Unfortunately, it does reduce the scope for asking interesting questions. Most of them have already been answered. Certainty rules. Mustrum Ridcully is not the kind of person who would tolerate an Uncertainty Principle, after all.
Back in Roundworld, there is perhaps one point worth making.
Just suppose there is nothing else. Arguments about intelligent life on other worlds have always been highly biased by the desires of those doing the arguing that there should be intelligent life on other worlds, and we three are among them. But the argument is a house of cards with no card on the bottom. We know of life on one world. Everything else is guesswork and naked statistics. Life may be so common through the universe that even the atmosphere of Jupiter is alive with Jovian gasbags and every cometary nucleus is home to colonies of microscopic blobules. Or there may be nothing alive at all, anywhere else but here.
Perhaps intelligent life arose before humanity, and perhaps it will again when humanity’s span has become a rather complex layer in the strata. We can’t tell. Time does not simply, as the hymn says, bear all its sons away – it can easily see the disappearance of the entire continent on which they stood.
In short, in a universe a billion Grandfathers long and a trillion Grandfathers wide, there may be just a few hundred thousand years on one planet where a species worried about something other than sex, survival, and the next meal.
This is our Discworld. In its little cup of spacetime, humanity has invented gods,3 philosophies, ethical systems, politics, an unfeasible number of ice-cream flavours and even more esoteric things like ‘natural justice’ and ‘boredom’. Should it matter to us if tigers are made extinct and the last orangutan dies in a zoo? After all, blind forces have repeatedly erased species that were probably more beautiful and worthy.
But we feel it does matter, because humans invented the concept of things ‘mattering’. We feel we ought to be brighter than a mile of incandescent rock and a continent-sized glacier. Humans seem to have created, independently, in many places and at various times, a Make-a-Real-Human-Being Kit, which begins with prohibitions about killing and theft and incest and is now groping towards our responsibilities to a natural world in which, despite its ability to hurt us mightily, we nevertheless have a godlike power.4
We advance arguments about saving rainforests because ‘there may be undiscovered cancer cures in there’, but this is because extelligence wants to save rainforests and the cancer-cure argument might convince the bean-counters and the fearful. It might have a real basis in fact, too, but the real reason is that we feel that a world with tigers and orangutans and rainforests and even small unobtrusive snails in it is a more healthy and interesting world for humans (and, of course, the tigers and orangutans and snails) and that a world without them would be dangerous territory. In other words, trusting the instincts that up until now have generally seen us through, we think that Tigers Are Nice (or, at least, Tigers Are Nice In Moderation And At A Safe Distance).
It’s a circular argument, but in our little round human world we’ve managed to live on circular arguments for millennia. And who else is going to argue with us?
1 Explained to the hilt in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe.
2 This is probably another lie. Alien microbes are unlikely to find us edible. So are alien tigers, although they might do us quite a lot of damage in finding out. But certainly an alien world will have a whole host of nasty surprises, if we are not very careful. We can’t tell you what they’ll be. They’ll be a surprise.
3 We apologize to any real gods.
4 Unfortunately, huge malicious destructive force is a god-like power.
FORTY-NINE
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
‘RINCEWIND WALKED VERY gingerly towards his office, the globe of the project held carefully in his hands.
He would have expected an entire universe to be heavier, but this one seemed on the light side. It was probably all that space.
The Archchancellor had explained at length to him that although he would be called the Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, this was only because that was cheaper than repainting the title on the door. He was not entitled to wages, or to teach, or express any opinions on anything, or order anyone around, or wear any special robes, or publish anything. But he could turn up for meals, provided he ate quietly.
To Rincewind, it sounded like heaven.
The Bursar appeared right in front of him. One moment there was an empty corridor, the next moment there was a bemused wizard.
They collided. The sphere went up in the air, turning gently.
Rincewind rebounded from the Bursar, looked up at the ball curving through the air, flung himself forward and down with rib-scraping force and caught it a few inches from the stone floor.
‘Rincewind! Don’t tell him who he is!’
Rincewind rolled over, clasping the little universe, and looked back along the passage. Ridcully and the other wizards were advancing slowly and cautiously. Ponder Stibbons was waving a spoonful of jelly invitingly.
Rincewind glanced up the Bursar, who was looking perplexed.
‘But he’s the Bursar, isn’t he?’ he said.
The Bursar smiled, looked puzzled for a moment, and vanished with a ‘pop’.
‘Seven seconds!’ shouted Ponder, dropping the spoon and pulling out a notebook. ‘That’ll put him in … yes, the laundry room!’
The wizards hurried off, except for the Senior Wrangler, who was rolling a cigarette.
‘What happened to the Bursar?’ said Rincewind, getting to his feet.
‘Oh, young Stibbons reckons he’s caught Uncertainty,’ said the Senior Wrangler, licking the paper. ‘As soon as his body remembers what it’s called it forgets where it’s supposed to be.’ He stuck the bent and wretched cylinder in his mouth and fumbled for his matches. ‘Just another day at Unseen University, really.’
He wandered off, coughing.
