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THAlt. ersH t—.—/ rt is WIC, min 10C Thursday September 12011, thetimos cu uk I No 70353 TIMF7,.5E, Free inRichsiardde E Dawkins ur ek a( ,tk exclusive The maga/itle lot Raithits 61.111•1 HA l . op• ; we How UK Planning waged revolt fuels `oil war' in Libya fears over ImccmaTtm Webb When the holm tithe overthrow of Colonel Muammar Grititinfl is finally written, two shabby disused rooms on the top floor of the Foreign and economy Commonwealth Office will dewed, a special mention. Ned to redundant photocopiers and surrounded by maps of the Maghreb, half n doyen turnip* Office and Minis- try of Defence o Wink worked far four months alonsolde Alan Duncan, the oil Countryside lobby opposes easier development trader turned minister, and MI6 on a second critical front. Som f lemma.Rama Watson Mr Frost, 141040 organisation repre- When David Cameron meets the sents I00,000 humus*" employing victorious Mustafa Abdul Jain the Monsters must dery opposition to more than 5 m'Ilion people, warned the chairman of the National Trymanta*, plans that would tstee restrictions on coalition that it would damage growth Council (NTC), in PAM today he may buckling in 11w countryside, nor of the R It budded in the race of resistance quietly credit a covert tram that he country's foremost busmen lenders "The Government Is absolutely right to commbaloned. the Ilbyan Oil Cell. has warned. move on planning but my worry is that Its mission was tottery /wont history The Governmtml most 'hold Its It. is going OWL It has to hold Its and make the sanctions on Colonel coune" a the row 'noodles over course. nine is a sand-off and you Caddell operate effectively. against the have Wrinull fatty lined up against the backdrop of an increasingly hitter proposedchange, herald Whitehall turf war to control the unit 'Reform will cut banks' Business groups argue that Ilw reforms are vital to streamline building 11w six-strong team, led fled by an earnings by a quarter' and revitalise growth. The Home admiral and then a senior diplomat. was created In early April idler the first *wt. owns 10.13 Builders Federation yesterday accused flush of bombing failed to oust (*MIMI a coalition of groups opposed to tow Glidden reforms, Including the Notional Trust Mr ()uncap confronted the National proposed changes that woukl create a of wareniongering Security Council with intelligence "mesumption in favour of sustainable Out the Greenest IlannIng Ever from the nil world that hastily arranged ploy David Prost, the depart- Coalition which also includes the Banc lute were hurting the rebels while ing chief of the British Chambers of RSPB and the WWF, says that new harkflabbing on leaving the Libyan dklator's war laws would damage the countryside. George Clooney. * political thriller TM On al Merit Commerce, told Thu Tignat machine untouched. Reforms making It harder for coun- Jack Neill-I loll. or the Campaign to the campaign hall. opened Me Venire film festival at night. News, P09414 With the dietMor ready to pay SIN) to cils to block development have helot Ruud England. said Mse $200 more than the going rate for a provoked another dispute between the coalition and rural campaigners Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, accused lobby growlof "send-hydro. proposals are nyenyhelmlinly geared to delivering the needs of business and shoMtenn growth rather than long- term needs of communities and the Clooney cruises in for tonne of petrol, the behaviour of a few oil traders was beam. Some dodged sanction. by Misting to the Tunisian pod of LIT :WAITS and trucking sop car ailithiat of the chariot but Can. *emotive and Liberal Democrat MN fear a backlash In their constituencies. environment " An olioIvo of leading town planners Conlinum on pre 11, rot1 `overdose of handsome' piles across the border. while /OW Continued on page?,colS IN THE NEWS Transfers bonanza fo glrl! Bruit screening risk Child rioter convicted Sartori accused T-Mobile deal halted real power Ilse A boy, II. became the youngest Nkuln Sarkumy accepted A'Earts SS billion takeover of Premier league dub/loom Women are 'AM heinitkopt (415 million on new planers TIMUI2 hr the dark' about the risk person In he convicted in illegal campaign donlit inns T•Mnbile INA is on the brink connection williIasi MillId's (0)rultnink-e• nclunt WiMUM, of collapse after nuirlaton by Mudow of the transfer awe land w all Ni IS lirroi riots in Landon. News, Pepe I lijudp•dwms woad. PIM Z9 blocked It Buttons. peg' deadline. Spat, pages 7241 1 I lInCet seowung Naar, Polo 3 sl EFTA01168947 1111 1 1\11 lure I vme 24 • September Nil. 5dence• Life• The Planet EFTA01168948 'I'his month 'I'he school run Science master with a lesson for us all Careers advice P20 What schoolchUthco think of %dente As one of BfitainY pre•eminent academia and — our very colourful experiment authors, Richard Dawkins could command the attention of the world's opinion formes. Yet Keeping it real three years ago he gave up his day job to con• centrate on writing a hook for children The P22 The science master on whatb really Due -Ns...et KY RICO IAan DAWNIN Male of Reality, extracts of which appear in this haw of Eureka, is ikatmed to become a &Mk, to do for science what Ernst GombrichY A Little 'Those who ran, teach History of Shit World has done for its Wiwi. But It Is his motivation that Is important In directing his energy at children, Professor LP34 . Meet five Inspirational science teat-ben sY KAYA KUKG Os p47 Family affair Dawkins Is addressing the greatest educational challenge this country faces. Britain Is running Alice 'Ilioniani has a short of scientists and engineers; unless we start history lemon at the growing more, and quickly, we will have to Cavendish laboratory import scientists and outsource the induatry that should he powering mfr future growth. OM% A: In WOO Britain was ranked fourth by the IIll:PIRST Organisation of Economic Cooperation and MAYO r Development m science attainment by pupils I NI KY RoNTII aged IS. By 2909 it was INK The trend b dearly \ext home one we need In reverse, and Imaginatively. Oda Educators and politicians should heed the findings of science The more we learn about how our brains work the more likely we will be able to Inspire children to hecome.scientists. If l'hc Big that means going out of the margins, starting Picture school later in the day or offering Rita tin on the Shinning rf 'filament lunchtime jelly, then that should he considered Their are already signs of rekindling interest. This year the numbers of A level maths and sci- ence students have soared, beamed perhaps by Thion Cox et al Prof Dawkins may not have quite 1130 slum pop star appeal, hut the silence meille he weaves is as nwe,Ingarnig II might he I &moss in learning the impettn we need to set Britain back on track [ p40 What science can taadi education to the top bench of scientific excellence • NY MARK I MNDMON a IIANNAII DEVLIN INS Every In I SCIENCE. LIFE. tl l GREENWAMI ri di l THE REVIEW EUREKA IS... THE PLANET No such thing Matt el .11 National 14414 • EVERYTHING as a free trip Museum of News from Sin alId science Scotland I Aw.114.w.l. Aft Wiecinf (MI WONDERFUL. out there IS I WHOARE YOU? be taught as by I lermione Man (Leh Ili We. WORLD QUF.NTIN COOPER a single-sex Cockburn Illatinod lbws chaff sui-cdoss Let there 10 1 YOUR SCIENCE, he light LIVE, PLANV.T Aliens or Just us? subject? MI THE FUN ihPra 1000114 .14•Apen rf IMF l WWI Your views "We are the Quiz & putties INTIIEORY & your 'Achim Martians!" 99 COM Swamis. 11W4sty Thermo- osellY Mt I TIIF. MONTH wee nIsSw 1.1e AIn dynamics it l SCIENCE. vs What's on Rt. mIv is MATTERS ANTHONY %IILDON when & where Neosho (Sm.% 14101.” ,an The problem NA liven. MSS MAW. with patents O. Amu Issmau in genetics Every day 0 Ilnoti iNwsparm nil VIII PISS laeael SKI HEN MILLER Tim Nnqrpm t You decide: I've learnt my The science biog Instals Met Koh Kahn lake UK Y.Ouorm3000 Can companies lesson — at thetdmes.cauk/ Net Prkurh theiped LH own genes? least In French eureka-dolly Mil a le soliispiralibleir lK Scplanbet lull I north I Dill TIMES I I EFTA01168949 PI larOGRAPIIY: DAVID STEWART ...why are there so • In his new book Richard Dawkins teaches young and old alike the fundamentals of science. So take your seat in the classroom... • many animals? Adam's task of turning all the animals was a tough one les been estimated that about 2 million species have so far been corn scientific names. and eirti these are just a small fraction of the number of yxtw t yet to he named. I low do we e-•en decide whether two animals belong in the saint species or in two different species? Where animals reproduce sexually. we can come up with a sort of defuut ion. Animals belong to different species If they don't breed togetlxt There arc txsnkrlin• cases. suds as horses and donkeys, which ran brred together but produce offspring (called mules or hinnies) that arc infertile We therefore place a horse and a donkey in different species. More obviously, horses and dap belong to different species because they don't even try to interbreed. and couldn't produce offspring if they did. even infertile ones Rut spaniels and poodles belong to the same species because• they happily interbreed. and the puppies that they produce am fertile. Can you sit the shape of a tree developing in your mind? It is a family tree a tree with many branches, each branch basing sub-branches. and each sub-branch having sub-sub-branches The tim of the twigs are species The other groupings -- class. order. family. gem; - arc the branches and suh-twanchet The whole tree n all of life on froth The following isn't exactly how the tree of animals branched. but it gives you an idea Imagine an ancestral species splitting into two species. If each of thaw Own splits into two, that makes four If each of them splits into two, that makes eight. and so on through 16, 32. 