“It is moderately baffling why an animal selected to survive in Africa as a hunter-gatherer would need the ability to do higher mathematics, or have a transcendent feeling looking at the stars.” - Richard Dawkins, The New Statesman, 2021
At university, I had the amazing privilege of being paid to have a few flying lessons. The first was on a cold, grey, winter’s day. I was the last in the queue of students to go up, and as the afternoon pushed on and the light started to fade, it looked as though I might miss out. But then the instructor got me in the plane, took off as quickly as he could, and punched this tiny machine through the clouds. Just like that, we were out of the miserable dullness of December and in this otherworldly landscape with blue sky above and the Sun setting over the clouds below. I was completely in awe, the same way you might be if looking up at the stars in the middle of a desert.
It got me thinking, that while people have been looking up at the stars in wonder for millennia, it must only be fairly recently in human history that people have been able to see what I saw that afternoon. Why should it be that we find such a view, that our eyes apparently were not evolved to look at, so transcendentally beautiful? Why do the images from the James Webb telescope cause the same reaction?
I had the following poem half-written for a while, but was inspired to finish it in 2021 when Richard Dawkins came out with the marvellous line quoted at the top of this post. For Dawkins, such questions are baffling. For those willing to look, the answers might be written in the clouds.
This one’s for you, Dawkins, for you and your moderate bafflement.
How did those monkeys do it, when they looked up at the sky, And saw thick clouds above them, said one day we will fly higher than any living thing or rock whose peak is hidden, And gaze down on this blanket from the vantage point of heaven, And when we do let's vow today, only beauty shall we see, No distaste, disgust, discomfort, only glorious majesty. Though now we tread this solid earth and for many years to come, Let's mutate our eyes in such a way that when we see the Sun drop upon that groundless landscape and wash the white with amber, We will all declare in unison that our eyes have made this grandeur. And how did those men feel, when they first pierced those clouds, And looked upon a beauty hidden from eternity till now, Prepared by many years of death lest their eyes should not be ready, Lest their hands not grasp the wonder and hold themselves too steady. Did they hold fast their fathers' creed, or did they start to doubt? Did one turn to the other, say, do you hear them shout? Can we trust our fathers' stories, that our eyes are the creator? For it's almost as if, by their nature, They declare the glory of something greater.