“I have been thinking about the leaf.”
Professor Quillibrace looked over his newspaper.
“I was afraid you might.”
“The particular leaf.”
Miss Stray looked up.
“The one the girl put in her book?”
“Precisely.”
Blottisham leaned forward.
“It is clearly a story about attention.”
Stray smiled.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Quillibrace folded his newspaper.
“This should be interesting.”
“The tree loses thousands of leaves.”
“Yes.”
“Almost nobody notices.”
“Yes.”
“But the girl notices one.”
“Yes.”
“She picks it up.”
“Yes.”
“She keeps it.”
“Yes.”
“And therefore”—Blottisham paused for effect—“attention creates value.”
Stray considered this.
“Does it?”
“Obviously.”
“Was the leaf valuable before she noticed it?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“Potentially.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“Ah. The potential leaf.”
“It possessed value in itself.”
“Then why did nobody notice?”
“Because they failed to recognise its value.”
“Which raises the question,” said Quillibrace, “of how they were supposed to recognise something that wasn't yet valuable to them.”
Blottisham frowned.
“That is a technical objection.”
“No,” said Stray. “It's quite an important one.”
She looked out of the window.
“I think the story is doing something smaller.”
“Smaller?”
“The girl simply notices the leaf.”
“Yes.”
“She likes it.”
“Yes.”
“She puts it in her book.”
“Yes.”
“Years later, she still has it.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing else needs to happen.”
Blottisham looked disappointed.
“But that cannot be the whole point.”
“Why not?”
“Because then attention is merely attention.”
“Perhaps it is.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“Careful, Blottisham. You are approaching a dangerous proposition.”
“What proposition?”
“That something may matter without needing a theory of why it matters.”
Blottisham sat back.
“But surely we can distinguish between subjective and objective value.”
“We can distinguish many things,” said Quillibrace.
“And should we?”
“Not necessarily.”
Stray looked at him.
“That sounds almost anti-academic.”
“Don't tell anyone.”
Blottisham stood and walked towards the window.
“The tree doesn't care about the particular leaf.”
“Probably not,” said Stray.
“The girl does.”
“Yes.”
“So the same leaf matters differently to different participants.”
“Yes.”
“Then value is relational.”
Quillibrace sighed.
“Here we go.”
“But it is!”
“It may be.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘may be’?”
“Because you keep turning observations into conclusions.”
Blottisham looked at the tree outside.
“What if the girl had never picked up the leaf?”
Stray thought about it.
“Then the leaf would have fallen.”
“And nobody would have remembered it.”
“Probably.”
“So what changed?”
Stray looked at him.
“Someone noticed.”
Blottisham was silent.
For once, he did not immediately produce a theory.
Quillibrace noticed.
“Remarkable.”
“What?”
“You have been quiet for nearly ten seconds.”
Blottisham turned.
“I was thinking.”
“Another dangerous development.”
Stray smiled.
“Perhaps the leaf was not important because the girl understood something about it.”
“What, then?”
“She simply saw it.”
Blottisham looked back towards the window.
Outside, the tree stood beside the road.
A leaf fell.
None of them saw it.
Blottisham watched the ground for a moment.
Then he said:
“I think I missed one.”
Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.
“Don't worry.”
“Why?”
“There are several thousand more.”
No comments:
Post a Comment