    39

    Einstein and the Eskimos

    Before the coming of the white man to the north, Eskimos

    believed that if they cut slabs of ice, organized them in a circle, formed

    a dome and lived inside they would please the spirits.  Apparently, the

    plan worked.  The contented spirits made sure the Eskimos stayed

    warm, even when the temperature dipped to forty below zero outside.

    Eventually, western scientists showed up and tried to explain how the

    Eskimos had mastered an invisible force called thermodynamics.

    According to these presumptuous foreigners, the igloo's tunnel-like

    entrance pre-heated outside air, the movable snow-block door let in

    precisely the amount of this air that could be further warmed by the

    seal-oil lamp inside, and the adjustable hole in the roof allowed just

    enough of the resulting rising currents out to create the convection that

    kept the whole thing going.  The sturdy igloo builders pooh-poohed

    thermodynamic nonsense.  They knew exactly what invisible powers

    kept their dwellings warm.63

    Indians worship an invisible divinity--the cow goddess.  As a

    result, cows eat and Indians starve. We are appalled.  Why don't the

    hungry Indians simply carve up some of the cattle wandering

    nonchalantly down their streets and wolf down a burger?

    Anthropologist Marvin Harris has shown that if the Indians

    slaughtered their cows and threw them between the buns of a Big Mac,

    far more of them would starve.  Harris explains that the Indians

    survive by using the cow's dung as fuel, their traction to pull plows

    and their milk to feed children.  Killing the cows would make

    agriculture impossible, heating unheard of, and milk unavailable.  The

    worship of the sacred cow works.  It keeps alive the creatures on which

    the entire Indian economy is based.64

    Pictures of the invisible world can have wild inaccuracies.  But

    every view that flourishes does so because it solves at least one major

    problem.  Balinese religious leaders kept their gods happy by throwing

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