The Blindness of Science

Left: Sir John Kendrew assembles a molecular model of myoglobin. Right: A computer-rendered 3-D model of myoglobin. Kendrew photo courtesy of MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Used under a CC BY 2.5 license. Myoglobin image by Aza Toth. Public domain image.

What we do not see determines what we know at least as much as what we do see. Science is no exception to this rule. It is as subject to the vagaries of social, political and other contingent forces as any other subject.

One of the classic examples of how expectations shape outcomes is the “invisible gorilla” experiment, in which subjects are asked to count basketball passes between two players. During the passes, a person in a gorilla suit walks onscreen, looks at the camera, and pounds her chest before exiting the scene.[i] Only about half the people who watch the video see the gorilla. The demonstration gave rise to the term “inattentional blindness” – that is, people see what they expect to see, often at the cost of noticing more compelling information.[ii]

The study of science’s history and institutions is replete with examples of a given viewpoint resulting in a particular set of practices or interpretations. Both material and social factors play a role in shaping these viewpoints.

Materiality has a profound effect on science. Christoph Meinel points out that three-dimensional stick-and-ball models, which were ubiquitous in molecular research before the advent of sophisticated computer programs, were a translation of the chemist's vision as a “builder of a new world out of man-made materials.” Eventually, the models took on a greater sense of the “reality” of molecular structure for these researchers than the actual chemicals.[iii]

The predominance of physical molecular models had a major impact on the graphics programs that replaced them. X-ray crystallographers demanded the ability to manipulate the structures they were working with in real time, and computer developers took pains to build this sense of physical manipulation into their programs. Now, as then, crystallographers incorporate a strong sense of embodied ownership into the work they do on molecular structures. No one, they feel, can know their molecules the way they do. The tacit knowledge they gain from their projects is something to which other scientists, who eventually come to work with these same molecules, are blind.[iv]

Blindness finds its way into the scientific process through social structures in many forms. Any student working in a lab toward a Ph.D. soon discovers that, throughout her undergraduate years, she has been presented with experiments that reinforce the notion that science is straightforward work with a high success rate. These impressions are dashed when she begins doing independent work and finds out that the majority of day-to-day science fails.[v]

Science historian Robert E. Kohler argues that the cultural spaces of science laboratories themselves actively shape what goes on inside them, and can be broken down broadly into distinct early modern, modern, and postmodern styles that broadly reflect the elite social sensibilities of the times in which they are built and used.[vi]

Language and the social milieu very much inform the impressions people have about seemingly scientific phenomena. Definitions have practical implications. The term “child abuse,” for instance, was not invented until the early 1960s. It eventually won out over the term “battered child syndrome.” The latter term did not include actions commonly recognized as abuse today, such as sexual touching or neglect. The meaning of “child abuse” has therefore been able to expand to encompass many more types of activity than previously used terms, and has shifted significantly since its inception the moral, judicial, and medical reactions used to deal with it.[vii]

Material and social characteristics often shape the practice of science simultaneously. As in the transition from moveable molecular models to manipulable computer graphics programs, social judgments about how a procedure “should feel” can introduce path dependency into new technologies.

Early music synthesizer technology demonstrated this phenomenon particularly well. Two rival inventors, Robert Moog and Don Buchla, created machines to reproduce musical sound. Buchla did not standardize his synthesizers, seeing them as a means for an exploration of the avant-garde. Moog made his inventions easy-to-use, and even built them so they could play using the familiar piano keyboard. Moog's more recognizable device succeeded, whereas Buchla's faded.[viii] Moog's success had nothing to do with technical superiority; he simply paid more attention to what other people wanted and allowed those social forces to modify his instrument.

Even historical judgments about the practice of science change depending on which aspects one pays attention to. The “distortionist” camp of science historians, for instance, tends to portray the militarized science of the Cold War period as fundamentally perverting the scientific process. Yet this was not the case for seismology, as science policy expert Kai-Henrik Barth points out. While military programs invested heavily in the field, the research agenda for seismology remained largely unchanged before, during and after this influx. As Barth notes, the distortionist view assumes a normative position based on unknowable speculation about how science would have progressed without military patronage.[ix]

With the myriad opportunities for science to be blinded, should we therefore lament that we cannot be absolutely sure of anything we know? No. The foundation of science is provisional truth; its success rests on the constant reevaluation of seemingly resolved questions. This is where new vistas open, where discoveries challenge former dogmas. In those moments, the gorilla suddenly becomes visible.

