The Science of Discworld II - The Globe tsod-2

by Terry Pratchett

  The philosophical worldview, exemplified by Antigonus, is that the nature of the world can be deduced by pure thought, on the basis of a few deep, general principles. Observation and experiment are secondary to verbal reasoning and logic.

  The scientific worldview is that what people want has very little to do with what actually happens, and that it is unnecessary to invoke gods at all. Thought is useful, but empirical observations are the main test of any hypothesis. The role of science is to help us find out how the universe works. Why it works, or what manner of Being ultimately controls it, if any, is not a question that science is interested in. It is not a question to which anyone can give a testable answer.

  Oddly enough, this hands-off approach to the universe has given us far more control over it than magic, religion or philosophy have done. On Roundworld, magic doesn't work, so it offers no control at all. Some people believe that prayer can influence their god, and that in this way human beings can have some influence over the world in which they live, like a courtier at a king's ear. Other people have no such beliefs, and consider the role of prayer to be largely psychological. It can have an effect on people, but not on the universe itself. And philosophy has a tendency to follow rather than lead.

  Science is a form of narrativium. In fact, all four approaches to the universe -magic, religion, philosophy and science -involve the construction of stories about the world. Oddly enough, these different kinds of story often have many parallels. There is a distinct resemblance between many religious creation myths and the cosmologists' 'Big Bang' theory of the origin of the universe. And the monotheistic idea that there is only one God, who created everything and runs everything, is suspiciously close to the modern physicists' idea that there should be a single Theory of Everything, a single fundamental physical principle that unites both relativity and quantum mechanics into a satisfying and elegant mathematical structure.

  The act of telling stories about the universe may well have been more important to the early development of humanity, and for the initial growth of science, than the actual content of the stories themselves. Accurate content was a later criterion. When we start telling stories about the universe, the possibility arises of comparing those stories with the universe itself, and refining how well the stories fit what we actually see. And that is already very close to the scientific method.

  Humanity seems to have started from a rather Discworldly view, in which the world was inhabited by unicorns and werewolves and gods and monsters, and the stories were used not so much to explain how the world worked, but to form a crucial part of the cultural Make-a-Human kit. Unicorns, werewolves, elves, fairies, angels, and other supernatural were not real. But that didn't actually matter very much: there is no problem in using unreal things to programme human minds[66]. Think of all those talking animals.

  The models employed by science are very similar in many respects. They, too, do not correspond exactly to reality. Think of the old model of an atom as a kind of miniature solar system, in which tiny hard particles called electrons whirl around a central nucleus consisting of other kinds of tiny hard particles: protons and neutrons. The atom is not really like that. But many scientists still use this picture today as the basis for their investigations. Whether this makes sense depends upon what problem they are working on, and when it doesn't make sense, they use something more sophisticated, like the description of an atom as a probable cloud of 'orbitals' which represent not electrons, but places where electrons could be. That model is more sophisticated, and it fits reality more closely than a mini solar system, but it still isn't 'true'.

  Science's models are not true, and that's exactly what makes them useful. They tell simple stories that our minds can grasp. They are lies-to-children, simplified teaching stories, and none the worse for that. The progress of science consists of telling ever more convincing lies to ever more sophisticated children.

  Whether our worldview is magical, religious, philosophical or scientific, we try to alter the universe so that we can convince ourselves that we're in charge of it. If our worldview is magical, we believe that the universe responds to what we want it to do. So control is just a matter of finding the right way to instruct the universe about what our wishes are: the right spell.

  If our worldview is religious, we know that the gods are really in charge, but we hold out the hope that we can influence their decisions and still get what we want (or influence ourselves to accept whatever happens ...). If our worldview is philosophical, we seldom tinker with the universe ourselves, but we hope to influence how others tinker. And if our worldview is scientific, we start with the idea that controlling the universe is not the main objective. The main objective is to understand the universe.

  The search for understanding leads us to construct stories that map out limited parts of the future.

  It turns out that this approach works best if the map does not foretell the future like a clairvoyant, predicting that certain things will happen on certain days or in certain years. Instead, it should predict that if we do certain things, and set up a particular experiment in particular circumstances, then certain things should happen. Then we can do an experiment, and check the reasoning. Paradoxically, we learn most when the experiment fails.

  This process of questioning the conventional wisdom, and modifying it whenever it seems not to work, can't go on indefinitely. Or can it? And if it stops, when does it stop?

  Scientists are used to constant change, but most changes are small: they refine our understanding without really challenging anything. We take a brick out of the wall of the scientific edifice, polish it a bit, and put it back. But every so often, it looks as if the edifice is actually finished.

  Worthwhile new questions don't seem to exist, and all attempts to shoot down the accepted theory have failed. Then that area of science becomes established (though still not 'true'), and nobody wastes their time trying to change it any more. There are always other sexier and more exciting areas to work on.

  Which is much like putting a big plug in a volcano. Eventually, as the pressure builds up, it will give way. And when it does, there will be a very big explosion. Ash rains down a hundred miles away, half the mountain slides into the sea, everything is altered ...

