Science of Discworld III Read Free

the omniscope that was attached to the base of the glass dome, and stared down at the little frozen world. ‘Just debris at the equator,’ he reported. ‘They never built the big skyhook thing that allowed them to leave. 2 There must have been something we missed.’
    ‘No, we sorted it all out,’ said Ridcully. ‘Remember? All the people did get away before the planet froze.’
    ‘Yes, Archchancellor,’ said Stibbons. ‘And, then again, no.’
    ‘If I ask you to explain that, would you tell me in words I can understand?’ said Ridcully.
    Ponder stared at the wall for a moment. His lips moved as he tried out sentences. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘We changed the history of the world, sending it towards a future where the people could escape before it froze. It appears that something has happened to change it back since then.’
    ‘Again? Elves did it last time!’ 3
    ‘I doubt if they’ve tried again, sir.’
    ‘But we know the people left before the ice,’ said the Lecturer inRecent Runes. He looked from face to face, and added uncertainly, ‘Don’t we?’
    ‘We thought we knew before,’ said the Dean, gloomily.
    ‘In a way, sir,’ said Ponder. ‘But the Roundworld universe is somewhat … soft and mutable. Even though we can see a future happen, the past can change so that from the point of view of Roundworlders it doesn’t. It’s like … taking out the last page of a book and putting a new one in. You can still read the old page, but from the point of view of the characters, the ending has changed, or … possibly not.’
    Ridcully slapped him on the back. ‘Well done, Mr Stibbons! You didn’t mention quantum even once!’ he said.
    ‘Nevertheless, I suspect it may be involved,’ sighed Ponder.
    1 The N’tuitiv tribe of Howondaland created the post of Health and Safety Officer even before the post of Witch Doctor, and certainly before taming fire or inventing the spear. They hunt by waiting for animals to drop dead, and eat them raw.
    2 See The Science of Discworld (Ebury Press, 1999, revd 2000).
    3 See The Science of Discworld II (Ebury Press, 2002).

TWO
PALEY’S WATCH
    T HE SCENE: A RADIO CHAT-SHOW in the Bible Belt of the United States, a few years ago. The host is running a phone-in about evolution, a concept that is anathema to every God-fearing southern fundamentalist. The conversation runs something like this:

    Such a conversation did occur, and the host was not being ironic. But Jerry’s point is not quite the knock-down argument he thought it was. Charles Robert Darwin died in 1882. The first Nobel Prize was awarded in 1901.
    Of course, well-meaning people are often ignorant about fine points of historical detail, and it is unfair to hold that against them. But it is perfectly fair to hold something else against them: the host and his guest didn’t have their brains in gear. After all, why were they having that discussion? Because, as every God-fearing southern fundamentalist knows, virtually every scientist views Darwin as oneof the all-time greats. It was this assertion, in fact, that Jerry was attempting to shoot down. Now, it should be pretty obvious that winners of Nobel prizes (for science) are selected by a process that relies heavily on advice from scientists. And those, we already know, are overwhelmingly of the opinion that Darwin was somewhere near the top of the scientific tree. So if Darwin didn’t get a Nobel, it couldn’t have been (as listeners were intended to infer) because the committee didn’t think much of his work. There had to be another reason. As it happens, the main reason was that Darwin was dead.
    As this story shows, evolution is still a hot issue in the Bible Belt, where it is sometimes known as ‘evilution’ and generally viewed as the work of the Devil. More sophisticated religious believers – especially European ones, among them the Pope – worked out long ago that evolution poses no threat to religion: it is simply how God gets things