mutated virus of ill fortune. I could have broken off, or made an artificial ending. I pressed on because I couldn’t stop. I was telling it for myself, and a goldfish would have served me as well as a producer. When I had done, he said his goodbyes hurriedly—he had another meeting, he’d be in touch with another idea for me—and as I stepped out into the filth of Meard Street I felt tainted. The unnamed sensation returned,this time in the form of a pricking along my nape and a rawness in my gut, which resolved itself, for the third time that day, into an unreliable urge to crap.
I spent the afternoon in the reading room of the London Library, looking up some of Darwin’s more obscure contemporaries. I wanted to write about the death of anecdote and narrative in science, my idea being that Darwin’s generation was the last to permit itself the luxury of storytelling in published articles. Here was a letter to
Nature
dated 1904, a contribution to a long-running correspondence about consciousness in animals, in particular whether higher mammals like dogs could be said to have awareness of the consequences of their actions. The writer, one Mr.——, had a close friend whose dog favored a particular comfortable chair near the library fire. Mr.—— witnessed an occasion after dinner when he and his friend had retired there for a glass of port. The dog was shooed from its chair and the master sat down in its place. After a minute or two sitting in contemplative silence by the fire, the dog went to the door and whined to be let out. Its master obligingly rose and crossed the room, whereupon the pooch darted back and took possession once more of the favored place. For a few seconds it wore about its muzzle a look of undisguised triumph.
The writer concluded that the dog must have had a plan, a sense of the future, which it attempted to shape by the practice of a deliberate deceit. And its pleasure in success must have been mediated by an act of memory. What I liked here was how the power and attractions of narrative had clouded judgment. By any standards of scientific inquiry, the story, however charming, was nonsense. No theory evinced, no terms defined, a meaningless sample of one, a laughable anthropomorphism. It was easy to construe the account in a way that would make it compatible with an automaton, or a creature doomed to inhabit a perpetual present: ousted from its chair, it takes the nextbest place, by the fire, where it basks (rather than schemes) until it becomes aware of a need to urinate, then goes to the door as it has been trained to do, suddenly notices that the prized position is vacant again, forgets for the moment the signal from its bladder, and returns to take possession, the look of triumph being nothing more than the immediate expression of pleasure, or a projection in the mind of the observer.
I myself was comfortable within a large, smooth-armed leather chair. In my line of vision were three other members, each with a book or magazine on his lap, and all three asleep. Outside, the raucous traffic in St. James’s Square, even the dispatch motorbikes, was soporific in the way that other people’s frantic motion can be. Indoors, the murmur of water along unseen ancient pipes and, nearer, a creaking of floorboards as someone, invisible behind the magazine rack, moved a couple of paces, paused for a minute or two, and then moved again. This sound, I realized in retrospect, had been perched on the outer edges of my awareness for almost half an hour. I wondered if I could reasonably ask this person to keep still, or suggest he take a pile of magazines and go and sit in silence. My tormentor stirred—four leisurely squeaking steps, and then there was peace. I tried to continue with Mr.—— and the mental capacity of dogs, but now I was distracted. When there was movement across the room, I made a point of not looking up from my page, even though I was taking nothing in. Then I gave way, and all I saw
I spent the afternoon in the reading room of the London Library, looking up some of Darwin’s more obscure contemporaries. I wanted to write about the death of anecdote and narrative in science, my idea being that Darwin’s generation was the last to permit itself the luxury of storytelling in published articles. Here was a letter to
Nature
dated 1904, a contribution to a long-running correspondence about consciousness in animals, in particular whether higher mammals like dogs could be said to have awareness of the consequences of their actions. The writer, one Mr.——, had a close friend whose dog favored a particular comfortable chair near the library fire. Mr.—— witnessed an occasion after dinner when he and his friend had retired there for a glass of port. The dog was shooed from its chair and the master sat down in its place. After a minute or two sitting in contemplative silence by the fire, the dog went to the door and whined to be let out. Its master obligingly rose and crossed the room, whereupon the pooch darted back and took possession once more of the favored place. For a few seconds it wore about its muzzle a look of undisguised triumph.
The writer concluded that the dog must have had a plan, a sense of the future, which it attempted to shape by the practice of a deliberate deceit. And its pleasure in success must have been mediated by an act of memory. What I liked here was how the power and attractions of narrative had clouded judgment. By any standards of scientific inquiry, the story, however charming, was nonsense. No theory evinced, no terms defined, a meaningless sample of one, a laughable anthropomorphism. It was easy to construe the account in a way that would make it compatible with an automaton, or a creature doomed to inhabit a perpetual present: ousted from its chair, it takes the nextbest place, by the fire, where it basks (rather than schemes) until it becomes aware of a need to urinate, then goes to the door as it has been trained to do, suddenly notices that the prized position is vacant again, forgets for the moment the signal from its bladder, and returns to take possession, the look of triumph being nothing more than the immediate expression of pleasure, or a projection in the mind of the observer.
I myself was comfortable within a large, smooth-armed leather chair. In my line of vision were three other members, each with a book or magazine on his lap, and all three asleep. Outside, the raucous traffic in St. James’s Square, even the dispatch motorbikes, was soporific in the way that other people’s frantic motion can be. Indoors, the murmur of water along unseen ancient pipes and, nearer, a creaking of floorboards as someone, invisible behind the magazine rack, moved a couple of paces, paused for a minute or two, and then moved again. This sound, I realized in retrospect, had been perched on the outer edges of my awareness for almost half an hour. I wondered if I could reasonably ask this person to keep still, or suggest he take a pile of magazines and go and sit in silence. My tormentor stirred—four leisurely squeaking steps, and then there was peace. I tried to continue with Mr.—— and the mental capacity of dogs, but now I was distracted. When there was movement across the room, I made a point of not looking up from my page, even though I was taking nothing in. Then I gave way, and all I saw
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