But the ape isn’t happy with that. The ape gets bored with things it can’t see. The ape wants pictures. And it gets them, and then a god of endless space becomes an old man with a beard sitting in the clouds. Great art takes place in the god’s honour, and every pious brush gently kills what it paints. The wise man says ‘But this is just a metaphor!’, and the ape says ‘Yeah, but those tiny wings couldn’t lift a cherub that fat!’ And then not so wise men fill the pantheon of heaven with hierarchies of angels and set the plagues of man on horseback and write down the dimensions of Heaven in which to imprison the lord of infinite space.1 The stories begin to choke the system …
Seeing is not believing.
Rincewind knows this, which is why he encourages Shakespeare to make elves real. Because once you’re called Mustardseed, it’s downhill all the way …
The elves cannot understand Rincewind’s ploy. Not until his thoughts give it away to the Queen of the Elves, and the salvation of the world rests upon 300 pounds of plummeting orangutan. Nevertheless, the plan worked very well. This is Oberon, near the end of the play:
Through the house give glimmering light,
By the dead and drowsy fire;
Every elf and fairy sprite
Hop as light as bird from brier;
And this ditty, after me,
Sing and dance it trippingly.
There’s no hope for them. Next stop, nursery wallpaper. Whereas witches, now:
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d I’th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab—
Make the gruel thick and slab;
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For th’ ingredience of our cauldron.
No contest. What’s a chaudron? Entrails. Definitely no contest. The witches appear on stage in Macbeth only three times, but they steal the show. They probably got fan mail. The fairies are present for a large part of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it is Bottom that steals the show and only Puck has a glimmer of the old evil. They’ve been parcelled, stamped and sent on their way to Tinkly Wood.
To be sure, Shakespeare’s Oberon is not all sweetness and light. He uses the juice of a herb, the flower known as Love-in-idleness, to enchant Titania, Queen of the Fairies, because she has gained possession of a changeling child, and he wants it. He makes her fall in love with Bottom, who at that point in the story is an ass. And he is appeased, and she is entirely happy with the turn of events, when she gives him the child. But that’s low-level, sanitised nastiness, a fretful squabble, not a war.
The allure of the unknown fades into the tawdry reality of a specific representation, once you see it dripping sequins. Abraham’s God of Extelligence was far more compelling than a few golden (probably just gold leaf) idols. But when the Renaissance artists started to paint God as a bearded man in the clouds, they opened the way to doubt. The image just wasn’t impressive enough. The pictures on radio are always so much better than those on TV.
For the last few hundred years, humanity has been killing its myths. Faith and superstition have been giving way, slowly and against considerable resistance, to the critical assessment of evidence. They may, perhaps, be enjoying a bit of a revival: many rational thinkers have bemoaned the slide into cults and the wierd offshoots of New Ageism … But those are all very subdued versions of the old myths, the old beliefs; their teeth have been drawn.
Science alone is not The Answer. Science too has its myths. We have shown you some of them, or at least what we believe to be some of them. The misuse of anthropic reasoning is a clear example, as in the case of the carbon resonance, but argued with no thought for the fudge-factor of the red giant.
The ideal of the scientific method is often not realised. Its usual statement is an oversimplification in any case, but the basic worldview captures the essence. Think critically about what you are told. Do not accept the word of authority unthinkingly. Science is not a belief system: no belief system instructs you to question the system itself. Science does. (There are many scientists, however, who treat it as a belief system. Be wary of them.)
The most dangerous myths and ideologies, today, are the ones that have not yet been destroyed by the rising ape. They still strut their stuff on the world’s stage, causing grief and havoc – and the tragedy is that it’s all to no purpose. Most of it doesn’t matter. Issues like abortion do matter, to some extent; even ‘pro-choice’ adherents would prefer that the choice should not be necessary. Issues like short skirts or lengths of beards do not matter, and it’s foolish and dangerous to make a big fuss about them on a planet that is bursting at the seams with an excess of people. To do so is to promote the memeplex above the good of humanity. It is the action of a barbarian mind, a mind sufficiently removed from reality that the consequences of its resident memeplex do not affect it directly. It is not the actions of the naïve young men who carry the suicide bomb, or fly the airliner into a skyscraper, that are the root of the problem; it is the actions of the evil old men who lead them to behave like that, all for the sake of a few memes.
The key memes are not religious, in this case, we suspect, even though religion is often blamed: that’s mostly a smokescreen. Those old men are motivated by political memes, and the religious memeplex is merely another of their weapons. But they are also trapped in their own stories, and this is high tragedy. Granny Weatherwax would never make that mistake.
