Natural Science (1973)

Natural Science. Lewis Thomas

From New England Journal Medicine 288 pp 307-308 February 8, 1973.

 

I don't know of any other human occupation, even including what I have seen of art, in which the people engaged in it are so caught up, so totally preoccupied, so driven beyond their strength and resources. 

Scientists at work have the look of creatures following genetic instructions; they seem to be under the influence of a deeply placed human instinct. They are, despite their efforts at dignity, rather like young animals engaged in savage play. When they are near to an answer their hair stands on end, they sweat, they are awash in their own adrenalin. To grab the answer, and grab it first, is for them a more powerful drive than feeding or breeding or protecting themselves against the elements.

It sometimes looks like a lonely activity, but it is as much the opposite of lonely as human behavior can be. There is nothing so social, so communal, and so interdependent. An active field of science is like an immense intellectual anthill; the individual almost vanishes into the mass of minds tumbling over each other, carrying information from place to place, passing it around at the speed of light.

There are special kinds of information that seem to be chemotactic. As soon as a trace is released, receptors at the back of the neck are caused to tremble, there is a massive convergence of motile minds flying upwind on a gradient of surprise, crowding around the source. It is an infiltration of intellects, an inflammation.

There is nothing to touch the spectacle. In the midst of what seems a collective derangement of minds in total disorder, with bits of information being scattered about, torn to shreds, disintegrated, deconstituted, engulfed, in a kind of activity that seems as random and agitated as that of bees in a disturbed part of the hive, there suddenly emerges, with the purity of a slow phrase of music, a single new piece of truth about nature.

In short, it works. It is the most powerful and productive of the things human beings have learned to do together in many centuries, more effective than farming, or hunting and fishing, or building cathedrals, or making money. It is instinctive behavior, in my view, and I do not understand how it works.

It cannot be prearranged in any precise way; the minds cannot be lined up in tidy rows and given directions from printed sheets. You cannot get it done by instructing each mind to make this or that piece, for central committees to fit with the pieces made by the other instructed minds. It does not work this way.

What it needs is for the air to be made right. If you want a bee to make honey, you do not issue protocols on solar navigation or carbohydrate chemistry, you put him together with other bees (and you'd better do this quickly, for solitary bees do not stay alive) and you do what you can to arrange the general environment around the hive. If the air is right, the science will come in its own season, like pure honey.

Image from HERE.

Science has taken a turn towards Darkness (2015)

Many members of the British public will be under the impression that the billions of pounds of their taxes that are spent every year by UK Government agencies on biomedical science, is money well spent. Apparently, the reality is in fact quite the opposite.

HERE is a frankly shocking editorial by Dr Richard Horton Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the 55 year old Editor of The Lancet, one of the world's top medical journals.

In this piece, Horton describes a cosy meeting held under the Chatham House rule at the Wellcome Trust in April 2015 with some of the UK's top funders of biomedical science; the BBSRC, the MRC and the Wellcome Trust. 

Two of these agencies are handsomely paid for by the UK Government, with the aim of funding the highest quality basic biomedical science. In 2015/2016 the BBSRC spent £473 Million and the MRC £927.8 Million. Every penny of which was derived from UK tax payers.  

Here is what Horton has to say:

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures,such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct. 

Dr Horton then goes on to say:

Can bad scientific practices be fixed? Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivised to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivised to be productive and innovative. 

This is shameful. No scientist should need to be incentivised to be right. Science, if it is anything at all, is all about being right. Meaning in this case: seeking to understand the truth about nature and natural phenomena.

The sponsors of the symposium that Horton attended in April 2015 have published the outcomes of the symposium, an action plan and an update on progress HERE. Perhaps, in years to come, the next editor of The Lancet may be able to write an opinion piece which describes a situation in bio medical science that is very different than today's: A turn away from darkness.

Green Lane (2017)

Image Copyright M.G. Reed 2017

The Art of Teaching Science (1982)

The Art of Teaching Science by Lewis Thomas HERE.

