My Philosophy
For some odd reason, Pat and I were having a conversation in our living room about my skepticism of the accuracy of the global warming models and the accuracy of the models that forecast various disasters. Because of my experience in modeling complex systems, and what limited knowledge I have of weather modeling, I am absolutely convinced that nobody really knows enough about modeling such systems to construct a model that can make accurate forecasts of weather next week, much less 10 or 20 years from now. To expect models driven predominantly by carbon to made accurate forecasts of future sea levels seems patently ridiculous. There are so many factors that affect weather that focusing on a model driven primarily by CO2 is unlikely to be successful as a predictive model. It is almost bound to fail -- and it (they) have.
This does not mean that I am a global warming atheist, but I am an agnostic. I don’t like the idea that carbon dioxide is building in our atmosphere and it is cause for concern. But I don’t trust the motives of many folks who call themselves “environmentalists” who also share anticapitalist motivations and now wish to shut off debate on the global warming paradigm. I believe that closing debate on any idea can be dangerous. It’s the kind of stuff that all oppressive institutions have tried to foist on an ignorant public since man first began to communicate. “Don’t question the propaganda we have fed you since your birth, or you will go to hell”. All ideas should be open to scientific question and that closing debate on any idea is a dangerous thing. However, I would impose one major exception: An idea being tested must be in the form of a testable hypothesis. Ideas based on faith for which there is no hard supporting evidence should be viewed with intense skepticism. Faith-based notions such as “intelligent design” can be debated but must be supported by some hard evidence to have any scientific credibility. The arguments of those who favor the “intelligent design” theory support their theory predominantly with what they see as holes and inconsistencies in evolutionary theory but with no hard evidence supporting their own theory. When the proponents of “intelligent design” start providing hard, testable data to support their theories’ then science in our modern society can begin to take them seriously. Same for global warming or climate change.
But I digress! The chat Pat and I were having led to was a review of the evolution of my own philosophical beliefs. I talked to Pat for a couple of hours. She remained attentive and asked good questions that kept me going. I did not observe that far away facial expression that she sometimes shows when she feels that I am engaged in some esoteric lecture that she finds boring or repugnant – so I continued.
(For now, I would like to pass on the childhood influence of my philosophy beliefs – not because they were unimportant but because I wish to first focus on the influence of my professional life on my philosophy of life.)
After my 3-year term was over with the Marine Corps, I returned to Edinburg very unsure of my future. A conversation with my father convinced me that farming was a much too risky business and that maybe I should go back to College to see if I could find some other profession that would interest me. I will never know for certain that my father’s advice was the best, but it seemed to work out OK for me. He even offered to help with some financial support. If I could find a buyer for a soil-leveling machine that he was not using, I could keep the money from the sale. I found a buyer who owned the Brown Derby Restaurant in Edinburg. He took the machine with a promise to pay. After several trips to the Brown Derby to remind him of his debt to me, he finally paid up. With this nest egg of about $200.00, support from the GI Bill and income from driving a school bus, selling adds for the Pan American College Bronco Annual, and a job with the Soil Conservation Service -- and later with the Department of Agriculture where I measured cotton allotments, I was able to support my education and graduated from Pan American College with a degree in general agriculture. By now, I had a wife and a young son and no real, full-time job. I decided to get a graduate degree in Entomology at Texas A&M University. When I told an older colleague at the Soil Conservation Service of my plans, he assured me that I was not really smart enough to be accepted into a reputable institution such as A&M. The departing words from my SCS boss was “please don’t ask for letters of recommendation.” I think he was half kidding, but just in case, I never used him for recommendations.
Anyway, I applied for admission into A&M and was pleasantly surprised to be accepted. My grades at Pan American had not been exceptional – maybe a B+ average with a C or two. But that was an improvement from my high school grades that were in the C+ range. Throughout my educational years, I had learned to sit in the back of the classroom where I could be as inconspicuous as possible so the teacher would not ask me questions. Since I could not hear well, I often could not hear a teacher’s question to me which resulted in many embarrassing situations. It did not help that my study habits were practically non-existent. My school years might be characterized by a lack of enthusiasm for learning and a very poor self-image. My main source of joy was playing with family and friends and hunting with my dogs.