64,128. 46, 512 You can see that it doesn't take long to get up into the millions of mimes. For species. the equivalent of words 6 DNA — the genetic inkmution every thing thing carries inside it that determines how it is made. When individuals reproduce sexually, they mix their DNA. And when members of one local population migrate into another local population and introduce their genes into it by mating with individuals, we call this gene flow'. Tice DNA of two separated populations of a species becomes less and los alike over time 'lieu DNA becomes less and less able to viva together to make babies Dome DNA has drifted so far from donkey DNA that the two tin no longer unskrstand each other. Or rather. they can mix well enough — the two -DNA ihalects can and mtand exit other well enough - to stake a Ming creature. a mule. but not well enough to make one that run reproduccAnimal species almost never exchange DNA again emir they have (lilted far enough apart to have stopped breeding together. 22 I niE TIMES I Fens I Sestme.t2011 • • • Sepinriter Nil I beets I Tilt 111611.'S I n EFTA01168950 RICHARD DAWKINS ...who was the first ...what is the inside of person really? an atom like? This may surprise you. but there never was a first An atom of lead is the smallest obiat that still desenrs person because every person had to have parents and to be called lead. But can you really not cut an atom those parents had to be people. too. any further' And would an atom of lead actually look It's the saint with rabbits There never was a lust take a tiny tattle chip of lead? No, it wouldn't look like rabbit. never a find crocodile. never a lint dragonfly. anythmg. because an atom n too small to be seen, even Every creature ever born belonged to the same species with a powerful microscope And, yes, you can cut an as its parents So that must mean that every creature atom into even mutter pieces — but what you then yet eva.born belonµed to the same species as its is no longer the same elenkni What n more, this is grandparents And its great-grandparent. very difficult to do, and it releases an alarming quantity And so on for ever. of energy That is why, for some people, the phrase For ever? Well, no. it's not as simple as that This Is -splitting the atom' has such an ominous ring to it It going to need a hit of explaining. was fiat done by the great New leaLind scientist In your imaination. find a picture of silent-If Now Ernest Rutherford in 1919. take a picture of your father and place it on top Then Although we can't see an atom, and although we find a picture of his father, your grandfather, and place can't split it without turning it into something else, that that on top. Then place on top of that a picture of your doesn't mean we can't work out what it is like inside. great-grandfather Carry on paling up the pictures. Tlk Rutherford model, later refined by Rutherfords going back through more and more great itreat-greats pupil. 11w erktrated Owlish physicist Niels Bohr, treats flow many greats do we nett' for our thought the atom as a tiny. miniatunted solar system There is a aent? Oh. a mere ISS million or so well do nicely. nucleus in the middle of the atom, which contains the It isn't easy to imagine a pile of ISS million pictures. bulk of its material And there arc tiny particles called If each picture were punted as a picture postcard. then electrons whining around the nucleus in "oda(' At some point, a suck of 11%5 million tipped on its side would need a One surprising thing about the Rutherfonlitiohr probably less than bookshelf three miles long model is that the dittance between each nucleus and a million years ago, The near end of the bookshelf has the picture of the next is very large compared with the sire of the you The far end has a picture of yourdistant ancestor. nuclei, even in hard, solid matter, such as a diamond. our ancestors were What did he look like? We don't know exactly what he A diamond it