Fresh Angles (from a Sick Bed)

I had been pretty much bedridden with fever for three days since Tuesday – which I used as yet another excuse to read non-work related books. The first one is a continuation of Junichiro Tanizaki saga: “The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi” [1], and the second one is a science book my friend dropped for another friend, but which I confiscated out of necessity at least for the time being: Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene”.

By the title and the cover, their difference couldn’t be starker. Yet, upon finishing Tanizaki and starting Dawkins, it is their similarity that is most striking: it is how each author deliberately set up their work by looking at an old issue from a “fresh” angle (the books are written in 1931 and in 1976 respectively, thus the quotation marks capturing the word fresh).

Tanizaki experimented on how most Japanese history books were traditionally written: very matter of fact, focusing on the male figures, leaving out the role of females and the private lives of the heroes. In “The Secret History”, Tanizaki created a novel precisely where these history books left off: by looking into the private lives of the heroes, and focusing specifically on the role of females in making ‘history’. He even went as far as fabricating two historical sources he quoted over and over throughout the novel. The result is a bizarre yet comical, ahistorical yet wildly imaginative, piece of literature [2].

Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene”, on the other hand, presented Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the famous ‘survival of the fittest’ with a new light by asking a question: survival of what? Is it the species, the group, the individual, or the gene? The title obviously gave out Dawkins’ version: it’s the survival of the gene. So that takes care of the third word of the title. The second title word, selfish, represented his other unorthodox argument: that human beings are innately selfish, not, as many would like to believe, altruistic [3].

Not completely convinced how significant a fresh angle can be?

In the preface to 1989 edition of the book, Dawkins, an etymologist and a professor of zoology at Oxford University, illustrated his intent to present a new angle in presenting the theory of evolution by using the metaphor of the Necker cube. In his own rather long words:

“This is a two-dimensional pattern of ink on paper [and now pattern of dots on your computer screen], but it is perceived as a transparent, three-dimensional cube. Stare at it for a few seconds and it will change to face in a different direction. Carry on staring and it will flip back to the original cube. Both cubes are equally compatible with the two-dimensional data on the retina, so the brain happily alternates between them. Neither is more correct than the other. …

I now think that this metaphor was too cautious. Rather than propose a new theory or unearth a new fact, often the most important contribution a scientist can make is to discover a new way of seeing old theories or facts. The Necker cube is misleading because it suggests that the two ways of seeing are equally good. To be sure, the metaphors gets it partly right: ‘angles’, unlike theories, cannot be judged by experiment; we cannot resort to our familiar criteria of verification and falsification. But a change of vision can, at its best, achieve something loftier than a theory. It can usher in a whole climate of thinking, in which many exciting and testable theories are born, and unimagined facts laid bare. The Necker cube metaphor misses this completely. It captures the idea of a flip in vision, but fails to do justice in its value. What we are talking about is not a flip to an equivalent view but, in extreme cases, a transfiguration.”

Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene”, Oxford University Press, New Edition, 1989: xviii-ix.

Note:
[1] If you’re wondering where is the best place in Jakarta to get Japanese novels, you definitely should go to Periplus in Sudirman Place. They sell Japanese novels from Rp. 15.000,- to Rp.40.000,- per book! Not sure if this is applicable in other Periplus outlets, though.
[2] His other essay within the same book that I haven’t read, “Arrowroot”, is apparently based on actual historical accounts.
[3] I’ve only read about a quarter of the book, so can’t quite elaborate yet on the specifics of the book.