But, once I entered Pan American College, I realized that education was a serious business, so I learned to grab the seat immediately in front of the teacher’s desk so that I could really hear the lectures and questions. My grades improved. But, there was no reason to believe that I was suddenly some kind of intellectual giant. I knew that anything I accomplished in life would be due to the amount of effort I invested. And, I began to overcome a fundamental shyness and developed a degree of confidence in my own intelligence and abilities. It also led me to believe that many folks are poor or ignorant because of their own bad choices in life. I began to see governmental welfare primarily as a reward for laziness and that productive folk should not be expected to support those who choose not to take care of themselves. I knew that a few folks are poor through no fault of their own and deserved some assistance to get them back on their feet, but I had no confidence in the ability of bureaucrats to distinguish the truly needy from the slackers. Therefore, I was and remain very suspicious of the costs and benefits of governmental welfare. I see most welfare programs as a vote buying exercise by politicians. However, I recognize the welfare is sometimes a good investment in giving someone a helping hand to overcome hard times. However, it is my belief that if governmental welfare were eliminated, private sources would do a much better job of helping the needy. My motto is: markets work; governments don’t.
Graduate School
Pat, Jimmy and I had been living in Pat’s grandparents home in Edinburg. It was left vacant after they died. Her aunt Hazel Lister inherited the property and we paid her rent – something outrageous like $50 a month or something. We loaded all our belongings into a trailer, made from a pickup truck bed, and pulled it to College Station, Texas to begin graduate studies. This was a very big adventure for us. Pat was unsure that we were doing the right thing and Pat’s mom Lela was distraught that we were leaving.
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| Jim Sterling and Lela Turner |
When I arrived at A&M, I asked around about job prospects. Somebody told me that Perry Adkisson was flush with money from research grants, so I cornered him and asked if he had any kind of job to help me out. He asked a few questions about my background and before the conversation was over, offered me a job taking care of cotton growing in a greenhouse for research purposes. We moved into some old army barracks that served as apartments for graduate students at A&M. They were not air-conditioned and in September, College Station can be very hot. But, having never lived in a home with air-conditioning, we did not know the difference.
Before I could start taking graduate-level courses in Entomology, I was required to take several undergraduate makeup courses. A two-semester course in Insect Taxonomy was generally considered by most undergraduate entomology students to be the most difficult. The laboratory was set up as a sort of contest. The grade was mostly dependent on a student insect collection with the number of species and their correct identifications determining the grade. I had been warned about this course when still in Edinburg, so I had started collecting, pinning, labeling and identifying my specimens a year or so before coming to A&M. When I arrived at A&M, I cultivated a friendship with another graduate student who had taken this course and loved to collect and identify insects. He knew many of the special places to find specific insect species and was so good that he set a new departmental record for the most species ever counted for this course. With his help, I beat his record and set a new one. With an insect collecting net in one hand and a killing jar in the other, I greatly enjoyed this part of the exercise. It seemed much like a continuation of the animal hunting that I did and enjoyed as a young man. But the pinning, drying, and labeling were very tedious.
Ayn Rand’s Influence
I Don’t remember exactly how I found out about Ayn Rand and her books. But, once I read “Atlas Shrugged” I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough. I read most of her books and agreed with her central thesis that the socialist message sounds good, but ultimately leads to disaster. As I aged, I reflected back on her books and began to think that maybe she is overly assertive and absolutistic. As I watched the nightly news on TV, I could clearly see their bias toward the collectivist ideology. Here we were in the most capitalistic nation the world has ever know. We are the wealthiest, most free, happiest, morally best, civilization that ever existed and most of what we heard on TV was anti-capitalistic propaganda. It was depressing! Socialism seems to occupy the moral high ground. Many Americans practiced capitalism but preached collectivism. But then, we began to see the Communist world crumble, the Berlin walls come down and we could see that countries who adopted free markets prospered – not for just the rich, but for all economic classes. Globalism was beginning to win what Carl Marx had called the commanding heights of the world economy. The economic health of the world was improved and continues to improve. The economies of old socialistic nations like China and India showed dramatic improvements whereas socialist nations such as Cuba and North Korea had stagnant economies, hunger, and even some starvation. Defenders of Communist Cuba report a very high literacy rate and more medical doctors per capita than many Capitalist nations. But what they fail to note is that citizens of Cuba can read, but about all they are allowed to read are books approved by Fidel Castro and that the doctors in Cuba often work in hospitals with no running water or sewage disposal. Only a few years ago, the average daily wage of a Cuban worker was about $5.00. So much for the idea that collectivism helps the poor. Fidel Castro and communism were an absolute disaster for Cuba.
