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The Lava Lizard's Tale
Richard Dawkins
This is the first of 3 tales to be posted. They were written immediately after The Ancestor's Tale was completed, and would have been included if Richard had visited the Galapagos Islands before the book was published.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AMmPauwXxic
Quicktime Small (426x240, 34.8 MB) | Quicktime Large* (720x480, 81.5 MB) | Audio Only mp3 (3.5 MB)
Filmed & Edited by Josh Timonen
* Quicktime Large version is anamorphic, so it may appear too skinny if played in the browser. It is recommended that you download this file first, and then play it in the QuickTime player
This article was written while Richard Dawkins was on an earlier trip to Galapagos, and the footage seen here was shot on a later trip. This tale was originally posted at The Guardian website.
TRANSCRIPT:
A guide at the Natural History Museum stated confidently that a particular dinosaur was 70,000,008 years old. When asked how he could be so precise he replied, "Well it was 70 million when I started this job, and that was eight years ago." The evident experience of Valentina Cruz, our wonderful Galapagos naturalist guide, suggests that I must add a similar margin to the estimate of 100 years that she gave us for the age of the black lava fields on the island of Santiago. The exact date of the great Santiago eruption is not recorded, but it definitely happened on one particular day in one particular year around 1900. I shall call it SV day (Santiago volcano day). I need to seem as precise as the museum guide, although the exact date doesn't matter. Perhaps it was January 19 1897, 100 plus eight years before my visit to the island.
SV day was one day in the late 19th century, a day on which, elsewhere in the world, somebody's grandfather was born at some particular hour. Somebody else died. A moustached young man in a straw boater met his true love for the first time and was never the same again. Like every day that has ever been, it was a unique day. Every second of it. It also was the date of the great Santiago volcano, the one that made the lava fields that I walked this January in the company of lava lizards, Tropidurus albemarlensis, although I knew it only when they moved and betrayed their camouflage.
Lava lizards are pretty much the only things that do move over these barren fields of black, clinker-ringing rock. And as they do so their splayed hands are feeling - though they do not know it - the fingerprints of past time. Fingerprints? Past time? Wait, that is the theme of the lava lizard's tale.
Santiago was one of the four Galapagos islands on which Charles Darwin landed in 1835, and it was the only one where he spent any time, camping for a week while Captain Fitzroy took the Beagle to fetch fresh supplies. Darwin called it James, for he and his shipmates used the English names of all the islands: the evocative Chatham, Hood, Albemarle, Indefatigable, Barrington, Charles and James. He and his small camping party had trouble finding a clear spot to pitch their tent, so thickly did the land iguanas carpet the ground. Today there are no land iguanas left on Santiago. Feral dogs, pigs and rats did for them, although there are still plenty of land iguanas on other islands of this iconic archipelago, while the closely related marine iguanas abound on all the major islands including Santiago.
The black lava fields of Santiago are an unforgettable - almost indescribable - spectacle. Black as a female marine iguana (of course the simile really should go the other way) the rock is called rope lava, and you can soon see why. It is drawn out and plaited in twisted ropes and pleats, folded and gathered like a black silk dress, coiled and whorled in giant fingerprints. Fingerprints, yes, and that brings me to the point of the lava lizard's tale. As the lizard scuttles over the black lava of Santiago it is treading the fingerprints of history, rolled out by the sequence of particular events that tran-spired, minute by minute, on one particular day late in Darwin's century, marking the minutes of that day, the day of the Santiago volcano.
There cannot be many other ways to see, laid out before you, a complete history, second by second, of one particular day, more than a century ago. Fossils do the same thing but over a much longer time scale. The molecules of a fossil are not the original molecules of the animal that died. Even fossil tracks, like those Mary Leakey found at Laetoli, don't really do it. It is true that Laetoli shows you the exact places where two individual Australopithecus afarensis (those diminutive hominids carrying chimpanzee brains around on human legs), perhaps a mated couple, placed their feet during a particular walk together. There is a sense in which these footprints are frozen history, but the rock that you see today is not as it was then. That couple walked in fresh volcanic ash which later, over thousands of years, solidified and compacted to make rock. The lava ropes and pleats of Santiago, those giants' fingerprints, are still composed of the very same molecules that were frozen into precisely those positions, only a century ago. And the time scale over which the distinct ropes and pleats were laid down is a time scale of seconds.
Tree rings do it on a time scale of years. Where the whorls of lava fingerprinting are laid down second by second, and fossils are laid down by the millions of years, each tree ring marks exactly one year. Thick rings or thin label good growth years or poor and, because every sequence of half a dozen years or so has its own characteristic pattern of good and poor years, the patterns can be recognised, again and again in different trees, as labels of particular clusters of years. Old trees and young trees show the same fingerprints so, by counting rings and daisy-chaining the patterns from increasingly ancient wooden relics, archeologists can compile a catalogue of fingerprints outspanning the longest-lived tree.