The elves are still with us, in our heads. Shakespeare’s humanity, and the critical faculties encouraged by science, are two of our weapons against them. And fight them we must.
And to achieve that, we need to invent the right stories. The ones we’ve got have brought us a long way. Plenty of creatures are intelligent, but only one tells stories. That’s us, Pan narrans.
And what about Homo sapiens? Yes, we think that would be a very good idea …
1 Revelation xxi.16 gives it as 12,000 furlongs in length, breadth and height, or a cube 1,500 miles on a side. Noticeably smaller than the Moon.
INDEX
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
A
Aaron 141, 142
‘aborigines’ 132
abortion 344
Abraham 172, 210–12, 344
acids, alchemy 66
actors 282–3
Adam and Eve 125
Adams, Douglas 304
adaptive radiation, evolution 133–4
adenine 52
adultery 142
advertising, memes 329
Aeschylus 341
Africa
forests 107
human evolution 88, 113
human genetic diversity 122, 132–3
Out of Africa theory 122, 124, 131–3
tribal beliefs 167*
African elephant 110–11
agriculture 118
aircraft 244*
Aladdin 158
alchemy 66–8, 239
algorithms 183–4
aliens 134
Fermi Paradox 314
Allah 167
‘alternate universe’ stories, science
fiction 312–13
altruism 213–14, 215
amino acids 186
Amish 142
ammonium chloride 66
amoebas 165, 186, 188
amusia, congenital 274–5
Andersen, Hans Christian 155
androstenone 287
angels 247
animals
in cave paintings 276
co-evol
ution 310
co-evolution with humans 119–21
cultural evolution 94–5
domestication 117–21
in fairy stories 74
free will 165
imagining being one 286, 287–9
mimicry 284
nests 94, 113
play 94
vomeronasal organ 287
Anthropic Principle 28, 30
Anthropithecus boisi 109
anti-heroes 158
Antikythera mechanism 237–8, 242
Anubis 120
apes
evolution 107–8
paintings 265
The Aquatic Ape (Morgan) 91–2
Arabian Nights 75
Arabs
alchemy 66
and the Renaissance 69
archer-fish 116
archetypal stories 340–1
Archimedean screw 237
Archimedes 70, 236–7, 238, 239, 241
Arctic 122
aristocracy, barbarian attitudes of 89, 99–100
Aristophanes 341
Aristotle 241–2
‘arrow of time’ 190, 191, 192, 194,195
arsenic 67
art
context 275
perception of 275–7
prehistoric man 275–6
teaching with lies 293
see also music; paintings
Ashkenazi 141
Asia, human evolution 113
asteroids 47
Astounding Science Fact and Fiction 134
astrology 65, 66, 169–70, 173
astronomy, predictions 173
At Home in the Universe (Kauffman) 78
Athens 65, 341
atomism 72
atoms
carbon formation 28–30
models of 247–8
auditory nerve 268
Australia
‘aborigines’ 132
human evolution 113, 122, 131
rock drawings 276
Australopithecus 88, 109
authority, obedience to 136, 157
autonomous agents 57
Avicenna 67
B
babbling, language development 154
babies
development of 188
human regard for 117
listening to music 263–4
predicting sex of 307–8
smiles 153–4
speech development 269
baboons 90, 107, 108
Babylon, Hanging Gardens 237
Bach, Johan Sebastian 270
background music 262–3, 265
balance, seasickness 274
bananas 217*
Bar-Mitzvah 136–7
barbarians
distinction from tribalism 137–41
nobility as 89, 99–100
storytelling 78, 157–8
Bastet 120
Bateson, Gregory 158–9
bats, echo-location 287–9
BBC 208
beaches, human evolution on 91–2
The Beatles 263, 272
bees 284, 290
Beethoven, Ludwig van 263, 271, 330
behaviour
altruism 213–14, 215
cheating 284
emergent behaviour 154–5, 307
lying 284–6, 289–93, 340
beliefs
as memes 331–2
religion 206–8, 218–22
science and 344
Berliner, David 286–7
beryllium 29
Bible 156, 173
bicycles 121–2
Big Bang 193, 194, 239, 247
bigfoot 113
Billingsley, Sir Henry 65
binary code 183
biology
phase spaces 51–5
see also evolution
biospheres 55, 56–7
birds
adaptive radiation 133
birds of prey 94
meta-patterns 116
rituals 95
birth, astrology 169–70
birth control 333
Black Country 301*
Black Holes 194, 315
black paint, superstitions 301
blackbirds 93
Blackmore, Susan 329, 330, 331, 332, 333
Blind Man’s Lantern (Hausa story) 116–17
blind spot, retina 266–7
The Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins) 331
Blue, Rabbi Lionel 208
body language 284
Bond, James 158, 341
bonobo chimpanzees 109, 111, 124, 325
books, size of 49–50
Borneo 265
bower-birds 95
Bowker, John 331
Brahms, Johannes 273
brain
alternative scenarios 149–51, 155–6
congenital amusia 274–5
consciousness 22
cultural evolution 91–5
echo-location 288
endorphins 275
evolution of 23
hearing 268–9, 290
human evolution 114
listening to music 263–4, 269
memes 328–33
mental models 25–7, 166
mind theories 21
need for storytelling 326
neurons 186
pattern recognition 91, 116
sensory perception 266–9, 273–7, 287
size 90, 150–1
storytelling 325
telepathy 282
thought processes 21–2
understanding language 283
vision 266–8, 288, 290
breeding, puberty rituals 134–7
Brin, David 86, 119*
British Museum 50
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) 221
Brown, Fredric 172
BSE (mad cow disease) 245*
Bubastis 120
bubbles, shape of 45–6
Buddhism 171, 241
bureaucracy 217
C
cabbalism 76
Cain and Abel 125*
Calcutta 333
Camerer, Colin 51
Campbell, John Jr 134, 135–6
car-sickness 274
carbon, formation of 27–30
cargo cults 80
cars 118, 152–3
Cartesian duality 20
Cartesian Theatre, model of consciousness 266
Carthage 46
Catch-22 (Heller) 311*
Catholic Church 333
cats
computing ability 271*
domestication 117, 118–19, 120–1
evolution of creodonts 310
free will 165
play 94
quantum mechanics 306–7
cattle 93, 117
causality
beliefs 74–6
human behaviour and 25–6
monotheism 172
Spinoza and 76–7
cave paintings 113, 265, 275–6
Cayley, Sir George 244*
CDs 187–8
cells, mitochondria 123
Celsus 67
centrifugal force 46
CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) 325–6
chain-letters 329
Chaitin, Gregory 183–4
chaos theory 165, 175, 304–5
Chase, Philip 131
cheating
altruism and 213
lying 284–6, 289–93, 340
predictions 307–8
cheetahs 109, 116
chemistry, alchemy and 66
chemotherapy 67
Chesterton, G.K. 155*, 341–2
chickens 117
children
education 291
emergent behaviour 154–5
hearing 270
human regard for 117
importance of storytelling 342
language development 283
learning 93–4, 114–15
learning rules 77
‘lies-to-children’ 268, 291–3
paintings 265
rituals 217
storytelling 74–5, 78–9, 151–2,326–7
subculture 115
wish-fulfilment 74–5, 76, 77
chimpanzees 273
common ancestor with man 87, 108, 109
development 151–2
and human DNA 87–8, 112–13
immune system 124
intelligence 113
man as the third chimpanzee 325
meat-eating 95, 117
species 111
China 122
alchemy 67
apes 107
hominids 88
music 270
science 172
chivalry 99, 121
choices 165–6, 174–5
Christ 221, 332
Christian II, Elector of Saxony 68
Christianity 172, 221, 332–3
chromosomes 330
Y-chromosome 141, 142–3
cichlid fish 133–4
Cinderella 115
circles, area 46
circumcision 136, 139
civilisation, evolution of 98
see also culture
CJD 245*
Clarke, Arthur C. 73, 75, 86, 272
‘classical’ education 69, 70
climate, tree growth rings 188
Clinton, Bill 142
cloning 31–2
closed timelike curves 314–15
co-evolution 119–21, 310
cochlea 268
Cocos Islands 133
codes
digital information 183
DNA 52, 53–4, 185–6
Cohen family 138–9, 141–3
coin-operated machines 70
cold dark matter 20
Collapse of Chaos (Stewart and Cohen) 54
colour
perception of 289–90
rainbow 293
combinatorics 48–9
The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare) 334
Coming of Age in Samoa (Mead) 264
commitment strategies 215–16
communication
with babies 154
cultural evolution 94–5
digital communications 181–4
in dog packs 94–5
early hominids 113
and evolution of brain 23
see also language
Communism 328
competition, evolutionary 214–15
complex systems 152–4
emergence 303, 307
entropy 190
evolution and 54, 57
history 308
organisms 188
predictability 165, 305–6
universe 193–5
complicated systems 152
complicity, emergent behaviour 154–5
computers
algorithms 183–4
inability to understand stories 53
viruses 329
concepts, defining 235–6
The Concise Lexicon of the Occult 168