The next morning, Mr Blottisham arrived at the Senior Common Room carrying a notebook.
Professor Quillibrace looked up.
“You have had another dream.”
“Yes.”
Miss Stray smiled.
“Who was in it?”
“Dawkins and Sheldrake.”
Quillibrace put down his newspaper.
“That is an unusual combination.”
“It was an unusual dream.”
Blottisham opened the notebook.
“I wrote some of it down.”
He cleared his throat.
I was standing in a field.
There was a flock of sheep.
At least, I thought there was a flock of sheep.
Then I noticed that every sheep was slightly different.
One had very long wool.
One had almost none.
One had three horns.
One appeared to be made partly of grass.
I decided not to investigate the last one.
Richard Dawkins was standing beside a fence.
Rupert Sheldrake was standing on the other side.
Dawkins pointed at the sheep.
“Variation.”
Sheldrake looked at the flock.
“Memory.”
Dawkins looked at him.
“Where?”
“In the field.”
Dawkins looked around.
“The field doesn't remember.”
“Perhaps not consciously.”
“Then what does?”
Sheldrake pointed at a sheep.
“That.”
The sheep walked towards the gate.
Another sheep followed.
Then another.
Then all of them.
Dawkins frowned.
“Social learning.”
Sheldrake nodded.
“Perhaps.”
The first sheep turned around and walked back.
The others followed.
Dawkins looked pleased.
“There.”
“What?”
“Imitation.”
Sheldrake smiled.
“Perhaps.”
The sheep did it again.
Then again.
The fourth time, they didn't need to see the first sheep.
They simply went to the gate.
Dawkins frowned.
“Habit.”
Sheldrake said nothing.
The sheep returned.
This time they all stopped at exactly the same place.
A small circle had appeared in the grass.
Sheldrake pointed at it.
“What do you see?”
“A worn patch.”
“What caused it?”
“The sheep.”
“What caused the sheep to walk there?”
“They followed one another.”
“And the first sheep?”
Dawkins paused.
“It went there for some reason.”
Sheldrake smiled.
“Exactly.”
The field changed.
Now there were hundreds of sheep.
All of them walked towards the same patch of grass.
I looked at the ground.
“Where did the circle come from?”
“History,” said Sheldrake.
Dawkins shook his head.
“Selection.”
The circle became larger.
The sheep kept walking.
Then the sheep disappeared.
The circle remained.
Dawkins pointed at it.
“Evidence.”
Sheldrake nodded.
“Of what?”
Dawkins hesitated.
The field disappeared.
We were now in a laboratory.
There was a maze on a table.
A rat stood at the entrance.
Dawkins said:
“The rat has to learn the route.”
The rat entered.
It went left.
Then right.
Then left again.
It reached the food.
Sheldrake watched carefully.
“Now another rat.”
A second rat entered the maze.
It went left.
Then right.
Then left.
It reached the food.
Dawkins smiled.
“Learning.”
Sheldrake said:
“Now another.”
A third rat entered.
It went left.
Then right.
Then left.
Dawkins stopped smiling.
“How did it know?”
“It didn't.”
“Then why did it take the same route?”
Sheldrake looked at the maze.
“Perhaps the route had become easier.”
Dawkins looked at him.
“The maze is identical.”
“The maze is identical.”
“The rat is different.”
“Yes.”
“Then what has changed?”
Sheldrake pointed at the empty maze.
“Nothing you can see.”
The maze disappeared.
In its place was a long corridor.
At the end was a door.
The door was labelled:
FIRST TIME
Beside it was another:
SECOND TIME
And another:
HUNDREDTH TIME
I opened the first.
Behind it was an empty room.
He opened the second.
The room contained a chair.
He opened the hundredth.
The chair was already moving towards him.
I shut the door.
“That's not fair.”
Dawkins looked amused.
“It doesn't need to be.”
Sheldrake said:
“Why should the world forget what has happened?”
Dawkins turned to him.
“Because things don't inherit memories from unrelated things.”
“Do they have to?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise anything could influence anything.”
Sheldrake considered this.
“Perhaps not anything.”
The corridor began filling with doors.
Each door had a number.
The numbers continued beyond what I could see.
I opened door 1.
A spoon lay on the floor.
Door 2 contained two spoons.
Door 3 contained three.
By door 100, the floor was covered with spoons.
Dawkins looked at them.
“Repetition.”
Sheldrake nodded.
“Exactly.”
I picked up one of the spoons.
“Who put these here?”
Nobody answered.
I put it down.
Then another spoon appeared beside it.
Dawkins looked at Sheldrake.
Sheldrake looked at Dawkins.
I looked at the spoon.