Liberals will claim that even though Cuban Communism has a few defects, at least almost all Cubans can read. So, the tacit premise is that the virtues of being able to read exceeds the benefits of a healthy diet.
Liberals will claim that even though Cuban Communism has a few defects, at least almost all Cubans can read. So, the tacit premise is that the virtues of being able to read exceeds the benefits of a healthy diet.
Promotions
When I came before the promotion committee at Texas A&M, there were a couple of members who exhibited some reluctance to promote me to Full Professor. Your publication record is OK they said but too few of your publications are in refereed scientific journals.
Later, one of the committee members informed me that at the time he was giving me a hard time about my publication record, he was upset because when he went before the Department Head to ask for a raise, the head claimed that the funds were not available because he had spent the last of them to give me a deserved salary increase.
Teaching
When I was offered a position at A&M, it was to take over Perry Adkisson’s research position with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station as Assistant Professor. Perry was taking over the position as Head of the Department of Entomology so he knew that he would no longer have time to conduct research or supervise graduate students. I had visited Cornell University and Purdue University and had been offered positions from both of them. But Perry offered me not only a job but a large, beautiful laboratory with offices that he had built for himself. Also included in the deal was a fairly large grant by Cotton Incorporated to get me started. Perry also stated that the position I was taking was the same one that the two previous Department Heads had used to launch their career into a highly-paid administration position as Department Head. It was no real contest. At either Cornell or Purdue I would be starting at about the same salary, but their facilities were very old and I would have to fight for space and win some research grants to begin a research and teaching program. At A&M I could “hit the ground running.” I knew many of the administrators, faculty, some key cotton farmers and my expertise was in the hot new field of applied insect ecology. I felt very honored to be offered this position and was very excited to get started. But, there was one major drawback. Most of the faculty in the Department of Entomology had been recruited from Universities other than A&M. The came from Cornell, UC Davis, UC Riverside, Illinois, Purdue, etc. and made it clear that hiring one’s own graduates caused inbreeding of ideas. But, in general, I was well accepted by faculty and students.
In this capacity, I was also a member of the faculty of the Department of Entomology.
New faculty evaluation committee sets new standards.
Committee Meetings
Oh God, I have a faculty meeting!
Research
The one thing for which I developed great respect was the scientific method. There is no better way to search for the truth. Whenever I hear someone claim something like “the truth is . . . . My immediate response is one of skepticism. The reason is that scientists tend not to use such language. The will say something like: “the evidence suggests the following conclusion”. Or, “an analysis of our data give us a 90% confidence in the following conclusion.” Scientists think in terms of probability, not in absolutes. Absolutes are for politicians, preachers, and assorted con-men.
Pest Management
This is where I got to learn from master con-men. I really don’t know all the history in the evolution of this concept, but I remember some of the pertinent details.
Science Whore
I began to feel like a science whore for the University. It was my job to sell my integrity for research dollars. To say that the University is not interested in good science would not be correct. Universities make their reputation on the objective, dispassionate, search for the truth. However, if a huge pile of research funds are available that helps promote some ideology, a huge pile of research proposals will suddenly appear to contest for these funds and the scientific excuses and justifications for the need for these funds will soon follow. And, scientists will begin to defend to the death the truth of the new ideological perspective.
When I was first hired at A&M, the consensus was that taking money from chemical corporations was unethical. That if you took this money, your conclusions would be biased in favor of the generous corporation's product. Thusly, science is often sold to the highest bidder. I never really considered that taking government money could have the same effect. It took many years for me to realize that government grants do the same thing.
Retirement
At the age of 55 I could retire. Respect for A&M University on the decline, new department head, new administrators, I felt the call of the world. At the time, life expectancy was about 75 years for the average man in the USA. Thus, I figured that I had at least 20 years of life remaining to explore the world and climb a few mountains.
For many years, my dreams were filled with old arguments and recriminations about colleagues who had attacked me with or without justification.
One of my chief protagonists was a fellow by the name of Knox Walker. We worked together for a number of years, and he would come camp in my office to chat about whatever. One day I asked him to leave so that I could finish some important work. This apparently hurt his feeling and he stopped speaking to me. Oh, well.
Summary:
Folks who accept the various theories of life as absolute truth, seem to me to be the primary cause of wars. Maybe we can't survive as a species without some government, but if our civilization dies, it will most likely be due to some tyrant with global ambitions and nuclear bombs -- at least until our world and it's inhabitants die in some planetary disaster.