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[i]           Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us (New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2009), http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/, 8-23-13; http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html, 10-5-13;

[ii]

          Manohla Dargis, “What You See Is What You Get,” The New York Times (July 10, 2011), AR13, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/movies/why-difficult-movies-are-more-um-difficult.html?pagewanted=all, 10-5-13;

[iii]

         Anna Maerker, "Review: Why Do They Look Like That? Three-dimensional Models in Science," Social Studies of Science 37 (2007), 961-965, http://sss.sagepub.com/content/37/6/961.full.pdf+html, 10-23-13;

[iv]

         Natasha Myers, "Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography," Social Studies of Science 38 (2008), 163-199, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25474573, 10-23-13;

[v]

          Sara Delamont and Paul Atkinson, "Doctoring Uncertainty: Mastering Craft Knowledge," Social Studies of Science 31 (2001): 87-107, http://www.jstor.org/stable/285819, 10-24-13;

[vi]

           Robert E. Kohler, “”Lab History: Reflections,” Isis 99 (2008), 761-768, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/595769, 10-5-13;

[vii]

        Ian Hacking, “The Making and Molding of Child Abuse,” Critical Inquiry 17 (1991), 253-288, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1343837.pdf, 10-18-13;

[viii]

       Trevor Pinch, "Technology and Institutions: Living in a Material World," Theory and Society 37 (2008), 461-483, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40345597. 10-18-13;

[ix]

         Kai-Henrik Barth, “The Politics of Seismology: Nuclear Testing, Arms Control, and the Transformation of a Discipline,” Social Studies of Science, 33, 5 (Oct. 2003), 743-781, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183067, 10-11-13.           

Imagining Metaphysical-Epistemological Frameworks: Three Types of Responses to the Fossil Record

A fossil of Tiktaalik, one of the most famous examples of the transition between lobe-finned fish and four-legged animals, was found in the Canadian arctic in 2004. Photograph by Eduard Solà. Used unde the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The fossil evidence appears to support evolutionary theory. Different species appear in the record in exactly the order one would expect if descent with modification were true.

But what if that seemingly obvious evidence was, in fact, a clever ruse? This is one argument put forth by certain creationists, who believe the Earth was brought into being by a god who made life appear via some supernatural means alluded to in the Bible (or one of several other sacred religious texts). For these people, the fossil record evidence is merely another test of faith.

This proposal, often dismissed out of hand by scientists and rarely brought to its logical conclusion by those who espouse it, nevertheless is consistent with a particular metaphysically-derived epistemological argument that has been advocated by serious philosophers, including none other than Rene Descartes.

To understand the Cartesian metaphysical-epistemological framework, it is useful first to understand two other such frameworks from which different conclusions about the meaning of the fossil record can be drawn. Bertrand Russell and Galileo Galilei are illustrious representatives of these alternative camps.

Russell is a metaphysical naturalist (sometimes also called ontological naturalism). That is, he believes that both the means of discovering knowledge (epistemology) and the nature of the universe (metaphysics) are built on a material foundation. This is the de facto position of science, which does does not permit supernatural explanations.

Russell, in chapter V of his “Problems in Philosophy,” posits that all knowledge is derived from sensory-mediated perception of the physical world – what he calls “acquaintance.” This acquaintance accounts not only for all we can call truth; it is the very substrate on which all statements of any kind depend. We cannot even have language without this direct experience known as acquaintance: “Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted [Emphasis in original].”

Russell’s epistemology comes from a metaphysical position in which there is no room for faith, for faith is that in which one believes without being able to experience it. To him, the only reason a creationist could even propose the fossil record ruse is because of experience of the actual fossil record accompanied by past experiences of lies he had encountered. The notion of a god, far from being some transcendental true being, is merely a composite of experienced human attributes transferred to an imagined deity.

Galileo would likely agree with Russell that the fossil evidence supports evolution, for Galileo is a methodological naturalist. But their agreement would end where metaphysics begins. Although Galileo believes that the proper way of gaining knowledge about the world around us is by looking at material reality, he also maintains that the nature of the universe comprises more than the material; specifically, he believes the soul, the Catholic God, and other such Biblical notions are equally - if not in a superior sense - true.

