The Science of Discworld IV

hundreds of cultivated varieties, of many plant species, all with monstrously enlarged petals and double flowers, in which anthers and sepals have been converted into petals. These varieties are unable to reproduce sexually and have to be multiplied by methods such as taking cuttings. We humans have exaggerated their sexual parts to such an extent that for them, sex is now impossible.
    There is another side to this process. Without human intervention, orchids have evolved wondrous flowers, complex and colourful. But orchids tend to be rare, growing in remote forests in the angles between the stems of vast trees, or in tiny patches at the edges of dangerous marshes. Humans, admiring the flowers without wanting to modify them, have used a different technique to make them available, to transcend nature. They have developed a variety of sophisticated methods to multiply plants without sex, including tissue culture, by which almost any part of a plant can be made to grow into a whole little plant.
    The result is a deluge of orchids. They have been multiplied to the point at which it is possible to buy living orchid plants for a few pounds at any nursery. Left to their own, in their rare habitats, these plants would not have had any significant impact on humanity. Only a few botanists would ever have heard of them. But today we see them everywhere, in huge quantities; in bridesmaids’ corsages, on restaurant tables and on windowsills. Human cultural capital, this time in the form of know-how, has caused these orchids to exist.
    The same goes for trains, cars and aeroplanes. And electrical distribution systems. And washing-up detergents. And the most grotesque weaponry. We all live among the products of this cultural capital, even those of us who live ‘in the wild’, on mountains or in jungles (except for a few indigenous peoples who have hardly any contact with the outside world). Part of being a twenty-first century human is that nearly all of our surroundings have been ‘caused’ by previous investment, by cultural capital, be it artefacts or knowledge. We have taken over the natural world, and are remaking it inour own image. Nearly all of the causality that surrounds us depends on cultural capital.
    In this way, we have remade our world in the image of narrativium. There is lots of hidden wiring behind the scenes, but it is
deliberately
hidden, so that we don’t need to understand it to work our world. If you needed a PhD to log onto Facebook, the internet would have remained what it originally was when Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web: a research tool for particle physicists.
    Things happen ‘by magic’ because we have made them work like magic. If we want something to happen, it does.
    Like turning the light on, or buying an orchid for a few pounds.
    fn1 See
The Science of Discworld II: The Globe
.
    fn2 Though not obvious to 20% of Americans, who believe that the Sun goes round the Earth, and a further 9% who don’t know: see Morris Berman,
Dark Ages America
.
    fn3 This phrase is not intended to be derogatory, but it recognises an educational dilemma. In
The Collapse of Chaos
, ‘liar-to-children’ is a highly respected profession on the planet Zarathustra. The name reflects the occasional need for teachers to simplify explanations, to pave the way for more sophisticated ones later. The Zarathustrans observed that while all such explanations are true for a given value of ‘truth’, that value is sometimes small.

SEVEN
----
AMAZING GLOBE

    Miss Marjorie looked so uncertain that Ridcully helped her out.
    ‘Well, here in Unseen University we take the view that sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. However, as I understand it, you seldom need to say a mantra to get some engine to work … though I rather suspect that some people do.’
    Despite everything, Marjorie was finding this weird looking-glass world rather amusing and bemusing at the same time, and as a good librarian she noted the fact, and wondered if there could be a ‘cemusing’ when you couldn’t believe your eyes. She said, ‘As a matter of fact, Archchancellor, I used to have a very old Morris Minor, bequeathed to me by my father, who had polished it every Sunday, religiously, and berated it in Latin if it went wrong. I still have the vehicle, and I myself have found that it can sometimes be persuaded to start by singing to it a few verses from
Hymns Ancient and Modern
; a few bars of “All Things