An Experiment in the Irrational

An Experiment in the Irrational

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When I was a kid, I had a problem with patches of itchy skin on my hands and arms. No matter how fastidiously clean I was, no matter how hard I scrubbed, and no matter how many medicines and creams and remedies I tried, I could not get rid of them. It wasn't a life-threatening situation – or even a life-challenging one – but they were ugly and annoying. And they would not go away.

One day, I happened to overhear three old Italian women, neighbors of ours, trading stories of Gypsy fortune-tellers they had consulted. I listened to the predictions that the fortune-tellers had made with disdain: I was only about nine or ten at the time, but even I could have come up with such generic, bound-to-come-true prophecies as these.

Then, one of the old Italian women started to relate a method for getting rid of skin problems that her Gypsy fortune-teller had told her. She had my instant attention. She related the whole method step by step and, when she had finished, the other old Italian women all nodded in agreement. Yes, they concurred, that's how you get rid of them, all right.

I had paid keen attention to the entire method, and it seemed the most ridiculous nonsense I'd ever heard. Even dressed up in scientific language, it's absurd. Step one was mathematical: Count the number of itchy patches you have. Step two was geological: Find the same number of pebbles. Step three was aesthetic: Get a small pretty box and put the pebbles in it. Step four was geographical: Put the box someplace where someone will find it and open it.

Apparently, the theory behind this procedure was that the pebbles represented your skin problems. When someone took and opened the box, they took away your skin problems, too.

Let me be perfectly clear at this point. I did not believe that performing these steps could possibly cure my itchy patches, not after all of the reasonable things that I'd tried that had been unsuccessful. But I was desperate. I would do it, even though I had zero confidence in the method. I had nothing to lose but my itchy patches.

First, I counted them. There were five, which surprised me. Considering the misery and annoyance they caused me, I would have put the figure closer to a hundred.

Next, I selected five pebbles with great care. Two were pure white quartz, with sparkly facets. One was a perfectly matte-smooth grey flint. One was pink. And the fifth was some kind of striped sedimentary rock. Each one was about the size of a lima bean.

Then I found a small candy box covered in shiny gold foil, and put the pebbles inside. It was the kind of box that someone might open out of curiosity.

The location I chose for the box was on the sidewalk near a small variety store a few blocks from my house. I wanted a place that I didn't go to very often, so I wouldn't constantly be checking to see if someone had taken the box yet. I didn't place the box in the middle of the sidewalk, but off to the side, so no one would step on it accidentally. Still, it was perfectly visible, so that someone might see it, walk over to it, and pick it up.

I left it there and walked away, feeling a little foolish to have done something so ridiculous.

My itchy patches were gone in a week.

I was stunned. I'd had no expectation whatsoever that this would work. To me, it had been just one more ineffective idea to get out of the way. I was certainly surprised and relieved that they were gone, but puzzled also. Why had this worked?

Thinking back on this episode, there were only three possible explanations, of which I totally rejected two.

First, it could have been pure coincidence. In other words, my itchy patches were about to go away on their own anyway, and I just happened to perform these actions at about the same time. What I did had nothing whatsoever to do with their leaving. I might just as well have played the zither or stood on my head: the result would have been the same.

I didn't believe this. These things had shown no sign that they were on their way out. On the contrary, they had resisted every reasonable treatment I had tried and, if anything, were spreading further and getting uglier. I couldn't believe that they were suddenly passing away, and that it had nothing to do with what I had done.

Second, it could have been magic, whatever that is. This had been the implication of the three old Italian women. Putting those pebbles into that box was some kind of spell that magically connected my itchy patches to the pebbles. When the magic pebbles left my possession, so did the itchy patches. It was some kind of symbolic transaction.

Sorry, but no. I certainly got the symbolism of the five pebbles, but that's all it was. There was no magical connection between the two, no arcane link that joined the existence of one with the other. The pebbles did not magically represent the itchy patches on some mystical balance sheet, so that losing one set meant losing the other.

