The Senior Common Room was unusually quiet.
Mr Blottisham had been reading the latest issue of a popular science magazine.
He looked up with evident satisfaction.
"They've finally discovered it."
Professor Quillibrace glanced over his spectacles.
"Discovered what?"
"The field."
"The field?"
"Yes."
"I see."
"It says here that the field permeates the entire universe."
Quillibrace nodded politely.
"Does it indeed?"
Miss Elowen Stray laid down her notebook.
"What did it say before that?"
Blottisham blinked.
"I'm sorry?"
"Before it permeated the universe."
"I don't understand."
"How did the idea first appear?"
Blottisham looked at the article.
"I suppose... as part of a theory."
"A theory?"
"Yes."
"And before that?"
"I imagine someone proposed it."
Quillibrace smiled.
"A promising beginning."
He rose and wandered towards the blackboard.
Suppose, he said, writing carefully,
Let us introduce a field...
"There."
Blottisham nodded.
"A mathematical proposal."
"Quite."
Quillibrace rubbed out some of the words.
Now the sentence read,
The field interacts...
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"That seems harmless."
"Perhaps."
Quillibrace erased another word.
The sentence now read simply,
The field exists.
He put the chalk down.
"What has changed?"
"The wording."
"Only the wording?"
Miss Stray answered quietly.
"The status."
Quillibrace inclined his head.
"The mathematics is identical."
"Yes."
"The evidence is unchanged."
"Yes."
"But the grammar..."
"...has quietly crossed a boundary."
Blottisham frowned.
"But surely if the theory succeeds..."
"...yes?"
"...the field becomes real."
Quillibrace smiled.
"Has anything happened to the evidence between the first sentence and the last?"
Blottisham considered.
"No."
"Then what has happened?"
"I..."
Miss Stray looked thoughtfully at the blackboard.
"The language has become more confident."
Quillibrace resumed his seat.
"I sometimes think language possesses its own momentum."
"In what sense?"
"It dislikes qualifications."
Blottisham laughed.
"So do newspaper editors."
"Quite."
"It would be exhausting," said Miss Stray, "to say every time: a mathematical structure whose behaviour corresponds remarkably well with observation."
"It would."
"So we shorten it."
"Naturally."
"And eventually..."
"...yes?"
"...we forget it was ever shortened."
Blottisham folded the magazine.
"So you're saying scientists exaggerate?"
"No."
"They simplify?"
"Often."
"They become careless?"
Quillibrace shook his head.
"I think language becomes comfortable."
Silence settled over the room.
The grandfather clock ticked steadily.
Miss Stray spoke first.
"Perhaps words become like well-worn paths."
Quillibrace looked interested.
"Go on."
"The first person walks cautiously."
"Indeed."
"The hundredth scarcely notices the path."
"And the thousandth?"
"They begin to believe the path was always there."
Blottisham smiled.
"I rather like that."
Quillibrace did not reply immediately.
"History provides many examples."
"The ether?"
"Yes."
"Caloric?"
"Quite."
"The crystalline spheres?"
"Indeed."
"They all sounded perfectly ordinary."
"They did."
"Until they didn't."
Outside the window, the college gardener was replacing handwritten labels in the herb garden with polished brass plaques.
Miss Stray watched him for a moment.
"The plants haven't changed."
"No."
"The labels have."
"They have."
"But I notice..."
"...yes?"
"...the brass makes everything seem more permanent."
Quillibrace smiled.
"A remarkable observation."
Blottisham stood and joined her at the window.
"So the labels alter how the garden feels."
"They do."
"Without altering the garden itself."
"No."
He was silent for a moment.
"Perhaps theories acquire brass plaques."
Quillibrace laughed quietly.
"I fear they often do."
The dinner bell echoed faintly through the college.
As they gathered their books, Miss Stray glanced once more towards the herb garden.
"The wise gardener," she said, "never mistakes the label for the plant."
Quillibrace picked up his hat.
"Nor," he replied, "does the wise philosopher mistake a convenient noun for a completed ontology."
They left together.
Outside, the brass labels gleamed reassuringly in the evening sun.
The rosemary paid them no attention.
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