The conclusions reached in science are always, when looked at closely, far more provisional and tentative than are most of the assumptions arrived at by our colleagues in the humanities. But we do not talk much in public about this, nor do we teach this side of science. We tend to say instead: These are the facts of the matter, and this is what the facts signify. Go and learn them, for they will be the same forever. 

The Case of the Floppy-Eared Rabbits (1958)

Here is a superb paper from 1958 by Bernard Barber and Renée C. Fox; The Case of the Floppy-Eared Rabbits: An Instance of Serendipity Gained and Serendipity Lost.

ABSTRACT

Two distinguished medical scientists independently observed the same phenomenon in the course of their research: reversible collapse of rabbits' ears after injection of the enzyme papain. One went on to make a discovery based on this serendipitous or chance occurrence; the other did not. Intensive tandem interviews were conducted with each of these scientists in order to discover similarities and differences in their experiences with the floppy-eared rabbits. These interview materials are analyzed for the light they shed on the process of scientific discovery in general and on the serendipity pattern in particular.

More on Lewis Thomas and his observations HERE.

Cornish, New Hampshire (1961)

Here is a brilliant essay in the Paris Review about an incident in 1961 when an unemployed actor tracked down J.D. Salinger.

Mammut (1912)

From Der Mensch der Vorzeit by Prof. Hugo Obermaier (1877-1946). Published in Berlin 1912

An Ephemeral Geography

Null Island is
an ephemeral geography, 
a foggy ship of state
sailing thru autumn mists, 
surrounded by sirens and map cherubs. 
Null geocodes, welcome home.

Some explanation HERE.
Image from HERE

Lend me the stone strength of the past... (1944)

Gougane Barra, in the Sliabh Luachra, by Robert Gibbings. From Lovely is the Lee.

Erewhon (1923)

 An edition of Erewhon by Samuel Butler, illustrated by Samuel Gibbings.

The incessant job is to get into focus, not out of focus (1942)

The incessant job is to get into focus, not out of focus. 
A letter from Wallace Stevens to Henry Church 8th December 1942. 

Image from HERE.

Plotly - Open Source JavaScript graphing library

A JavaScript package to quickly create your own customizable Plotly chart editor, HERE.

Most of the Plotly Library below.

Thinking a Bow-and-Arrow (2012)

Here is a paper by Marlize Lombard & Miriam Noël Haidle that develops and applies a visualisation technique to describe the complex series of actions required for tasks such as making a fire, using a composite, stone-tipped spear and making and using a bow and arrow - three vital technologies for human history. 

Above an example of  the visualisation as applied to  using a
stone-tipped spear.

The Abstract reads:

For various reasons increased effort has recently been made to detect the early use of mechanically-projected weaponry in the archaeological record, but little effort has yet been made to investigate explicitly what these tool sets could indicate about human cognitive evolution. Based on recent evidence for the use of bow-and-arrow technology during the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa by 64 kya, we use the method of generating and analysing cognigrams and effective chains to explore thought-and-action sequences associated with this technology. We show that, when isolated, neither the production of a simple bow, nor that of a stone-tipped arrow, can be reasonably interpreted to indicate tool behaviour that is cognitively more complex than the composite artefacts produced by Neanderthals or archaic modern Homo. On the other hand, as soon as a bow-and-arrow set is used as an effective group of tools, a novel cognitive development is expressed in technological symbiosis, i.e. the ability to conceptualize a set of separate, yet inter-dependent tools. Such complementary tool sets are able to unleash new properties of a tool, inconceivable without the active, simultaneous manipulation of another tool. Consequently, flexibility regarding decision-making and taking action is amplified. The archaeological evidence for such amplified conceptual and technological modularization implies a range of cognitive and behavioural complexity and flexibility that is basic to human behaviour today.

Victorian Tile (1892)

A tile that forms part of a space filling tesselation from the Victoria Building, University of Liverpool.

Natural History (1936)

From HERE.

Eclipse at Peru (1937)

Corona photographed by William H Barton at Cerro de Pasco. Natural History Magazine 1937 . HERE.

Modern Mathematics For T. C. Mits (1946)

HERE

Beyond Again (Beyond the Beyond the Beyond)

More non-poetry by Lillian R. Lieber on SAM.