But eliminating those two explanations leaves only the third: Something Else. I don’t know the details of this Something Else, but I have some hints about its shape, its limits, and what it must involve.

For example, it must involve my own body – because that’s where the effect was – and it might involve my own mind – because that’s what conceived and carried out the actions. It’s interesting to speculate on whether the same result would have occurred if my mind hadn’t been involved; in other words, if someone else had carried out these steps on my behalf, but without my knowledge. Of course, for all I know, this is actually occurring all the time. If so, thank you, unknown benefactor!

In addition, the Something Else might also involve the box with the pebbles. Are they really necessary for the process? Could you simply imagine doing these steps, and not actually do them, and still get the same results?

Finally, the Something Else might involve another person. Someone might or might not have picked up that box and opened it. If they did, their involvement might be an essential part of the method. Or it might not be. Or maybe nobody touched the box at all.

Here’s one possibility for how the Something Else works. My mind, at some level, understands the symbolism of the pebbles, and directs the body to heal, and the body does: it heals itself. This is a remarkable thing, but it’s consistent with “psychosomatic” (literally, “mind-body”) situations, where the state of the mind affects the state of the body. However, if this is what’s happening, why was this pebble-in-the-box method effective, but my fervent wishes to be rid of the itchy patches were not? Could it be the difference between my conscious mind wishing and my non-conscious mind believing?

This possible explanation of Something Else is attractive, because it only involves me: my mind and my body. In this explanation, the box and the pebbles are only props to fool the non-conscious mind. The hypothetical other person opening the box is not necessary at all.

Here’s another possible explanation of Something Else: something—I don’t know what—is actually transferred to the pebbles during this process. My mind knows that this transfer has taken place, and my body feels it. As to what the something is, the usual suspects would include some kind of biochemical material, an electromagnetic field, or some quantum state.

The nice thing about this possible explanation is that it offers the possibility of testing to measure if anything has actually been transferred. However, in this explanation, too, the body heals itself.

There are other more complicated possible explanations, but they all seem to be combinations of these two.

Now, in both possible explanations, the body actually heals itself. Nothing external or medical happens to cure the body. At first, this seems strange, but it’s actually quite plausible. After all, human beings survived for millions of years before the discovery of medical cures, presumably overcoming countless plagues, injuries, and other challenges. The healing power of the human body must be prodigious.

Which brings us to the main point of this particular column. This ability to heal ourselves is a super power in real life. We don’t know how to do it. We don’t know how to control it. But we seem to have this ability, somehow. And it can be amazing.

But this raises an annoying question: if the body can heal itself so well, why doesn’t it? If my body could heal all along, why didn’t it? Does it require some kind of incentive to do this healing? If so, why? And how can we invoke this incentive more deliberately?

These are all intriguing possibilities, some of which might actually have great value and significance. However, it’s also intriguing to consider what led us to even contemplate these possibilities, namely, doing something totally irrational and nonsensical: trying to cure itchy patches with pebbles in a box. If I had behaved rationally and sensibly, I would never have performed those steps, never experienced the total surprise at their outcome, and never thought about the actual mechanisms that made this possible. And, maybe, never gotten rid of those itchy patches.

This kind of irrational and nonsensical behavior is important. If people never tried something as ridiculous as chewing willow bark to cure a headache, they would never have discovered aspirin. If Darwin had never had the foolish desire to sail halfway around the world to study birds and iguanas, he would never have formulated his ideas of how life changes. If Einstein had never had the absurd idea of riding on a beam of light, he would never have created his theories of relativity.

So, paradoxically, it might actually require irrational and nonsensical acts to lead us to the scientific insights that we regard as rational and sensible, and thus to the knowledge we value so highly. To try something new, something that has no logical basis for working according to what we know so far, might be essential for discovery. It's very odd, but this strange and self-contradictory method of gaining knowledge seems to work.

And it’s satisfying. Kind of like scratching an itch.