Galileo draws this distinction between the realm of science and the realm of the soul in his “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany.” In the letter, Galileo attempts to show that one cannot take all passages in the Bible literally. He does not go as far as to say that the Bible is discordant with nature. Indeed, he thinks the Bible justifies the natural order of the world. However, he argues that new discoveries may lead to new interpretations of some verses, and that others which do not directly bear on matters of salvation may in fact be purposefully skewed so as to be understandable to the masses, even if the information is not, strictly speaking, accurate.

The distinction Galileo makes between nature and the heavenly is key to his conciliatory position. “I should judge,” he writes, “that the authority of the Bible was designed to persuade men of those articles and propositions which, surpassing all human reasoning could not be made credible by science, or by any other means than through the very mouth of the Holy Spirit.”

Here Galileo diverges from Russell, whose metaphysics do not admit of a means for obtaining knowledge outside that which is accessible to science and reasoning.

Galileo's methodological naturalism is perhaps the most popular of the three frameworks today. Most people accept the authority of the understanding that the scientific endeavor produces about the physical world, while continuing to believe in a realm of life after death that is separate and inscrutable from this side of the mortal veil. His argument, in fact, reflects the current official position of the Roman Catholic Church that once persecuted him.

Methodological naturalism is the de jure position of science, because while science does not permit the supernatural, it also does not refute the supernatural.

Methodological naturalism does, however, face some significant challenges. The instability it introduces into interpretations of sacred texts can (despite Galileo's assertions to the contrary) lead to questions about the soul, the nature of gods, and salvation. More importantly, though, as science has expanded into territories previously in the purview of scripture, the unknowable space open to the spiritual has shrunken. Increasingly this framework takes on a “god of the gaps” quality.

Descartes, in contrast with the other frameworks, rejects naturalism altogether. As a devout Christian, he cannot accept the metaphysical version, and as a sophisticated thinker he recognizes the incompleteness of the methodological version.

Descartes' method is quite ingenious. Rather than asserting belief based on evidence of any sort, he instead embraces an extreme form of doubt of which even the ancient Greek Skeptics would be envious. For Descartes, this extreme doubt allows him to withdraw from the natural world; he does not plan to seek confirmation of the supernatural there.

By avoiding material objects, Descartes can assert only that which he finds in his own mind, which he takes to be the starting point of “true” reality, making him an idealist in the Platonic sense. A few ideas, he decides after establishing that his mind must exist, have more certainty than empirical observations. One of these ideas is perfection, which he declares is the essence of God. Thus he writes in the synopsis of his "Meditations” that “the idea of being perfect, which is found in our minds, possesses so much objective reality...that it must be held to arise from a cause absolutely perfect.”

Descartes' doubtful idealism offers powerful support for the creationist argument of false evidence. His method cannot be waved away on account of the evidence precisely because the evidence is not considered a reliable source for knowledge claims. It admits no assault from the empirical world.

There are, of course, weaknesses to Descartes' approach. One is that he must arrive at the concept of self prior to establishing the concept of God. He also chooses the categories on which he will focus in an explicit effort to arrive at God: for instance, he assumes definitional relations in making doubt synonymous with imperfection and imperfection antonymous with perfection. Perfection is neither objective nor specific, nor is it necessarily the same as “good.” One can be perfectly evil. Russell would likely counter Descartes by pointing out that these definitions and relations are formed in the first place on the knowledge of acquaintance, thus undermining the very effort Descartes had made in escaping sensory information.

A second concern for Descartes' method is that it tells us nothing in particular about God, beyond it being a form of absolute perfection. It certainly does not give credence to any particular scripture or deity, as Galileo's framework does.

Once accepted, though, the Cartesian God works in creationists' favor in that it offers assurance that a God does exist, and that that God is more “real” than any physical object, including fossil evidence. Assured of the prevailing truth of God, one is free to adopt any faith tradition one prefers and to reject any countervailing evidence as merely a test of that more well-established faith.

The differences between the metaphysical-epistemological frameworks epitomized by Descartes, Russell, and Galileo are today playing out in the heated debates about the veracity of evolutionary theory. Each has subtle, but practical, consequences for major societal issues, from religious adherence to education policy. Understanding them is crucial to understanding the textures of these defining public and personal debates.

