Terry Pratchett - The Science of Discworld

BY THE SAME AUTHORS:

TERRY PRATCHETT

THE CARPET PEOPLE THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN STRATA

TRUCKERS DIGGERS WINGS ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND

JOHNNY AND THE DEAD JOHNNY AND THE BOMB

THE UNADULTERATED CAT (with Gray Jolliffe) GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman) THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO (with Paul Kidby)

T HE D ISCWORLD SERIES:

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC THE LIGHT FANTASTIC EQUAL RITES

MORT SOURCERY WYRD SISTERS PYRAMIDS GUARDS! GUARDS!

ERIC (with Josh Kirby) MOVING PICTURES REAPER MAN

WITCHES ABROAD SMALL GODS LORDS AND LADIES MEN AT ARMS

SOUL MUSIC INTERESTING TIMES MASKERADE FEET OF CLAY

HOGFATHER JINGO THE LAST CONTINENT CARPE JUGULUM

THE FIFTH ELEPHANT THE TRUTH THIEF OF TIME

THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II (with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen)

THE COLOUR OF MAGIC (graphic novel)

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC (graphic novel)

MORT: A DISCWORLD BIG COMIC (with Graham Higgins)

SOUL MUSIC: The illustrated screenplay

WYRD SISTERS: The illustrated screenplay

MORT THE PLAY (adapted by Stephen Briggs)

WYRD SISTERS (adapted by Stephen Briggs)

GUARDS! GUARDS! (adapted by Stephen Briggs)

MEN AT ARMS (adapted by Stephen Briggs)

THE DISCWORLD COMPANION (with Stephen Briggs)

THE STREETS OF ANKH-MORPORK (with Stephen Briggs)

THE DISCWORLD MAPP (with Stephen Briggs)

A TOURIST GUIDE TO LANCRE a Discworld Mapp (with Stephen Briggs and Paul Kidby) DEATHS DOMAIN (with Paul Kidby) NANNY OGGS COOKBOOK

IAN STEWART

CONCEPTS OF MODERN MATHEMATICS GAME, SET, AND MATH

THE PROBLEMS OF MATHEMATICS DOES GOD PLAY DICE?

ANOTHER FINE MATH YOUVE GOT ME INTO FEARFUL SYMMETRY

NATURES NUMBERS FROM HERE TO INFINITY THE MAGICAL MAZE

LIFES OTHER SECRET FLATTERLAND WHAT SHAPE IS A SNOWFLAKE?

THE ANNOTATED FLATLAND

JACK COHEN

LIVING EMBRYOS REPRODUCTION PARENTS MAKING PARENTS

SPERMS, ANTIBODIES AND INFERTILITY THE PRIVILEGED APE

STOP WORKING AND START THINKING (with Graham Medley)

IAN STEWART AND JACK COHEN

THE COLLAPSE OF CHAOS FIGMENTS OF REALITY

WHEELERS EVOLVING THE ALIEN

When a thaumic experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find that theyve accidentally created a new universe. Within it is a planet that they name Roundworld, an extraordinary place where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic.

The universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the evolution of life on Earth and beyond.

This original Terry Pratchett story, inverwoven with chapters from Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, offers a wonderful wizards-eye view of our universe. Once youve seen the world from a Discworld perspective, it will never seem the same again...

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

A RTHUR C. C LARKE

_____

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced

G REGORY B ENFORD

_____

The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.

M ARK T WAIN

_____

There are no turtles anywhere

P ONDER S TIBBONS

O NCE UPON A time, there was Discworld. There still is an adequate supply.

Discworld is the flat world, carried through space on the back of a giant turtle, which has been the source of so far twenty-seven novels, four maps, an encylopaedia, two animated series, t-shirts, scarves, models, badges, beer, embroidery, pens, posters, and probably, by the time this is published, talcum power and body splash (if not, it can only be a matter of time).

It has, in short, become immensely popular.

And Discworld runs on magic.

Roundworld our home planet, and by extension the universe in which it sits runs on rules. In fact, it simply runs. But we have watched the running, and those observations and the ensuing deductions are the very basis of science.

Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in er

Perhaps we should try this another way. Is there a connection between magic and science? Can the magic of Discworld, with its eccentric wizards, down-to-Earth witches, obstinate trolls, fire-breathing dragons, talking dogs, and personified D EATH , shed any useful light on hard, rational, solid, Earthly science?

We think so.

Well explain why in a moment, but first, lets make it clear what The Science of Discworld is not. There have been several media tie-in The Science of books, such as The Science of the X-Files and The Physics of Star Trek. They tell you about areas of todays science that may one day lead to the events or devices that the fiction depicts. Did aliens crash-land at Roswell? Could an anti-matter warp drive ever be invented? Could we ever have the ultra long-life batteries that Scully and Mulder must be using in those torches of theirs?

We could have taken that approach. We could, for example, have pointed out that Darwins theory of evolution explains how lower lifeforms can evolve into higher ones, which in turn makes it entirely reasonable that a human should evolve into an orangutan (while remaining a librarian, since there is no higher life form than a librarian). We could have speculated on which DNA sequence might reliably incorporate asbestos linings into the insides of dragons. We might even have attempted to explain how you could get a turtle ten thousand miles long.

We decided not to do these things, for a good reason um, two reasons.

The first is that it would be er dumb.

And this because of the second reason. Discworld does not run on scientific lines. Why pretend that it might? Dragons dont breathe fire because theyve got asbestos lungs they breathe fire because everyone knows thats what dragons do.

What runs Discworld is deeper than mere magic and more powerful than pallid science. It is narrative imperative, the power of story. It plays a role similar to that substance known as phlogiston, once believed to be that principle or substance within inflammable things that enabled them to burn. In the Discworld universe, then, there is narrativium. It is part of the spin of every atom, the drift of every cloud. It is what causes them to be what they are and continue to exist and take part in the ongoing story of the world.

On Roundworld, things happen because the things want to happen. What people want does not greatly figure in the scheme of things, and the universe isnt there to tell a story.

With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.

Thats the conventional view of Roundworld science. It misses a lot of what actually makes science tick. Science doesnt just exist in the abstract. You could grind the universe into its component particles without finding a single trace of Science. Science is a structure created and maintained by people. And people choose what interests them, and what they consider to be significant and, quite often, they have thought narratively.