WHO KNEW?!

BY

MICHAEL KOENIGSKNECHT

 

Presented March 5, 2010

The Chicago Literary Club

Joint Meeting at the Fortnightly of Chicago


 

Knock, Knock                                                                      

Who’s There?

Who Knew

Who Knew What?

Who’s What?

What’s Going On?

I don’t know any What’s Going

Or Coming    

 

Who do you think you are?

What happened to What?                           

When, are you going to

 answer my questions?

 

Who, What, When,

Next you’ll be calling me Where! 

Let’s keep it simple, shall we?

It’s Who Knew.

           

 

 

 

 

            Friends, Ladies, Gentlemen, lend me your ears; I come to ask the questions, not to answer them.  The evil that men do – that’s a subject for another evening. Tonight’s topic is Who Knew.

 

            First, is it even a question?  Or is it, rather, a rueful declaration of futility; as Jean Paul Sartre used to say, an existential cri de coeur?

 

            How will we ever know?  Who shall we ask?  Is there an answer to this central issue of this time, and of this place?

 

            Is the human mind capable of penetrating this mystery?  Or, shall we, seat mates on the tilt-o’wheel of life, simply have to live with this ambiguity at the very core of our dinner conversation?

 

            I am reminded of something Groucho Marx once said . . . very amusing . . .  But, let me come back to that later.  Let me come back to Mr. Who Knew and to Mr. Groucho Marx.   First, let me talk about Thomas Jefferson; there may be a serious, even a melancholy, aspect to this topic. 

 

            Thomas Jefferson was a man of politics, science and theology.  Putting aside ineluctable human frailties, most of us would consider him a thoughtful, articulate and educated man.  He was well traveled, spoke and read several languages and devoted time to scientific study, even during periods of substantial commitment to public service. 

 

            But looking back on Mr. Jefferson now, we see intellectual blind spots.  One was Mr. Jefferson’s struggle with accepting the fact of the extinction of species.  Today, it is accepted fact that of all the species that have lived on earth, 99.9% are currently extinct.  But 200 years ago, the concept of species extinction was radical. Fossils, large and small, had been discovered and examined.  Theories included that these were remains of current species which had simply relocated.  Jefferson himself examined some notable fossils discovered on eroded river banks in the Ohio and Kentucky Territories.  These included mammoth bones and a very large claw which Jefferson theorized had belonged to a “prairie lion” many times larger than the familiar African lion.  When President Jefferson sent Lewis & Clark to explore the newly-acquired Louisiana Territory, he specifically enjoined them to look for living prairie lions and mammoths which he supposed might still roam the unexplored lands. 

 

            At the time of Lewis & Clark’s expedition French scientists had already published works about species extinction.  Jefferson’s resistance to the concept of species extinction had several bases.  One was political: he wished to counter French scientists’ denigration of all things American.  He wanted very much to have large, amazing animals exist in this new nation. Another was philosophical: Jefferson was educated on the western European canon and had thoroughly absorbed the core philosophical, scientific and theological values.  God’s creation was perfect.  An all powerful, all loving God would not allow any species to become extinct; this would render His creation incomplete.  It would break the great Chain of Being.  In this cosmology, plants, animals, humans, angels and God were all links in the Great Chain of Being.

 

            Jefferson believed in the Great Chain of Being, in the perfection of God’s creation.  “Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”  (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787).  Even when God, in his wisdom, punished man by sending the flood, He carefully avoided any breaks in the chain, any gaps in his creation, by commissioning Noah to gather two of each creature to repopulate the earth.   Jefferson was born into the 18th century “completeness of nature” view of the world; he died when evidence was building that extinction of species is a natural, recurring process.

 

            In 1859 Darwin published The Origin Of Species.  Darwin believed that the extinction of species is a natural and essential component of the evolution of species.  Natural selection is a sorting process:  some species to extinction, some to enhanced reproduction and survival. Darwin, however, believed that extinction of species was a gradual process, slower even than the evolution of species.  He rejected sudden, cataclysmic extinction.    

 

            Into the early twentieth century, Darwin’s ideas prevailed. By the mid-twentieth century scientific consensus was shifting and now Darwin’s rejection of sudden extinction is considered wrong.  Current scientific thought is that there have been at least twenty mass extinctions over the last half billion years. 