For those who have not met SAM before,
I wish to summarize
VERY BRIEFLY
what his old acquaintances
may already know,
and then to tell to all of you
MORE about him.
In the first place,
the name “SAM”
was first derived from
Science, Art, Mathematics;
but I now find
the following interpretation
much more helpful:
the “S” stands for
OUR CONTACT WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD;
please note that
I do NOT say
that “S” represents “facts” or “reality”,
for
the only knowledge we can have of
the outside world
is through our own senses or
“extended” senses —
like microscopes and telescopes et al
which help us to see better,
or radios, etc., which
help us to hear sounds
which we would otherwise
not be aware of at all,
and so on and so on.

But of course
there may be
many, many more things
in the world
which we do not yet perceive
either directly through our senses
or with the aid of
our wonderful inventions.
And so it would be
Quite arrogant
to speak as if we knew
what the outside world “really” is.
That is why I wish to give to “S”
the more modest interpretation
and emphasize that
it represents merely
that PART of the OUTSIDE world
which we are able to contact, —
and therefore even “S” has
a “human” element in it.

Next:
the “A” in SAM represents
our INTUITION,
our emotions, —
loves, hates, fears, etc. —
and of course is also
a “human” element.

And the “M” represents
our ability to draw inferences,
and hence includes
mathematics, logic, “common sense”,
and other ways in which
we mentally derive the “consequences”
before they hit us.
So the “M” too is
a “human” element.

Thus SAM is entirely human
though not an individual human being.

Furthermore,
a Scientist utilizes the SAM within him,
for he must make
“observations” (“S”),
he must use his “intuition” (“A”)
to help him formulate
a good set of basic postUlates,
from which his “reasoning powers” (“M”)
will then help him to
derive conclusions
which in turn must again be
“tested” (“S” again!) to see
if they are “correct”.

Perhaps you are thinking that
SAM and the Scientist
are really one and the same,
and that all I am doing is
to recommend that we all become
Scientists!
But you will soon see that
this is not the case at all.
For,
in the first place,
it too often happens, —
alas and alack! —
that when a Scientist is
not actually engaged in doing
his scientific work,
he may “slip” and not use
his “S”, his “A”, and his “M”,
so carefully,
will bear watching,
like the rest of us.

Infinity: Beyond the Beyond the Beyond (1953)

This is a strange and ambitious book by Lillian R. Lieber, from 1953 on Infinity. The layout is strange - it isn't poetry, it is prose with each line forming a single phrase.

Structural Constellation II (1950)

Josef Albers (1888-1976). 
Structural Constellation II -  1950

From HERE.

Dawn at Dotonburi, Osaka (1921)

Dawn at Dotonburi, Osaka 

Kawase Hasui
1921 

From HERE

Woodcut (1962)

Woodcut by Harry Sternberg (1904-2001) from HERE.

Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass.

The medic and writer Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) called the MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts) “a paradigm, a human institution possessed of a life of its own, self-regenerating, touched all around by human meddle but consistently improved, embellished by it.”

Image from HERE.

Sequoiadendron giganteum

The Sequoiadendron giganteum - the Giant Sequoia, or what John Muir simply called the Big Tree, can be found quite widely in the UK.  There are two wonderful specimens in the town park in leominster (HERE).

Image above from Cone-bearing Trees of the California Mountains by Chase, J. Smeaton (1911). 

Compact Multiple Copies

If you have some information that you feel is of high value, then a good approach is to make compact multiple copies of the information as a means to increase the probability that the information will not disappear altogether. This works for trees in a forest as well as for books.  

Inspired by a thought from a Robert Bringhurst talk HERE.

Roterdam (1599)

Raccolta di le piu illustri et famose citta di tutto il mondo

From HERE.

Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (1914)

From HERE.

La Pyrotechnie de Hanzelet Lorrain (1630)

HERE is a richly illustrated French treatise on Pyrotechnics and other military techniques by Jean Appier-Hanzelet (1596-1647), published in 1630.
 
La pyrotechnie de Hanzelet lorrain, ou sont representez les plus rares & plus appreuuez secrets des machines & des feux artificiels, propres pour assieger, battre, surprende & deffendre toutes places.