  But this happens only after a long period of apparent stability, and only after a huge fight to preserve the conventional ways of thinking. What we then see is a paradigm shift, a huge change in thought patterns; examples include Darwin's theory of evolution and Einstein's theory of relativity.

  Changes in scientific understanding force changes in our culture. Science affects how we think about the world, and it leads to new technologies that change how we live (and, when misunderstood, deliberately or otherwise, some nasty social theories, too).

  Today we expect big changes during our lifetimes. If children are asked to forecast the future, they'll probably come up with science-fictional scenarios of some kind -flying cars, holidays on Mars, better and smaller technology. They are probably wrong, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that today's children do not say: 'Change? Oh, everything will probably be pretty much the same. I’ll be doing just the same things that my Mum and Dad do now, and their Mum and Dad did before them.' Whereas even fifty years ago, one grandfather, that was generally the prevailing attitude. Ten or eleven grandfathers ago, a big change for most people meant using a different sort of plough.

  And yet ... Underneath these changes, people are still people. The basic human wants and needs are much as they were a hundred grandfathers ago, even if we ever do take holidays on Mars (all that beach ... ). The realisation of those needs may be different -a hamburger instead of a rabbit brought down with an arrow you made yourself - but we still want food. And companionship and sex and love and security and lots of other familiar things.

  The biggest significant change, one that really does alter what it is like to be human, may well be modern communication and transportation.

  The old geographical barri
ers that kept separate cultures separate have become almost irrelevant.

  Cultures are merging and reforming into a global multiculture. It's hard to predict what it will look like, because this is an emergent process and it hasn't finished emerging yet. It may be something quite different from the giant US shopping mall that is generally envisaged. That's what makes today's world so fascinating - and so dangerous.

  Ultimately, the idea that we are controlling our universe is an illusion. All we know is a relatively small number of tricks, plus one great generic trick for generating more small tricks.

  That generic trick is the scientific method. It pays off.

  We have also the trick of telling stories that work. By this stage in our evolution, we are spending most of our lives in them. 'Real life' -that is, the real life for most of us, with its MOT

  tests and paper wealth and social systems -is a fantasy that we all buy into, and it works precisely because we all buy into it.

  Poor old Phocian tried hard, but found that the old stories weren't true when he hadn't quite got as far as constructing a new one. He performed a reality check, and found that there wasn't one at least, not one he'd like to believe was real. He suddenly saw a universe with no map. We've got quite good at mapping, since then.

  23. PARAGON OF ANIMALS

  The wizards went back to Dee's House in sombre mood, and spent the rest of the week sitting around and getting on one another's nerves. In ways they couldn't quite articulate, they'd been upset by the story.

  'Science is dangerous,' said Ridcully at last. 'We'll leave it alone.'

  'I think it's like with wizards,' said the Dean, relieved to be having a conversation again. 'You need to have more than one of them, otherwise they get funny ideas.'

  'True, old friend,' said Ridcully, probably for the first time in his life. 'So ... science is not for us.

  We'll rely on common sense to see us through.'

  'That's right,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Who cares about trotting horses anyway? If they fall over they've only got themselves to blame.'

  'As a basis for our discussion,' said Ridcully, 'let us agree on what we have discovered so far, shall we?'

  'Yes. It's that whatever we do, the elves always win,' said the Dean. 'Er ... I know this may sound stupid ...' Rincewind began. 'Yes. It probably will,' said the Dean. You haven't been doing very much since we got back, have you?'

  'Well, not really,' said Rincewind. 'Just walking around, you know. Looking at things.'

  'Exactly! You haven't read a single book, am I correct? What good is walking around?'

  'Well, you get exercise,' said Rincewind. 'And you notice things. Yesterday the Librarian and I went to the theatre.

  They'd got the cheapest ticket, but the Librarian paid for two bags of nuts.

  They'd found, once they had settled into this period, that there was no point in trying to disguise the Librarian too heavily. With a jerkin, a big floppy hood and a false beard he looked, on the whole, an improvement on most of the people in the cheap seats, the cheap seats in this case being so cheap they consisted, in fact, of standing up. The cheap feets, in fact.

  The play had been called The Hunchback King, by Arthur J. Nightingale. It hadn't been very good. In fact, Rincewind had never seen a worse-written play. The Librarian had amused himself throughout by surreptitiously bouncing nuts off the king's fake hump. But people had watched it in rapt fascination, especially the scene where the king was addressing his nobles and uttered the memorable line: 'Now is the December of our discontent -I want whichever bastard is doing that to stop right now!'

  A bad play but a good audience, Rincewind mused after they had been thrown out. Oh, the play was a vast improvement on anything the Shell Midden Folk could have dreamed up, which would have to be called 'If We'd Invented Paint We Could Watch It Dry', but the lines sounded wrong and the whole thing was laboured and had no flow. Nevertheless, the faces of the watchers had been locked on the stage. On a thought, Rincewind had put a hand over one eye and, concentrating fearfully, surveyed the theatre. The one available eye watered considerably but had revealed, up in the expensive seats, several elves. They liked plays, too. Obviously. They wanted people to be imaginative. They'd given people so much imagination that it was constantly hungry. It would even consume the plays of Mr Nightingale.

