The afternoon sun stretched across the common room windows. Professor Quillibrace sat with his customary composure, one hand resting on a teacup. Miss Stray was making notes in a small book. Mr Blottisham had arranged several biscuits in a line upon the table and was examining them with unusual seriousness.
“Excellent,” said Blottisham. “I believe I have finally understood natural selection.”
Quillibrace looked mildly concerned.
“You have?”
“Yes. Entirely. People unnecessarily complicate it.”
Miss Stray looked up.
“In what sense?”
Blottisham gestured toward the biscuits.
“Nature chooses.”
Silence.
He pointed at one biscuit.
“This biscuit survives.”
Then another.
“This one perishes.”
Then a third.
“This one demonstrates admirable resilience under trying conditions.”
Quillibrace watched him.
“And what,” he asked gently, “is performing the choosing?”
Blottisham blinked.
“Nature.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Blottisham frowned.
Quillibrace continued.
“But what is Nature?”
Blottisham waved vaguely toward the window.
“Well... everything.”
“Everything choosing things?”
“Yes.”
Miss Stray tilted her head.
“That sounds administratively exhausting.”
Blottisham looked uncertain.
Quillibrace folded his hands.
“You see, Mr Blottisham, the difficulty begins with the word selection. It is grammatically suspicious.”
“Suspicious?”
“It behaves like a verb. Verbs have an unfortunate tendency to suggest agency.”
Blottisham nodded cautiously.
“So selection implies a selector.”
“Quite.”
“And there is a selector.”
“Not necessarily.”
Blottisham stared.
“But things are selected.”
Quillibrace took a sip of tea.
“Only if one insists on describing the process that way.”
Blottisham leaned back.
“Oh dear.”
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
“So the issue is that the grammar quietly introduces a hidden character into the story.”
“Exactly,” said Quillibrace. “One begins with organisms and environments and eventually discovers an invisible examiner sitting somewhere in the background assigning marks.”
Blottisham looked alarmed.
“You mean there isn't one?”
“No.”
“No cosmic adjudicator?”
“No.”
“No evolutionary admissions committee?”
“None that science has yet encountered.”
Blottisham looked disappointed.
“I had imagined Nature carrying a clipboard.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Yes. Many people do.”
Miss Stray glanced at the biscuits.
“But if nothing selects,” she said, “why do some forms persist and others disappear?”
Quillibrace pointed at the line of biscuits.
“Suppose these represent different organismal forms.”
Blottisham brightened.
“My biscuit ecology.”
“If you wish.”
Quillibrace adjusted one biscuit slightly.
“Now imagine each exists within a structured field of constraints.”
Blottisham frowned.
“A field?”
“Yes.”
“Like a meadow?”
“No.”
“A football field?”
“No.”
“A field field?”
“No.”
Miss Stray smiled.
“A space of conditions and relations that make some patterns stable and others unstable.”
“Precisely.”
Blottisham frowned harder.
“So Nature isn't selecting winners?”
“No.”
“Then what happens?”
Quillibrace considered.
“Some configurations persist.”
“And others?”
“They fail to stabilise.”
Blottisham looked dissatisfied.
“But who decides?”
“No one.”
“No one?”
“No one.”
Blottisham sat very still.
Miss Stray watched him with interest.
“So selection isn't an action,” she said slowly.
“No.”
“It is a pattern that becomes visible over time.”
“Exactly.”
Blottisham looked as though he had been informed that gravity had no ambitions.
“But people talk about selection pressures.”
“Yes,” said Quillibrace.
“Pressure sounds extremely active.”
“It does.”
“It sounds as though reality is leaning heavily upon things.”
“Unfortunately language often behaves this way.”
Blottisham shook his head.
“So nothing pushes?”
“Not in that sense.”
“Nothing chooses?”
“No.”
“Nothing evaluates?”
“No.”
Blottisham stared at the biscuits in silence.
After a long pause he spoke.
“I feel rather sorry for Nature.”
Quillibrace looked at him.
“Sorry?”
“Yes.”
“It seemed to have such an important job.”
Miss Stray smiled over her notebook.
Blottisham sighed.
“All this time I thought evolution was being managed.”
“And now?” asked Quillibrace.
Blottisham looked mournfully at the window.
“Now it appears the universe is simply allowing things to continue existing without supervision.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Yes.”
Another silence.
Blottisham looked down at the biscuits again.
Then he slowly moved one to the edge of the table.
“This one,” he said quietly, “failed to stabilise.”
Miss Stray wrote something in her notebook.
Quillibrace glanced at her.
“What are you writing?”
She looked up.
“Just a small observation.”
“What observation?”
She smiled.
“Mr Blottisham appears to have undergone differential persistence under constraint.”
Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
Blottisham frowned.
“…am I still here?”
“Provisionally,” said Quillibrace.
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