Chapter 19b
Jon inquired, “For instance?”
“Now we are getting into my
field” said the professor comfortably.
Forgive me if I seem to taunt you a little. There is a shelf of books behind me. Do you see them?”
“Yes.”
“Now look away. How many are there?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t count them.”
“Count them now without
looking.”
“Let’s see. The shelves are about six feet high, at about
a foot a shelf. The shelves are about
four feet wide so there are about twenty four feet of shelf space, or two
hundred eighty eight inches. One book
per inch would be two hundred eighty eight books.”
“Very good
indeed. Now look again. It looks like there is a clock on that shelf,
occupying a foot of shelf space. And
look at these thin journals. A shelf and a half of journals none more than a
quarter inch thick. Did you see those
things?”
“Yes, but I didn’t remember
them.”
“But you can see them all
now. I mean the ones you could easily
count from where you sit.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Let us test that. Look at this computer screen.” The professor turned a computer monitor
around for
“Yes, I do.”
“How many are there? You can look.”
“Five rows of five. Twenty five books.”
“Good. Now keep looking.”
After several moments Scandius went on, “Pay no attention to the flashing
border. It is only there to distract
you. It is the oldest magician’s trick
there is. Now how many
books?”
“Twenty
five.”
Scandius pressed another key.
The books promptly moved back in order.
There were five rows of five and one row of two.
“Twenty two,” said
Scandius started the demonstration again. Presently he said, “I can see the
change. But of course I have watched it
a thousand times.”
“No, the computer is not
programmed to do that. But tell me if
you see it happen.” He waited a bit
longer and pressed a key again. The books
reordered themselves.
“Twenty five books,” said
“Yes,” said the professor,
“The test can be done in any number of ways.
But the fact is that you cannot prove you can see all the books. The slightest distraction to keep you from
seeing the actual act of vanishing, the motion, and you cannot tell whether one
has come or gone.”
He switched off the
computer.
“So you see the real puzzle
is not that we are aware of things without knowing it. It is that we think we are aware of things
and we are not.
“Think about the evolution of
it. An ape can travel forty miles an
hour from the top of the tree to the bottom.
Every few feet he must grab a new branch. He is not strong enough to stop himself at
that speed by grabbing and holding a single branch. So he must be working a few branches ahead,
judging the size and distance of each branch, evaluating it for its position so
he can get a good hold on it, estimating the degree of springiness – how far it
is going to bend as he puts weight on it – and gauging the surface. It is an incredible amount of calculation to
perform at such speed. And yet he does
and does so quite accurately.”
“So we did not evolve to be
able to judge the whole environment,” said
“Correct,” said the
professor. We rather evolved to select
parts of the environment and judge them while ignoring other parts. That is what our brain is good for. You only looked at select books and the rest
you just assumed were all right.”
“That’s so strange.”
“But it would have to be that
way. Like the ape with a branch, you can
look at a book and at a glance gauge its heft, it’s texture, what it probably
will smell like and how the pages will sound as you turn them. To do that for the entire shelf at a split
second would require a super computer.
It would be like an ape being able to judge two hundred branches in the
time it takes to reach for one. He
simply has no need for that. Your brain
is bigger than that of an ape, but it is not two hundred times as big as an
ape’s brain.”
“So I am really only seeing a
few books. But I swear I can see them
all at once.”
“All day you live in a world
full of color and detail, you are able to evaluate with great subtlety things
around yourself, and as far as you are concerned the whole world in front of
you is evaluated thus all the time. But
when I test for that evaluation, I cannot find it.”
“But we all know we can see
all of these things. We can agree on
that much,” said
“No. We all think we see all of the things before
us, but when we do a specific test we must all agree that the perception is not
there. Your awareness, your observation
of a whole world, your very will – there is no way to prove they exist at all.”
“In other words,” said Hapgood. “Your
awareness of yourself is like your awareness of God. There is no scientific evidence for it or
against it. It is outside the world of
experiment, and the evidence for the two is equal.”
“Yes, you could put it that
way. And now do you see why the world
seems so spooky?”
“I certainly see that the world seems spooky. So the bottom line is to ignore anything
spooky,” said
“Not necessarily. There are things you are aware of that you
don’t know you are aware of. They may
come as a hunch or as a premonition. It
may be useful to play a hunch, to investigate it. That is particularly true if it is a matter
in which you have much interest and experience.
You may have summed up ten thousand clues into a pattern and not have
realized it. But remain most
skeptical. You see how easily your
senses are fooled. Your hunches are probably
far more treacherous.”
They left the professor and had
a late lunch at a student watering place.
Some students were singing rugby songs.
The jolly undergraduates were so merry it seemed as if their lives had
no other purpose. The grand, ancient and
austere colleges around them made the student company seem all the more
pleasant.
The four emerged shortly
after dark. As they approached the car
Hapgood began to say that he didn’t think they were going to
They would have been happy to
have had
Ivan drove back onto the
pavement, gunned the engine and started toward the other car, going down the
middle of the road with his lights still off.
As the other car neared and gained speed,
“Well done,
“It must have been one of the
groups we dealt with before. They could
have come up from
British Air flight 4 from
There have been 5,705
visitors counted so far.