Tips on Arguing: Inductive Reasoning

In ancient Greece, philosophers and thinkers invented a process for arriving at truths about the world that we know today as deduction. These processes relied on taking general statements about the world and applying various logical rules to them in order to answer particular questions.

Deduction was enormously useful, especially in mathematics. It is deductive reasoning that led to the Pythagorean theorem, a general statement that works with every right triangle you will ever encounter.

Deduction had weaknesses, however, because it could give you answers that did not fit your observations. That was what drove the seventeenth-century English philosopher Francis Bacon to popularize a new way of organizing thought: induction.

Inductive reasoning takes deduction and flips it around. Instead of inventing axioms and applying them to specific observations, induction worked by collecting numerous observations and then deriving general principles from the amassed observations.

By giving precedence to observations over theories, Bacon's empirical approach provided a springboard for a great leap forward in the study of the natural sciences. If you collected 100 observations and 99 of them could not be explained with your current theory, the theory would have to be changed.

The modern scientific method is dependent upon inductive reasoning. However, Bacon himself warned against equating the two. Induction is only half of science. Eventually, enough observations have been collected to develop a strong theory.

At that point, the theory becomes the standard for future observations, thus allowing us to once again use deduction. Our observation of a heavier-than-air jet does not lead us to conclude that gravity is being violated – we know that the plane is in fact operating according to the rules of gravity. We also assume those rules are consistent, or else we could never be sure if the next jet would get off the ground.

Induction is incredibly versatile, and it encourages a healthy skepticism about statements that can't be verified by facts. If used properly, this form of reasoning is one of the best ways to align your ideas and beliefs with empirical reality.

Tips on Arguing: Admit When You're Wrong

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We’d all like to win our arguments. We’d all like to believe that our positions are the “right” ones. We’d all like to have the facts on our side.

           

But life isn’t that simple. Circumstances change. New facts are discovered, and sometimes they challenge even the staunchest of beliefs. “Truth” rarely remains unchanged over the long run. To be able to argue effectively, you have to be prepared to be wrong.

           

That’s easier said than done, though. Even if you recognize on an intellectual level that your statements and beliefs are subject to change, actually admitting and acting upon it can have some unpalatable consequences: embarrassment; suspicion from others; loss of one’s job; legal action.

           

In the long term, however, refusing to admit a mistake or clinging to an outdated notion is a losing gambit.

           

Consider the Toyota recall debacle that began in late 2009. It was revealed that Toyota had been neglecting safety concerns in several of its models long before it recalled any cars. The public backlash was devastating. Within two weeks, research by Kelley Blue Book estimated that “27 percent of those who said they were considering a Toyota prior to the recall now say they no longer are considering the brand for their next vehicle purchase.” Of those disillusioned car buyers, about half said they weren’t sure if they would consider buying a Toyota after the company’s problems were resolved.

           

It was a huge hit for Toyota, which still had to recall over 6.5 million vehicles and temporarily shut down several North American plants.

           

The damage to Toyota’s brand – and the deaths caused by its negligence – could have been minimized if the executives had been willing to recognize their errors. The company didn’t escape the negative consequences of public apology, either. Embarrassment, mistrust, and legal penalties were all amplified by Toyota’s inaction.

           

It can be hard to be open about your failings. It can be hard to abandon your established beliefs, especially if they’re central to your life or work. Eventually, though, it’s always much harder not to admit when you're wrong.

Experiment Says Neutrinos Obey Speed Limit After All

Photograph by Christophe Delaere. Some rights reserved.

Neutrinos do not travel faster than light, according to the first independent attempt to verify the results of an experiment from 2011 that found the subatomic particles breaking the speed limit of physics.

The new evidence, which comes from an experiment called ICARUS and was published March 15 to the pre-print server arXiv.org, clocked neutrinos at roughly the speed of light and no faster.

ICARUS is located in Gran Sasso, Italy, the same location as the OPERA experiment that found the faster-than-light neutrinos. Both experiments detected pulses of neutrinos being sent from CERN 731 kilometers away.

The team at OPERA in September released controversial findings showing that neutrinos had arrived at their detector 60 nanoseconds earlier than the speed of light would allow. At the time, they were skeptical but could not find any flaws in their experiment despite six months of checking. They asked the wider community for help.