Something similar can be done with sediment patterns laid down on the sea bottom and revealed in cores of mud taken up in deep sampling tubes. And, over the longer time span of hundreds of millions of years, the named strata of the geological series are, in their own way, fingerprints of time. What is so remarkable about the lava fields of Santiago is that these fingerprints were set out on the timescale that we humans deal with every second of our lives, the time scale of musical notes, the time scale of an artist's brush, the time scale of everyday actions and the stream of human thought.
This is a real thought for a surreal landscape. And the Galapagos islands are replete with images that could have come straight from a surrealist's canvas. A tiny desert island off Santa Fe (Barrington to Darwin) looks fit for Man Friday except that instead of palm trees there are giant cactuses. As if the Arizona desert had been transplanted into an azure sea; no surrealist could have done it better. And what are sea lions doing in the Arizona desert, to say nothing of shocking pink flamingos, equatorial penguins, or flightless cor morants earnestly hanging their impotent, stubby wings out to dry? As for the large flounder that I saw when snorkelling off North Seymour Island, it was pure Salvador Dali. Changing colour to match the corals over which it slid like an oval carpet, I would certainly not have spotted it if Valentina had not gracefully dived to point it out to me. It was only later that my wife compared the flounder to the flowing, bending watch of a Dali painting. And wasn't that very painting, the one with the bent watches, called The Persistence of Memory ? Not a bad title for the lava fields of Santiago, scuttling ground of the Galapagos lava lizards.
Reality, if you go to the right place, and see it in the right way, can be stranger than a surrealist's imagination. No wonder Darwin drew his early inspiration from these enchanted islands.
Richard Dawkins's book The Ancestor's Tale, is a Chaucerian pilgrimage to the evolutionary past. The pilgrims are living creatures, and their tales are used to illustrate some general principles of evolution. This essay would have been included in the book if the author had written it after, instead of before his personal pilgrimage to the islands.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AMmPauwXxic
Quicktime Small (426x240, 34.8 MB) | Quicktime Large* (720x480, 81.5 MB) | Audio Only mp3 (3.5 MB)
Filmed & Edited by Josh Timonen
* Quicktime Large version is anamorphic, so it may appear too skinny if played in the browser. It is recommended that you download this file first, and then play it in the QuickTime player
This article was written while Richard Dawkins was on an earlier trip to Galapagos, and the footage seen here was shot on a later trip. This tale was originally posted at The Guardian website.
TRANSCRIPT:
A guide at the Natural History Museum stated confidently that a particular dinosaur was 70,000,008 years old. When asked how he could be so precise he replied, "Well it was 70 million when I started this job, and that was eight years ago." The evident experience of Valentina Cruz, our wonderful Galapagos naturalist guide, suggests that I must add a similar margin to the estimate of 100 years that she gave us for the age of the black lava fields on the island of Santiago. The exact date of the great Santiago eruption is not recorded, but it definitely happened on one particular day in one particular year around 1900. I shall call it SV day (Santiago volcano day). I need to seem as precise as the museum guide, although the exact date doesn't matter. Perhaps it was January 19 1897, 100 plus eight years before my visit to the island.
SV day was one day in the late 19th century, a day on which, elsewhere in the world, somebody's grandfather was born at some particular hour. Somebody else died. A moustached young man in a straw boater met his true love for the first time and was never the same again. Like every day that has ever been, it was a unique day. Every second of it. It also was the date of the great Santiago volcano, the one that made the lava fields that I walked this January in the company of lava lizards, Tropidurus albemarlensis, although I knew it only when they moved and betrayed their camouflage.
Lava lizards are pretty much the only things that do move over these barren fields of black, clinker-ringing rock. And as they do so their splayed hands are feeling - though they do not know it - the fingerprints of past time. Fingerprints? Past time? Wait, that is the theme of the lava lizard's tale.
Santiago was one of the four Galapagos islands on which Charles Darwin landed in 1835, and it was the only one where he spent any time, camping for a week while Captain Fitzroy took the Beagle to fetch fresh supplies. Darwin called it James, for he and his shipmates used the English names of all the islands: the evocative Chatham, Hood, Albemarle, Indefatigable, Barrington, Charles and James. He and his small camping party had trouble finding a clear spot to pitch their tent, so thickly did the land iguanas carpet the ground. Today there are no land iguanas left on Santiago. Feral dogs, pigs and rats did for them, although there are still plenty of land iguanas on other islands of this iconic archipelago, while the closely related marine iguanas abound on all the major islands including Santiago.
The black lava fields of Santiago are an unforgettable - almost indescribable - spectacle. Black as a female marine iguana (of course the simile really should go the other way) the rock is called rope lava, and you can soon see why. It is drawn out and plaited in twisted ropes and pleats, folded and gathered like a black silk dress, coiled and whorled in giant fingerprints. Fingerprints, yes, and that brings me to the point of the lava lizard's tale. As the lizard scuttles over the black lava of Santiago it is treading the fingerprints of history, rolled out by the sequence of particular events that tran-spired, minute by minute, on one particular day late in Darwin's century, marking the minutes of that day, the day of the Santiago volcano.