Monterey Cypress (1919)

MONTEREY CYPRESS 

Margaret Downing Brainard.

Within a radius of scarcely five miles together with an inland tension of only a few rods, there stands on Point Lobos and Cypress Point in Monterey County, California, a most interesting group of prehistoric trees widely known as the Monterey Cypress, or, Cedars of Lebanon. 

On the Points overlooking the Ocean the constant action of the fierce winds have forced a peculiar growth. Gnarl-trunked, some two to four feet in diameter, their limbs usually twist out from the bowl of the tree into long flat sprays which form table-like tops at the height of fifty feet from the ground.

Other specimens, from the same cause, develop into grotesque shapes, the most spectacular being that of a striding ostrich and long-necked crane, weirdly silhouetted against the sky. Back from the granite shore, partially sheltered from Ocean winds, the trees produce a more open top while long straight branches extend down the less rugged bodies close to the ground. Inland, shut back by advancing Monterey pines and entirely cut off from the ocean winds, the habit of growth is pyramidal.

The tree is a cypress and not a cedar. La Perouse discovered it in 1786, but, not until Hardweg rediscovered it in 1846 did it receive from him its first name, Cupressus Macrocarpa, the Greek for `large fruited cypress'. The flat-topped growth around Cypress Point bears so strong a resemblance to the Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus Libana) that people non-versed in tree lore have naturally fallen into the error of using the misnomer. Writers, too, overshadowed by the wonderful stories told by the old stage-drivers of the Monterey Peninsula, constantly refer to the Monterey Cypress as the `sacred cedar of the Holy Land'.
 

More HERE, on the story - that involves five Chinese Buddhist monks in 420AD finding Monterey and somehow bringing this tree with them. 

 

Mechanick Exercises (1683)

From a Facsimile of the original 1683 edition of Mechanick Exercises by Joseph Moxon published in 1901 (HERE).

Sphaera mundi (1501)

By Johannes de Sacro Bosco from HERE.

Merely advertising of the scholarship (1995)

From twenty years eaelier - 1995: WaveLab and Reproducible Research. Jonathan B. Buckheit and David L. Donoho HERE

When we publish articles containing figures which were generated by computer, we also publish the complete software environment which generates the figures.

An article about computational science in a scientific publication is not the scholarship itself, it is merely advertising of the scholarship. The actual scholarship is the complete software development environment and the complete set of instructions which generated the figures.
 

Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (2017)

A great piece in the Guardian on the work of Peter Godfrey-Smith's book Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (HERE)

Streets for People (1969)

Streets for People by Bernard Rudofsky 1969.

"...for the street is not an area but a volume. It cannot exist in the vacuum; it is inseparable from its environment. In other words, it is no better than the company of houses it keeps. The street is the matrix: urban chamber, fertile soil, and breeding ground. Its viability depends as much on the right kind of architecture as on the right kind of humanity."
 

Image (left) from Streets for People and (right) an advert from New York Magazine 25 May 1970.

 

Gaussian Correlation Inequality (2014)

A nice story HERE about a retired statistician who solved the Gaussian correlation inequality in 2014 and because it wasn't published in a well known journal it was then ignored for a few years.

On Endpapers

From HERE.

A sculptor of his own brain.

A great piece in The Paris Review on the work of the Spanish pathologist, histologist and neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934). Including mention of his dream diary HERE. Above a self-portait of Cajal in his years of medical student in zaragoza from HERE.

A Journey Round my Room (1794)

In The Art of Travel, the writer Alain de Botton mentions a book called A Journey Round My Room by Xavier de Maistre. This book was written by de Maistre based on his experiences as a 27 year old in the army of the Sardinian Kingdom. In 1790 he was placed under house-arrest in Turin for fighting an illegal duel. During the 42 days of his incarceration he wrote what would become Voyage autour de ma chambre. 

Botton uses de Maistre's book to argue that all of our experiences, the prosaic as well as the exceptional have something to teach us. He also cites Nietzsche: 

When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences - their insignificant, everyday experiences - so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others - and how many there are! - are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority of those who know how to make little of much.