The first major doubts were cast over the OPERA results in February, when the team found two potential sources of error in their equipment. The first was a bad connection from a fiber-optic cable that sends signals from a synchronizing GPS system into the master clock. This error would tend to speed up the timing of the neutrinos, giving results that were too fast.

However, the second source of error involved an internal oscillator that was not properly calibrated and would tend to make the results of the experiment slower than expected.

ICARUS's results are particularly compelling because, except for the detector itself, almost all of the equipment in the experiment are shared with OPERA. The two even shared the same beams of neutrinos; ICARUS is located in the same facility, mere meters away from its rival detector.

The OPERA team is still moving forward with plans to test its earlier results with more measurements of neutrino speeds this spring. ICARUS and two other experiments at Gran Sasso will also make additional measurements.

"Whatever the result, the OPERA experiment has behaved with perfect scientific integrity in opening their measurement to broad scrutiny and inviting independent measurements,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci in a press release. “This is how science works.”

Intelligent Kinetics: God of the Gases

This is a satirical description of an “alternative” to the Kinetic Molecular Theory of gases based on the definition of Intelligent Design given by the anti-evolution group The Discovery Institute. It's meant to demonstrate how a patina of scientific-sounding words can make the most ridiculous idea seem (almost) plausible.

Unlike evolutionary theory, Kinetic Molecular Theory and other well-established theories do not have active campaigns fighting to discredit their validity. Yet from a scientific standpoint, there is no difference: all theories are founded on mountains of evidence and serve as a framework for other discoveries. So, if Intelligent Design is a viable alternative to evolutionary theory, why not apply the same concept elsewhere?

Secular Bernoullians beware: your flimsy materialistic worldview is about to collapse under the weight of the evidence that an intelligent being is actually moving all those particles around!

What is Intelligent Kinetics?

"Intelligent kinetics (IK) refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in the behavior of molecules in a gas. The theory of intelligent kinetics holds that certain features of the containers and of gases are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as Brownian motion.

"Through the study and analysis of a container’s components, an IK theorist is able to determine whether various gaseous arrangements are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent kinetics, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the properties of gases produced when intelligent agents act. IK scientists then seek to find containers which have those same types of gaseous properties which we commonly know come from intelligence.

"Intelligent kinetics has applied these scientific methods to detect design in the velocities of molecules in a container, the complex and specified information content of gaseous particles, the perfectly elastic and perfectly spherical physical architecture of molecular collisions, and the rapid origin of kinetic activity in a container of gas when changes in pressure, volume, or temperature occur."

Q.E.D.

Tips on Arguing: Argument from Authority

If someone told you that alchemy must be a legitimate science because Isaac Newton practiced it, would you start trying to turn lead into gold?

Of course not. Yet that is exactly how the argument from authority works – by replacing logic and evidence with the name of a respected or powerful person.

Whenever your hear such a name used to back up an argument, you should immediately ask yourself two questions:

First, is the named person a relevant expert on the topic? Francis Crick is a legitimate authority on genetics. Oprah Winfrey is not. If, however, you are discussing media entrepreneurship, Winfrey's perspective could offer valuable insights.

Second, does the authority's position make sense? Although Isaac Newton had reasons to believe alchemy might be true in his day, the evidence has since led us to abandon transmutation for modern chemistry. It does not makes sense to practice alchemy based on Newton's stance on the matter.

The inherent caveat of any argument from authority is this: no matter how high on the totem pole a person may be, no matter how much expertise on a subject he or she may have, it is always possible to make mistakes. Even the brightest of us is still only human.

Whenever someone flashes a big name to boost an argument, always be suspicious. Names are only as good as the ideas behind them.

Westport Group to Hold Fourth Annual Darwin Day Dinner



A recent Darwin Day celebrant with old Charlie.
Photograph by Cary Shaw. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

 The Southern Connecticut Darwin Day Committee will hold its fourth celebration of science and humanity on Feb. 11 at the Inn at Longshore in Westport.

This year's Darwin Day Dinner will feature a talk by Rene Almeling, assistant professor of Sociology at Yale University. She will discuss her 2011 book, “Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm.”

The event will include a cocktail hour and a full course dinner. There will also be a science quiz during which each table will collaborate on the answers. The table with the highest score on the quiz will win prizes.

