The Story of B (Ishmael 2) - Page 47

I said, “Animism is flanked by the Law of Life on one side and by science on the other. All three face the community of life.”

The border

“Now I want to make sure we don’t lose track of what we set out to do here, Jared. We’re investigating a border between almost-humans on one side and truly-humans on the other. We’re doing this because it’s my notion that we came to humanity as religious beings.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s extend our bricolage to include a little mental landscaping of the area around us. Take a stick and draw a circle around us at a distance of a couple paces.”

I did as she asked and sat down again.

“That circle represents the border we’re investigating, about three million years in the past, when Australopithecus became Homo. Is that clear?”

I said it was.

“I’m sure you understand that this line is imaginary. There was never a day when you would’ve been able to point to one generation of parents and say, ‘These are Australopithecines,’ then point to their children and say, ‘These are humans.’”

“I understand.”

“We can’t know how wide the line itself is. It might be two hundred years wide or a thousand years wide or ten thousand years wide. All we know is that on our side of the line there are creatures we feel confident about calling Homo and on the far side of the line there are creatures we don’t feel confident about calling Homo.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t know how much you know about all this, so I’ll play it safe and point out that the line doesn’t correspond to tool use. I mean, you don’t have users of tools on this side of the line and nonusers on the far side. You have tool-users on both sides of the line. We can be virtually certain of this, since even chimpanzees are well known tool-users, and Homos immediate predecessors were far beyond chimpanzees.”

I told her I knew all this but didn’t mind her “playing it safe.”

The Law of Life: the hologram

B asked me to describe the state of our work of bricolage. I picked it up and studied it again before beginning. “This fossil shell is the community of life on this planet. The religion you call animism is bound up with this community. Something called the Law of Life is written in the community of life and this too is bound up with animism. Perhaps it’s the work of animism to read the Law of Life that is written in the community of life.”

“That’s an excellent guess, Jared. Go on.”

“Animism perceives itself as allied with science, because both seek truth in the universe itself.”

“Good. Now we’re ready to spend some time on the Law of Life. The Law of Life is like a hologram. Do you know anything about holography?”

“A bit. I was a photography buff in high school, and holography is basically lensless photography. In ordinary photography, a photographic plate is exposed to light reflected from an object, and an image appears on the plate because a lens intervenes. In holography, a photographic plate is exposed to light reflected from an object, but no image appears on the plate because no lens intervenes. What’s recorded on the plate are patterns of light waves received from every part of the photographed object. This is the hologram. And when the hologram is placed in a beam of light, a three-dimensional image of the photographed object appears in midair where the original object stood. And because every part of it is imprinted with light waves from the whole object, any fragment of the hologram can be used to regenerate the whole image.”

“This is how the Law of Life is similar to a hologram, Jared: Every fragment of it is imprinted with the whole law.”

“The Law of Life is what governs life?”

“No, the Law of Life isn’t what governs life, it’s what fosters life, and anything that fosters life belongs to the law.”

I told her an example would help.

“Here’s the Law of Life for newly hatched ducklings: Latch on to the first thing you see that moves, and follow it no matter what. Since the first thing newly hatched ducklings see is ordinarily their mother, they usually latch on to their mother, but they’ll latch on to anything that moves. Since their best hope for survival is latching on to their mother, no matter what, you can see why this is the law that fosters life for ducklings.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“Here’s a generalization that can be made about the Law of Life: Those who follow it tend to become better represented in the gene pool of their species than those who don’t follow it.”

“So not all individuals follow the law?”

“The duckling that for one reason or another doesn’t receive or respond to the genetic latching-on-to-mom signal is weeded out. It doesn’t survive long enough to reproduce.”

“I see.”

Tags: Daniel Quinn Ishmael Classics
Source: readsnovelonline.net
readsnovelonline.net Copyright 2016 - 2024