 

            The quest for knowledge, science and the scientific method are wonderful things. They co-exist with other aspects of human nature: romanticism, religious beliefs, a tendency to anthropomorphism and to reason from the very specific and temporary to the general and infinite.  All of these respond to our thirst for answers to large questions.  Sometimes we conflate two or more of these aspects to satisfy our need for answers. 

 

            Our human tendency to prematurely believe that we know, that we have “The Answer”, is actually counter-productive.  As long as men knew that the earth was the center of the universe, a better understanding of the mechanics of our solar system was impossible.

 

            As long as people think, as did Jefferson, that creation at the moment of their existence is complete and perfect, a better understanding of the history of our planet and of life on earth is impossible.

 

            Even Darwin was tethered to the past, to the concepts he’d been taught; thus limiting his steps into the new intellectual territory he had discovered. 

 

            Aren’t we all, like Jefferson and Darwin, subject to emotional and cultural limits to stepping into new intellectual territory?

 

            Isn’t human knowledge itself a bit like earthly flora and fauna, subject to evolution?  Let’s be honest, 99.9% of our ideas are doomed to extinction. Any one person’s knowledge is constrained by their position on the intellectual evolutionary chart.  Each of us may be of different heights, but we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before. 

 

            So, Ladies and Gentlemen, is it possible to keep it simple, to a concise Who Knew?  Must we not also consider matter, time and space?

 

            Recall our friend, so rudely roused from his restful repose by an abrupt “knock, knock.”  Was he not correct to ask What? When? and Where? in answer to the laconic Who Knew?

 

            Ladies and gentlemen, can we name a grand prize winner of our global game by merely asking Who Knew?  I think the answer obvious, don’t you?

 

            Truly, we are on a journey tonight.  Together, we have just experienced, in this room, incarnate, that very intellectual tendency just mentioned: the impulse to the premature conclusion.  Guys, I know what you are thinking: “Gosh, that never happened before!”  Under the sway of the compulsion to believe that we know, we seize upon the offered answer and declare the discussion closed.  Some people are satisfied with the premature conclusion, others not. 

 

            Well, let me assure those of you not so easily satisfied: this inquest is not yet concluded.  We have yet to touch upon the seminal point.   

 

            There remains the as yet unasked Why.  Not the day-to-day, common why, but the Great Why.

 

            When we have amassed heaps of facts, of Who’s, What’s, When’s and Where’s, the Great Why is still out there.  It is not factual, it is not reasonable, and it will not be still. 

 

            Cleared-eyed science, reason, focused intellect are wondrous things, but they do not answer every purpose.  What lies beyond reason, beyond intellect? There be the Great Why.

 

            Yes, oh yes, young Ishmael, there be the Great Whyly Why.  She lurks in deep waters.  Often submerged, she glides silent and powerful, just below the surface; a dark shadow beneath the flotsam and jetsam of our daily lives.

 

            Our quest for the Great Why may seem senseless, impossible even; yet, pursue her we must.  So, we few, we happy few, voyage beyond science, beyond reason.  On our journey, who will offer map or compass; or better, GPS?  When we search our memories, one man breaks the surface, gasping for breath and clutching the device of our salvation.   That man is Groucho Marx.

 

            Groucho Marx, that piquant philosopher and game show host, and; confidentially, a flagrant, casual philatelist.  Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen, you know those Hollywood types; over the years, he had a few, usually in the back of desk drawers.  Yes, Who Knew?! But I digress. 

 

            Tonight Groucho Marx shall remain clothed in the sensible woolens of moral philosophy.   The great man once said, quite casually, he may not have realized the profundity of his words: 

 

            “Any man who says he sees right through women, is missing a lot.”

 

            So, so, true.  If we but infer what the Great Marx actually intended to impart, our toes will be pointed in the right direction. 

 

            What lies beyond reason and intellect?  Beyond the Who, What, When and Where’s? There be beauty.  There be poetry.  There be mystery, spirituality and humor.  Let not our too sharply focused reason cause us to miss those. 

 

            In the end, my friends, Who Cares, Who Knew?!