It’s common to think of the idea that babies are caused by sex as sort of the ultimate Obvious Idea. When someone wants to make fun of another’s naivety or ignorance they will sometimes quip “he/she thinks babies come from storks”. This concept even gets the grandiose title facts of life. A very funny example is Sexpelled (a parody of the Intelligent Design propaganda film Expelled — “Proponents of Stork Theory claim that ‘Big Sex’ has been suppressing their claim that babies are delivered by storks.”)
What you might not realise is there are many tribal cultures that have historically not seen the connection (see this searching for Homer) — there are some that disbelieve this today. And of course it makes perfect sense. If you live in a society where women are pregnant or breastfeeding at all times, you will have no evidence that will privilege sex over the other things done by people on a regular basis (sleep, eating etc) as the cause of pregnancy.
People often think worldviews progress because of the intrinsic genius of Heroes. Cultures/people/theories that have the wrong view are seen as stupid. (The easiest argument against such nonsense: surely the brains of these tribe members aren’t much different from ours biologically?!) Yes being clever contributes. But the prerequisite is having the evidence available. And this could just be a matter of luck. If you think these people were/are stupid, think again. In another world the stork misapprehension could have lasted well into the scientific era. Unlikely perhaps, but what if there were similar “obvious” connections that failed to be made? There are:
- That blood moves (as opposed to staying still) and is pumped by the heart was only discovered in 1616 and was controvercial for ages.
- The brain was thought by Aristotle as an organ for cooling, thousands of years into modern (non-hunter-gatherer) history.
- Until last century everyone thought space and time were absolute.
I threw the last one in facetiously but there’s no reason for any of these 3 to be less obvious than the “facts of life”. We are extremely lucky, we live in a world that contains enough evidence for us to actually discover some truths. In just a few billion years the universe will have expanded so much, there’ll be no evidence of other galaxies left in the night sky (ignoring the sun’s upcoming explosion). Let’s count our lucky stars & make the most of them.
0 Comments