What do Jeremy Clarkson and the octopus on the fishmonger's slab have in common? Think about it. It might take you a while so while you work that one out let me introduce you to Professor Simon Conway Morris, a Paleobiologist from Cambridge, who has won a whole series of scientific prizes and now thinks that Darwin might have, well, jumped to the wrong conclusions. It all has to do with "Convergence" - let me explain ...
Back to the octopus and Mr. Clarkson. Have you worked it out yet? Well it appears they both look at you through very similar eyes - eyes that have a lense suspended in fluid focusing light onto light sensitive cells. I must admit I had not looked into octopus eyes before (or even found myself looking into Jeremy Clarkson's eyes!) but it seems that their similarity is highly significant for poor old Mr. Darwin. Why? Because accordinging to Darwin (and all other biologists) homo sapiens (which we take to include Jeremy) and the octopus come from completely differenmt species that seperated on the evolutionary tree millions of years ago, way before that type of eye developed. It seems they have booth completely independently developed the same eye. Professor Morris tells me, and who am I to argue, that these "convergences" - different species becoming more like each other, developing the same solution to a problem - are remarkably common. So ...
So, when Darwin saw similarities in fossils, and live species, this does not necessarily mean they have a common ancestor, they might just have been facing the same problem (like needing to see) and ended up finding the same solution. Oh dear, Darwin.
Morris is humble enough to admit that he has no idea why species "converge", and by what mechanisms, but he suggests that perhaps life is more of a mystery than Darwin led us to believe.
I'm just left wondering whether it was God who thought of the eye, and after he gave a few to the octopus family He realised that Jeremy might find a couple useful as well - especially when he's driving at speed. But more importantly I'm really encouraged to read a scientist who believes there is still a great deal of mystery about life.
My church home group are currently working our way through the prophet Micah - quite challenging stuff! This week we found ourselves in chapter 5 which was quite appropriate really in that we had spent the weekend playing at being royalists. It's amazing how so many British people (and I was one of them) can either ignore or deride our royal family most of the year and then spend four whole days waving the Union flag, singing "God save the Queen", and having lunch out in the street in pouring rain with neighbours we never spoke to before - just because someone called Elizabeth Windsor has been "long to reign (or was it rain?) over us".
Well, Micah, was certainly not a royalist, but he does have some interesting things to say about reigning.
Quite independently two of us in the home group decided that we should use "The Message" version of the Bible this week for our study. I admit I rarely read "The Message" - some sort of intellectual snobbery about it not being a proper translation, just an interpretation, as if the hermaneutical process is somehow secondary to linguistic translation! Anyway, having been led to "The Message" one phrase really stood out for me. In a passage which I know almost by heart, because we use it every Christmas, (Micah 5:2) Micah speaks prophetically of Israel's king - the Messiah, Jesus - as "the leader who will shepherd-rule Israel". Instantly pictures of Homs jumped into my mind and my ears rang to the tune of Bashar al-Assad, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Slobodan Milošević, Idi Amin ... What a contrast! And then a quiet sense of gratitude for the young lady who fifty nine years ago was announted with oil in a Christian Cathedral and prayed for God's strength as she dedicated herself to serve her people.
But, I was reminded in our home group, the prophet's words are for me (not just Obama, Kibaki or Pratibha Patil). Shepher-ruling is for me, in my workplace, in my family, amongst my community. Verse 4 of that chapter in Micah goes on " He will stand tall in his shepherd-rule by God's strength, centered in the majesty of God-Revealed." After the washing up, everyone had gone home, I had put away the Bibles and swept up the crumbs, I rewrote that verse as a prayer:
"May I stand tall as I shepherd-rule by God's strength, centred in the majesty of God-Revealed"
What do Jeremy Clarkson and the octopus on the fishmonger's slab have in common? Think about it. It might take you a while so while you work that one out let me introduce you to Professor Simon Conway Morris, a Paleobiologist from Cambridge, who has won a whole series of scientific prizes and now thinks that Darwin might have, well, jumped to the wrong conclusions. It all has to do with "Convergence" - let me explain ...
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