There cannot be many other ways to see, laid out before you, a complete history, second by second, of one particular day, more than a century ago. Fossils do the same thing but over a much longer time scale. The molecules of a fossil are not the original molecules of the animal that died. Even fossil tracks, like those Mary Leakey found at Laetoli, don't really do it. It is true that Laetoli shows you the exact places where two individual Australopithecus afarensis (those diminutive hominids carrying chimpanzee brains around on human legs), perhaps a mated couple, placed their feet during a particular walk together. There is a sense in which these footprints are frozen history, but the rock that you see today is not as it was then. That couple walked in fresh volcanic ash which later, over thousands of years, solidified and compacted to make rock. The lava ropes and pleats of Santiago, those giants' fingerprints, are still composed of the very same molecules that were frozen into precisely those positions, only a century ago. And the time scale over which the distinct ropes and pleats were laid down is a time scale of seconds.
Tree rings do it on a time scale of years. Where the whorls of lava fingerprinting are laid down second by second, and fossils are laid down by the millions of years, each tree ring marks exactly one year. Thick rings or thin label good growth years or poor and, because every sequence of half a dozen years or so has its own characteristic pattern of good and poor years, the patterns can be recognised, again and again in different trees, as labels of particular clusters of years. Old trees and young trees show the same fingerprints so, by counting rings and daisy-chaining the patterns from increasingly ancient wooden relics, archeologists can compile a catalogue of fingerprints outspanning the longest-lived tree.
Something similar can be done with sediment patterns laid down on the sea bottom and revealed in cores of mud taken up in deep sampling tubes. And, over the longer time span of hundreds of millions of years, the named strata of the geological series are, in their own way, fingerprints of time. What is so remarkable about the lava fields of Santiago is that these fingerprints were set out on the timescale that we humans deal with every second of our lives, the time scale of musical notes, the time scale of an artist's brush, the time scale of everyday actions and the stream of human thought.
This is a real thought for a surreal landscape. And the Galapagos islands are replete with images that could have come straight from a surrealist's canvas. A tiny desert island off Santa Fe (Barrington to Darwin) looks fit for Man Friday except that instead of palm trees there are giant cactuses. As if the Arizona desert had been transplanted into an azure sea; no surrealist could have done it better. And what are sea lions doing in the Arizona desert, to say nothing of shocking pink flamingos, equatorial penguins, or flightless cor morants earnestly hanging their impotent, stubby wings out to dry? As for the large flounder that I saw when snorkelling off North Seymour Island, it was pure Salvador Dali. Changing colour to match the corals over which it slid like an oval carpet, I would certainly not have spotted it if Valentina had not gracefully dived to point it out to me. It was only later that my wife compared the flounder to the flowing, bending watch of a Dali painting. And wasn't that very painting, the one with the bent watches, called The Persistence of Memory ? Not a bad title for the lava fields of Santiago, scuttling ground of the Galapagos lava lizards.
Reality, if you go to the right place, and see it in the right way, can be stranger than a surrealist's imagination. No wonder Darwin drew his early inspiration from these enchanted islands.
Richard Dawkins's book The Ancestor's Tale, is a Chaucerian pilgrimage to the evolutionary past. The pilgrims are living creatures, and their tales are used to illustrate some general principles of evolution. This essay would have been included in the book if the author had written it after, instead of before his personal pilgrimage to the islands.
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Posted: Thursday, February 21, 2008 | PermalinkComments 51 - 100 of 112 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers52. Comment #131321 by Palmer_Eldritch on February 22, 2008 at 8:47 am
@Steve ZaraInteresting that you mention Aubrey Manning. He was one of my lecturers as an undergraduate and I maintain to this day is one of the best lecturers/speakers I have ever had the pleasure to experience.
Of particular note is that he too was a student of the Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Niko Tinbergen like our host Professor Dawkins.
One more thing. I recently read The Ancestors Tale and was surprised at how much of the first year (and even a little of second year) of my undergraduate course it covered. Almost like a refresher course.
Other Comments by Palmer_Eldritch
53. Comment #131347 by SilentMike on February 22, 2008 at 9:47 am
I just can't wait. I want the next two tales.Other Comments by SilentMike
54. Comment #131365 by riemann on February 22, 2008 at 10:48 am
While waiting for the next two tales, here's another would-be tale by Richard in case some of you had missed it; The Komodo Dragon's Tale.http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,452,The-Komodo-Dragons-Tale,Richard-Dawkins
Other Comments by riemann
55. Comment #131467 by Teratornis on February 22, 2008 at 1:08 pm
In reply to comment #131093 by krisking:
Being religious is like being athletically conditioned. Both require constant training......... Being a lazy atheist is easy.
