{"id":4933,"date":"2019-04-22T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4933"},"modified":"2019-04-21T09:38:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T16:38:26","slug":"mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iii-chapter-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/04\/mark-reads-the-science-of-discworld-iii-chapter-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Science of Discworld III&#8217;: Chapter 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the fourth chapter of <i>Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Watch<\/i>, the authors address Paley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s watch and geological time periods. 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>Trigger Warning: For discussion of trauma, anxiety<\/b><\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting how much these <i>Science of Discworld <\/i>books make me take trips through my childhood. I suppose it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard to do that when so much of these books discuss how science and scientific theories are opposed in Roundworld. This chapter is no exception, either, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that there are plenty of people in the world for whom the theory of evolution is an offensive, blasphemous idea.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In particular, though, I think \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Paley Ontology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M STILL SO MAD AT HOW CLEVER THIS TITLE IS) deals with the sheer magnificent span of time over which evolution takes place, while also acknowledging that evolution <i>can<\/i> happen in the course of a few years. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that time span that was routinely left out of conversations I had early in my childhood and teenage years, at least not until I got to junior high and high school. Mrs. Hall, my seventh grade science teacher, was the first to ever say to me that evolution can be observed over long periods of time, that it was a myth that evolution happened overnight. It might seem silly to you, but I genuinely was around individuals who were offended by the notions that humans had evolved from other creatures. Their common refrain? Well, how come there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t monkeys turning into humans <i>right now<\/i>? Why aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t we seeing any evolution right before our eyes?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hindsight obviously helps me understand how absurd these questions were, but at the time, they were calculated detonations. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to respond to them, and I was conditioned to <i>repeat<\/i> them to others! You ever have that experience as a kid where adults are telling you something with absolute certainty, and you feel like something is <i>wrong<\/i> with it, but you have absolutely no tools or skills to vocalize those feelings? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure a lot of us have, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had to reckon with as an adult. I felt that <i>often<\/i>. I had no real response to people telling me that the Earth was only six thousand years old; I had no information to counter the idea that all the evidence that life on Earth was <i>billions<\/i> of years old, that this planet had been around a lot longer than a few thousand years before Jesus. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a frustrating thing to go through! I wish I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d know about zircons and geological cycles back then, but alas, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be born <i>knowing<\/i> everything.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As I grew older, I began to have serious problems with the notion of intelligent design for ridiculously personal reasons. In this chapter, the authors detail out the arguments against Paley and the watchmaker theory, but I came at things from an emotional place. If a Creator designed me, why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they make me perfect? Why did I have so many things wrong with me? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy to report that the world AROUND me was what was wrong, not me, but I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that at the time either. So I grew up feeling woefully inadequate in practically everything. (No one should be surprised that I have anxiety!!!) So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something comforting in this chapter, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably not something the authors intended. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a common notion they discuss here:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This kind of description is easily misunderstood as a kind of inbuilt tendency towards \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcprogress\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u201dever onwards, ever upwards. Ever more complex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which they then immediately discard:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Rubbish. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWorks better\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is not an absolute statement. It applies in a context that is itself changing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I often think about what my life would be like if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d not experienced trauma so young. How would my brain be different? How would my emotions and reactions be wired differently? I am a living adaptation, a being who changed in order to survive. And I did! I tell myself that a lot: you have survived every terrible thing that life has thrown at you. Have I worked <i>better<\/i> over the years? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot harder to determine. But I love the idea that progress is not inherently a natural thing or even a <i>good<\/i> thing! With natural selection, it always comes down to <i>survival<\/i>. What features or qualities or even random mutations allowed a living organism to survive, to then pass on those things to a future generation? Maybe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not progressing all the time, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m living. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty good, too.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/KuKXzd3aikg<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/the-anger-is-a-gift-paperback-edition-is-out-may-7-2019\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now up for pre-order!<\/a> It comes out on May 7, 2019.\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 fourth chapter of Darwin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Watch, the authors address Paley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s watch and geological time periods. 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-4933","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":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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