nude up of carbon atoms. Suppose wc sufficiently different looked hie. but fossils give us a pretty good ilea. represent the nucleus of each carbon atom in the from uskilhat a Your I85-million-greats-grandfather was a fish So crystal by a football, with electrons in orbit around it was your 185-mdlion-greats-grandmother. which is just On this wale the neaghbounitg footballs in the modern person as well or they couldn't luxe mated with each other diamond would be more than 15km away wouldn't have been and you woukln1be here The !Mon between 11w footballs would contain the able to breed with Les now walk along our three-mile bookshelf, electrons in orbit around the nuclei Rut each electron, pulling pictures off it one lw one to have a look at on our football scale, is much smaller than a put, and them if they had met them. Every picture shows a creature belonging to the these miniature gnats are themselves several same species as the picture on either side of it kilometres away from the footballs they are flying Yet if you walk steadily from one end of the around. So you can we that - amazingly - even the bookshelf to the ottk-r, youth ace a human at one end legendarily hard diamond is almost all empty space and a rah at the other. and lots of interesting relatives The same is ink of rocks, no nutter how hard and an between, which include some that look like apes, solid 11 n true of iron and lead And it is troy of you other that look lake shrews, and so on. Each one is like and me Solid matter is made of alt0(113 'packed- its neighbour. in the line yet. if you pick any two together, but -packed' means something rather odd pictures far apart in the hoe they are very different here because the atoms are mostly empty space So it was all very gradual — so gradual that you Why do rocks and walk feel hard, and wits' can't we wouldn't notice any change as you walked back ten merge our spact' with theirs? We lave to reality that thousand year, which would bog you to somewhere what we feel and see as solid matter is more than Just around sour 400-greats-granctfather maid and electrons - 11w footballs and the gnats_ Now, kis push a hit further back in time, If you Scientists talk about 'forces and 'booth" and walked the first million years along the shelf. the 'fields", which ad an their different ways both to keep picture of your 50.000-greats-gnmdfather would be the 'footballs' apart and to keep the component' of I tear Richard Dawkins different enough to count as a different species, the one each "foothalT together And al is thaw forces and captain -Who was the we call flomo erectus. We. today. are lbw sapiens fields than make things feel solid. lint person really- in So, the question of who was the first person, and When you get down to really small thing's, such as an exclutise audio when they laved, doesn't have a precise answer. It's kind atoms and nuclei, the distinction between 'matter" and extract on the I one. of hors. lake the answer to the question when did you *empty TACO' starts to lose its meaning. It nrct really Wad edition on stop being a baby and become a toddkr/ M some right to say that nucleus n "matter" like a soccer 'flitinadas %comber I point, probably less than a million years ago but mote and that there a 'empty space until the next nucleus. Komi a full inters trw than a hundred thousand ye-an ago. our mentors We define solid matter as 'what sou can't walk with Richard Dawkins were sunkientb different from us that a modern through' You can't walk through a wall because 01 in llits on person wouldn't have been able to breed with them if thew mysterious forces that link the nuclei to their Saturday September they had met neighbors in a lixed position. That's what soot meant SrptrniltrIVII I Eurriri I murisiv; I rs EFTA01168951 RICHARD DAWKINS tin an LOW .what would ET and ...how is a rainbow made The won of allajor General Albert A spleeny Irv", rhinoceros. In the Magic other aliens look like? in the sky? Snenteeerne Plisse US ArmyS fount. chk4 ci Inlelllomte Convinced Dawkins inglisins thin it talk was nude tram he could wait through mil a woukt hove a If there are living creatures on other planets, what First we need to understand about something called *ail, Ow I easearif Thal allatlenal Oela abeel both were made ed a OM as strong as might they look like? the spectrum. It was discovered about ;so years ago by are owe) to So aealhah dear <Irani' Mom°. he There's a widespread feeling that its a bit lazy for Isaac Newton. who may well have been the greatest ran at 0.14• In hit OM* the me 0404.10 told science fiction authors to make them look like