Eden - A Simple Question of Observation

摘要

It is a privilege to be offered a soapbox and an audience to go with it - you certainly don't get that at Speakers' Corner! I would take as my themes: "life is so busy today" and "innovation is a good thing". Possibly the most profound life-changing thing that has ever happened to me in terms of my imagination was when a friend asked me to give him one hour of time to look at a one metre square patch of grass in a field. He told me he wanted me to stare at it with total concentration, not dreaming, not distracted, but totally focussed. For a short while all I saw was green, and then I saw ants, spiders, more ants, bigger spiders, then beetles and other insects I couldn't begin to describe. A field vole pushed through, and by the time my hour was upmy world had changed. There in this one square metre was a complete world of thousands of living things oblivious of me. My romantic notion of ecology where all things were dependent on each other may or may not be real, but this world proved a window on to another one for me.