Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos

Abstract

Sample Chapter: "Flooded House" JOHN LILLY ran dolphin research facilities in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Coral Gables, Florida. In the years after Green Bank, Sagan often visited on winter vacations. This allowed him to combine his love of snorkeling with his continuing interest in Lilly's attempts to communicate with these "alien" intelligences. Marine mammals were a pop-culture phenomenon. There was a TV show, Flipper, about a dolphin as anthropomorphic as those in Lilly's tales -- though a good deal less overtly sexual. Lilly advised Flipper's producer, Ivan Tors, and two of Lilly's dolphins appeared in a movie version of Flipper. Lilly's books on dolphins became best-sellers. His example must have been on Sagan's mind as he forged his own writing career. In winter 1963 Sagan met "Elvar." Elvar with the voluntary erections. Lilly took Sagan into a room with a large tank of sea water. Elvar poked his head above the water. "Carl, this is Elvar," Lilly announced. "Elvar, this is Carl." Elvar expertly smacked his head against the water surface. A neat spray of water nailed Sagan in the forehead. Lilly left Carl and Elvar alone. The dolphin lolled in the water like a happy dog. Soon Sagan was scratching his belly. The dolphin would periodically dive, swim to the opposite end of the tank, and return for more scratching. Sagan tired of this before the dolphin did. Elvar reared up out of the water, balancing a moment on tail flukes and emitted a single word: "More!" At least, it sounded like "more." It was a high-pitched monosyllabic squeak. Sagan went and found Lilly attending some electronic equipment. He informed him, excitedly, that Elvar had said "more." "Was it in context?" Lilly wanted to know. "Yes, it was in context." "Good," Lilly said. "That's one of the words he knows." * * * Lilly believed his dolphins could speak English -- not well, of course, and their vocabulary was limited. Sagan was not so sure. He was fascinated by all he saw in Lilly's finny kingdom. But it was never clear what was "real" and what was anthropomorphizing. Lilly sometimes seemed unmotivated to make these distinctions. Lilly would talk about the great experiments he was going to do. Then another year would go by, Sagan would see him the next winter, and it would turn out that the actual, controlled experiment had still not been done. Lilly would spin another colorful tale. They had been trying out the concept when the dolphin did the damndest thing . . . One year, some of the captive dolphins committed suicide -- or such was Lilly's understanding. Lilly gallantly set the surviving dolphins free. These anecdotes were what made Lilly's books on the dolphin so engaging. But "the really critical scientific tests were somehow never performed," Sagan complained. Sagan tried to nudge Lilly along. He outlined specific experiments and controls that would actually prove something. It had not even been established that dolphins can communicate arbitrary information to other dolphins. Until then, everything else Lilly did would rest on shaky ground. Sagan suggested a Bach vs. Beatles experiment. They would teach a dolphin to distinguish between the music of Bach and the Beatles (dolphins have excellent hearing). The dolphin would be rewarded with tasty fish every time it tapped a fish dispenser that was playing Beatles music underwater (say) but never when it tapped an identical dispenser playing Bach. Then they would introduce a new dolphin that knows nothing about music and how the fish dispensers work. A barrier would now prevent the "educated" dolphin from tapping the fish dispensers. Only the uneducated dolphin would be free to do that. Every time the uneducated dolphin hit the "right" dispenser, both dolphins would get food. The educated dolphin would then have an incentive to "instruct" the new dolphin on the way to get food. If dolphins communicate, that would be demonstrable (in many tests, with many pairs of dolphins) by the greater slopes of the learning curves. * * * Lilly never performed this experiment. He suspected that if dolphins were to learn human speech, it would have to be through "total immersion," through being isolated from other dolphins and living with a human, hearing only human speech. This naturally entailed "total immersion" for the human, too. Lilly envisioned a flooded house. It would be a home with the comforts of middle-class suburbia, only there would be water in it. Dolphins would glide freely among the human occupants' legs. In such a house dolphins might learn human language. It could even, Lilly speculated, be the foundation of a future utopia in which humans and dolphins would co-exist as equal partners. A frustrated romance of Sagan's played a small role in Lilly's most famous dolphin study. One night in St. Thomas, Sagan dined at a remote mountaintop restaurant. The hostess caught his eye. She was an attractive young woman with dark hair and a healthy, tomboyish quality. Her name was Margaret Howe. She told Sagan that she was bored. Her job as a hostess was evenings only. She wanted something else to occupy her on the island. Sagan tried to get Howe into bed. Howe rebuffed him, but the meeting had one result: Sagan introduced Howe to anthropologist Gregory Bateson, who was then running the St. Thomas facility. This led to a job and plunged Howe into one of the most unusual experiments of the 1960s. In the summer of 1965, Howe lived in the company of "Peter," a male dolphin, 24 hours a day, six days a week in a simplified flooded house. There are surreal photographs of Howe working efficiently at a desk or chatting on the telephone, eyed curiously by a dolphin as her whole environment is sopping in 24 inches of water. "A dolphin is more like a shadow than a roommate," Howe said. The thing would stay by her all day and never leave. She could talk on the phone for hours. The dolphin wouldn't get bored. It wouldn't leave. As weeks passed, Howe was subject to depression and crying jags. "I have found that during the day I will find any excuse to get out of the flooded room," she wrote in her diary. (Lilly meanwhile was contemplating a flooded car for the future bi-species society.) Peter began exhibiting courting behavior. He lightly nibbled Howe's legs, getting erections, and rubbing against her ardently. As a matter of expediency, Howe took to giving the dolphin hand jobs. Peter would "reach some sort of orgasm, mouth open, eyes closed, body shaking, then his penis would relax and withdraw." Dolphin libidos being what they are, this had to be repeated two or three times; then, finally, the dolphin could concentrate on its lessons. That made for a pretty good conversation stopper. Otherwise the experiment's results were debatable. It seemed that Peter learned to say "hello" and "ball" and parrot consonant sounds. When Howe asked Peter to get the ball, he would often get the cloth. * * * After this experiment, Sagan visited St. Thomas and played a game of catch with Peter. Sagan threw the ball to Peter, and Peter dove under it and batted it back with his snout. His aim was as accurate as a human's. Then, after a few volleys, the dolphin began returning the ball far to the side of Sagan. Peter was toying with Carl, performing an "experiment" of his own. Figuring that two can play that game, Sagan retrieved the ball one last time and held it, treading water. For about a minute, both mammals stood their ground. Peter gave in. He swam into Sagan's side of the tank, circling him, repeatedly brushing past him. This puzzled Sagan. It didn't seem like the dolphin's tail flukes had brushed him. Then he realized the dolphin had a hard-on. The frustrated triangle of Sagan, Howe, and Peter was worthy of Sartre. There was a further twist. Peter was one of Lilly's ex-actor dolphins. Sagan had been propositioned by Flipper. * * * By the mid 1960s, Lilly's interests had shifted to human consciousness. He was experimenting with the isolation tanks he had invented and with the then-new drug known as LSD-25. The Sandoz Company hoped to find a commercial use for the drug, and the Defense Department was said to be particularly interested. In a research proposal, Lilly requested the drug "to see its effects on dolphins." Sagan and Lilly drifted apart. While he admired Lilly as a visionary, Sagan believed that Lilly was veering further and further from science. As to LSD, Sagan felt it was an entirely different matter from marijuana. It was a new and unknown chemical that had not been "tested" by centuries of cultural practice. Sagan reasoned that LSD is hazardous because its dosage is so minute and its effect is delayed. A user cannot tell he has consumed too much until it is too late.