picking up cues

one thing leads to another

I was reading the only just published Richard Dawkins [1] because I wanted something different to read [2] because each book on the display had a bright red sticker ‘Half Price’ [3] because Dawkins might give me more insight to use when I’m incommoded by creationists on my way to the bus stop.

I’d not realised how much some of his remarks would make me laugh out loud. There’s Darwin, in 1838, reading Malthus On Population ‘for amusement’. And from Dawkins : “When you mate a male with a female, you expect to get a son or daughter, not a hermaphrodite” ; and a plangent reminder “For reasons I won’t go into, it is of the essence of sexual reproduction that you shouldn’t fertilize yourself.”

Finally, a pointer to an essay by Alfred Russel Wallace (whom I rather care for) : ‘On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type’. I stopped short. This was relevant to a problem which had been haunting me for the past couple of weeks. How come there are so many varieties of Wicca when it’s been going for so little time? I looked up the original Wallace article. It was in a book printed in 1870. The electronic catalogue showed me, in less than a minute, there was a copy in the stack of our library. I engaged the attention of our newly arrived Graduate Assistant. No more than three minutes later, the volume was handed to me. Though the essay was first published in 1858, it had a full explanation applicable to the current Wiccan situation : as each new coven or individual passes on experience to the next generation, the material passed on is slightly different from the material the coven or individual received from its parent. Brilliant.

Bonus. The Wallace collection of essays includes ‘The Philosophy of Birds’ Nests’. Now there’s a thought to distract attention from the news of the day.

francis cameron

© oxford, 16 september 2009