Terry Pratchett: The Science of Discworld III - Darwin's Watch

`I don't think we want to do that, do we?' said Ridcully.

`It might be considered impolite,' agreed the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

`Exactly how big would a Great Big Thing be?' said the Senior Wrangler.

`The same size as the universe, sir,' said Ponder. `Every particle of the universe would be modelled within it, in fact.'

`Quite big, then ...'

`Yes, Sir.'

`And quite hard to find room for, I should imagine.'

`Undoubtedly, sir,' said Ponder, who had long ago given up trying to explain Big Magic to the rest of the senior faculty.

`Very well, then,' said Archchancellor Ridcully. `Thank you for your report, Mister Stibbons.' He sniffed. `Sounds fascinatin'. And the next item: Any Other Business.' He glared around the table. `And since there is no other busi-'

`Er ...

This was a bad word at this point. Ridcully did not like committee business. He certainly did not like any other business.

`Well, Rincewind?' he said, glaring down the length of the table.

`Um ...' said Rincewind. `I think that's Professor Rincewind, Sir?'

`Very well, professor,' said Ridcully. `Come on, it's past time for Early Tea.'

`The world's gone wrong, Archchancellor.'

As one wizard, everyone looked out at what could be seen of the world through Archchancellor Sloman Discovering the Special Theory of Slood.

`Don't be a fool, man,' said Ridcully. `The sun's shining! It's a nice day!'

`Not this world, sir,' said Rincewind. `The other one.'

`What other one?' said the Archchancellor, and then his expression changed.

`Not-' he began.

`Yes, sir,' said Rincewind. `That one. It's gone wrong. Again.' Every organisation needs someone to do those jobs it doesn't want to do or secretly thinks don't need doing. Rincewind had nineteen of them now, including Health and Safety Officer [2] The N'tuitiv tribe of Howondaland created the post of Health and Safety Officer even before the post of Witch Doctor, and certainly before taming fire or inventing the spear. They hunt by waiting for animals to drop dead, and eat them raw. .

It was as Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that he was responsible for the Globe. These days, it was on his desk out in the gloomy cellar passage where he worked, work largely consisting of waiting until people gave him some cruel and unusual geography to profess.

`First question,' said Ridcully, as the faculty swept along the dank flagstones. `Why are you working out here? What's wrong with your office?'

`It's too hot in my office, sir,' said Rincewind. `You used to complain it was too cold!'

`Yes, Sir. In the winter it is. Ice freezes on the walls, sir.' `We give you plenty of coal, don't we?'

`Ample, Sir. One bucket per day per post held, as per tradition. That's the trouble, really. I can't get the porters to understand. They won't give me less coal, only no coal at all. So the only way to be sure of staying warm in the winter is to keep the fire going all summer, which means it's so hot in there that I can't work in - don't open the door, sir!'

Ridcully, who'd just opened the office door, slammed it again, and wiped his face with a handkerchief.

`Snug,' he said, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. Then he turned to the little globe on the desk behind him.

It was about a foot across, at least on the outside. Inside, it was infinite; most wizards have no problem with facts of this sort. It contained everything there was, for a given value of `contained everything there was', but in its default state it focused on one tiny part of everything there was, a small planet which was, currently, covered in ice.

Ponder Stibbons swivelled the omniscope that was attached to the base of the glass dome, and stared down at the little frozen world. Just debris at the equator,' he reported. `They never built the big skyhook thing that allowed them to leave [3] See The Science of Discworld (Ebury Press, 1999, revd 2000). . There must have been something we missed.'

`No, we sorted it all out,' said Ridcully. `Remember? All the people did get away before the planet froze.'

`Yes, Archchancellor,' said Stibbons. `And, then again, no.'

`If I ask you to explain that, would you tell me in words I can understand?' said Ridcully.

Ponder stared at the wall for a moment. His lips moved as he tried out sentences. `Yes,' he said at last. `We changed the history of the world, sending it towards a future where the people could escape before it froze. It appears that something has happened to change it back since then.'

`Again? Elves did it last time!' [4] See The Science of Discworld II (Ebury Press)

'I doubt if they've tried again, sir.'

`But we know the people left before the ice,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. He looked from face to face, and added uncertainly, `Don't we?'

`We thought we knew before,' said the Dean, gloomily.

`In a way, sir,' said Ponder. `But the Roundworld universe is somewhat ... soft and mutable. Even though we can see a future happen, the past can change so that from the point of view of Roundworlders it doesn't. It's like ... taking out the last page of a book and putting a new one in. You can still read the old page, but from the point of view of the characters, the ending has changed, or ... possibly not.'

Ridcully slapped him on the back. `Well done, Mr Stibbons! You didn't mention quantum even once!' he said.

`Nevertheless, I suspect it may be involved,' sighed Ponder.

THE SCENE: A RADIO CHAT-SHOW in the Bible Belt of the United States, a few years ago. The host is running a phone-in about evolution, a concept that is anathema to every God-fearing southern fundamentalist. The conversation runs something like this: HOST: So, Jerry, what do you think about evolution? Should we take any notice of Darwin's theories?

JERRY: That Darwin guy never got a Nobel Prize, did he? If he's so great, how come he don't get no Nobel?

HOST: I think you have a very good point there, Jerry.

Such a conversation did occur, and the host was not being ironic. But Jerry's point is not quite the knock-down argument he thought it was. Charles Robert Darwin died in 1882. The first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901.

Of course, well-meaning people are often ignorant about fine points of historical detail, and it is unfair to hold that against them. But it is perfectly fair to hold something else against them: the host and his guest didn't have their brains in gear. After all, why were they having that discussion? Because, as every God-fearing southern fundamentalist knows, virtually every scientist views Darwin as one of the all-time greats. It was this assertion, in fact, that Jerry was attempting to shoot down. Now, it should be pretty obvious that winners of Nobel prizes (for science) are selected by a process that relies heavily on advice from scientists. And those, we already know, are overwhelmingly of the opinion that Darwin was somewhere near the top of the scientific tree. So if Darwin didn't get a Nobel, it couldn't have been (as listeners were intended to infer) because the committee didn't think much of his work. There had to be another reason. As it happens, the main reason was that Darwin was dead.

As this story shows, evolution is still a hot issue in the Bible Belt, where it is sometimes known as 'evilution' and generally viewed as the work of the Devil. More sophisticated religious believers - especially European ones, among them the Pope - worked out long ago that evolution poses no threat to religion: it is simply how God gets things done, in this case, the manufacture of living creatures. But the Bible-Belters, in their unsophisticated fundamentalist manner, recognise a threat, and they're right. The sophisticated reconciliation of evolution with God is a wishy-washy compromise, a cop-out. Why? Because evolution knocks an enormous hole in what otherwise might be the best argument yet devised for convincing people of the existence of God, and that is the `argument from design' [5] So called because it starts from the phenomenon of design and deduces the existence of a cosmic designer. .