Interesting allusion. Physical inactivity (according the medical profession here) contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart problems etc etc.
I should have pointed out that being religious is also not like being athletically conditioned. Just visit any church in the U.S. and count the obese people there.
Every analogy fails somewhere. An analogy which fails nowhere is more properly an identity. Two things which are merely analogous will differ in some ways, even though usually the rhetorical ploy of posing analogies is to call attention to the similarities.
That's something to keep in mind next time you are having a debate, and your opponent presents a catchy analogy. You instantly know the analogy must fail somewhere, so zero in on that.
Being a lazy atheist is easy, but being a lazy rationalist is less easy. Some work is necessary to master critical thinking, and to develop awareness of when one's own thinking is drifting off to irrationality. It's not easy to memorize all the documented fallacies, nor to recognize them when they appear heavily camouflaged in ordinary discourse (it's easier to spot a cuttlefish than some of the sneakier memes).
The average person has all sorts of irrational ideas in his or her head, even apart from religion. We need look no further than the examples of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot which our theist friends are so fond of suggesting as examples of irrational atheism (with varying degrees of correctness).
Philosophers have been trying for centuries to formulate a purely rational basis for morality. It's a good thing people don't have to rely on reason to be (somewhat) moral, otherwise we'd be screwed.
People are moral, to the extent that they are, because we happened to evolve an urge to conform our behavior, to some extent, to the behavioral norms of our tribe. Trying to derive moral behavior via logic from first principles is so difficult that there wouldn't be any moral behavior if that's how people had to come by their morals. Instead, people mostly mindlessly absorb their morals from their culture, as evidenced by the enormous cultural variation in morality around the world. Not to mention the absurd logical inconsistencies in everyone's personal moral code.
For a stunning description of how moral norms have evolved among Europeans since the Middle Ages, see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence
It's amazing to think that normal behavior among my ancestors once involved activities such as going to watch cat-burnings, a gruesome entertainment in which a cat was burned alive in a cage so the audience could roar with laughter at its howls of pain. And this was after Europe was Christianized. I think that pretty much settles the issue of whether our morality is for the most part socially constructed.
Theists are correct when they wonder how a rational atheist might derive any sort of morality from a non-belief in any supernatural entity. The honest answer is we cannot. However, simply imagining a god doesn't do the trick either, as evidenced by the fact that no two people can agree exactly on what any particular god might be saying.
For example, once upon a time many if not most Bible-believing Christians concluded from the Bible's casual acceptance of slavery that God has no problems with the practice. Today most Christians have constructed an extra-Biblical belief that slavery is wrong, and we don't hear much any more about the well-developed scriptural justifications for slavery. Therefore we see that even if a person believes in the God of the Bible (whatever that means), that belief is insufficient to resolve the basic moral question of whether it is OK to own other people.
It seems to me that if a belief in God cannot tell us whether slavery is right or wrong, then the believer still has all his work ahead of him to come up with a moral code. After all, the question of whether we may own other people is a pretty basic moral idea. If believing in God doesn't settle that moral question, what does it settle?
Fortunately for humans, as I mentioned, we are able to absorb our culturally-constructed moral codes without having to think much about it.
Religion might give a little extra oomph to this process in some cases, but religion also motivates many people to commit extra evil, so it's hard to say whether religion provides a net moral benefit.
Other Comments by Teratornis
56. Comment #131607 by miaka on February 22, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Have to agree with Shuggy. Am I missing something? What was this documentary even about? It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Seriously, can anyone summarize the main point in this video--I'm genuinely interested to know what it was.Other Comments by miaka
57. Comment #131632 by Intelligenceresigned on February 22, 2008 at 7:54 pm
That video was absolute poetic mastery. Richard, your words give me inspiration. Thank you. Other Comments by Intelligenceresigned
58. Comment #131648 by njwong on February 22, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Comment #131607 by miaka on February 22, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Have to agree with Shuggy. Am I missing something? What was this documentary even about? It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Seriously, can anyone summarize the main point in this video--I'm genuinely interested to know what it was.
You were probably expecting a BBC documentary like video, as I was too when I first watched it (because of Josh excellent editing techniques). However, this expectation is too high (you must not compare this to a well financed BBC documentary). Instead, think of this as a sophisticated video-blog, and you will appreciate this better.
In most documentaries, you either take the approach of filming everything you can capture, and then cut a film out of the footage you have (eg. "Planet Earth"), or, you write a script before hand and then film to the script (eg. "Journey of Life"). Notice that in both cases, the film produced is always conceived from a VISUAL point of view
However, Josh and RD's video was originally an essay printed in TEXT media. The entire essay has now been transferred VERBATIM to a video, and moving images have been edited in to accompany the words. Thus, we should more rightly view it a better produced video-blog (eg. Pat Condell's videos) than a documentary per se.
