Deus Ex Machina — But With Science

One of the most frustrating intellectual phenomena I have come across is something I have come to call Scientific Deus Ex Machina. For those unfamiliar with the term, the literal translation of Deus Ex Machina is “god from the machine”. The phrase, which comes from the theater, is a “get out of jail free card” of sorts for the writer. When a difficult plot point cannot be resolved in a manner that makes sense, the writer simply brings a new character into the scene where they suddenly resolve it. The more non-sensical, the better. An angel may suddenly appear from heaven, for instance, forgiving all the sins of the characters, everyone makes up, and the play ends.

So, what does the theater have to do with science? Well, science and medicine today have become so complicated that without years of specialized training it is impossible for anyone to understand new discoveries. With this lack of understanding comes both distrust for science, and an impossible expectation for what science can do. Rather than being seen as a manifestation of years or even decades of hard work, discoveries are thought to spontaneously manifest from the minds of the singularly brilliant. Scientific discovery has been elevated to the realm of miracles, and miracles are prayed for rather than worked towards. In many ways, this change in perspective is not surprising. Over the past century, science has quite literally changed the entire fabric of society. The best way to think about this is the “Rip Van Winkle” thought experiment. If a very tired “Rip van Winkle” fell asleep in the year 500 AD in Europe, the Middle East, or eastern Asia and didn’t wake up for 1000 years, what would they see when they awoke? Their world would be different, but probably not fundamentally so. Most people would be farmers, working their land by hand or with a few horses or oxen. The primary method of transportation would be walking, but the rich may have some horses. Sea travel was accomplished predominantly in small sailing ships, improved but similar to what they were 1000 years before. Any improvements in the way people live their lives would be small and incremental.

Say “Rip” fell asleep for another 300 years and awoke in 1800 AD. What is different now? Well, agriculture has improved slightly, and cities are larger, but life if still similar. People get around by walking or with horses. Ships are small and powered by sail, although oceanic trade means new goods are available to the very rich. Warfare now means guns, but they are still fairly inaccurate and tactics and mortality levels from war haven’t changed much. “Rip” would probably still have a good understanding of the world before he falls asleep again…

…and awakes in the year 1900 AD. What does “Rip” see now? The world has changed dramatically thanks to the amazing internal combustion engine. Trains now crisscross Europe and North America. A journey that used to take months on foot now take days. Shipping journeys that previously required months take only weeks, and the steam engine has allowed ships to increase exponentially in size. Electricity has been harnessed, and the telegraph can send messages across continents. Literacy has improved to the point where newspapers not only exist, but in some countries dominate politics. Goods can be shipped, refrigerated, across hundreds of miles. The Wright Brothers just flew a plane for the first time. “Rip” is having trouble recognizing the world around him.

In a stupor, “Rip” faints and awakes 50 years later. Cars are everywhere. People can now fly, and journeys of 5000 miles take days. Electricity is not a novelty but an expectation in many modern homes. Forget newspapers, the radio now delivers news and entertainment to homes around the world. People no longer even use cars to travel, they use planes. Two atomic bombs have been dropped, and rockets can carry explosive death thousands of miles away. Penicillin is everywhere, and for the first time in history a small cut on the hand doesn’t come with a risk of death. Agriculture, which had been the predominant job for thousands of years, is now practiced by a minority of people in the developed world, and the most productive fields are tilled with machine power. Another 50 years goes by and the computer has been invented and is now exists in homes throughout the world. Space travel is now so routine it doesn’t even make the news. Televisions are everywhere. Air conditioning is everywhere allowing populations of people to live and work in places never before tolerable. “Rip” would be so confused by the world around him he would probably require psychiatric help . And that was 20 years ago.

Scientific breakthroughs have resulted in greater changes in the past century than would previously be experienced over the course of a millennium. For the first time in the history of the world, people do not worry about dying from small cuts on the hand. We can now produce so much food that we throw most of it out — obesity is a bigger global concern than hunger. We have seen science create miracles, and so we expect it to fix all our problems:

· Climate change: Why should we go through the hard work and inconvenience of having to build new energy infrastructure — can’t scientists just create new carbon capture technology to pull CO2 out of the air so we can keep producing more?

· Plastic pollution: Why should we work to reduce our dependency of bottle water and bottled sugary drinks — can’t scientists just discover a new way to remove plastic from the ocean, or maybe a bacteria that will just eat the plastic?

· Overfishing: Why worry about instituting scientific fisheries requirements — can’t scientists just grow fish in aquaculture facilities so we have plenty of fish to eat and to catch recreationally?

· Novel coronavirus: Why should we change our behavior based on public health recommendations — can’t scientists just create a vaccine in a record amount of time for a virus where there was never a successful vaccine before?

All of these problems have a solution that do not require major scientific breakthroughs. Tackling climate change requires no new technology. We did just fine long before we were producing 300 million tons of plastic per year, throwing out half of it. Humans have consumed fish for millennia, but it is only in the last couple hundred years that we have fished species to the point of extinction. Many countries we would consider poor and second world have been able to reduce coronavirus transmissions to manageable levels, some even completely eliminating the virus from their borders. Unfortunately, these solutions require sacrifice. The rich may have to sacrifice their wealth. The rest of us may require sacrificing the convenience of our daily lives. We may have to consume less. Many jobs will no longer exist, and the people doing them will have to be retrained for new ones. We will have to cancel travel plans and change how we socialize. People would rather just wait for a scientific deus ex machina. But what if science can’t fix all of them? Or what if it already has, and we are too stubborn to accept the solution?