Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent Notes PDF

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Roy Fisher...

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PILGRIM ON THE GREAT BIRD CONTINENT CHAPTER 1 - “But Darwin’s mentors did not see the birds this way, and for his time Darwin’s outlook was fresh, and full of poetry” - Darwin left his imposed pursuit in medical school towards a naturalist one - “You will be a disgrace to yourself and all of your family,” Robert Dawin - “Charles Darwin was a respectful son, and, shattered by his father’s lack of support, he immediately composed a letter refusing the post” - “He applied his oversized bump to his naturalist's endeavors and, as a young man hardly knowing what he was about or what he might be doing, Darwin began his life’s work, changing the relationship between humans and the rest of earthly creation forever” - “But the way that Datwin studied bears little resemblance to modern scientific practice” - “He shook his head to bring himself back to the enormous world and to the realization that would not leave him: We are unbelievably small, we are highly forgettable” - “He was coming to understand the completely unique value of the individual while at the same time realizing that it is a mistake - a kind of hubris - to confer a more transcendent sense of import to any individual animal” - “He was always aware of two different kinds of questions- those he did not know the answer to and those he could not know the answer to” CHAPTER 2 - “From the start, Darwin saw the diary as one of his most important tools [...] he was sure it would be of interest to him as he aged, and perhaps to his eventual children” - “It is, like most diaries, a rehearsal of personal ambitions, a form of self-invention, a training ground for sustained creativity, and a kind of vessel between worlds carrying his voice from a purely private place into a wider forum” - “He didn’t realize that he was in the thick of creating his life’s most significant habit - transforming the activities of daily life into scientific insights” CHAPTER 3 - “I see Darwin at this moment beginning his voyage again, not as a tourist this time but as a kind of pilgrim, living an unfiltered, firsthand experience, becoming his own witness to creation’s story, putting himself, as is the pilgrim’s task, within that story” - “Darwin was compelled in the diary to record something of the spiritual response that had taken hold of him” - “‘It is nearly impossible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings which are excited; wonder, astonishment & sublime devotion fill & elevate the mind’” - “It is not difficult to think of this time as a kind of conversion period for Darwin- an intense turning that is the source of a new perspective [...] This rearrangement is what allows spiritual experience - an act or feeling or encounter during which humans, in solitude, ‘stand in relation to whatever they consider to be divine.’” - Liberal Christian background and later immersed in Anglican culture at

Cambridge CHAPTER 4 - “In spite of what our teachers told us, there are stupid questions, but a good question, an evocative and intelligent question, is always startling and treaurable” - “The best questions arise from a different sphere, from the unknown place that music or poetry comes from, the realm of creativity and curiosity and clear blue ether” CHAPTER 5 - “Typically, arrogance is considered to be the antonym of humility, but I believe arrogance is, rather, a symptom of humility’s true opposite - forgetfulness” - “And it is in these moments of surprising forgetfulness that we renew humility, a remembrance of the ground of our lives, the basis of what is offered to us as well as what is required of us” - “We begin to see, rather, our lives as embodied, unseparate, inseparable, rushing forward with the whole of wild life” - “There is a complex line that circumscribes human interactions with the natural world - a line between remembering ourselves and forgetting ourselves that must be trod lightly and with discernment developed over time” - “I am more and more certain that this is what the naturalist’s calling asks: to see how deeply it matters that we are not forgetful” CHAPTER 6 - “Most biological scientists are trained under a specific rubric that allows a certain range of intellectual speculation. Within this range, however, there are two things that are banned in scientific reporting. One is anecdote, the random, non replicable observations of animal behavior. The other is anthropomorphism, the attribution of human mind states to nonhuman creatures” - “This primitive language, the consortium argues, keeps science locked in an outdated understanding of avian consciousness” - “The naturalist’s faith draws us into the works of recognizing such dimensions of nonhuman lives - both what we can known and the pure subjectivity that lies, however frustratingly, beyond the reach of our brilliant science” CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

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“Darwin recognized a spiral of relationships, a coil in which humans were caught up rather than one they observed from the fictitious ethereal remove recommended by the science of his time. Such relationships revealed themselves as an organism made its way from its body to its place, from its place to its sustenance, from its own life to othersan infinity of other” (Page 161)

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“ We are fragments-from one angle incomplete, from another entirely whole. We lie in the spaces between these concepts, our feet stepping neatly about the work of our household - kitchen garden, laundry, child - our jagged backs against the soil, where our edges are smoothed, where all the sentient beings (sea stars, owls, trees, and stones) become our quiet, unseen company.” (page 165)

Chapter 9 -

Chapter 12 - “Her story (Lady Hope), he says, has the ring of truth to the extent that her details of Darwin’s home, life, and even conversational style seem authentic. But there is no way to corroborate her highly unlikely tale, which grew into a genuine legend, complete with a vision of Darwin clutching a Bible at the moment of death, renouncing evolution, and begging for a clergyman.” (Page 250) - “Darwin’s family, though, say they heard him whisper minutes before passing, “I am no afraid to die” the words of a man who, lacking faith in traditional immortality, lay content in the knowledge of a full life lived well” (Page 250) - “I like to think, too, that although science cannot teach one to die well, as Darwin seems to have done, a life attuned to the cycles of nature can offer such lessons, and in this Darwin was schooled daily.” (Page 250-251) -

“Reading Darwin’s early notebooks, his Ornithological Notes, and other works, I am always intrigued with the specificity of his observations, the details he bothered to record that so often pass beyond out everyday notice” (Page 248)

Religious quotes---convergence - “In the Autobiography, Darwin repudiated any connection to the traditional Christian faith and offered an actual refutation of Anglican creedal belief, grounded in Humean skepticism. Might the “grand conclusions” of traditional religious beleif “be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Darwin’s doubts were fitting, and even necessary, if his vision was to be consistent.” (Page 236-237)

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“Both Huxley and Darwin were careful to separate their agnosticism from atheism. Darwin states many times over in his correspondence and notebooks that he has “never been an atheist”. He also insisted that is was also possible to be a theist, in fact an “ardent theist” (here he was thinking if his friend the American Asa Gray), and still subscribe fully to his scientific views.” (Page 239-249)

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“In his youth, there may have been moments when he thought science might hold the key to infinite understanding, but there were no such moments in Darwin’s mature years. Rather, his lifelong study of natural things allowed him to draw a slender perimeter around his knowledge, and to stand within it, quiet before the things of which he, in human finitude, must remain ignorant. He recognized that this perimeter was not impermeable; the questions on either side often infused one another, and even Darwin’s most academic treatises exposed these connections. Darwin was humble in the presence of mystery, yes, but was more than humble. He was uncommonly comfortable” (Page 242)...