What the Critics Got Right

“The Cosmic Serpent's critics were not wrong that Narby confuses his enthusiasm for evidence. The book's value survives this criticism, but the criticism should be held alongside the value.”

The Cosmic Serpent attracted serious critical attention from scientists who engaged with its argument rather than dismissing it. The most pointed came from biophysicist Jacques Dubochet, who would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017, and from the reviewer at Publishers Weekly.

Dubochet's criticism was methodological: Narby had proposed a hypothesis, that shamans access molecular-level information through ayahuasca visions, but had not designed any test for it. The hypothesis is falsifiable in principle, but Narby had not attempted to falsify it.

Publishers Weekly's criticism was epistemological: Narby 'confuses his own enthusiasm for evidence' and takes 'similarities of form', any helical pattern, any double structure, any serpentine shape, as 'proof of identity or causal connection.' A Goodreads reviewer who identified as a geneticist made a similar point: the hypothesis is scientifically framed but poorly executed as science. The visual similarity between the DNA double helix and shamanic serpent imagery is suggestive but not probative.

These criticisms are fair. Narby does make analogical leaps that the evidence doesn't fully support. He does take resemblance as more significant than resemblance alone can bear. His defense, that 'the presuppositions of science are too narrow to permit the test', is the kind of argument that, if unchecked, can immunize any hypothesis from falsification.

The appropriate response to these criticisms is not to dismiss the book but to read it with them in mind. The combinatorial problem, how did indigenous peoples discover the ayahuasca combination?, is real and unresolved by any alternative explanation. The pragmatic reliability of indigenous pharmacological knowledge is documented and impressive. The question Narby poses is genuine. The answer he proposes is speculative. Both things are true, and both matter.

Sources

• Publishers Weekly review, The Cosmic Serpent (1998)
• Wikipedia, Jeremy Narby
• Goodreads review by geneticist, The Cosmic Serpent