humans, scientist ever Ile discovered that white light is really a In Arington. Ye pas In slIrtth about co Oho 1963 Ile cookie, *godly irio like a whirr with just a few things changed — bigger heads tar extra mixture of all the different colours. To a scientist, that's era, or maybe wings what white means But perhaps it is not jut lazy. not just a lack of I low did Newton find this out? /Le set up an imagination. Perhaps there really is good reason to experiment first he blacked out his room so that no suppose that aliens, if there are any (and I think there lkeht could get bl and then he opened a narrow probably are). might not look too unfamiliar to us chink in the curtain, so that a pencil-thin beam of Ektional aliens are proverbially described as bug-eyed white sunlight came streaming in. lie then let the monsters, so I'll take eyes as my example. beam of light pass through a prism. Which is a sort Eyes arc pretty good thins> to have, and that es of triangular chunk of Ores What a prism does is going to he true on most planets light trawls, for splay the narrow white beam oul but the splayed-out practical purposes, in straight lines. Wherever light is beam that emerees from the prism is no longer available, such as in the vicinity of a star, it is white. It is multicoloured, like a rainbow, and technically easy to use light rays to find your way Newton gave a name to the rainbow that he made that around. to navigate, to locate objects. Any planet that day. the spectrum. has hfe n pretty much bound to be in the vicinity of a line's how it works. When a beam of light travels star, because a star is the obvious source of the energy through air and hits Om, it gets bent The bending is that all life needx. called 'refraction", Refraction doesn't have to be caused So the chances are good that light will be available by glass- water does the trick, too. wherever life is present and where light is present it is So, light is bent when it hits glass or water. Rut now very likely that eyes will evolve here's the point. The angle of the bend n slightly Let's exercise our imaginations a bit more On the plaint of our hypothetical Attn. the radiant energy from their star will probably range from radio waves at different depending on what colour the light is Red light bends at a shallower angle than blue light So, if white light really is a mixture of cokmred lights as 66 Let's exercise our the lung end to X-rays at the short. Why should the Newton guessed, what's going to happen when you alerts limit themsehrs to the narrow hand of bend white light through a prism' imaginations a bit frequencies that we call 'light. ? Maybe they have radio The blue light n going to bend farther than the red more. Why should the eon) Or X-ray eyes? light, so they will be separated from each other when A good image relics on high resolution The higher they emerge from the other side of the prism. And the aliens limit themselves the resolution, the closer two points can be to each yellow and green lights will come out in between. to the narrow band of other while still being distinguished from each other. The result n Newton's spectrum: all the colours of frequencies that we call Not surprisingly, king wavelengths don't make for good the rainbow. arranged in the correct rainbow order resolution. tight wavelengths are measured in minute light"? Maybe they — red. orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. fractions of a millimetre and give excellent resolution. Prisms are all wry well but when you see a rainbow haw radio eyes? Or but radio wavelengths are measured in metres in the sky, there isn't a great big prism hanging up X-ray eyes? So radio waves would be busy for forming images, there doing the refracting No, but there are millions although they are very good for communication of raindrops. 1larry Rxter.CAraline. I low du you set about illUstralinsi give you half the story, and the engaged purposes because they can be modulated. Modulated If you want to see a rainbow you have to have the unexplainable, or al least complex. reader evokes the other half — the sound means changed, extremely rapidly; in a contmikd sun behind you when you look at a rainstorm Each lie Magic of Reality — theories in science? and motion — in the mind way As far as is known. no living creature on raindrop es more like a little ball than a prism. and light the illustrator Dave McKean I think everything is explainable. Mad What lengths do you need to go to to areas of science, and definitely the subjects research and understand science briefs? our planet has evolved a natural system for behaves differently