Friday, September 05, 2003
Yesterday I wrote 917 words on Chapter Eight of Murder of Angels, after rewriting the 550 or so words from Wednesday. Today I hope to finish the chapter and move on to Chapter Nine tomorrow. I'm good to go, so long as the absinthe holds out. I have two more chapters to write in September and the book will be finished. I did very well when I set forth the 1,071-words-per-day challenge for myself last month, so I do have hope.
Also yesterday I was rereading Percy E. Raymond's Prehistoric Life. Published in 1939, it's one of those old palaentology texts I like to pull out and read every now and then, because it's comfortable and serves as a reminder of the fallibility of science and, perhaps, its ability to progress despite that fallibility. There's a marvelous passage, which I will quote, from Chapter XVI ("Marine Reptiles"), concerning the causal agent of the mass extinction that marks the close of Cretaceous Period:
One theory in explanation of the decline and fall of the reptiles at the close of the Mesozoic, suggested by the all too prevalent habit of judging all other phenomena in light of man's experience, compares racial history with the life story of the individual. Thus reptiles as a group were in a youthful stage at the beginning of the Mesozoic, endowed with abundant energy and fecundity. Having no competitors on the land, they increased and multiplied and peopled the earth. Though they were carnivorous at first, the abundant food led some of them to vegetarian habits. Before the end of the Mesozoic all reptilian phyla were ages old, and it may be that, like old men, they had lost their youthful vitality and fertility, and were no longer resistant to disease. Energy had run down; old age had overtaken the race. In their doddering senility some had lost part or all of their teeth; a few had actually grown spines, considered by some students a sure sign of approaching extinction.
Contemporary students of palaeontology (espcially those ignorant of the history of their own science) might balk at the passage, but Raymond was no crackpot. His Prehistoric Life was the end-product of his Harvard lectures and the book was published by Harvard University Press. The idea of "racial senescence" was still in vogue in biology in the 1930s, and palaeontologists had yet to realize that the end-Cretaceous phenomenon affected not only dinosaurs, but most species - animal, plant, and protist - on the planet, and they had yet to consider extraterrestrial agents. Also, as their understanding of dinosaurian physiology was more limited than our own, they'd yet to learn that many of the dinosaurs at the very end of the Mesozoic were most likely "warm-blooded," active creatures, more closely allied to living birds than to lizards and turtles. And Prehistoric Life was published only 64 years ago. It makes me wonder how quaint and misguided palaeontology texts published in 2003 will appear in 2067. If nothing else, reading the old books gives us perspective on the scientific enterprise. Just as we need to study the history of life to understand its present situation, we must study the history of science to understand its current state.
I am going on, aren't I? But, since I essentially gave up palaeo' in March '02, it's good to stretch this part of my brain every now and then. To see that it's all still there.
Last night, Spooky and I gorged ourselves on a cheesy vampire double-feature, beginning with Wes Craven's Dracula II: Ascencion (silly, but enjoyable) and proceeding to Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters (laughable and not very enjoyable at all).
And now it's time to plug the auction. Click here and buy something. Come on. You know there's something there you can't live without.
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