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Daughter: Daddy, what is an instinct?
Father: An instinct, my dear, is an explanatory principle.
D: But what does it explain?
F: Anything - almost anything at all. Anything you want it to explain.
D: Don't be silly. It doesn't explain gravity.
F: No. But that is because nobody wants "ïnstinct" to explain gravity. If they did, it
would explain it. We could simply say that the moon has an instinct whose strength
varies inversely as the square of the distance...
D: But that's nonsense, daddy.
F: Yes, surely. But it was you who mentioned ïnstinct," not I.
D: All right - but then what does explain gravity?
F: Nothing, my dear, because gravity is an explanatory principle.
D: Oh.
D: Do you mean that you cannot use one explanatory principle to explain another? Never?
F: Hmm...hardly ever. That is what Newton meant when he said "hypotheses non fingo."
D: And what does that mean, please?
F: Well, you know what "hypotheses" are. Any statement linking together two descriptive
statements is an hypothesis. If you say that there was a full moon on February 1st and
another on March 1st; and then you link these two observations together in any way, the
statement which links them is an hypothesis.
D: Yes - and I know what non means. But what's fingo?
F: Well - fingo is a late Latin word for "make." It forms a verbal noun fiction from which we
get the word "fiction."
D: Daddy, do you mean that Sir Isaac Newton thought that all hypotheses were just made
up like stories?
F: Yes - precisely that.
D: But didn't he discover gravity? With the apple?
F: No, dear. He invented it.
D: Oh...Daddy, who invented instinct?
F: I don't know. Probably Biblical.
D: But if the idea of gravity links together two descriptive statements, it must be an
hypothesis.
F: That's right.
D: Then Newton did fingo a hypothesis after all.
F: Yes - indeed he did. He was a very great scientist.
D: Oh.
D: Daddy, is an explanatory principle the same thing as an hypothesis?
F: Nearly, but not quite. You see, an hypothesis tries to explain some particular something
but an explanatory principle - like "gravity" or ïnstinct" - really explains nothing. It's a sort
of conventional agreement between scientists to stop trying to explain things at a certain
point.
D: Then is that what Newton meant? If "gravity" explains nothing but is only a sort of full
stop at the end of a line of explanation then inventing gravity was not the same as
inventing an hypothesis, and he could say he did not fingo any hypotheses.
F: That's right. There's no explanation of an explanatory principle. It's like a black box.
D: Oh.
D: Daddy, what's a black box?
F: A "Black Box" is a conventional agreement between scientists to stop trying to explain
things at a certain point. I guess it's usually a temporary agreement.
D: But that doesn't sound like a black box.
F: No - but that's what it's called. Things often don't sound like their names.
D: No.
F: It's a word that comes from the engineers. When they draw a diagram of a complicated
machine, they use a sort of shorthand. Instead of drawing all the details, they put a box
to stand for a whole bunch of parts and label the box with what that bunch of parts is
supposed to do.
D: So a "black box" is a label for what a bunch of things are supposed to do...
F: That's right. But it's not an explanation of how the bunch works.
D: And gravity?
F: Is a label for what gravity is supposed to do. It's not an explanation of how it does it.
D: Oh.
D: Daddy, what is an instinct?
F: It's a label for what a certain black box is supposed to do.
D: But what's it's supposed to do?
F: Hmm. That is a very difficult question...
D: Go on.
F: Well, it's supposed to control - partly control - what an organism does.
D: Do plants have instincts?
F: No. If a botanist used the word "ïnstinct," when talking about plants, he would be
accused of soomorphism.
D: Is that bad?
F: Yes. Very bad for botanists. For a botanist to be guilty of zoomorphism is as bad as for
a zoologist to be guilty of anthropomorphism. Very bad, indeed.
D: Oh. I see.
D: What did you mean by "partly control"?
F: Well, if an animal falls down a cliff, its falling is controlled by gravity. But if it wiggles
while falling that might be due to instinct.
From Steps to an Ecology of Mind Ballantine Books, N.Y., 1972
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