“I first learned about the celebration of Darwin Day when the organizers of the event called me to speak, and I think it is a wonderful way to promote science education,” Almeling said in an email interview.

Committee Treasurer John Levin said he feels quite fortunate to have Almeling speak at this year's event.

“Human reproduction has resonance with every person, and the processes are really changing,” he said.

The Darwin Day Dinner is held every year around the birthday of naturalist Charles Darwin, who is most famous for describing the process of biological evolution through natural selection. Darwin was born Feb. 12, 1809.

The first dinner was held in 2009 on what would have been his 200 birthday. Levin said he and several of his friends began organizing the dinners that year after learning that there were celebrations planned in other cities around the world, but none in Connecticut.

Since then, he said the event has grown moderately, drawing 133 people last year.

In previous years, the dinner took place on a Friday; this is the first year it will be held on a Saturday. Aside from that change, Levin said the event will be similar to the earlier ones.

“We think that we've had a winning formula, and as a consequence we have kept that same formula,” he said, adding that no one has had any major complaints or suggested any meaningful changes in past years.

Levin said that Darwin Day as an international phenomenon seems to be growing in subtle ways. He would like to see it eventually become as popular as more recognized holidays that have religious or national themes.

“There's nothing right now really devoted to enlightenment, science or rationality,” he added.

The Darwin Day Dinner is sponsored by The Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County; The Wilton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); the Unitarian Church in Westport; and the Norwalk Public Schools Science Department.

The deadline to register for the event is Feb. 3 The cost is $55 per person. Excess proceeds will be donated to the National Center for Science Education.

To learn more about the Darwin Day Dinner or to register, visit www.darwindayct.org.

Connecticut’s Religiously Intolerant History, Pt. 1

Fairfield’s Last Witch Trial

A woodcut illustration from Joseph Glanvill’s “Saducismus Triumphatus or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions,” published posthumously in 1681 in London. The book purported to provide proof of witches’ magical powers, and attacked skeptics of these abilities. Glanvill’s text would become influential during the Salem Witch Trials a decade later.Public domain image.

When the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ranked states using data from its comprehensive 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, only 57 percent of respondents from Connecticut and Rhode Island reported that they believed in God with “absolute certainty,” placing it second-to-last in the country. The state placed similarly low in all other rankings.

Today’s religious landscape is almost the complete opposite of what it was in the 17th century, when Connecticut was the quintessentially theocratic state. The Calvinists who founded the colony steeped their everyday lives in religiosity, and saw the tools of government as extensions of their god-given duty to secure religious purity in society. The Congregationalist Church was for more than a century the state-sanctioned religious institution; all other belief systems, including other sects of Protestant Christianity, were officially disenfranchised and unofficially derided as atheistic abominations.

Life in a theocracy could be difficult for those outside of the state church’s good graces. Those who broke with the sanctioned practices of the official belief system would be ostracized by the community. They could find themselves unable to participate in civic life. They could even be prosecuted under those state and local statutes that enshrined religious intolerance.

The separation of church and state was incrementally accomplished over generations, often as a reaction to specific policies that had negatively impacted Connecticut’s own residents.

‘By the lawe of God of this colony thou deservest to dye’

The Calvinists, who were variously called “puritans” and “pilgrims” (a reference to John Bunyan’s allegorical moralist tale, “The Pilgrim’s Progress’), were products of a Europe that had been torn apart a century earlier by some of the bloodiest sectarian wars the world has ever seen. They sought to establish a society where they could practice their own brand of religious fundamentalism without interference.

They also believed in education. The most prominent among them were men versed in laws and letters. They built the earliest colleges in the colonies. They kept up with the scientific revolution in Europe and the emerging value it placed on empiricism and induction.

This led to some strange combinations of belief and skepticism. Connecticut’s citizens thought that Satan had direct influence in the world, and that witches had gained supernatural powers by creating pacts with the evil being.

Connecticut’s government was at the forefront of witch persecution. Numerous trials took place in the state during the 1600’s, including the first recorded execution for witchcraft in the U.S. in 1647.

A state law making witchcraft a capital offense that was passed in 1642 explicitly referenced passages from the Bible: “If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death. Exodus xxii. 18. Levit. xx. 22. Deut. xviii. 10, n.”

