A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller [86]
The thon’s gaze seemed to clamp calipers an the abbot’s cranium and measure it six ways. He smiled doubtfully.
“You’d like me to explain our work in the simplest possible language?”
“Something like that, if it’s possible.”
“That’s just it.” He laughed. “The untrained man reads a paper on natural science and thinks; “Now why couldn’t he explain this in simple language.” He can’t seem to realize that what he tried to read was the simplest possible language-for that subject matter. In fact, a great deal of natural philosophy is simply a process of linguistic simplification-an effort to invent languages in which half a page of equations can express an idea which could not be stated in less than a thousand pages of so-called “simple” language. Do I make myself clear?”
“I think so. Since you do make yourself clear, perhaps you could tell us about that aspect of it, then. Unless the suggestion is premature-as far as your work with the Memorabilia is concerned.”
“Well, no. We now have a fairly clear idea of where we’re going and what we have to work with here. It will still take considerable time to finish of course. The pieces have to be fitted together, and they don’t all belong to the same puzzle. We can’t yet predict what we can glean from it, but we’re fairly sure of what we can’t. I’m happy to say it looks hopeful. I have no objection to explaining the general scope, but-” He repeated the doubtful shrug.
“What bothers yon?”
The thon seemed mildly embarrassed. “Only an uncertainty about my audience. I would not wish to offend anyone’s religious beliefs.”
“But how could you? Isn’t it a matter of natural philosophy? Of physical science?”
“Of course. But many people’s ideas about the world have become colored with religious-well, what I mean is-”
“But if your subject matter is the physical world, how could you possibly offend? Especially this community. We’ve been waiting for a long time to see the world start taking an interest in itself again. At the risk of seeming boastful, I might point out that we have a few rather clever amateurs in natural science right here in the monastery. There’s Brother Majek, and there’s Brother Kornhoer-”
“Kornhoer!” The then glanced up warily at the arc lamp and looked away blinking. “I can’t understand it!”
“The lamp? But surely you-”
“No, no, not the lamp. The lamp’s simple enough, once you got over the shock of seeing it really work. It should work. It would work on paper, assuming various undeterminables and guessing at some unavailable data. But the clean impetuous leap from the vague hypothesis to a working model-” The thon coughed nervously. “It’s Kornhoer himself I don’t understand. That gadget-” he waggled a forefinger at the dynamo “-is a standing broad-jump across about twenty years of preliminary experimentation, starting with an understanding of the principles. Kornhoer just dispensed with the preliminaries. You believe in miraculous interventions? I don’t, but there you have a real case of it. Wagon wheels!” He laughed. “What could he do if he had a machine shop? I can’t understand what a man like that is doing cooped up in a monastery.”
“Perhaps Brother Kornhoer should explain that to you,” said Dom Paulo, laying to keep an edge of stiffness out of his tone.
“Yes, well-” Thon Taddeo’s visual calipers began measuring the old priest again. “If you really feel that no one would take offense at hearing non-traditional ideas, I would be glad to discuss our work. But some of it may conflict with established preju-uh-established opinion.”
“Good! Then it should be fascinating.”
A time was agreed upon, and Dom Paulo felt relief. The esoteric gulf between Christian monk and secular investigator of Nature would surely be narrowed by a free exchange of ideas, he felt. Kornhoer had already narrowed