The Science of Discworld IV Judgement Da - By Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart Page 0,64
and pieces that led to it: it originates when it emerges.
The emergence of the first lightning strike marks the beginning of the storm. The cell divisions that mark the acorn’s difference from the other buds around it are the emergent oak. The cell divisions and relationships that promoted the egg that later became you orchestrated the emergent event that began you. The universe is complicated because emergent events – quantitative differences becoming qualitative differences – have occurred so many times. Bridges like ribosomes have been built, and the Moon now circles the Earth.
These links have joined separate events into a web of causality that is the most notable property of the world around us. A story, however, is not a web. It has a linear structure, because both speech and writing proceed one word at a time. Even hypertext, used on the internet, is determined by a linear programme written in hypertext mark-up language (html). And that is why storytelling – human narrativium – finds origins to be so difficult and puzzling, and sometimes looks for simplicities where none exist.
fn1 Junjun Zhang, Nicolas Dauphas, Andrew M. Davis, Inigo Leya and Alexei Fedkin, The proto-Earth as a significant source of lunar material, Nature Geoscience 5 (2012) 251-255.
fn2 Harald Brüssow, The not so universal tree of life or the place of viruses in the living world, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B364 (2009) 2263-2274.
ELEVEN
* * *
A VERY INTERESTING CASE
Mustrum looked at Miss Daw with a slightly sorry expression, which burst into a smile. ‘Going home, then? Well now, isn’t that good news? I’m sure your people there will be wondering what has happened to you, though of course you needn’t worry – we can put you back right at the point where and when you left. Such a pity you couldn’t stay longer; it is always useful to talk to somebody who knows how to talk.’ Ridcully sighed. ‘It isn’t easy being Archchancellor. Very few people will talk to you as if you are a human as opposed to a very large hat; you just have to hope that there is somebody ready and willing to tell you when you are making a bloody fool of yourself.’
He sighed again, and Marjorie said, ‘Would you mind if I stayed a little longer, then? I mean, if you can send me back home as if this never happened, well, it’s a long time since I’ve had a holiday, and I’m fascinated by what is happening here. After all, it appears that there is going to be a major court case to see who owns my planet. So excuse me if I demand a ringside seat, since I am a sitting tenant, as it were. I could earn my keep too; although I say it myself, I am well versed in all aspects of library practice. But really, surely some representative of the population of the world in question should in all fairness be allowed to at least follow the proceedings.’
Ponder Stibbons glanced at the Archchancellor and said, ‘She might have to wear a beard, Archchancellor; it is laid down by statute.’ The air thickened a little, and he kept a weather eye on Ridcully’s face.
Slowly the Archchancellor said, turning over every letter like some delicate and precious thing, ‘It would seem, Mister Stibbons, that you have forgotten … the codicil.’
‘The codicil, Archchancellor?’
‘Yes, Mister Stibbons, the codicil which directs that the sex of a librarian is immaterial.’
Theoretically, Ponder Stibbons was at this point treading on dangerous ground, were it not for the fact that he had both tenure and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the university that was second to none. And so he theoretically girded his theoretical loins and said, ‘Archchancellor, there is no such codicil. Believe me, sir, I am aware of all relevant university statutes and guidelines.’
He was expecting a certain amount of noise about this and had stepped back a little before Mustrum Ridcully beamed at him and said, ‘My dear boy, there is a de facto codicil; surely if an orangutan – albeit one who has travelled through humanity on his way to a higher calling – can be our Librarian, and indeed the best librarian we have ever had apart from being the cheapest to feed, then a librarian who is also a lady can certainly work in our library beardless! After all, the convention that you do not need to be a human male to be a librarian is there in place irrevocably.’