| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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| feature Counterpoints in Science Why kansas is flat THE CREATOR OF THIS UNIVERSE set things in motion twelve billion years ago with a spectacular fireworks display that is still going on, as anyone can verify by looking up at the night sky, with or without a telescope. The Creator expected this show, which started with such a big bang, to have a long run. Contrary to the claims of unauthorized spokespersons, he did not plan every detail of the future performance. He started with a few simple ingredients and added a dash of chaos theory to ensure some surprises. Every eon or two he would check to see how the expanding whirligig was shaping up. He was beginning to get bored with the repetitious dioramas of galaxy formation, red, white, and blue stars, pulsars, and supernovae. Then, a few billion years ago, he was both surprised and delighted to see that there was something new under the Sun, in the otherwise unremarkable suburbs of the Milky Way. On planet Earth, a dime-a-dozen dirtball with an iron core, tiny carbon-based molecules were reproducing themselves in an ingenious way. He watched as this process went on for some three billion years, but it seemed to be going nowhere-just untold trillions of micron-size spherules filling the seas and occasionally throwing up layered piles of themselves called stromatolites. About a billion years ago, just as the Creator was losing interest in this sideshow, the pace picked up. Cells learned to stick together and a fantastic variety of new life forms evolved, taking over the land and the air as well as the water. The dinosaurs were so much fun that he had some regrets when a wayward asteroid blasted them into oblivion. He could have prevented it, of course, but he had resolved at the beginning of this experiment to let nature take its course. After that, other matters drew his attention for a few epochs, and he didn't cast his regard on Earth again until about 20,000 years ago. The Life Caper was continuing to evolve. Some big-brained bipedal apes seemed to be moving up to the dominant status the dinosaurs had enjoyed before the asteroid. These hairless apes all looked very much alike, with none of the variety and pizzazz that the dinos had displayed. Glancing at North America, the Creator was chagrined to notice a rectangular area near the middle of the continent that was still without form, just the way everything had been before he set off the Big Bang. Being a perfectionist, he decided the glitch would have to be fixed, but he was too busy at the moment to take on a patch job. Instead, he turned the project over to one of his minor apprentices, the Wizard of Oz. Wiz had proved to be a bit of a bumbler in his earlier efforts. Once, he accidentally dropped a white dwarf into a black hole, producing a gamma ray burst that wiped out an entire galaxy. However, the Creator figured it didn't take a supernova-designer to paper over this tiny void. He gave the Wiz detailed instructions and hoped he would do it right for a change. The end product, which the Wiz called Kansas, was too flat for the Creator's taste, but he recalled that in Apprentice School the Wiz had had to repeat both plains geometry and plate tectonics. The one thing the Wiz actually was a whiz at was the game of tornadoes, and of course Kansas was a perfect board for that game. Not long ago in Universal Time, one of the Wiz's games went awry when an out-of-control twister picked up a human female named Dorothy and brought her and her dog, Toto, back to the Wiz's modest celestial estate. Dorothy's adventures in Oz, with the Wiz, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, the Cowardly Lion, and various witches have attained mythical, even cinematic, status. Everybody in Oz except the wicked witches loved Dorothy, but she got homesick for Kansas, so the Wiz sent her back the way she came, Tornado Special Delivery. He didn't hear from Dorothy again until about a year ago, when another of his tornadoes got a bit out of hand, tearing up a few houses and a lot of trees. On the return trip, Tornado Express, he got a letter somewhat buffeted in appearance, in Dorothy's unmistakable handwriting and her favorite violet ink. She wrote:
The Wiz was furious, too. In his role as Apprentice Creator, Kansas was his biggest, indeed his only, success. And now they were trying to take it away from him. Could he do something about it? Darn tootin' he could! He called in his friend and counselor, Scarecrow, and read what Dorothy had written. "I have a special assignment for you, pal," he told him. "Be ready to take a spin over to Kansas tomorrow morning." He knew that Scarecrow would never be detected as an alien among the thousands just like him in Kansas fields. Scarecrow walked up to the big farmhouse and knocked on the front door. Dorothy was happy to see her old friend again. She was quite a bit older, but her trip to Oz had slowed the aging process, and she was still full of spit and vinegar. After reminiscing about their travels along the Yellow Brick Road, they agreed to get right to work countering the pernicious propaganda being taught in Kansas schools. From headquarters in the top of an abandoned silo, they could look out over the cornfields and the water towers. They powwowed with Dorothy's grandson Frank, who was completely sympathetic with their cause. He enlisted his church group, one of whose members providentially sat on the State Board of Education. It was duck soup to swing the majority of the Board to their side. Scarecrow was given a hearing and treated with great respect, because scarecrows in Kansas have a long history of combating the dark forces that try to destroy the crops. The Chief Counselor of Oz was eloquent in defense of his Wizard's accomplishment. "How do these Cosmologists and Evolutionists know what happened billions and millions of years ago? Were they there? How can you know what happened if you weren't there? The Wizard of Oz made Kansas, under direct instructions from the Creator," Scarecrow said. "All this hot air about the Big Bang and the evolution of humans from apes may have some validity for the rest of the world, but it sure as shootin' doesn't hold water in Kansas." Scarecrow sat down to a standing ovation, and the State Board immediately passed a resolution removing Cosmology and Evolution from the Kansas curriculum. The next day, Dorothy and Scarecrow sat in their silo conning tower, looking out over the beautiful prairies, at the sinuous rivers and golden waves of wheat stretching to the horizon. Kansas felt safe again-except for the occasional tornadoes-but those were merely proof of the Wiz's continuing affection for his own little piece of creation. They toasted their victory with glasses of buttermilk punch, Dorothy's special recipe. Scarecrow was due to leave on the next dust devil. "You did a magnificent job for my great-grandchildren," she said. "Now they can learn the truth about Kansas. Give my love to the Wiz." "Yes," said Scarecrow with a somewhat rueful smile. "Everything is just about perfect now. Or it would be, if I only had a brain." Jerold M. Lowenstein is professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and chairman of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. jlowen@itsa.ucsf.edu |
Spring 2000
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