Rincewind carried the sphere though the maze of dank passages and into his office, where he cleared a space for it on a shelf.
The ice age had cleared up. He wondered what was happening down there, what gastropod or mammal or lizard was even now winding up its elastic ready to propel itself towards the crown of the world. Soon, without a doubt, some creature would suddenly develop an unnecessarily large brain and be forced to do things with it. And it’d look around and probably declare how marvellous it was that the universe had been built to bring forward the inevitable development of creature-kind.
Boy, was it in for a shock …
‘Okay, you can come out,’ he said. ‘They’ve lost interest.’
The Librarian was hiding behind a chair. The orangutan took university discipline seriously, even though he was capable of clapping someone on both ears and forcing his brain down his nose.
‘They’re busy trying to catch the Bursar right now,’ said Rincewind. ‘Anyway, I’m sure it couldn’t have been the apes. No offence, but they didn’t look the right sort to me.’
‘Ook!’
‘It was probably something out of the sea somewhere. I’m sure we didn’t see most of what was going on.’
Rincewind huffed on the surface of the globe, and polished it with his sleeve. ‘What’s recursion?’ he said.
The Librarian gave a very expansive shrug.
‘It looks okay to me,’ said Rincewind. ‘I wondered if it was some sort of disease …’
He slapped the Librarian on the back, raising a cloud of dust. ‘Come on, let’s go and help them hunt …’
The door shut. Their footsteps died away.
The world spun in its little universe, about a foot across on the outside, infinitely large on the inside.
Behind it, stars floated away in the blackness. Here and there they congregated in great swirling masses, spinning about some unimaginable drain. Sometimes these drifted together, passing through one another like ghosts and parting in a trailing veil of stars.
Young stars grew in lumi
nous cradles. Dead stars rolled in the glowing shrouds of their death.
Infinity unfolded. Walls of glittering swept past, revealing fresh fields of stars …
… where, sailing through the endless night, made of hot gas and dust but recognizable nevertheless, was a turtle.
As above, so below.
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
Abbott, Dallas 308
abduction by aliens 326–9
Aborigines 322
abortion, drawing the line in 59–60
absences 182–6
acceleration, rapid 367
acid rain 307
adaptability of life 300
aerial boat 367
Africa 146–8, 230, 323, 334, 366
Agassiz, Louis 226
Ahlquist, Jon 335
air
as ancient element 71
as Earth’s atmosphere 156–60, 184
as mixture of gases 72–3
Alaska 312
alchemy 72, 76
Alexander the Great 367
Alexandria 88–9
algae 195, 198, 231
algorithms 349
ALH84001 meteorite 132
alien life 126–7, 129, 132
on Europa 133–5
on other planets 373
aliens, abduction by 326–9
allosaur 285
Alroy, John 312
Alvarez, Luis 305–6
Alvarez, Walter 305–6
Amazon river 161
amber, insects trapped in 310
America(s) 139, 147–8, 312, 321, 366–7
American Indian tribes 161, 312
amino acids 217
Amirante Basin 253
ammonia 118, 123, 157, 162
ammonites 286, 305, 309
amoebas 44, 134, 198
Amor 257
Anasazi Indians 312
Anaximenes 71
Anderson, John 93
Andes 158
angular momentum 119, 122, 174
animals 102, 158, 209–13, 229, 316, 322
minds of 350–1
ankylosaur 288
Antarctic 146, 159, 321, 323
Ant Country 106, 110, 339, 349
anteaters 322
anthropic principle 260–1
anthropology 347
anti-Black Hole 95–6
antigravity 42, 94–6
anus, invention of 231
apatosaur 288, 303
Apatosaurus (orig.Brontosaurus) 303*
apes 323–38, 340
humans as ‘aquatic’ 336–8
Apollo (type of asteroid) 257
Apollo missions 172, 174, 366–7
Apollo-11 172
Apollo-13 172
‘aquatic apes’, humans as 336–8
Archaeopteryx 291
Archer, Mike 321
architecture 160
of the brain 347
archosaur 288
Arctic 159, 366
argon 157
armadillos 322
Armstrong, Neil 172
Around the Moon (Verne) 367
arthropods 198, 200
artificial intelligence 348–9
Artsutanov, Y.N. 370
asteroids 39, 117, 132, 257, 259, 301, 306, 364
astrophysics 80, 83
Atlantic Ocean 147
Asia 148, 307, 320
Aten 257
atmosphere 132, 156–9, 162–4, 171–2, 229, 365
of Moon 171–2
atomic bomb 22
atomic clocks 92