However, I agree that the mental comparison to a BBC documentary is hard to shake, no thanks to Josh excellent video work! RD has done documentaries before, and he knows that to make a proper documentary from a book, you must always rewrite the script to present your points from a visual point of view. (That's what screen writers do - almost all films made from books do not follow their book source verbatim - save movies from Shakespeare's plays.) A documentary is not the intent of this particular video. Think of it more as poetry accompanied by pictures.
Other Comments by njwong
59. Comment #131666 by Logicel on February 23, 2008 at 1:24 am
26. Comment #131067 by kennykyles on February 21, 2008 at 9:34 pmMarvellous. The style and presentation harks back to an earlier time when content was king.
______
I agree. Josh did well with this vblog. I, for one, think this site needs more original content. With my Newsreader, I catch about 50% of the non-original articles which are posted here (so this site is still quite valuable in that regard). However, original content is what the 'eyeballs' want.
I enjoyed the opportunity to see some marvelous landscape and to hear once again Dawkins' superb handle on regarding the role of time in evolution. I particularly appreciated the simile used for the day-long lava flow--what an artist can accomplish with her brush, an activity with we can visualize easily. This easily understandable perspective is a bridge on which we can stand so we can begin to understand a time span that exceeds our own, the time span in which evolution happened.
Other Comments by Logicel
60. Comment #131682 by seals on February 23, 2008 at 2:23 am
The Galagpagos islands look to be an intriguing place, which I hope never becomes a tourist hotspot. I see this as a kind of travelogue enhanced with RD's insights. If it fell short of a bbc documentary in any way this escaped me. Captivating from so many different angles... what more could you want (except it could have been longer - more more more!) Other Comments by seals
61. Comment #131738 by lazarus on February 23, 2008 at 5:09 am
Great video - but socks with sandles! Even university professors can be more trendy than that. ;-) Other Comments by lazarus
62. Comment #131783 by Richard Morgan on February 23, 2008 at 9:48 am
Is this the first musical comment?Suite : For Evolution
N° 1 : Fingerprints - past time?
Text by Richard Dawkins;
Spoken by Richard Dawkins;
Original music : Richard MORGAN
Dedicated to Lava Lizards everywhere.
(Special thanks to Darwin for an original idea.)
http://www.esnips.com/doc/94b0ab1a-0c3c-4708-a60f-993b87db161f/N°1---Fingerprints----past-time
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
63. Comment #131805 by seals on February 23, 2008 at 11:05 am
Re: socks with sandals - maybe those lizards (or other creatures) bite! Other Comments by seals
64. Comment #131811 by Richard Morgan on February 23, 2008 at 11:18 am
http://www.esnips.com/doc/94b0ab1a-0c3c-4708-a60f-993b87db161f/N°1---Fingerprints----past-timehttp://www.esnips.com/doc/94b0ab1a-0c3c-4708-a60f-993b87db161f/N°1---Fingerprints----past-time
http://www.esnips.com/doc/94b0ab1a-0c3c-4708-a60f-993b87db161f/N°1---Fingerprints----past-time
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
65. Comment #131826 by Teratornis on February 23, 2008 at 11:51 am
In reply to comment #130957 by notsobad:
How can anybody exchange discovering this wonderful real world for religious fantasies?
Probably because it's easier for people to generate religious fantasies wherever they happen to be than to find themselves strolling around the Galápagos Islands with someone as knowledgeable and articulate as Prof. Dawkins to explain it all to them.
We like to call the religious folks on their habit of cherry-picking scriptures for the inspirational bits, while ignoring the bothersome bits about slavery, plucking our eyes that cause us to sin, the verses that forbid the lending of money at interest, etc. So let's be honest and admit that the vast bulk of science is incredibly boring and tedious to most people.
And also, those of us reading this site are, on average, not genetically normal. It takes a bit of IQ to find nature documentaries as interesting as, say, the celebrity gossip shows (for the women viewers) or the sports shows (for the men viewers). The average dullards, who overwhelmingly outnumber us at the moment, have trouble relating to our odd fascinations.
It's easy to forget this because of a phenomenon called "cognitive stratification." Most people tend to surround themselves with persons of similar IQ (and political viewpoint, etc.). It can be difficult after a while to remember that other types of people exist.
Moore's law should fix the first problem eventually, by giving us intelligent computers that know everything humans have discovered about everything, have the ability to recognize where we are and what is around us, and can explain it as well as the best human experts and educators. And not just verbally, but with intelligent heads-up displays (perhaps miniaturized to fit into contact lenses) which point to where we should look and highlight items of interest. There are fascinating science stories to tell about the most prosaic places, but nobody to tell most of them yet.
Genetic engineering should fix the second problem by making everyone as least as smart as the smartest humans who have lived.