“I've seen this before.”
Dawkins said:
“That's irrelevant.”
Sheldrake said:
“Is it?”
The spoon disappeared.
Then reappeared.
Then disappeared again.
Then there were two.
Then three.
Then none.
I backed away.
“What's happening?”
Dawkins said:
“Variation.”
Sheldrake said:
“Resonance.”
I looked from one to the other.
“Could you please stop giving different names to the same thing?”
Dawkins smiled.
“We aren't.”
Sheldrake smiled too.
“That is the point.”
The field returned.
The sheep were there again.
But now every sheep was standing exactly where another sheep had stood before.
I walked between them.
“Are they remembering?”
Dawkins said:
“They have inherited characteristics.”
Sheldrake said:
“They may also be inheriting a tendency.”
“A tendency to what?”
“To resemble what has happened before.”
Dawkins shook his head.
“Resemblance is not an explanation.”
Sheldrake nodded.
“No.”
The sheep began moving.
Slowly at first.
Then faster.
Soon the whole flock was moving in a great circle.
The circle became a spiral.
The spiral became a pattern.
The pattern became a path.
The path became a road.
And the road was suddenly filled with people.
Everyone was walking the same way.
I recognised some of them.
Others I had never seen.
One man stopped.
Another person behind him stopped too.
Then another.
Soon the entire road had stopped.
I waited.
Nobody moved.
“What happens now?”
Dawkins said:
“Something new.”
Sheldrake said:
“Perhaps something remembered.”
A child stepped onto the road.
She dropped a spoon.
Everyone looked at it.
Nobody had dropped a spoon before.
At least, nobody remembered doing so.
The child picked it up.
Then another child dropped one.
Then another.
I looked at Sheldrake.
“You're going to say it again.”
Sheldrake smiled.
“It happened before.”
Dawkins looked at the spoons.
“No.”
“What?”
“It happened now.”
The road disappeared.
The field disappeared.
The laboratory disappeared.
There was only a single spoon lying on the ground.
I bent down to pick it up.
Before I touched it, another spoon appeared beside it.
I woke.
Blottisham closed the notebook.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Finally Miss Stray said:
“It sounds as though the dream was asking whether history can become part of causation.”
Blottisham nodded.
“That's what I thought.”
Quillibrace looked at him.
“Did you?”
“Eventually.”
“And what did Dawkins represent?”
Blottisham considered this.
“An emphasis on inheritance, variation and selection. What gets transmitted is not simply an accumulated memory of everything that has happened. There are mechanisms.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“And Sheldrake?”
“The possibility that history might have another kind of persistence. That repeated forms might become easier to reproduce through something like morphic resonance.”
Miss Stray added:
“Though the hypothesis is controversial and is not established scientific fact.”
“Yes,” said Blottisham. “I know.”
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
“You do?”
“I read the footnote.”
“That is progress.”
Blottisham looked at the notebook.
“But the interesting part wasn't deciding which one was right.”
“What was?”
“The dream kept making the same thing happen again.”
Miss Stray nodded.
“Repetition became the evidence.”
“Or the problem,” said Quillibrace.
Blottisham thought about this.
“If something happens again, we normally ask what caused the second occurrence.”
“Yes.”
“But if the fact that it happened once somehow makes it more likely to happen again, then the first occurrence changes the conditions of the second.”
Quillibrace nodded slowly.
“And that is the interesting question.”
Blottisham smiled.
“So history doesn't merely tell us what happened.”
Miss Stray looked at him.
“It may alter what can happen next.”
There was a silence.
Then something fell onto the floor.
Everyone looked down.
It was a spoon.
Blottisham stared at it.
“I didn't put that there.”
Quillibrace looked at Sheldrake's empty chair.
Then at Dawkins's empty chair.
Neither chair had been occupied.
At least, nobody remembered them being occupied.
Miss Stray picked up the spoon.
“Perhaps someone dropped it.”
Blottisham nodded.
“Obviously.”
He put it on the table.
A second spoon appeared beside it.
Nobody spoke.
Blottisham looked at Quillibrace.
“That's interesting.”
Quillibrace sighed.
“Don't encourage it.”
A third spoon appeared.
Blottisham smiled.
“I think it's learning.”
Miss Stray looked at the spoons.
“Or we are.”
The door opened.
Beyond it was the corridor.
There were spoons all the way down it.
Blottisham looked at Quillibrace.
“Do we know who started this?”
“No.”
“Then how did it begin?”
Quillibrace looked down the corridor.
“I suppose that's the problem.”
The door closed.
A moment later, there was a quiet metallic sound.
Then another.
And another.
Nobody went to look.
No comments:
Post a Comment