* It is a particular mini-Problematica. Let’s name it section two-and-a-half of my two-part essay at the starting place of novel characters. (Listed here are Portions 1 and 2.) Problematica is written through Max Dresow…
Have you ever ever had the revel in of finding out about one thing after which— swiftly— seeing it in every single place? The phenomenon it seems that has a reputation: the “Baader-Meinhof” phantasm, in connection with a West German militant communist workforce. A St. Paul resident, Terry Mullen, coined the time period in a letter to my native newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It sounds as if after finding out concerning the Baader-Meinhof (or Pink Military Faction) workforce, Mr. Mullen started noticing it in every single place. Or, in the event you choose, right here’s Lewis Black describing the similar factor:
The fellow subsequent door to you tells you, “There’s a endure shitting in every single place.” You are saying, “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” and day after today the endure is following you round.
I had a Baader-Meinhof second the previous day. My Baader-Meinhof (or shitting endure) was once Mivart’s catch 22 situation— now not one thing I simply discovered about, however one thing I simply wrote about. Right here’s what came about. Whilst I used to be loitering out of doors my two-year-old’s room, stealing a second of peace, I pulled a guide from my bookshelf. It was once an essay assortment, Conceivable Worlds, through J. B. S. Haldane, printed in 1927. One essay was once titled “Darwinism to-day,” the similar name as Vernon Kellogg’s 1907 guide, which I wrote about in my remaining submit. Curious, I started to learn. It starts with a Haldane staple: the usage of biology to ridicule the argument from design:
On moderate, each vertebrate harbours some dozens of parasitic worms, whose far off ancestors have been free-living. Blake requested quite doubtfully of the tiger: ‘Did he who made the lamb make thee?’ The similar query applies with equivalent power to the tapeworm, and an affirmative resolution would obviously postulate a author whose sense of values would now not commend him to the admiration of humanity. (Haldane 1927, 29)*
[* Everyone has heard the story about Haldane and the theologian. The theologian asks Haldane what the biologist can say about the attributes of the Creator from a broad knowledge of his works. Haldane replies that He must have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.” Stephen Jay Gould tracks down the origins of this story in an essay, “A special fondness for beetles,” reprinted in Dinosaur in a Haystack.]