By the end of the 17th century, however, colonial jurisprudential culture had shifted, placing a greater emphasis on evidence that made witch trials increasingly difficult to prosecute.

In 1692 – the same year as the famous Salem witch trials – a new wave of witchcraft accusations from threatened the lives of several Fairfield County women.

The troubles began when Katherine Branch, a servant in the Stamford home of former selectman Daniel Wescot, started having epileptic-like “fits.” Wescot suspected Branch was possessed by witchcraft, and soon Branch began naming names: Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford. Mary and Hannah Harvey, Mary Staples, and Goody Miller, all of Fairfield. Finally, Mercy Disborough of Compo, now part of Westport. Several of the accused were known to have had rocky relationships with the Wescots.

The initial investigation called for a committee of five women to examine the accused for “devil’s marks.” These were marks supposedly placed on the witch’s body by Satan so that he could drink the witch’s blood. If a birthmark was considered suspicious, a pin would be stuck through it to see if it would bleed. If it didn’t, the woman might be a witch.

Clawson passed this first examination, but Disborough did not.

A special trial was set up on Sept. 14 in Fairfield. Bills of indictment against Clawson and Disborough were presented to a grand jury, while charges against the other women were dropped. Disborough’s indictment, transcribed by Secretary John Allyn, said she had “familiarity with satan the grand enemie of God & men & thes by his instigetion & help thou hast in a preternatutal way afflicted & don Harm to the bodyes & Estates of sundry of their Ma[jesties] subjects…for which by the lawe of God of this colony thou deservest to dye.”

Clawson and Disborough had both pleaded not guilty to the crime. To determine if they were actually witches, the jury needed more evidence. The accused women agreed to be tested by having their hands bound to their legs and being tossed into the water, the theory being that water would refuse to accept a witch. If they floated, it was evidence of guilt.

On Sept. 15, the two women were given the water test. According to Allyn’s notes, several witnesses testified that they both floated.

Meanwhile, a contingent of Clawson’s friends from Stamford rallied to her defense. Seventy-six people signed a letter vouching for Clawson’s good character.

The jury deliberated, but was unable to come to a conclusion in either case, and decided to send the case to the General Court in Hartford (then the state’s highest court).

The ministers of the court, who had plenty of experience with the prosecution of witches and were aware of the hysteria sweeping through Salem, were not convinced at all by the evidence. They returned their official opinion on Oct. 17 with four findings:

1. "The endeavor of conviction of witchcraft by swimming is unlawful and sinful, and therefore it cannot afford any evidence.”

2. "Unusual excrescences found upon their bodies ought not to be advanced as evidence against them without the approbation of some able physicians.”

3. "Respecting the evidence of the afflicted maid (the witness claimed to have been bewitched)…we cannot think her a sufficient witness; yet we think that her affliction being something strange, it well deserves a further inquiry.”

4. "As to the other strange accidents—as the dying of cattle, etc., we apprehend the applying of them to these women as matters of witchcraft to be upon very slender and uncertain grounds."

The General Court did not choose to question whether witches actually existed, but they did demand a higher standard of evidence than the trial in Fairfield had produced.

The group in Fairfield reconvened, and on Oct. 28, found Clawson innocent. Disborough, however, was convicted.

In the first half of 1693, petitioners on behalf of Disborough approached the General Court, calling the decision against her illegal. The Court appointed a commission consisting of Samuel Wyllys, William Pitkin, and Nathaniel Stanley to review the documents of the case.

The commission, reaffirming the General Court’s earlier skepticism, acquitted Disborough and decided that further witch trials should be avoided altogether. They cited the horror that had occurred in Massachusetts the year before, saying that the epidemic of litigations in Salem were “warning enof, those that wit make witchcraf t of such things wit make hanging work apace.”

No witches were convicted in Connecticut after that, though a few trials continued to take place until 1697. Many citizens still believed that witches walked among them, consorting with Satan and possessing children. The law against witchcraft was never repealed; instead, it was quietly expunged from later revisions of public acts.

Disborough escaped execution. She faded into relative obscurity, popping up only occasionally in public records from the early 1700’s. She had been subjected to dangerous and humiliating tests, put in jail and sentenced to death, but had narrowly managed to gain her freedom. In this early test of state-sanctioned religion, Connecticut had taken a small step toward reform.

Part 2: Anglican Infiltration

Part 3: (Coming soon)