The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's had acquired a peculiar atmosphere over recent weeks.
No one mentioned it directly.
But conversations had become more cautious.
Books were opened with greater suspicion.
Even the furniture itself seemed increasingly liable to conceal conceptual machinery.
Rain continued softly against the windows.
Professor Quillibrace sat by the fire reading.
Miss Elowen Stray was writing in the notebook which by now appeared less like a notebook and more like an ongoing archaeological record of conceptual collapse.
Mr Blottisham entered slowly.
Very slowly.
He sat down without speaking.
Quillibrace looked up.
"My goodness."
Miss Stray lowered her pencil.
Blottisham stared into the fire.
"I have been thinking."
Silence followed.
Quillibrace looked alarmed.
"I see."
Blottisham ignored him.
"I think there is another one."
Quillibrace glanced at Miss Stray.
Miss Stray glanced back.
Neither spoke.
Blottisham looked up.
"It has been there all along."
He leaned forward.
"Everything becomes clear if one moves downward."
Silence.
Quillibrace removed his spectacles.
"Oh dear."
Blottisham gestured carefully.
"To understand a machine, one examines its parts."
"To understand language, one examines words."
"To understand biology, one examines chemistry."
"To understand chemistry, one examines physics."
He spread his hands.
"One keeps moving toward simpler things."
"The deeper one goes, the more fundamental reality becomes."
He sat back.
"There."
Long silence settled over the room.
Rain moved quietly against the windows.
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"And why precisely do we do this?"
Blottisham blinked.
"What do you mean?"
"Why proceed downward?"
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"Because one eventually reaches the explanation."
Quillibrace waited.
Blottisham shifted slightly.
"...doesn't one?"
Miss Stray looked up from her notebook.
"The problem itself is familiar."
Blottisham looked at her.
"The world presents overwhelming complexity."
"Countless relations."
"Countless interactions."
"Without some organising principle explanation becomes rather difficult."
Blottisham nodded.
"Exactly."
"So reduction became a solution."
Quillibrace spoke quietly.
"Complex phenomena could be explained through simpler components."
"One could move downward toward foundations."
"Complexity became manageable."
Blottisham sat back with relief.
"There we are."
Quillibrace sighed.
Miss Stray looked sympathetically at the ceiling.
Blottisham closed his eyes briefly.
"No really — what now?"
"Nothing initially."
Quillibrace leaned forward.
"It solved a genuine problem."
"But?"
"There is almost always a but."
Quillibrace gestured gently.
"Where exactly does explanation end?"
Blottisham frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Take a sentence."
"Very well."
"One explains it through words."
"Yes."
"Words through sounds."
"Naturally."
"Sounds through physical processes."
"Yes."
"Physical processes through smaller structures."
"Mm."
"Smaller structures through still smaller structures."
Silence.
Blottisham stared.
"Oh."
Quillibrace nodded.
"The foundations appear strangely mobile."
Miss Stray resumed drawing circles in her notebook.
"There is another difficulty too."
Blottisham looked defeated already.
"Of course there is."
"A melody does not vanish into frequencies."
"A conversation does not vanish into sounds."
"Meaning does not vanish into neural activity."
"Society does not vanish into individuals."
Blottisham frowned.
"But the components are still there."
"Yes," said Miss Stray.
"But the organisation seems to disappear."
Silence settled around the room.
Rain continued softly.
Blottisham stared into the fire for a very long time.
Eventually he counted slowly on his fingers.
"Substance."
"Essence."
"Origin."
"Representation."
"Identity."
"Hierarchy."
"Reduction."
He looked up.
"Quillibrace?"
"Yes?"
Blottisham spoke very quietly.
"I think they know each other."
Silence.
Quillibrace looked thoughtful.
Miss Stray stopped writing.
Blottisham continued.
"I thought we had discovered separate ghosts."
"But perhaps they have been cooperating."
Quillibrace looked into the fire.
"Hm."
"The hidden substance carries identity."
"The identity possesses an essence."
"The essence explains continuity from an origin."
"The origin establishes foundations."
"The foundations produce hierarchy."
"The hierarchy supports reduction."
He paused.
"Oh dear God."
Miss Stray smiled slightly.
"Not a collection of ghosts."
Blottisham stared at her.
"No?"
She closed her notebook.
"An ecology."
Silence.
Rain moved gently against the windows.
Blottisham looked around the common room with growing horror.
Then he stood up.
"No."
Quillibrace looked at him.
"No?"
"No."
Blottisham pointed around the room.
"I absolutely refuse to discover that the ghosts themselves emerge through patterns of relation."
Long silence followed.
Then Quillibrace reopened his book.
"A perfectly understandable position," he said quietly.
He turned a page.
"Though I rather suspect the room reached that conclusion some time ago."
No comments:
Post a Comment