Other Comments by Teratornis
66. Comment #131828 by Richard Morgan on February 23, 2008 at 11:53 am
Please, somebody, anybody, give me a reaction to my little "sound collage". I'm not a troll.
http://www.esnips.com/doc/94b0ab1a-0c3c-4708-a60f-993b87db161f/N°1---Fingerprints----past-time
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
67. Comment #131834 by Teratornis on February 23, 2008 at 12:09 pm
In reply to comment #131266 by Dune010:
Lagomorph [sic]: Actually, you are right, and I was wrong.
I wish more conversations would lead to something like this. Too many people are more concerned with winning than with accuracy.
You are wishing, then, that more people would learn to think critically.
A critical thinker approaches every exchange as much as a potential opportunity to learn as well to teach, depending on whose arguments and data turn out to be better.
A successful debate is one in which the participants are collectively more correct than before they started, regardless of which participants discovered they had been wrong about something. Someone whose primary value is truth, rather than triumph, will be just as glad to receive correction as to give it.
Of course our sociobiological wiring has left us all instinctively terrified of losing face. This may have had survival value in the Pleistocene, when mistakes counted for a lot more, but today it's mostly just an impediment to progress.
Back in the Pleistocene, human knowledge was tiny. An adult could have been expected to have a good handle on the collective knowledge of the tribe. Even the smallest mistake could easily have been fatal, given the lack of food reserves, medicine, hospitals, etc.
Today life is much easier (at least while the fossil fuels hold out), and there are lots of safety nets. We have virtual environments where mistakes hardly have to count at all. There is also massive division of labor and an explosion of knowledge, which together guarantee that we are all mostly ignorant about most things.
And yet we still feel as self-conscious as the Pleistocene tribesman, as if every time we err in front of an audience it's a threat to our survival.
Other Comments by Teratornis
68. Comment #131835 by Radesq on February 23, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Richard M. I'm not sure what to say about it...the music is pleasant enough...the first clip seems to me to be smoldering with sexual innuendo.
Other Comments by Radesq
69. Comment #131837 by phasmagigas on February 23, 2008 at 12:19 pm
hahah, that opening sentence is a classic, re the 70my 8.
It made me realise just what creationists are missing: a sense of humor.
creationists often have that odd blank robot like look to their eyes, i wonder if this is linked to their noticable lack of imagination and acceptence of nonsense and actual lies, could be genetic.
Other Comments by phasmagigas
70. Comment #131843 by phasmagigas on February 23, 2008 at 12:35 pm
i enjoyed that.
its like a little visual 'outtake', a snippet of thought, an idea rattled around but that tells a lot more than its short time would suggest. its like a nugget of science and art brought together.
i think its main theme is to make the watcher (reader) get some 'feel' for the notion of how different timescales/events are recorded in physical structures, its that appreciation of time that eludes us and in many stops (them!) from accepting many of sciences explanations.
Other Comments by phasmagigas
71. Comment #131845 by Steve Zara on February 23, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Lagomorph [sic]: Actually, you are right, and I was wrong.
Bother! Now I am going to have to apologise for a mis-spelled name.
A Lagomorph is a member of the rabbit and hare family. It is a nice fluffy name. Lagomort sounds like something out of Harry Potter.
I wish more conversations would lead to something like this. Too many people are more concerned with winning than with accuracy.
We should be concerned with winning. We should push ideas as much as we can. But, we should not just accept when we lose, but take pleasure in finding out something new. That is what is so exciting about the scientific approach, and why I am grateful to lagomort[sic].
Other Comments by Steve Zara
72. Comment #131879 by Rational_G on February 23, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Great video - I have no problems with the production values - the video fits fine with RD's great writing, Other Comments by Rational_G
73. Comment #131971 by robotaholic on February 23, 2008 at 5:42 pm
that was a great video- I really enjoyed it - thank you Richard Dawkins Other Comments by robotaholic
74. Comment #132024 by Richard Dawkins on February 24, 2008 at 12:10 am
Richard Morgan wrote:Please, somebody, anybody, give me a reaction to my little "sound collage".
I'm not a troll.
http://www.esnips.com/doc/94b0ab1a-0c3c-4708-a60f-993b87db161f/N°1---Fingerprints----past-time
I'd like to listen to this, but all I get is an error message:
Flip4Mac WMV cannot play this movie
Any suggestions? Have others had trouble listening to it?
Richard
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75. Comment #132029 by Richard Morgan on February 24, 2008 at 12:54 am
I'd like to listen to this, but all I get is an error message.The link to the site esnips.com should open a page that plays an mp3.
Perhaps this will work for you :
http://www.esnips.com/web/SuiteforEvolution
If this doesn't work, I can send the mp3 to a personal e-mail address.
Radesq:
the music is pleasant enough...the first clip seems to me to be smouldering with sexual innuendo.
"smouldering with sexual innuendo"? You seem to be listening to something a lot more exciting than my mp3!!
