Eight Little Piggies Read Free Page A

Descent of Man (though I do not ignore this primary document), but by studying his very first publication, an article with Captain FitzRoy “On the Moral State of Tahiti” (Essay 18). As for the hottest topic of “modularity” in cognitive science, I never found a distinctive way in until I learned that an English dilettante named Daines Barrington had published an article in England’s leading scientific journal on Mozart’s musical abilities as a child of eight. (Barrington wrote when young Wolfgang represented a generic prodigy and had not yet become, so to speak, Mozart. Thus, he could be presented as a type, a general puzzle in why musical ability could be so hypertrophied in an otherwise ordinary boy). All this, in the propitious time of Mozart’s bicentennial year, led me to Darwin on mind, Tinbergen on the evolution of behavior and cognition in general, my own puzzling over Michelangelo’s stunning effect in using modularity to carve his statue of Moses, even, via Monty Python and back to Mr. Barrington, on the literary convention (and odd name) of litotes to mask wonderment—thus giving me a string to tie my beginning to a stylistically gentle end. Not bad.
    I often wonder what I am doing every month. I can’t be just a dilettante or poseur, or the streak wouldn’t be continuing with such undiminished commitment and ardor, such love of each little new thing learned. I guess I see myself in the guise of Papageno, the bird catcher of Mozart’s Magic Flute . He captures (but does not harm) the most beautiful objects of nature. He is capable of naive wonder, counting as originality in breaking through conventional prejudice—as when frightened by the Moor Monastatos, he stops and upbraids himself: How foolish; black birds exist, so why not black men? He wins, at the end, the greatest Darwinian prize of continuity, as he finally gets his Papagena and the promise of many little Papagenos and Papagenas to follow (I think of them as essays). But do not doubt his overwhelming modesty amidst all the showy confidence. I sense how rich and complex it is out there, and what a tiny, tiny part any of us have been able to understand. And I feel much like Papageno as he struggles to sing but can produce no words (though he hums a lovely melody) because his mouth is padlocked.
    Nonetheless, if I could have but one Mozartian wish—although it be as unrealistic as the original claim itself, and although this series will stop, deo volente , in January 2001—I would request the time to write as many monthly essays as the Don had women in Spain. Ma in Ispagna…

1 | The Scale of Extinction

1 | Unenchanted Evening
    TAHITI IS THE STEREOTYPE , virtually the synonym, of enchantment in our legends. Nurse Forbush from Little Rock might have been a charmer (especially when played by Mary Martin), but the South Sea locale made a strong contribution to “some enchanted evening.” (And Ezio Pinza, that greatest of operatic Don Giovannis, slumming on Broadway, didn’t hurt the scene either.)
    Some aspects of the legend need correction. Point Venus, for example, still the landing spot for many tourists, is not named for the beauty of Tahiti’s women, but for astronomy and Captain Cook, who set up his instruments at the site to measure the transit of the planet Venus across the disk of the sun in 1769. Charles Darwin himself was beguiled both by the name and the place when he arrived on the Beagle in November 1835:
    …We landed to enjoy all the delights of the first impressions produced by a new country, and that country the charming Tahiti. A crowd of men, women and children, was collected on the memorable point Venus, ready to receive us with laughing, merry faces.
    Darwin, however, broke ranks with male convention in expressing a lack of enthusiasm for Tahiti’s women: “I was much disappointed in the personal appearance of the women; they are far inferior in every respect to the men.” He objected most of all to the current