The Explanation for Everything Read Online Free PDF Page A

out.
    â€œSo I was hoping . . .”
    â€œYou were hoping . . .?” He pivoted to look at her. She was fingering a gold cross she wore around her neck.
    She stood up taller. “I was hoping you’d sponsor me for an independent study.”
    An independent study: a nightmare in all ways, especially bureaucratic. He ambled to a cage in the front of the room, peeked in, six mice dreaming happily of whatever mice dream of. “What would you like to design a study in, Melissa?”
    The eyes back on the ground. She sucked on her cross for just a moment, then let it drop from her mouth. She said, “Intelligent design.”
    Andy stopped ambling.
    Lionel had set him up.
    Then again, without really thinking about it, Andy had been waiting for someone to mention intelligent design for years. But all he said to Melissa Potter was, “Excuse me?”
    â€œI really wouldn’t make it too much work for you to sponsor me, Professor Waite. I would do all the background research and find the textbooks and the scholarship,” she said, quickly, for someone (he?) had already taught this young lady that not taking too much of a professor’s time was paramount in getting one to agree to anything. “I just need someone in the sciences to sign the paperwork and help oversee my project.”
    â€œMelissa, I wish I could help you—” he said.
    â€œGreat.”
    â€œâ€”But you should know that I’m a Darwinian. I teach a class some people call There Is No God. I’m not sure why Lionel would suggest that I—”
    â€œHe said you were smart,” Melissa said. “Tough and smart. That you’d challenge me.”
    Flattery. Jesus. “Look, Melissa, intelligent design isn’t a scientifically proven theory. You know that, right? Not only is it not proven, but it’s not provable.”
    â€œWell, nothing is totally provable.”
    â€œActually, some things,” he said. “Some things are.” He watched her heavy face crumple, then rearrange itself in an expression of fierce determination.
    â€œBut Darwinism is unprovable too, right?” she said. “It’s just a theory too—I mean they call it the theory of evolution, don’t they?”
    Ah, this old chestnut. “But when scientists use the word theory, they don’t mean something that can’t be explained. They call it the ‘theory of gravity,’ for instance, but the force of gravity isn’t open to debate.”
    â€œSo maybe there’s another explanation for life on earth,” Melissa said. “A better one than just natural selection or whatever kind of crap that is.”
    Natural selection or whatever kind of crap. Andy sighed: American education.
    â€œI was thinking,” she continued, “what you’re doing in this lab is experimental. I mean your whole career is based on things that are experimental, isn’t it? Isn’t that what science professors do? So couldn’t you help me design some kind of experimental system, some kind of curriculum, to help me prove that there was an intelligent force behind the creation of the planet? Just, like, an experiment? And then if it doesn’t work then, whatever, at least we tried.”
    Andy sighed, ran a hand through his hair. He had spent the past five years at Exton Reed just, like, experimenting, trying to prove that the genetics of alcoholism lead to immutable behavior patterns. Something as basic as this—genes lead to behaviors—felt, at this moment, impossible to prove, felt like trying to prove that the Beatles were better than the Rolling Stones. Who could say for sure? Weren’t there outlying examples? He had, for the past four years, overseen a small laboratory and a vivarium which stocked, at the moment, forty-two mice in varying shades of drunk. He clocked more hours with these mice than he did with almost anyone else in the world. And yet even they