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76. Comment #132042 by Richard Dawkins on February 24, 2008 at 2:23 am
The link to the site esnips.com should open a page that plays an mp3.
Perhaps this will work for you :
http://www.esnips.com/web/SuiteforEvolution
This one, like the other one, does indeed open a page. But what do I THEN have to click in order to play the mp3? It certainly doesn't spontaneously start playing, and there is no obvious clue as to what has to be clicked on that page.
Richard
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77. Comment #132044 by Murky on February 24, 2008 at 2:27 am
Richard, I found the audio file by clicking on "Listen" just to the right of FILE..Hope it helps and it is rather pleasing to listen to..Cheers
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78. Comment #132045 by Paula Kirby on February 24, 2008 at 2:29 am
This one, like the other one, does indeed open a page. But what do I THEN have to click in order to play the mp3? It certainly doesn't spontaneously start playing, and there is no obvious clue as to what has to be clicked on that page.
The section below the bit with Richard M's photograph is called "Files". If you click on "N°1 Fingerprints - past time.mp3", that will take you through to another page which shows the normal YouTube-type controls for playing/pausing the file. (First image on the page below the advert at the top.) Hope that works for you.
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79. Comment #132047 by Richard Dawkins on February 24, 2008 at 2:55 am
Richard, I found the audio file by clicking on "Listen" just to the right of FILE..
Hope it helps and it is rather pleasing to listen to..Cheers
This worked for me, thank you.
But, Richard M, did you actually COMPOSE this music especially for the lava lizards? If so, I am very impressed.
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80. Comment #132049 by Richard Morgan on February 24, 2008 at 3:14 am
Richard D, I believe it was you, yourself, who suggested somewhere that, just as religion inspired composers and artists in the past, the wonders of reality revealed through (scientific) observation could inspire artists and musicians today.But, Richard M, did you actually COMPOSE this music especially for the lava lizards?
Yes I actually composed this, not for the lava lizards (who, judging from the way they scuttle, prefer Reggae), but as a celebration of your message as expressed in The Lava Lizards Tale.
Depending on people's reaction to "Fingerprints - past time", I shall be working on more compositions. Clearly, where your words and/or voice are used, this will be strictly for sharing with the RD.Net family.
Yes, I have to admit - your words are inspiring.
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81. Comment #132050 by Steve Zara on February 24, 2008 at 3:15 am
Richard M - that is wonderful. My reaction is - I would like to hear more.(I am tempted to ask what sort of music you might compose to provide a background to a typical Christopher Hitchens speech, but perhaps that would be going too far)
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82. Comment #132051 by seals on February 24, 2008 at 3:23 am
All is revealed, thanks! Nice ambience there. Other Comments by seals
83. Comment #132059 by Richard Morgan on February 24, 2008 at 4:32 am
Steve Zara - stop reading my mind! A couple of weeks ago I did a musical "sketch" of a debate in which Hitchens would be a participant.http://www.esnips.com/web/Hitchindebate
Just for a little light relief.
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84. Comment #132060 by Richard Dawkins on February 24, 2008 at 4:34 am
Richard Morgan wrote:So yes I actually composed this, not for the lava lizards (who, judging from the way they scuttle, prefer Reggae), but as a celebration of your message as expressed in The Lava Lizards Tale.
Thank you. I am touched and delighted.
Richard
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85. Comment #132062 by Paula Kirby on February 24, 2008 at 4:40 am
http://www.esnips.com/web/HitchindebateWhat a talented chap you are, Richard Morgan! How about having a go at a debate with Alister McGrath next? (Should be fairly straightforward - not too many notes required.)
Other Comments by Paula Kirby
86. Comment #132064 by Steve Zara on February 24, 2008 at 4:43 am
Richard M - That "Hitchens" piece really works! Just the right amount of persistence, repetition and bombast implied.(Should be fairly straightforward - not too many notes required.)
I don't think it will be that easy. You would have to constantly refer to the notes, somehow implying that you might actually play something at some point, but never quite getting there. It could end up sounding very John Cage.
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87. Comment #132067 by Geoff on February 24, 2008 at 4:46 am
Did somebody mention lagomorphs?http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7253518.stm
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88. Comment #132070 by MPhil on February 24, 2008 at 4:53 am
Richard Morgan, very nice stuff. What software do you use to compose? Sibelius, Cakewalk or something else?
I always end up composing something that nobody could actually play - too many threads, too complex, polymetric, atonal... technically interesting but not very aesthetically pleasing. I have always wondered how people like Zappa, King Crimson or even Karlheinz Stockhausen managed to be aesthetically pleasing (in some way).
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89. Comment #132071 by Titus on February 24, 2008 at 4:59 am
That was fantastic Richard. Perhaps Josh could get you to do the same for Richard's future filmets.How about having a go at a debate with Alister McGrath next? (Should be fairly straightforward - not too many notes required.)
True Paula, just a riff (repeated ad nauseam) over "I think what I would like to say at this point is..."
