structure of Western thought, which I call die Cosmic Pyramid.
end. starting with the life forms we presently see, and showing how the This provides a new explanation of the origin, by gradual accumulation, of patterns in today's biosphere could be explained as having arisen by the all the Design in the universe. Ever since Darwin, skepticism has been aimed process of natural selection from the patterns in yesterday's biosphere, and so at his implicit claim that the various processes of natural selection, in spite of on, back into the very distant past. He started with facts that everyone their underlying mindlessness, are powerful enough to have done all the knows: all of today's living things are the offspring of parents, who are the design work that is manifest in the world.
offspring of grandparents, and so forth, so everything that is alive today is a branch of a genealogical family, which is itself a branch of a larger clan. He went on to argue that, if you go back far enough, you find that all the branches of all the families eventually spring from common ancestral limbs, so that there is a single Tree of Life, all the limbs, branches, and twigs united by descent with modification. The fact that it has the branching organization of a tree is crucial to the explanation of the sort of process involved, for such 62 UNIVERSAL ACID
Early Reactions 63
a tree could be created by an automatic, recursive process: first build an x, Did you ever hear of universal acid? This fantasy used to amuse me and then modify x's descendants, then modify those modifications, then modify some of my schoolboy friends—I have no idea whether we invented or the modifications of the modifications— If Life is a Tree, it could all have inherited it, along with Spanish fly and saltpeter, as a part of underground arisen from an inexorable, automatic rebuilding process in which designs youth culture. Universal acid is a liquid so corrosive that it will eat through would accumulate over time.
anything! The problem is: what do you keep it in? It dissolves glass bottles Working backwards, starting at or near "the end" of a process, and solving and stainless-steel canisters as readily as paper bags. What would happen if the next-to-last step before asking how it could have been produced, is a tried you somehow came upon or created a dollop of universal acid? Would the and true method of computer programmers, particularly when creating whole planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake?
programs that use recursion. Usually this is a matter of practical modesty: if After everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid, you don't want to bite off more than you can chew, the right bite to start with what would the world look like? Little did I realize that in a few years I is often the finishing bite, if you can find it. Darwin found it, and then very would encounter an idea—Darwin's idea—bearing an unmistakable likeness cautiously worked his way back, skirting around the many grand issues that to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and his investigations stirred up, musing about them in his private notebooks, but leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old land-postponing their publication indefinitely. (For instance, he deliberately marks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.
avoided discussing human evolution in Origin; see the discussion in R. J.
Darwin's idea had been born as an answer to questions in biology, but it Richards 1987, pp. 160ff.) But he could see where all this was leading, and, threatened to leak out, offering answers—welcome or not—to questions in in spite of his near-perfect silence on these troubling extrapolations, so could cosmology (going in one direction) and psychology (going in the other di-many of his readers. Some loved what they thought they saw, and others rection ). If redesign could be a
end. starting with the life forms we presently see, and showing how the This provides a new explanation of the origin, by gradual accumulation, of patterns in today's biosphere could be explained as having arisen by the all the Design in the universe. Ever since Darwin, skepticism has been aimed process of natural selection from the patterns in yesterday's biosphere, and so at his implicit claim that the various processes of natural selection, in spite of on, back into the very distant past. He started with facts that everyone their underlying mindlessness, are powerful enough to have done all the knows: all of today's living things are the offspring of parents, who are the design work that is manifest in the world.
offspring of grandparents, and so forth, so everything that is alive today is a branch of a genealogical family, which is itself a branch of a larger clan. He went on to argue that, if you go back far enough, you find that all the branches of all the families eventually spring from common ancestral limbs, so that there is a single Tree of Life, all the limbs, branches, and twigs united by descent with modification. The fact that it has the branching organization of a tree is crucial to the explanation of the sort of process involved, for such 62 UNIVERSAL ACID
Early Reactions 63
a tree could be created by an automatic, recursive process: first build an x, Did you ever hear of universal acid? This fantasy used to amuse me and then modify x's descendants, then modify those modifications, then modify some of my schoolboy friends—I have no idea whether we invented or the modifications of the modifications— If Life is a Tree, it could all have inherited it, along with Spanish fly and saltpeter, as a part of underground arisen from an inexorable, automatic rebuilding process in which designs youth culture. Universal acid is a liquid so corrosive that it will eat through would accumulate over time.
anything! The problem is: what do you keep it in? It dissolves glass bottles Working backwards, starting at or near "the end" of a process, and solving and stainless-steel canisters as readily as paper bags. What would happen if the next-to-last step before asking how it could have been produced, is a tried you somehow came upon or created a dollop of universal acid? Would the and true method of computer programmers, particularly when creating whole planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake?
programs that use recursion. Usually this is a matter of practical modesty: if After everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid, you don't want to bite off more than you can chew, the right bite to start with what would the world look like? Little did I realize that in a few years I is often the finishing bite, if you can find it. Darwin found it, and then very would encounter an idea—Darwin's idea—bearing an unmistakable likeness cautiously worked his way back, skirting around the many grand issues that to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and his investigations stirred up, musing about them in his private notebooks, but leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old land-postponing their publication indefinitely. (For instance, he deliberately marks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.
avoided discussing human evolution in Origin; see the discussion in R. J.
Darwin's idea had been born as an answer to questions in biology, but it Richards 1987, pp. 160ff.) But he could see where all this was leading, and, threatened to leak out, offering answers—welcome or not—to questions in in spite of his near-perfect silence on these troubling extrapolations, so could cosmology (going in one direction) and psychology (going in the other di-many of his readers. Some loved what they thought they saw, and others rection ). If redesign could be a
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