The book by de Maistre, translated into English in 1871 by Henry Atwell is HERE. 

Aratea, with extracts from Hyginus's Astronomica in the constellation figures (9th Century)

From HERE.

Pantograph (1631)

The Pantograph was invented by Christoph Scheiner in about 1603, but his book on the subject, Pantographice, was not published until 1631. 

The full title of the book is: Christophori Scheiner, e Societate Iesu Germano-Sueui, Pantographice, seu, Ars delineandi res quaslibet per parallelogrammum lineare seu cauum, mechanicum, mobile : libellis duobus explicata & demonstrationibus geometricis illustrata, quorum prior epipedographicen, siue planorum, posterior stereographicen, seu solidorum aspectabilium viuam imitationem atque proiectionem edocet

HERE.

The Parish Review

The Parish Review is the magazine of the International Flann O'Brien Society.

The Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, also worked as Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen and too many other pseudonyms for scholars to track. 

Blackboard (2008)

Two stills from an Blackboard, an animated oil painting video by David O'Kane, from HERE. 

Image Copyright David O'Kane.

Interference experiment with electrons (1963)

The diagram from 1963 that shows Feynman's original thought experiment on electron diffraction. From  The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume III
 
Quantum Mechanics

Chapter 1. Quantum Behaviour

“Quantum mechanics” is the description of the behavior of matter and light in all its details and, in particular, of the happenings on an atomic scale. Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.

...

In this chapter we shall tackle immediately the basic element of the mysterious behavior in its most strange form. We choose to examine a phenomenon which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. We cannot make the mystery go away by “explaining” how it works. We will just tell you how it works. In telling you how it works we will have told you about the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics.

...

We should say right away that you should not try to set up this experiment (as you could have done with the two we have already described). This experiment has never been done in just this way. The trouble is that the apparatus would have to be made on an impossibly small scale to show the effects we are interested in. We are doing a “thought experiment,” which we have chosen because it is easy to think about. We know the results that would be obtained because there are many experiments that have been done, in which the scale and the proportions have been chosen to show the effects we shall describe.

 

From HERE.

Controlled double-slit electron diffraction (2013)

A more recent version of the double-slit electron diffraction experiment, from 2013, is Controlled double-slit electron diffraction by Roger Bach, Damian Pope, Sy-Hwang Liou and Herman Batelaan New Journal of Physics 15 (2013) 033018

In this paper, the authors are arguing that the results they present are the first true implementation of an electron double slit experiment.

The general perception is that the electron double-slit experiment has already been performed. This is true in the sense that Jonsson demonstrated diffraction from single, double, and multiple (up to five) micro-slits, but he could not observe single particle diffraction, nor close individual slits. In two separate landmark experiments, individual electron detection was used to produce interference patterns; however, biprisms were used instead of double slits. First, Pozzi recorded the interference patterns at varying electron beam densities. Then, Tonomura recorded the positions of individual electron detection events and used them to produce the well known build-up of an interference pattern. It is interesting to point out that the build up of a double-slit diffraction pattern has been called ‘The most beautiful experiment in physics’, while the build-up for a true double-slit has, up to now, never been reported.

No doubt they will not be the last authors to claim they are the first. 

The Most Beautiful Experiment in Physics (1976)

In 2002 readers of Physics World voted Young’s double-slit experiment with single electrons as “the most beautiful experiment in physics” of all time. Although not credited by Physics World at the time, the physicists Pier Giorgio Merli, Gian Franco Missiroli, and Giulio Pozzi had carried out this experiment in a collaboration between the Italian Research Council and the University of Bologna almost three decades earlier.

The Bologna team had also made a movie for teaching purposes because the experience of watching an interference pattern build up electron by electron was so moving to them that they wanted to share this.

The stills above are from a wonderful movie made in 2010 that describes how the Italian physicsts carried out the experiment, the original movie they made and what they now think of their experiment ( HERE).

From the 2010 film, Gian Franco Missiroli explains why they made the original film:

For the experiment it was important to visualize it not just as a few shots that one can show in an article, but as a detailed sequence of hundreds of frames where you see the step by step growth of the interference pattern, with a psychological and emotional impact stronger than the one given by watching a photo in a scientific paper.