  Imagination created monsters. It made you afraid of the dark, but not of the dark's real dangers. It peopled the night with terrors of its own.

  So, therefore ... Rincewind had an idea.

  '] think we should stop trying to influence the philosophers and scholars,' he said. 'People with minds like that believe all sort of things all the time. You can't stop them. And science is just too weird. I keep thinking of that poor man—'

  'Yes, yes, yes, we've been through all this,' said Ridcully wearily. 'Get to the point, Rincewind.

  What have you got to say that's new?' 'We could try teaching people art,' said Rincewind. 'Art?'

  said the Dean. 'Art's for slackers! That'd make things worse!' 'Painting and sculpture and theatre,'

  Rincewind went on. 'I don't think we should try to stop what the elves began. I think we ought to encourage it as much as possible. Help the people here to get really good at imagining things.

  They're not quite there yet.'

  'But that's just what the elves want, man!' snapped Ridcully. 'Yes!' said Rincewind, almost drunk with the novelty of having an idea that didn't include running away. 'Let's help the elves! Let's help them to destroy themselves.'

  The wizards sat in silence. Then Ridcully said: 'What are you talking about?'

  'At the theatre I saw lots of people who wanted to believe that the world is different from the reality they see around them,' said Rincewind. 'We could—' He sought a way into Ridcully's famously hard-to-open mind. 'Well, you know the Bursar?' he said.

  'A gentlemen of whose existence I am aware on a daily basis,' said Ridcully gravely. 'And I'm only glad that this time we've left him with his aunt.'

  'And you remember how we cured his insanity?' 'We didn't cure it,' said Ridcully. 'We just doctored his medicine so that he permanently hallucinates that he is sane.'

  'Exactly! You use the disease as the cure, sir! We made him more insane, so now he's sane again.

  Mostly. Apart from the bouts of weightlessness, and, er, that business with the—'

  'Yes, yes, all right,' said Ridcully. 'But I'm still waiting for the point of this.'

  'Are you talking about fighting like those monks up near the Hub?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Skinny little chaps who can throw big men through the air?'

  'Something like that, sir,' said Rincewind.

  Ridcully prodded Ponder Stibbons.

  'Did I miss a bit of conversation there?' he said.

  'I think Rincewind means that if we take the elves' work even further it'll somehow end up defeating them,' said Ponder.

  'Could that work?'

  'Archchancellor, I can't think of anything better,' said Ponder. 'Belief doesn't have the same power on this world as it does on ours, but it is still pretty strong. Even so, the elves are here.

  They are a fixture.'

  'But we know they ... sort of feed on people,' said Rincewind. 'We want them to go away. Um ...

  and I've got a plan.'

  'You have a plan,' said Ridcully, in a hollow voice. 'Does anyone else have a plan? Anyone?

  Anyone? Someone?'

  There was no reply.

  'The play I saw was awful,' said Rincewind. 'These people might be a lot more creative than the Shell Midden People, but they've still got a long way to go. My plan ... well, I want us to move this world into the path of history that contains someone called William Shakespeare. And absolutely does not contain Arthur J. Nightingale.'

  'Who's Shakespeare?' said Ponder.

  'The man,' said Rincewind, 'who wrote this.' He pushed a battered manuscript across the table.

  'Read it out from where I've marked it,
will you?'

  Ponder adjusted his spectacles, and cleared his throat.

  'What a piece of work is, er, this is awful handwriting ... '

  'Let me,' said Ridcully, taking the pages. 'You don't have the voice for this sort of thing, Stibbons.' He glared at the paper, and then: 'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason ... how infinite in faculty ... in form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals ...'

  He stopped.

  And this man lives here?' he said.

  'Potentially,' said Rincewind.

  'This man stood knee deep in muck in a city with heads on spikes and wrote this?'

  Rincewind beamed. 'Yes! In his world, he is probably the most influential playwright in the history of the species! Despite requiring a lot of tactful editing by most directors, because he had his bad days just like everyone else!'

  'By "his world" you mean—?'

  'Alternate worlds,' muttered Ponder, who was sulking. He'd once played the part of Third Goblin in a school play and felt that he had rather a good speaking voice.

  'You mean he should be here but ain't?' Ridcully demanded.

  T think he should be here but can't be,' said Rincewind. 'Look, these aren't the Shell Midden people, it's true, but artistically they're pretty low down the scale. Their theatre is awful, they haven't got any decent artists, they can't carve a decent statue - this world isn't what it should be.'

  'And?' said Ponder, still smarting.

  Rincewind signalled to the Librarian, who ambled around the table handing out small, green, cloth-bound books.

  'This is another play he will write ... is ... writing ... wrote ... will have written,' he said. 'I think you'll agree that it could be very important ...'