The Science of Discworld II

starts by looking at an ‘outside’ view of language, a kind of chemical analogy. Words, he says, are obviously the atoms of language, phrases and sentences the molecules, atoms in combination. Verbs are reactive atoms, link nouns together, and so on. He discusses paragraphs, chapters, books … and fiction, that he claims, very persuasively, is the ultimate triumph of human language.
    Bateson shows us a scenario where an audience is watching a murder on stage, and nobody runs to phone the police. And then he goes into another mode, addressing his readers directly. He tells them that he felt that he’d done a really good job on the introduction to language, so he rewarded himself with a visit to the Washington Zoo. Almost the first cage inside the gate had two monkeys playing at fighting, and as he watched them, the whole beautiful edifice that he had written turned upside down in his mind. The monkeys had no verbs, no nouns, no paragraphs. But they understood fiction perfectly.
    What does this tell us? Not just that we can rewrite that scene with the boss in our minds. Not even that we can go and see her, and discuss what happened. Its most important implication is that the distinction between fiction and fact sits at the base of language, not at the pinnacle. Verbs and nouns are the most rarefied of abstractions, not the original raw material. We do not acquire stories through language: we acquire language through stories.
    1 Until we had really good fast computers, and had learned a little bit about how to model the complexity of ecosystems or companies or bacterial communities, most of us practised the reductionist trick of looking for the bits we thought we could understand and modelling those. Then we hoped we could put these separate bits together to understand the whole thing. We were nearly always wrong.
    2 As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, fairy tales are certainly not, as modern detractors of the fantasy genre believe, set in a world ‘where anything can happen’. They existed in a world with rules (‘don’t stray from the path’, ‘don’t open the blue door’, ‘you must be home before midnight’, and so on). In a world where anything could happen, you couldn’t have stories at all.

FIFTEEN
TROUSER LEG OF TIME
    I N THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT , magic moved on silent feet .
    One horizon was red with the setting sun. This world went around a central star. The elves did not know this. If they had done, it would not have bothered them. They never bothered with detail of that kind. The universe had given rise to life in many strange places, but the elves were not interested in that, either .
    This world had created lots of life, too. None of it had ever had what the elves considered to be potential. But this time …
    It had iron, too. The elves hated iron. But this time, the rewards were worth the risk. This time …
    One of them signalled. The prey was close at hand. And now they saw it, clustered in the trees around a clearing, dark blobs against the sunset .
    The elves assembled. And then, at a pitch so strange that it entered the brain without the need to use the ears, they began to sing .
    â€˜Chmmmmph!’ said Archchancellor Ridcully, as a heavy body landed on his back and clamped a hand over his mouth, forcing him back down into the long, dewy grass.
    â€˜Listen very carefully!’ hissed a voice in his ear. ‘When you were small, you had a one-eared toy rabbit called Mr Big Pram! On your sixth birthday your brother hit you on the head with a model boat! And when you were twelve … do the words “jolly lolly” ring a bell?’
    â€˜Mmph!’
    â€˜Very well. I’m you. There’s been one of those temporal things MisterStibbons is always goin’ on about. I’m taking my hand away now and we’ll both quietly crawl away without the elves seeing us. Understand?’
    â€˜Mmp.’
    â€˜Good man.’
    Elsewhere in the bushes the Dean whispered into his own ear: ‘Under a secret floorboard in your study—’
    Ponder whispered to himself: ‘I’m sure we both agree that this should not really be happening …’
    In fact the only wizard who did not bother with concealment was Rincewind, who tapped himself on the shoulder and evinced no surprise at seeing himself. In his life he had seen far more unusual things than his own doppelganger.
    â€˜Oh, you,’ he