2020: The Year of Eccentric Thinking

I recently watched Amazon’s new production, The Aeronauts, which traces the perilous journey undertaken by pilot Amelia Wren and meteorologist James Glaisher to explore the air. The film is based on the real-life balloon flight of British aeronauts James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell, the latter of whom is replaced by the fictional Amelia Wren. Glaisher’s meticulous measurements and observations lead to the discovery that the atmosphere has layers.

Let us not forget that anything widely accepted today began as an idea. An idea that, more often than not, was met with resistance. An idea that was not considered credible or legitimate. An idea that constituted the ramblings of a lunatic. To quote the 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer,

“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

Those thinkers who are ahead of their time undoubtedly face dismissals, merciless taunts, persecution. While we casually acknowledge these obstacles, we don’t really appreciate the struggles of those who endured them.

None of us remember the time when the germ theory of disease was regarded as a miasma or meteorologist was a taboo word. Only some of us remember a time when ulcers were thought to be caused by stress and spicy foods, the prevailing scientific consensus insisted on no causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, and lead was still ubiquitous in consumer products. Considering how often we’ve underestimated the harm caused by various compounds, perhaps warnings regarding the dangers of certain substances, such as fluoride, glyphosate, PFAS, PFOA (a.k.a. C8), and thallium in our food and water supply ought to be taken more seriously.

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

— British mathematician and historian Bertrand Russell

Today, the vanguard challenging much of our deeply entrenched dogma, such as the amyloid β hypothesis or the diet-heart hypothesis or the somatic mutation theory of cancer, face the same pushback from those who defend convention. Indeed, it is nearly impossible to receive government funding for an Alzheimer’s trial which does not target amyloid plaques. Robert Moir, a pioneer who lead the way in establishing the connection between microbes and Alzheimer’s disease, recently passed away at the age of 58 from glioblastoma and tearfully recounted to one of his colleagues that his discoveries would not be published.

While a strict adherence to the scientific literature may be considered admirable by some, it is nevertheless quite limiting and allows us to examine only the evidence at hand without any regard for future possibilities and advancement of our understanding. Remaining within the confines of existing knowledge stifles innovation and originality of thought. How can one think outside the box if one never travels outside of it? How can one see beyond the limitations of the ivory tower without venturing outside?

Regarding empiricism and understanding, there have been many occasions on which we have mistakenly accepted absence of evidence as evidence of absence, which led to the erroneous dismissal of the existence of lymph nodes in the brain, the function of the appendix as a safehouse for microbial commensals, and the possibility of neurogenesis over the entire course of one’s life.

Let us keep ingenuity alive and continue to question and test our foundations so that we may arrive a few steps closer to the truth. Let us acknowledge the complexity of disease models; we just may arrive at a better understanding through integration of these models.

To those who dare challenge existing dogma, let us offer respect rather than ridicule, remembering that the greatest of ideas can come from the unlikeliest of places (take Michael Faraday who received no formal education and worked as an apprentice prior to becoming Sir Humphry Davy’s laboratory assistant). To quote yet another brilliant thinker,

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”

— Alan Turing

My wish for this upcoming decade is that we will embrace novel thinking more fully. For it is the avant-garde who advance science. I’m not saying we need to indiscriminately entertain every single idea that challenges convention, but we should pay more attention to novel ideas, especially when our old ways of thinking haven’t yielded effective results.

Let us make this year one of eccentric thinking and the decade ahead one of scientific revolutions. My friend and science fiction writer Trafton Crandall remarked that this coming decade will be known as either the Soaring or Sinking Twenties. Fingers crossed that it’ll be the former!

“The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.”

— Hedy Lamarr