A Higher Court by John L. Betcher

Author:John L. Betcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John L. Betcher
Published: 2013-07-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

THE FOURTH DELIBERATION

This time I found my designated seat quite quickly. I didn’t even check to see who my table-mates would be. They would show up eventually.

Instead, I was wondering what time it was. We had turned our watches over to the Court Officer at about 9:45 this morning. By my estimation, it should have been time for a lunch break, or at least at rest room break, a long time ago. I unconsciously looked at my wrist.

Why wasn’t I hungry or thirsty? And why hadn’t anyone asked to be excused to use the wash rooms?

I stood as my Indian friend, Kimi, arrived. She was followed almost immediately by Tai and Dariah.

It was beginning to look like my deliberation group consisted of just six people – the four of us now present, plus Clete and Ariel. I thought it was wise that, at least for these intermediate discussions, our groups were small, and we were getting a chance to know the personalities involved. Trying to interact simultaneously with thirty-five strangers would have been extremely awkward.

We all shook hands . . . except Dariah, who bowed to each of us.

“Nice to see you all again,” I said, when we were seated. “Where should we start?”

Tai jumped right in.

“I felt sorry for that poor cosmologist. The woman kept asking him such stupid questions. And he had to keep humoring her by trying to answer them. My blood pressure went up just listening.”

Kimi and Dariah remained silent.

“I see your point, Tai,” I said. “On the other hand, as I think the philosopher said earlier today, foolish assumptions lead to foolish results. It should be fair game to probe the basic understandings that underlie all the complex science that follows after.”

Tai was about to say something. But I interrupted.

“Please hear me out. I’m not saying that we need to completely understand everything about an object, or a subject, for the knowledge we do possess to be useful to us. For instance, we don’t need to understand how to build a car to drive one. Or know how a flower grows to enjoy a well-manicured garden.

“In fact, our understanding is incomplete in nearly every aspect of our lives, if you think about it. That doesn’t keep us from living in a way that is consistent with what we do know.”

Oh, God, I thought. I’m starting to talk like an academic. I’d probably listened to too many of them today.

“But to carry these analogies further, I wouldn’t want to rely on a flower to produce seed for a turnip. Or expect my car to fly me to Singapore. So when we get to the point of considering extreme claims about things we only partly understand, having a good grasp of the fundamentals would be nice. Don’t you think, Tai?”

“The cosmologist isn’t exactly flying a Chevy to Honduras,” Tai answered. “He’s taking what he knows and making logical extensions of that knowledge.”

“But that’s exactly what I did with my car and my flower. I know the flower produces seeds and that turnips grow from seeds.

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