...because the growth of the interference pattern was something so ...touching so - from an expressive point of view - ...convincing, that a movie was the right way to show it. 

A recent appraisal of this beautiful experiment is HERE. 

The original paper: P. G. Merli, G. F. Missiroli, and G. Pozzi, “On the statistical aspect of electron interference phenomena” American Journal of Physics 44 (1976), 306–307.

Demonstration of single‐electron buildup of an interference pattern (1989)

The build up of an electron interference pattern one electron at a time as an electron beam passes through two slits in a barrier is not explainable with classical physics. Richard Feynmann "...absolutely impossible to explain in any classical way, and has in it the heart of quantum mechanics."

Here, from a paper by Tonomura and co-workers from 1989, is a series of experimental images of this phenomena. 

The Abstract:

The wave–particle duality of electrons was demonstrated in a kind of two-slit interference experiment using an electron microscope equipped with an electron biprism and a position-sensitive electron-counting system. Such an experiment has been regarded as a pure thought experiment that can never be realized. This article reports an experiment that successfully recorded the actual buildup process of the interference pattern with a series of incoming single electrons in the form of a movie.

The sequence of images shows what happens as electrons go through the pair of `slits' one at a time. Each white dot is a detected electron, point like and discrete. Over time as more and more electrons pass through the pair of slits an interference pattern builds up - a phenomena of continuous waves. Figure caption: (b) 100 electrons detected, (c) 3,000 electrons detected, (d) 20,000 electrons detected and (e) 70,000 electrons detected. 

Demonstration of single-electron buildup of an interference pattern. A. Tonomura, J. Endo, T. Matsuda, T. Kawasaki, and H. Ezawa. American Journal of Physics 57, 117 (1989); doi: 

Image from HERE.

Chances with Wolves

A superb piece HERE in The Paris Review by David Ramsey on the Internet radio station Chances with Wolves and the role it played as he cleared out his parents house in Nashville.

As we worked, I would find a photograph to keep, or I would find detritus to trash—say, the jewel box of a CD I bought in high school—and it was like uncovering old stories, a prior self, a lost language. A remembered moment or thought, long buried, would arrive with the jolt of discovery. Objects are sacred not when they become signifiers of nostalgia but when they collapse time altogether, when they are restorative of memory. When they are connective strands of the self, of the family, of the community. Our histories are fragile in flimsy recollection. Stuff is the durable stuff of our lives. Music, too, is like this.

Where else are you going to discover Watch ‘n’ Chain by Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation?

Image Copyright Chances With Wolves.

...happiness is no more than a faculty for being surprised (1906)

It seemed to me a wonderful thing that at last I should see oranges growing on trees; and I felt so happy that morning that I could not but wonder at my happiness, and seeking for a cause for it I stumbled on the reflection that perhaps after all happiness is no more than a faculty for being surprised.

The Lovers of Orelay, printed in the Memoirs of my Dead Life by George Moore (1852-1933). Published 1906. HERE.

Painting of Moore by Edouard Manet from HERE. 

The “buena vista” hypothesis (2017)

Massive increase in visual range preceded the origin of terrestrial vertebrates
Malcolm A. MacIver, Lars Schmitz, Ugurcan Mugan, Todd D. Murphey, and Curtis D. Mobley

doi: 10.1073/pnas.1615563114 PNAS March 7, 2017 

Significance

Starting 385 million years ago, certain fish slowly evolved into legged animals living on land. We show that eyes tripled in size and shifted from the sides to the top of the head long before fish modified their fins into limbs for land. Before permanent life on land, these animals probably hunted like crocodiles, looking at prey from just above the water line, where the vastly higher transparency of air enabled long-distance vision and selected for larger eyes. The “buena vista” hypothesis that our study forwards is that seeing opportunities far away provided an informational zip line to the bounty of invertebrate prey on land, aiding selection for limbs—first for brief forays onto land and eventually, for life there. 

Paper HERE.

Commentary HERE.

Image from HERE.