The impertinence of pertinence

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions." - Mark Twain

Well and truly, this tile is a subject that takes after my heart, since it is a challenge to the intellect; and because, it leads to impertinent questions and pertinent answers. For instance, if impertinence is a lack of respect or rudeness, and pertinence is, to be relevant, to the point and logical; how can something said or done, be rude or lacking in respect whilst being to the point and logical? Had I been Sherlock Holmes, that wonderful character endowed with logic and reason and as created by Arthur Conan Doyle; I would have said, "Elementary, my dear readers; elementary". By the way, as an aside, the fact is Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson" in any of the stories by Conan Doyle. However, that phrase has been popularized and used frequently in the movies and was even mistakenly cited in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations for 1937 and 1948.

Quotation

The actual quotation is as follows: "I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson," said Holmes. "When your round is a short one you walk, and when it is a long one you use a hansom. As I perceive that your boots, although used, are by no means dirty, I cannot doubt that you are, at present, busy enough to justify the hansom." "Excellent!" cried Watson.

"Elementary," is all that Holmes said in reply and no more: taken from, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893), quoted from the conversation between Watson and Holmes in "The Crooked Man" (Doubleday p. 412). Thus, Holmes, to be precise, only said "Elementary" and not the rest. But of course, movies being magic, they create dreams and drama to the viewer; and so "my dear Watson" was added into the dialogue to make it sound more magical and eloquent: even if, it reflects an impertinence of pertinence to the author Arthur Conan Doyle.

The book Ascent of Man is a modern day classic: a history of the humankind by Dr. Jacob Bronowski. It was later, made into an excellent documentary television series by the BBC and Time-Life Films in 1973. The author himself wrote and presented the documentary television serial. This book, considered as one of the first works of popular science, throws light on the historical and social context of scientific development.

Invention

In his highly accessible style, Dr. Bronowski discusses human invention from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to genetics, and from alchemy to the theory of relativity, showing how they all are expressions of our ability to understand and control nature. The Ascent of Man inspires, influences, and informs as profoundly as ever. In it, the author says that John Dalton, FRS and an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist who, best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory and his research into colour blindness; was a man of regular habits. For 57 years of his 78 year life span, he - John Dalton, 1766 to 1844 - walked out of his home in Manchester where he lived, every day; and he measured the rainfall, the temperature - a singularly monotonous enterprise in that climate.

Of, all that mass of data he collected, nothing whatever came; but of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules; and out of that singularly simple question came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer - another example of the impertinence of pertinence.

And, yet again; to explain the impertinence of pertinence, let me resort to some monkey business since monkey business seems to be the regular diet of Sri Lankans these days. Nevertheless, this monkey business, though not the business of the monkeys and hence does not arise in our parliament, is better known as The Banana Experiment: A group of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on top of the ladder.

Ladder

Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with ice-cold water. This they did many times and each time a monkey climbed the ladder. After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the other monkeys beat up the one trying to climb the ladder. After some time, no monkey dared go up the ladder regardless of the temptation and positive pleasure the bananas offered.

I wish we could do this with some of our political pleasure seekers. However, the scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys in the cage with a new monkey. The first thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder and immediately, the other monkeys pounced on him and beat him up.

After several beatings, the new member learnt not to climb the ladder even though he never knew why. Then the scientist substituted a second new monkey from the first group of four monkeys and the same thing happened. The first newly introduced monkey also participated in the beating up of the second new member though he did not know the reason why he did so. By now, there were two new members, who dared not go up the ladder, even though they knew not why. Only three monkeys were left who knew the reason not to climb the ladder: the reason being they will get soaked with cold water if any monkey went up the ladder. Then a third exchange effected, and the same thing happened. This was, repeated with the fourth exchange from the original set; and yet, the beatings continued. Finally, the fifth and the last of the older group was removed, and a new monkey inducted. What remained was, a group of five new monkeys that even though never received a cold shower, continued to beat up any monkey that attempted to climb the ladder. Had it been possible to pose a question to the monkeys and ask why they beat up any monkey that attempted to climb the ladder, I bet their answer would be, "I don't know; that's how things are done over here."

Sound very much like the average illogical human, does it not?

Tricks

The above is another aspect of the impertinence of pertinence: rude actions devoid of reason, combined with appropriate behaviour - appropriate in that it keeps to community trends and established traits. Thus, having evolved from monkeys, and possessing many of the monkey tricks; humans are no better.

The proof is in the parliament of ours, which is more of a monkey circus than an esteemed legislative chamber. Although the point the story is trying to make: that we can be conditioned based on the consequences of actions, which affect both our likelihood to do it and our reaction to others trying to do the same, is a valid one; the fact is, this experiment never happened the way it is told. I can understand your confusion. After all: it was presented as fact in a, since-redacted, Psychology Today article by Michael Michalko in 2011 and by Eddie Oblong in a speech in 2013.

I recently saw a friend of mine post the story on Facebook. The truth is, it was G.R Stephanson, in 1967 who conducted an experiment with chimps to show that conditioned monkeys would show "threat facial expressions while in a fear posture". This groundbreaking experiment is supposedly the proof that our rabid defense of power structures and tradition are in reality, evolutionarily grounded.

Thus, only by being aware of how plastic our habits and perceptions are, can we hope to change them and not by spreading misinformation, as it would seem is the current occupation of politicians sent into retirement. Their patently paranoid ravings serve only to devalue the small amounts of sense and pertinence with which they were associated.

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