when it hits a hall from how it is well %timed in the art of covered m the book. are explainable by a I'm not a scientist, so I have to understand transmitting, modulating or receiving radio waves7 behaves when it hits a prism that had to wait for human technology. But perhaps The difference is that the far side of a raindrop science axontunication clear-sighted writer, which Richard the subject from scratch It was fun to go there are ahem on other planets that have evolved acts as a tiny mirror The light front the sun turns certainly is, and imagery can help to make luck to school and learn (or re-learn) about radio communication? a somersault inside cony raindrop and is reflected things solid and clear in a different way. In the periodic table and light refraction I What about wave% shorter than light waves — X-rays, for example? X-rays are difficult to focus, which backwards and downwards. where it hits your eyes. Nobody sees the full spectrum from any one Picture this the same way that it is sometimes useful to use sound to talk about a painting, or coiours to talk about music. imagery can appreciate the knowledge much snore as an adult than I did as a child What's the ksy to successful and beautiful is why our X-ray machines form shadows rather than raindrop There are millions of other raindrops, and true images, but it Is not impossible that some life they are all behaving in the same kind of way. While throw a different perspective on a subject. science illustrations? forms on other planets have X-ray vision you are looting at Ni red beam. there is another Is art the key to science communication, They must Fis' accurate land in this book's Or, if the aliens have evolved °warn that can handle raindrop called B. which is lower than A. You don't RICHARD or will words always be more powerful? case, that's accurate according to Richard. radio waves for communication, they might also evolve C Richard Hawkins and DAWKINS I think some people can think more clearly and several friends and colleagues who see B's red beam because it hits you in the stomach Have McKean. EvIracted about a subject if they can sec it laid out on offered critiques) and beautiful (I still value true radar to find their way around But B's blue beam is in exactly the right place to tut MAO: of Kraft,' (ram Tlw Magic of Reality. the table in some form. Sometimes images beauty in art). Our soal for this book was to Duckbilksd platypuses have electric senors in their you in the eye to be published by Hesitant bilk which pick up the electnc4 disturbances in water And there are other raindrops lower than A can create an atmosphere or feeling they try to show how 'awesome" — in the Press on Sept IS or 120. It is can evoke emotiom show colours and proper sense of the word — the real world caused by the muscular activity of their prey. It n easy but higher than B, whose red and blue beams mailable far 118, with free to imagine an alien life form that has evolved electrical miss your eye but whose yellow or green beams textures and, of course, they. can clearly is, and the mechanisms and proossis that Sp, front The limes sensitivity along 11w sane lines as fish and the platypus. hit your eye So lots of raindrops together add up show data in the form of charts, diagrams govern it The dories embedded in the liook‘hop. (IS-IS 2712134 or but to a more advanced level to a complete spectrum thelime..cauklbookshop and relative distances. I certainly think history and development of our Universe imam are a powerful tool us storytelling. arc even more astounding than fortion, not that's the power of graphic novels They least because they are true. 26 I TM MIK*: I tints I Scerrinber Ntl settrthnlou I Varna I narrows EFTA01168952 Evolution? Yes, children can Adam and Eve it Nevertheless, many adults find evolution hard It is a stnkmg (act that bogeyman Indeed, they go too far in the other direction. Magical nobody understood it until (larks Darwin and Alfred %mei Wallace in transformations arc not just antiassientialist, they are anti-evolution. WORDS: RICHARD DAWKINS the 19th century. two centuries later than Isaac Newton's (on the face of too And antiacience. Complex things. such as hones. coaches and it more difficult) catmints-Asian of the laws of motion. force. princes, cannot spring spontaneously into exigence from nothing nor acceleration and universal gravity can they be spawned in a puff of smoke (rum other complex things. Could there be aspects of science that children find easier than adults such as mire pumpkins and frogs because adults are weighed down by misleading familianty? Maybe To he