importance to it. They may end up thinking that the theory of evolution is just some half-baked notion that Charles Darwin dreamed up while sitting on the toilet.

  I’m afraid I’m going to draw down the ire of the linguistic sticklers, because I’ve opted to use ‘theory’ in its lay rather than its scientific meaning. My excuse is that this is a book for a broader audience, so I thought it fair to use the word as it’s understood in general usage. I’ve tried to stick with whatever term was most widely used to describe each idea. If most people called it a theory (whether or not it was accurate to do so), so have I. Likewise, if most people have referred to a certain concept as a hypothesis, I do too.

  Which is all a long-winded way of saying that, just because I may refer to some of the ideas in the following pages as theories, it doesn’t mean that technically any of them are. A few of them do actually come close, and you’ll find a range of plausibility in the following pages. I suspect you may even end up agreeing with some of the claims! Others, however, don’t even really pass muster as hypotheses. Mere conjectures might be more accurate. Proceed with appropriate caution.
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  CHAPTER ONE

  Cosmological Conundrums

  If you travel out past the skyscrapers and city lights, through the suburbs and into the open countryside beyond, be sure to look up at the sky at night. You’ll see the universe stretched out above you in all its vastness. It’s an awe-inspiring sight, and it may lead you to wonder – what exactly is it and where did it all come from? How did the stars and galaxies get there? Just how can we make sense of this immensity?

  People have been pondering such questions since prehistoric times, when they found answers in mythology. Ancient Chinese myth taught that the universe formed when a giant named Pan Gu awoke inside an egg and shattered it to get out. In Lenape and Iroquois creation tales, a sea turtle carries the entire world on its back, and, according to the Babylonian epic Enûma Eliš, the storm god Marduk fashioned the heavens and Earth out of the slain body of a massive sea dragon, Tiamat.

  Nowadays, it’s the discipline of cosmology that tackles questions about the universe as a whole. By its very nature, it deals with concepts abstract and strange. Black holes, higher dimensions and virtual particles flickering in and out of existence in the vacuum of space, to name a few. As a result, cosmologists have a very high tolerance for odd ideas. The theories they regard as orthodox can be mind bending. As for the unorthodox theories we’ll examine in this section … let’s just say that they call into question some of the most basic aspects of what we consider to be reality.

  What if the Big Bang never happened?

  How did the universe come into existence? Mainstream science tells us that it burst forth explosively from a massively hot, dense state, approximately 13.8 billion years ago. As this cosmic fireball expanded, it cooled, forming first into atoms, and then into stars and galaxies, and finally a small part of it transformed into the Earth and all its inhabitants, including you and me.