Read Online the Dark Light Years by Brian W. Aldiss - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Brian W. Aldiss
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
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regarded as a priori proof of superior intelligence?”
"That is the most penetrating question I have heard asked in the last decade," said Wittgenbacher, nodding his head six times with the frightening assurance of a clock-work doll. "If it were posed to the masses, they would give you but one answer, or should I rather say that their many answers would take but one form. They would render an affirmative. We who are here may reckon our-selves more enlightened and would perhaps choose as a more valid example of superior intelligence the works of the analytical philosophers, where logic flows unconfused with emotion. But the masses - and who perhaps amongst us in the final analysis is to gainsay them? - would, if I may employ a colloquialism, plump for a product in which the hands as well as the mind had been employed. I do not doubt that among such a category of products the space-ship would appear to them the most outstanding.”
"I'd go along with them," said Lattimore. He sat next to Pasztor, sucking the frame of his spectacles and listening intently.
" I might even accompany them myself," chuckled Wittgenbacher, with more mechanical nods. "But this does raise another question. Suppose that, having granted this lifeform, so unaesthetically unhygienic in many of its habits, superior intelligence; suppose we later discover its planet of origin, and then perceive that its - um, its space-going ability is as much governed by instinctual behavior as is the ocean-going ability of our northern fur-seals. Perhaps you will correct me if I am in error, Sir Mihaly, but I believe that the Arctocephalus ursinus, the bear seal, makes a winter migration of many thousands of miles from the Bering Sea down to the shores of Mexico, where I have seen them myself when swimming in the Gulf of California.
"If we find this to be so, then not only shall we be in error in presuming superior intelligence in our friends, but we shall have to ask ourselves this: is it not possible that our own space travel is equally the outcome of instinctual behavior , and - much as the fur-seal may imagine on his swim south that his travel is prompted by his own will - may we not be pushed by an unglimpsed purpose beyond our own?”
Three reporters at the back of the room scribed busily, ensuring that tomorrow's Times, recording the longueurs of the conference, would pinpoint this highlight in a head-line reading Space Travel: Man's Migratory Pattern ?
Gerald Bone stood up. The novelist's face had lit at the new thought like a child's at sight of a new toy.
"Do I understand you. Professor Wittgenbacher, to imply that we - that our much-vaunted intelligence, the one thing that most clearly distinguishes us from the animals, may really be no more than a blind compulsion driving us in its own directions rather than in ours?”
"Why not? For all our pretensions to the arts and the humanities, our race ever since the Renaissance at least has directed its main efforts towards the twin goals of expanding its numbers and expanding outwards." Having got the bit between his teeth, the old philosopher was not going to stop there. "In fact you may liken our leaders to the queen bee who prepares her hive to swarm and does not know why she does it. We swarm into space and do not know why we do it. Something drives -”
But he was not going to get away with it. Lattimore was the first to vent a hearty "Nonsense", and Dr.
Bodley Temple and his assistants made unsavoury noises of dissent. All round the room, the professor was given the cultural catcall.
"Preposterous theory -”
"Economic possibilities inherent in -”
"Even a techni audience would hardly -”
"I suppose the colonization of other planets -”
"One just cannot dismiss the disciplines of science -”
"Order, please," called the Director.
In the following lull, Gerald Bone called another question to Wittgenbacher, "Then where shall we find true intellect?”
"Perhaps when we run up against our gods,"
"That is the most penetrating question I have heard asked in the last decade," said Wittgenbacher, nodding his head six times with the frightening assurance of a clock-work doll. "If it were posed to the masses, they would give you but one answer, or should I rather say that their many answers would take but one form. They would render an affirmative. We who are here may reckon our-selves more enlightened and would perhaps choose as a more valid example of superior intelligence the works of the analytical philosophers, where logic flows unconfused with emotion. But the masses - and who perhaps amongst us in the final analysis is to gainsay them? - would, if I may employ a colloquialism, plump for a product in which the hands as well as the mind had been employed. I do not doubt that among such a category of products the space-ship would appear to them the most outstanding.”
"I'd go along with them," said Lattimore. He sat next to Pasztor, sucking the frame of his spectacles and listening intently.
" I might even accompany them myself," chuckled Wittgenbacher, with more mechanical nods. "But this does raise another question. Suppose that, having granted this lifeform, so unaesthetically unhygienic in many of its habits, superior intelligence; suppose we later discover its planet of origin, and then perceive that its - um, its space-going ability is as much governed by instinctual behavior as is the ocean-going ability of our northern fur-seals. Perhaps you will correct me if I am in error, Sir Mihaly, but I believe that the Arctocephalus ursinus, the bear seal, makes a winter migration of many thousands of miles from the Bering Sea down to the shores of Mexico, where I have seen them myself when swimming in the Gulf of California.
"If we find this to be so, then not only shall we be in error in presuming superior intelligence in our friends, but we shall have to ask ourselves this: is it not possible that our own space travel is equally the outcome of instinctual behavior , and - much as the fur-seal may imagine on his swim south that his travel is prompted by his own will - may we not be pushed by an unglimpsed purpose beyond our own?”
Three reporters at the back of the room scribed busily, ensuring that tomorrow's Times, recording the longueurs of the conference, would pinpoint this highlight in a head-line reading Space Travel: Man's Migratory Pattern ?
Gerald Bone stood up. The novelist's face had lit at the new thought like a child's at sight of a new toy.
"Do I understand you. Professor Wittgenbacher, to imply that we - that our much-vaunted intelligence, the one thing that most clearly distinguishes us from the animals, may really be no more than a blind compulsion driving us in its own directions rather than in ours?”
"Why not? For all our pretensions to the arts and the humanities, our race ever since the Renaissance at least has directed its main efforts towards the twin goals of expanding its numbers and expanding outwards." Having got the bit between his teeth, the old philosopher was not going to stop there. "In fact you may liken our leaders to the queen bee who prepares her hive to swarm and does not know why she does it. We swarm into space and do not know why we do it. Something drives -”
But he was not going to get away with it. Lattimore was the first to vent a hearty "Nonsense", and Dr.
Bodley Temple and his assistants made unsavoury noises of dissent. All round the room, the professor was given the cultural catcall.
"Preposterous theory -”
"Economic possibilities inherent in -”
"Even a techni audience would hardly -”
"I suppose the colonization of other planets -”
"One just cannot dismiss the disciplines of science -”
"Order, please," called the Director.
In the following lull, Gerald Bone called another question to Wittgenbacher, "Then where shall we find true intellect?”
"Perhaps when we run up against our gods,"
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