I Have Landed Read Free Page A

Fracastoro’s elegant Latin verse and Beringer’s foppish Latin pseudocomplexities eluded my imperfect knowledge of this previously universal scientific tongue).
    Moreover, because I refuse to treat these essays as lesser, derivative, or dumbed-down versions of technical or scholarly writing for professional audiences, but insist upon viewing them as no different in conceptual depth (however distinct in language) from other genres of original research, I have not hesitated to present, in this format, genuine discoveries, or at least distinctive interpretations, that would conventionally make their first appearance in a technical journal for professionals. I confess that I have often been frustrated by the disinclinations, and sometimes the downright refusals, of some (in myjudgment) overly parochial scholars who will not cite my essays (while they happily quote my technical articles) because the content did not see its first published light of day in a traditional, peer-reviewed publication for credentialed scholars. Yet I have frequently placed into these essays original findings that I regard as more important, or even more complex, than several items that I initially published in conventional scholarly journals. For example, I believe that I made a significant discovery of a previously unknown but pivotal annotation that Lamarck wrote into his personal copy of his first published work on evolution. But I presented this discovery in an essay within this series (essay 6 in my previous book
The Lying Stones of Marrakech)
, and some scholars will not cite this source in their technical writing.
    By following these beliefs and procedures, I can at least designate these essays as distinctive or original, rather than derivative or summarizing—however execrable or wrongheaded (or merely eminently forgettable) any individual entry may eventually rank in posterity’s judgment. In scholars’ jargon, I hope and trust that my colleagues will regard these essays as
primary rather than secondary sources
. I would defend this conceit by claiming originality on four criteria of descending confidence, from a first category of objective novelty to a fourth that detractors may view as little more than a confusion of dotty idiosyncrasy with meaningful or potentially enlightening distinctiveness.
    By my first criterion, some essays present original discoveries about important documents in the history of science—either in the location of uniquely annotated copies (as in Agassiz’s stunning marginalia densely penciled into his personal copy of the major book of his archrival Haeckel, essay 22), or in novel analysis of published data (as in my calculation of small differences in mean brain sizes among races, explicitly denied by the author of the same data, essay 27).
    In this category of pristine discovery, I can claim no major intellectual or theoretical significance for my own favorite among the true novelties of this book. But when I found the inscription of a great woman, begun as a dedication in a gift from a beautiful young fiancée to her future husband, Thomas Henry Huxley, in 1849, and then completed more than sixty years later, as a grandmother and elderly family matriarch, to Julian Huxley—the sheer human beauty in this statement of love across generations, this wonderfully evocative symbol of continuity (in dignity and decency) within a world of surrounding woe, struck me as so exquisitely beautiful, and so ethically and aesthetically “right,” that I still cannot gaze upon Henrietta Huxley’s humble page of handwriting without tears welling in my eyes (as, I confess, they flow even now just by writing the thought!). I am proud that I could find, and make public, this little precious gem, this pearl beyond price, of our human best.
    By the second criterion, I reach new interpretations, often for material previously unanalyzed at all (bypassed in total silence or relegated to an