sure, a tadpole can turn into a frog and a caterpillar into a weight itself is literally misleading? I was fortunate this year to attend butterfly, but those are revealing special cases. A caterpillar's DNA is a conference of scientists with astronauts — American. Russian and dual purpose full instructions (or how to build a caterpillar (tam an egg. European - and I talked to some of them about what it is lac to be and then a second tier of instructions fur how to build a butterfly from %nightie..., but not massless. I quoted Douglas Adams to them- &constructed caterpillar flesh You can't make a caterpillar or a butterfly - The fact that we live at the bottomof a deep gravity well, on the or a frog or a pnner by magic, from nothing The DNA has to be already surface of a µs-caromed planet wing around a nuclear fireball 90 in place, and the only way we know for that to happen -- at least until million miles away and think this to he normal is obviously some human technology catches up — is tlw slow, gradual, generation-by- indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. but we lust done mutation filtering process of natural selection. various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of out But at least fairytales give the lie to — or perhaps positively misapprehensions" undermine — issenualrun I fununs can't turn into werewolves by I 'untested to the astronauts that, if children were ever to be horn moonlight. No species can turn into a radically different spat But and brought up in a space station where they now experience weight. any species can turn into a slightly different species And given enough they will find Newton easy to understand They will intuitively grasp the minions of wan. slight difference adds to slight difference and then idea — so foreign to us troglodytes at the bottom of the gravity well — accumulates slight difference again until eventually the descendant that the default condition for a moving body is to continue forever in of a fish turns out to be a fishmonger the same direction 'Hwy will effortlessly comprehend the difference "I'll believe in evolution the day a monkey gives birth to a human' between weight and mass, and will understand that, although a cannon So speaks the ignorant creationist, flat-footedly misunderstanding the hall and a ping pang ball can have equal weight. they very much do not gradualness of en:autism No animal ever ban was a member of a haw equal mass. Try to throw a cannon ball amass the space station and different species from its parenta 'Die trick is to unikrstand how that you are likely to shoot off in the opposite direction. Jump towards what truth Is fully compatible with another truth every one of us is descended you think of as the °ceiling", and you will he shocked to find that the from an animal which. were we to meet it today, we would classify (and "ceiling turns into the *floor" as you "fall"hemily" 'down" on it. very pmbably eat) as a fish. Before that, every one of us was descended Welghtksa children might even be primed to understand the Ennis-Minn from an ancestor that we would need a microscope to we, and that we lease tell me something I can tell Daddy, equivalence between gravity and acceleration. would probably classify as a bacterium. All that is literally true at the which he doesn't already know." The heartfelt plea of this child from Northern Ireland Computer games typically are programmed with a virtual physics same time as at is true that every intermediate link in the chain would which mimics, on the screen, the familiar physics of the outside world have been classified as the same species as its parents and its children is the more poignant because his father happened to be a devout Christian — as is com- Simulated objects don't pass through each other, simulated balls bounce It Sift realty all that paradoxical Every child is familiar with gradual off walls and off each other, they follow hailinically calculated parabolic change, too slow to notice. The hour hand of %um watch seems mon in that unfortunate province. What nonsense might the boy have been fed, from the trajectories, and so on What if a computer game were pnwrammed with motionless gut look away (or an hour and it has moved. You were once an alternative physts, perhaps even a virtual rendering of counter- a baby. then you became a toddler then you became a chikf Yet there cradle on? And what true knowledge could we offer in response? intuitive quantum physics? Or of something resembling Einsteinun non was a day when you woke up and said, 'Yesterday I was a toddler. Perhaps this little boy, when he asked