Sarah laughed at that. “It’s true.”

And I mentioned ecology and the balance of nature, population biology and the preservation of species, evolution theory and how life became what it is, sociobiology and the underlying animal causes for social behavior… But she objected, pointing out that those were real concerns.

“Sociobiology?” I asked. She winced. I admitted, then, that there were indeed some excellent angles for justifying the study of animals, but I claimed that for some people these became the most important part of the field. As I said, “For most of the people in our department, the theories became more important than the animals. What they observed in the field was just more data for their theory! What interested them was on the page or at the conference, and a lot of them only do field work because you have to prove you can.”

“Oh, Nathan,” she said. “You sound cynical, but cynics are just idealists who have been disappointed. I remember that about you—you’re such an idealist!”

I know, Freds—you will be agreeing with her: Nathan Howe, idealist. And maybe I am. That’s what I told her: “Maybe I am. But jeez, the atmosphere in the department made me sick. Theorists backstabbing each other over their pet ideas, and sounding just as scientific as they could, when it isn’t really scientific at all! You can’t test these theories by designing an experiment and looking for reproducibility, and you can’t isolate your factors or vary them, or use controls—it’s just observation and untestable hypothesis, over and over! And yet they acted like such solid scientists, math models and all, like chemists or something. It’s just scientism.”

Sarah just shook her head at me. “You’re too idealistic, Nathan. You want things perfect. But it isn’t so simple. If you want to study animals, you have to make compromises. As for your classification system, you should write it up for the Sociobiological Review! But it’s just a theory, remember. If you forget that, you fall into the trap yourself.”