A wizard did it.

One thing that fascinates me as I learn more about the history of science is what people believed things were before they knew what they really were – or, in a similar vein, what people believed caused certain phenomena before they knew the real cause.

Some of these beliefs were wonderfully inventive and enrich our culture to this day. For example in Monday’s lecture I mentioned the suggestion that pygmy elephant skulls, with no eye sockets and a single, large, and centrally placed socket for the trunk, could have been the basis for the Cyclops myth. There is a nice write-up of this work on the National Geographic website which is based upon the work of Adrienne Mayor. In her book The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, Adrienne Mayor argues that the Greeks and Romans used fossil evidence both to support existing myths and to create new ones: Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclops, Giants etc.

Other explanations were much less inventive and ascribed a wide variety of phenomena (mysterious plagues, poor crops, bad weather etc) to entities such as witches and wizards (or their equivalent in the local culture). In modern popular culture such appeals to generic, and all powerful, entities is considered poor writing. The Simpsons have popularized the phrase ‘A wizard did it’ as an example of an evasive answer to an inquiry, usually with the implication the question is being purposely avoided. The phrase originated when Lucy Lawless responded to Professor Frink's question regarding a continuity error in Xena: Warrior Princess.

Frink: In episode BF12, you were battling barbarians while riding a winged appaloosa yet in the very next scene my dear, you're clearly atop a winged Arabian! Please do explain it!

Lucy Lawless: Uh, yeah, well whenever you notice something like that … a wizard did it.

Frink: Yes, alright, yes, in episode AG04 …

Lucy Lawless: Wizard!

Frink: Oh for glaven out loud.

Due to the wonders of alphabetical order “A wizard did it’ is first in the list of Simpsons neologisms on Wikipedia.

I mention it here because this raises some interesting questions about what makes a good hypothesis. Why do I criticize the 'wizard hypothesis'? I am, deliberately, going to put off detailed discussion of the scientific method until the second part of the class so we won't cover this in lecture for another couple of weeks.

Undoubtedly there are still phenomena around that science does not have a good explanation for. I can think of several but UFO’s would be a good example, especially the alien abduction phenomenon. It is interesting to speculate on how the future will rate our attempts at explanation – as a good attempt given the facts, as part of our cultural mythology, or as just laughable….