the perennial question: "Where did I come physics at close to a maximum permitted velocity? Might children today I seem to have become a child." brought up on such ganws have a head start when they come to study In the same way, there never was a first I Ionic sapiens baby born to from?" was told: "God made you:' Or "You came out of your mother, and she came from physics at 9600 or university? I lona mynas parents When anthropologists heatedly argue whether Newton and Galileo had to wrest themselves free of false intuitions a particular jawbone belongs to I km° or Australopithecus. they may her mother and so on back to your great-great-great-great-grandmother who came from horn of their upbringimt in the grasity well. Is there a similar barrier turn out to be engaging in essentialist foolery. There never was a Eve. And Eve, along with her husband Adam, was made by God." to understanding evolution? Is there a parallel respect in which naive moment when Australopithecus parents gam, fondly down at the firstborn flow baby livery baby ever born belonged to the same children might actually find evolution easier to understand than adults? No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it is surprising According to the great Gemum-American zoologist Ernst Mayr. species as Its pamds Yet. if you sample an ancestor's descendants at a the chid historical bather to understanding evolution has been the sufficiently long interval (like sampling the position of the hour hand on how many parents think that it is somehow fun to pass on this falsehood (and others in philosophy of casaitialiun• for which he blames Plato and Aristotle. a watch). you'll find descendants that belong not just in different sixties the same vein) to their children. Or they expect their child's school to do so. Perhaps they Steeped in geometry. the Greeks thought of triangles in the real world but different orders, classes and phyla It is a certain (act that there once as imperfect approximations to an abstract ideal of trianglinesa In the was an animal that is the common ancestor uf you and a snail think it harmless, like Father Christmas. Or maybe they think the truth is less poetic, less same way that individual rabbits, rhinos and cormorants -- variable. I have sometimes worried about the educational effects of fairytales flesh-and bone individuals -- were flawed approximations to the ideal Could they be pernicious, leading children down pathways of gullibility "fun" or harder to understand than the myth. rabbit, the perfect rhino, the essence of cormorant Mayr argued that towards anhanenblic superstition and religion? Maybe. But could they such essentialist thinking delayed, by centuries, humanity's also be beneficial, in leading children away from static essentialism? and But I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more understanding of evolution The idea that one species coukl turn into towards a state of mind that is receptive to the dynamics of evolution? poetic — even more fun — than this myth, or any of the hundreds of creation myths from another Ilse idea that, given a sufficient number of generations. I don't know. And as so often when I don't know the answer to a question, I'd like to find out species of fah could gradually change so far that their descendants around the world. And — perhaps surprisingly — evolution could be taught in such a way could be aardvarks or philosophers — is, according to Mayr, detmly The Magic of Reality — An Evening with Richard Dawkins antithetical to all our intuitions, and this is becassewe are dyed-in-the- Royal Albert Mk October 19, 8-JOpm as to make it easier to understand than a myth. This is because myths leave the child's wool essentubsts. Hut maybe children are not. lames I larding Editor of The limes hosts an evening with Richard Dawkins Times• members can book premium seats (normally DA) for questions unanswered, or they raise more questions than they appear to answer. Evolu- Children.; fainiaks are replete with anti-essentialist propaganda Mice turn into white horses and pumpkins into gleaming coaches at 1.50 each Ticket prices include a voucher for one free copy of The Magic tion is a truly satisfying and complete explanation of existence, and I suspect that this is the touch of a fairy's wand It takes only a kiss for a frog to morph into of keulily to be exchanged on the night and a glass of Moe champagne. a handsome prince. Such radical changes undermine Mayes essentialist innamytimesphntaisk something a child can appreciate from an early age. a: nw nmm I Stela 4 *twin .7aM Scpleathrr Rot I Foul I ME TIMES I EFTA01168953