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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com

Friday, May 25, 2007


The kid asked me why walking catfish can walk, and I thought of evolution, the random mutation of genetic matter, some of which sticks. And how each mutation could be thought of as a Lucretian swerve. And how this notion of “swerve” calls to mind the etymology of “universe,” which is “one turn,” though apparently in the sense of “turn into one.” The Big Bang posits that the Universe is a turn away from one-ness, and evolution and the Lucretian swerve suggest that maybe the Big Bang could be thought of as the Big Unraveling propelled by the Primal Swerve, that the original one-ness turned within itself, and came undone. Rockers will be pleased to know that scientists now believe that the Big Bang sounded like the deep hum of a giant stack of turned-on amplifiers. But nobody will ever know for sure. Human vanity lazily assumes that rational inquiry will solve all riddles. No way. Primal questions are beyond us. Take
em on faith or not at all.


You can Lucretius' poem, On the Nature of the Things,here. I’ve read only tiny bits of it.
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