{"id":4958,"date":"2019-05-27T05:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2019-05-27T10:55:45","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T17:55:45","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iii-chapter-19-chapter-20-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/05\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iii-chapter-19-chapter-20-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld III&#8217;: Chapter 19 \/ Chapter 20, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of <i>Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Watch<\/i>, the wizards deal with a surprise guest, and I learn about the role of genes in evolution. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>The Science of Discworld III<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>Discworld<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Well, even if the chapter isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that long, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty damn pleased with CHARLES DARWIN COMING TO THE DISCWORLD. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s over by a longshot; how the hell are the wizards going to deal with Darwin <i>seeing<\/i> them do magic?? But here we are: the wizards now get to be face-to-face with the man who changed the Roundworld forever. Well, he did at one point. Or, rather, he <i>will<\/i> change it? He already changed it and will change it? YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. Pratchett makes a clever joke about Cohen and Stewart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lies-to-children\u00e2\u20ac\u009d terminology in the title, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so <i>apt<\/i>. The wizards <i>have<\/i> to lie to Darwin about some of the truth, and not just for the obvious reasons:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No one would like to be told that they came from a universe created quite by accident and, moreover, by the Dean. It could only cause bad feeling. If you were told you were meeting your maker, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d want something better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even then, this is still so terribly overwhelming, and the wizards were certainly not helping by CONSTANTLY DOING MAGIC IN FRONT OF DARWIN. He couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t concentrate! His sherry glass refilled by MAGIC! Yet even though the wizards were lying to Darwin, I was fascinated by what they <i>did<\/i> tell him: that he was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thrown\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into a different world where magic is real. Why tell him that? To get him to open up? Couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be to make him feel comfortable! (Perhaps that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what the sherry was for.) I suppose it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter, though, because it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t long before Darwin offered up yet another complication to this timeline: he had been given a <i>vision<\/i>. Actually, he thought here that the wizards were the <i>second<\/i> vision he received, the last one being from\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the God of Evolution? From Mono Island??? I think the logic that Ridcully uses here\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat once the Auditors broke into Roundworld and the wizards followed, leaving \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doors ajar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that the God of Evolution could have used\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis pretty sound. But <i>why<\/i>? Why do all this? And how are the wizards supposed to deal with BOTH the Auditors and the God of Evolution?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>EVERYTHING IS CHAOS.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Roundworld<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I realize that the argument that Stewart and Cohen construct here is probably cut in half due to the split itself, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s compelling so far! My understanding of genetics and its role in evolution wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t too far from the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153folk\u00e2\u20ac\u009d version. (And now that I understand that the authors were satirizing a popular interpretation of genetics, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad they threw in that bit about sexuality. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a weirdly invasive question that a lot of queer people get asked in terms of their identity. Seriously, even in 2019, I am regularly asked at public events whether biology made me this way or my environment did and truly, I am not even sure I <i>care<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 vaguely interesting in an intellectual sense? Anyway, TANGENT.) That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I got in the most general sense! So, what follows this, while dense at times, is actually really damn fascinating to me. I admit that I <i>did<\/i> recall being taught that natural selection wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a case of a body \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deciding\u00e2\u20ac\u009d what was a good and a bad mutation. But this part blew my mind:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nearly all current natural selection must be discriminating between different combinations of <i>ancient<\/i> mutations. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a matter of a new mutation arriving and the result being immediately subjected to selection: instead, that mutation must typically hang around, for millions of years, until eventually it ends up playing a role that makes enough of a difference for natural selection to notice, and react.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, Lewontin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s discovery still hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite seeped into the public understanding of genetics. Of note is the fact that the authors acknowledge this, that they make it clear how long it takes for current research to trickle its way down into our textbooks. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even harder in places like the US, where a bulk of our textbooks are made in ONE STATE that has a REALLY TERRIBLE history of putting vile shit into textbooks. (I might have gotten this wrong, but aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t most US textbooks for history and science made in Texas?) Thus, it makes sense that unless I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a teacher who is keeping themselves up to date on this sort of stuff, how was I ever to know what the scientists had discovered?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this section ended on the topic of genetic contingency plans (also mind-blowing to me!), so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m off to go see how this and possibly other points will factor into the thesis the authors gave me.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ztb7dt41BbM<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2019\/5\/7\/the-anger-is-a-gift-trade-paperback-is-out-today\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Watch, the wizards deal with a surprise guest, and I learn about the role of genes in evolution. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read The Science of Discworld III.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,559],"class_list":["post-4958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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