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90. Comment #132072 by Richard Morgan on February 24, 2008 at 4:59 am
Richard D - in one of your books you mentioned taking your baby daughter out one night to see a comet. You explained that she was probably too young to know what was going on, but since she would live to see it again (and you would not) you wanted her to be able to say that she'd seen it twice.I was very touched by this idea, and so composed this :
"You'll see it again, but..."
(Dedicated to Richard Dawkins and his daughter.)
http://www.esnips.com/web/WeSawTheComet
(It's one of my "straight from my heart" compositions.)
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
91. Comment #132131 by Jiten on February 24, 2008 at 9:17 am
Richard M I'm impressed! Other Comments by Jiten
92. Comment #132132 by Richard Dawkins on February 24, 2008 at 9:17 am
Richard Morgan wrote:Richard D - in one of your books you mentioned taking your baby daughter out one night to see a comet. You explained that she was probably too young to know what was going on, but since she would live to see it again (and you would not) you wanted her to be able to say that she'd seen it twice.
I was very touched by this idea, and so composed this :
"You'll see it again, but..."
(Dedicated to Richard Dawkins and his daughter.)
http://www.esnips.com/web/WeSawTheComet
(It's one of my "straight from my heart" compositions.)
It's lovely. Thank you very much.
Richard
By the way, if anyone is curious, the story concerned is in Climbing Mount Improbable, on page 131 of the UK edition and page 144 of the US edition.
Other Comments by Richard Dawkins
93. Comment #132141 by Rational Thinking on February 24, 2008 at 9:46 am
Comets are wonderful things. I have a photograph in my living room of the Halle Bopp comet, taken over Stonehenge (not by me, I hasten to add) - at 9.37pm. My father died recently, and with the family get together my brother noticed the picture and reminded me that I had actually seen it too - we were on a ferry coming back from France that night, and I recalled we went out on the deck and watched for it.
If you have a moment, Professor Dawkins, I wrote a little thank you letter to you recently on the Forum - it's in Faith and Reason, under Religious or Spiritual? My thanks again.
Other Comments by Rational Thinking
94. Comment #132142 by Radesq on February 24, 2008 at 9:58 am
Richard M. don't let my dirty mind deter you...I think what you are doing is great. It was just that the Prof. was describing eruptions and plaited and twisted ropes and folds of silk dresses frozen in their positions, tree rings doing it, daisy chaining, lots of things being laid down, talk of the sea's bottom, the hanging out of impotent stubby wings, etc.
I was just wondering if the Professor had written these words about the time of the Clinton scandal here in the USA. No it's probably just my imagination - you're doing a good job, keep it up!
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95. Comment #132158 by Richard Morgan on February 24, 2008 at 11:20 am
The Quote-miner's Tale : We All Tell Stories.
Inspired by and dedicated to:
Paula KIRBY
Voices : Alister McGrath & Richard Dawkins
Unoriginal original music : Richard (Cantankerous) MORGAN
http://www.esnips.com/web/A-McG
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96. Comment #132175 by kaiserkriss on February 24, 2008 at 12:04 pm
RM.. I never though you had that kind of talent stored within you, since you always come across as a "Cantankerous" but kind hearted, and reasonable individual, if prodded enough.. ;-)
Good for you, Keep it up. Any Other hidden artistic talents floating around the Board?jcw
Other Comments by kaiserkriss
97. Comment #132503 by Stratos on February 24, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I highly recommend you all read The Ancestor's Tale. I have about 50 pages remaining in this great tome. This video posted here is of the same style exhibited in that great book. Other Comments by Stratos
98. Comment #132628 by gborland on February 25, 2008 at 4:06 am
Continuing the musical theme, if anyone's interested, a musician/composer by the name of Henning Pauly wrote an entire album inspired by Richard Dawkins' work. The album is called Unweaving The Rainbow, by Frameshift (Pauly's name for the project, with guest musicians, including James LaBrie of Dream Theater on vocals).It's in the progressive rock vein, and it's a beautiful album. Here's its amazon.co.uk listing.
Other Comments by gborland
99. Comment #132952 by Richard Morgan on February 25, 2008 at 12:50 pm
More music'n'stuff:"Broken Rings and Gulls and Things."
From : The Salamander's Tale."
by Richard DAWKINS
Voice: Lalla WARD;
Music : Richard MORGAN
http://www.mediafire.com/?gg5fsxwbmxy
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
100. Comment #132960 by Richard Morgan on February 25, 2008 at 1:02 pm
gborlandThank you so very much for the link to Frameshift.
A change in the musical Zeitgeist is under way.
Other Comments by Richard Morgan
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51. Comment #131271 by bluebird on February 22, 2008 at 6:45 am
We are in the midst of a frigid/icy winter... so 'tis lovely to be an arm-chair tourist and "visit" the Galapagos, esp. with Professor Dawkin's sublime narration.
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