atomic number 77, 81–2
atomic physics 77
atomic reactors 80
atomic weight 74, 76, 78
atoms 26, 44, 74–8, 81–2
Democritus’ definition 74
diversity of 74
as quantum wave functions 108
solar system as model for 76
and quantum theory 77
splitting 76
unstable 81
aurora australis 145
aurora borealis 145
Australia 38, 198, 222, 230, 308, 316, 320–1
Australopithecus 294
autonomous agent 62
autopoeisis 196
axion 94–5
axis, Earth’s 176–8
tilt of 179, 228
Ayliffe, Linda 322
B
Babylonians 35, 90, 335
baby universes 25, 63
Backus, George 370
bacteria 132–5, 158, 164–5, 195–8, 202, 231, 284
theory of Europan 134–5
Bailes, Matthew 127–8
balloons 367
hot air 143–4
balls 115, 121, 295
Bangladesh 159
Banks, Iain 355
Barbour, Julian 55
barium 23
basalt 142
baseline (in telescope array) 131
Basilosaurus 323
bats 321
Bay of Fundy 176
Beagle, HMS 210
Beasley, Charlie 320
becoming 196, 317
and beginning 52–3, 61
beetles, God’s fondness for 300–1
belemnites 309
Bell, Jocelyn 125–7
Bell, Thomas 211
Benford, Gregory 40
Benford, James 368
beryllium 22, 79
atomic weight of 74
Best, Joel 326
Bible 35, 71
creation according to 211
Big Bang 26, 56–8, 63, 78–9, 80*, 101–2
Big Crunch 57
Big Freeze 230
biological warfare 365
biology 36–9, 44*, 164
Biosphere 2 project 160–1
Birch, Frances 141
birds 38, 57, 160, 206, 237, 241, 243, 295, 321, 367
and cats 212–3
and dinosaurs 302, 310
and lizards 207
origin of 291
Black Holes 62–3, 78, 96
Blackmore, Susan 328
blood 316, 335
ancient seas in our 164–5
bloodimindium (life turns up everywhere it can’t) 245, 264, 266
blue-green algae 195
blue whale 316
Bohr, Neils 24
boiling points 82, 162–3
bolas principle in spacecraft 369
bonobo (pygmy) chimp 334, 336, 338, 340
books 9, 11, 132, 161,185, 197*, 203–4, 340, 348
and development of society 353–4
boron, atomic weight of 74
Boyle, Robert 72, 74, 76
Bradner, Hugh 370
brain
apes’ acquiring big 334
cells 336
evolution of 334, 336, 348
human 336–341
sensory systems of 222
structures and development of 349–50
and sex 341
Brazil 161, 210
breeding 71, 209, 212, 351
bridge-playing and probability
theory 270–2
Brief History of Time, A (Hawking) 11, 23†
Britain 24, 159
bromine 75
brontosaur 283, 285, 288, 303
Brontosaurus (now Apatosaurus) 303*
Brown, Robert 129
Brown, William 368
brown dwarf 129
BSE (mad cow disease) 217
Bullard, Edward 147
Burgess Shale 240–2
Butler, Paul 129
C
Cairns-Smith, Graham 197
calcium 73, 165
calcium phosphate 200
Calder Hall 32
Callisto 133
Caloris Basin (crater on Mercury) 307
Cambrian era 199, 200, 231, 242
Cambrian Explosion 199, 200, 231, 242
Camelot 379
Canada 253, 320
cancer 268, 286
cure for 381
Cancri (55 Cancri star) 129
Cantiani, Maria-Giulia 179
Cape Canaveral space facility 367
carbon 73, 75, 79, 82, 157, 159–61, 165, 197, 259–60, 369
atomic weight of 74
isotopes 230
nanotubes 39, 371
carbon dioxide 73, 157–62, 164–5, 216, 229, 231, 284, 307, 365
Carboniferous period 284–5
carbon monoxide 160
cars 42, 159,161, 229
catastrophes 238, 246, 300, 379, 380
cats 13, 108–10, 212–3, 316, 324, 328, 345
and birds 212–3
cattle 229
Caudipteryx 291
causality 41, 54, 61, 103, 107
cells 164–5, 195–6, 200, 215, 316
brain 21, 336, 339
nerve 107, 338, 339, 349
centipedes 200
Central America 148, 306, 320
centrifugal force 119–20, 131, 141, 144, 176, 367
chain reaction, nuclear 22, 24–5
chance 211, 267, 270, 272–3
role of in evolution 28, 242
Chantcourtois, Alexandre-Emile Béguyrer de 75
chaos 255, 266
in solar system 124
phase in Langton’s Ant system 104
system 124
Theory 12, 124
charge
electrical 76, 144
moving 76–7
charge-coupled device 130
Charon 117, 171, 257
chelicerates 241
chelonium 73, 82, 152, 374
chemistry 23, 71, 73–4, 76–8, 122, 134, 196, 201–2, 215
Chicxulub crater, Yucatan, S. Mexico 306–8
children, and dinosaurs 303
see also ‘lies-to-children’
Chile 148
chimpanzee 238, 334–6
chlorine 72, 75, 78
atomic weight of 78
chlorophyll 158, 195
Christ, Jesus 335
Christie-Blick, Nicholas 230
Christy, Jim 171
chromium isotopes 306
chromosomes 60, 219
circuits, evolution by crossbreeding 219–21
circumference of Earth 89
Clarke, Arthur C. 5, 39, 40, 370
Clarke’s Law 41
clay 197, 209, 306
climate 146, 159,178, 226–30, 242, 322–3, 365