Keith Douglas
Last time, I postponed the discussion of December 2020’s problem. This time, the answer is in the trivia from the January issue. Here are the questions again, with answers and remarks.
1) What was Deng Xiaoping’s mother’s given name?
She did not have one. Not all Chinese girls were given names at the time. This question provokes reflection on cultural assumptions when asking questions.
2) What is the value of 1 divided by 0?
There isn’t one (in standard arithmetic or number theory, anyway). Be careful of questions that presuppose something. In mathematics, in this case, one has to show what mathematicians call ‘existence’ before one analyzes something’s properties. (That said, one needs some properties guessed before one investigates!)
3) When did William Shatner last order haggis and an emerald tiara by mail order from Zimbabwe?
I suspect that this question is where many of you suspected I was pulling something with these questions. Like the previous, it presupposes in a different way. This time, it is suggested, via “conversational implicature,” that Mr. Shatner orders Scottish food and jewelry from Africa, when it is very unlikely that he does.
4) Who was the first hockey goaltender to score a goal?
Some hockey fans may have answered this with Ron Hextall. They are not quite correct, but I leave it to the reader to find out more. Why? I did not ask which NHL goalie performed this unusual feat. As a child, I read a book from the local children’s library that had all sorts of strange hockey stories. I read a piece called “The Goalie That Scored A Goal” before Hextall’s NHL feat.
5) When did Vancouver last win the Stanley Cup?
This has the same trick as #4. It also has another twist: Why do we attribute to a city the winning of a sports championship? It seems to create a problem for cities that have had more than one team win the relevant title. Mathematicians know this as “uniqueness” problems. In order to characterize something precisely, one not only has to show “existence” but also uniqueness. In this case, Montreal, New York, and Toronto have all had (at least) two teams win.
6) How old was Alan Turing when his eldest daughter was born?
The inventor of computability theory and many other accomplishments had no children. This question thus cannot be answered with anything other than a baffled look or a reminder of this fact.
7) After it was hospitalized, how long did the longest lived komodo dragon live with COVID-19?
No komodo dragon has had COVID-19; consequently none has been hospitalized for it. However, there’s an even weirder part of this: The question can be read as suggesting that the longest lived (as in ever) komodo dragon is the hapless victim referred to.
8) Which U.S. state has the most western part of that country and the most eastern?
Another one of uniqueness, and also catches the “epistemic presupposition” that I was necessarily asking about two states. Due to where the International Date Line is, Alaska hosts both points; I am told that one can stand as far east as one can be and as far west as one can be by simply putting one’s feet apart.
9) If there are only five Platonic solids, how can one make a fair 10-sided die?
One cannot make a fair die (at least macroscopically) of any sort, given that manufacturing defects and the difference between a “math line” and a “physical line” is bound to show up. It is within this margin that I suspect that one can make a fair enough 10-sided die.
Which is not to say that seeing one for the first time (when one knows only about the five Platonic solids) is sometimes a baffling experience — as I have seen. (In my case, I learned about the solids after the dice, so it was not surprising.) This may well explain why early “10-sided” dice were actually 20 sided. The presupposition violated here is one of “semantic homogeneity” — I deliberately violated math vs. physics.
10) Where (what latitude and longitude) is the Sea of Tranquillity?
The sea in question is on the moon; it does not actually contain any water in any macroscopic form. However, it still has a latitude and longitude, relative to standards for the moon. So don’t plug them into your GPS and head off!
What Is the Purpose of Our Organs?
This month’s conundrum returns from trivia and presuppositions to another topic of interest, namely medicine and a related area of foundations of evolutionary biology.
When we cure a disease by (say) administering a course of antibiotics, we are working with the assumption that the organ being treated is malfunctioning and needs help to return to normal or at least to improve. Yet evolution, as we know, has no purposes. So what is the purpose, and hence function, of the organ the physician treats? Does this doom medicine to anthropocentrism? Even if “yes,” how ought one determine the “anthropocentric” function?
The purpose of an organ is to play the music of Bach.
Alternatively, the purpose, and hence function, of the organ the physician treats is to support the metabolism of the host body, regardless of whether or not that body has a purpose.
I agree with Richard, that one might say that the function of an organ is to support the organism of which it is part. This of course prompts the question about what is the function of the organism. Absent teleological explanations: Based on observations, it would appear that organisms seem to be optimized to spread their DNA, as described by the principles of evolution (Happy Darwin Day).
In his recent book, The Strange Order of Things, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio proposes that the goal of having the best implementation of “homeostasis” is the driving force behind evolution, all the way from the first basic cell through to multicellular organisms like us. On that basis, he claims to be able to explain all evolutionary developments, starting with aggregating cells in clumps, through cells and cell groups developing specializations, then to chemotaxis, sensation, and even consciousness.
(As for the organ playing the music of Bach, perhaps interesting to note that in the book From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett talks about how there are two different things we mean when we talk about purpose aka “why”: We might mean “what for”, or “how come”. But that is straying rather far from the initial question.)