Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

  “What then?”

  “What Darwin was philosophizing on here was how the first living cell might have been formed out of inorganic matter. And again, he hit the nail right on the head. Scientists of today think the first primitive form of life arose in precisely the kind of ‘hot little pool’ that Darwin pictured.”

  “Go on.”

  “That will have to suffice because we’re leaving Darwin now. We’re going to jump ahead to the most recent findings about the origins of life on earth.”

  “I’m rather apprehensive. Does anybody really know how life began?”

  “Maybe not, but more and more pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place to form a picture of how it may have begun.”

  “Well?”

  “Let us first establish that all life on earth—both animal and vegetable—is constructed of exactly the same substances. The simplest definition of life is that it is a substance which in a nutrient solution has the ability to subdivide itself into two identical parts. This process is governed by a substance we call DNA. By DNA we mean the chromosomes, or hereditary structures, that are found in all living cells. We also use the term DNA molecule, because DNA is in fact a complex molecule—or macro-molecule. The question is, then, how the first molecule arose.”

  “Yes?”

  “The earth was formed when the solar system came into being 4.6 billion years ago. It began as a glowing mass which gradually cooled. This is where modern science believes life began between three and four billion years ago.”

  “It sounds totally improbable.”

  “Don’t say that before you have heard the rest. First of all, our planet was quite different from the way it looks today. Since there was no life, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Free oxygen was first formed by the photosynthesis of plants. And the fact that there was no oxygen is important. It is unlikely that life cells—which, again, can form DNA—could have arisen in an atmosphere containing oxygen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because oxygen is strongly reactive. Long before complex molecules like DNA could be formed, the DNA molecular cells would be oxydized.”

  “Really.”

  “That is how we know for certain that no new life arises today, not even so much as a bacterium or a virus. All life on earth must be exactly the same age. An elephant has just as long a family tree as the smallest bacterium. You could almost say that an elephant—or a human being— is in reality a single coherent colony of monocellular creatures. Because each cell in our body carries the same hereditary material. The whole recipe of who we are lies hidden in each tiny cell.”

  “That’s an odd thought.”

  “One of life’s great mysteries is that the cells of a multicellular animal have the ability to specialize their function in spite of the fact that not all the different hereditary characteristics are active in all the cells. Some of these characteristics—or genes—are ‘activated’ and others are ‘deactivated.’ A liver cell does not produce the same proteins as a nerve cell or a skin cell. But all three types of cell have the same DMA molecule, which contains the whole recipe for the organism in question.

  “Since there was no oxygen in the atmosphere, there was no protective ozone layer around the earth. That means there was nothing to stop the radiation from the cosmos. This is also significant because this radiation was probably instrumental in forming the first complex molecule. Cosmic radiation of this nature was the actual energy which caused the various chemical substances on the earth to start combining into a complicated macro-molecule.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me recapitulate: Before such complex molecules, of which all life consists, can be formed, at least two conditions must be present: there must be no oxygen in the atmosphere, and there must be access for cosmic radiation.”

  “I get it.”

  “In this ‘hot little pool’—or primal soup, as it is often called by modern scientists—there was once formed a gigantically complicated macromolecule, which had the wondrous property of being able to subdivide itself into two identical parts. And so the long evolutionary process began, Sophie. If we simplify it a bit, we can say that we are now talking of the first hereditary material, the first DNA or the first living cell. It subdivided itself again and again—but from the very first stage, transmutation was occurring. After aeons of time, one of these monocellular organisms connected with a more complicated multicel-lular organism. Thus the photosynthesis of plants also began, and in that way the atmosphere came to contain oxygen. This had two results: first, the atmosphere permitted the evolution of animals that could breathe with the aid of lungs. Secondly, the atmosphere protected life from the harmful cosmic radiation. Strangely enough, this radiation, which was probably a vital ‘spark’ in the formation of the first cell, is also harmful to all forms of life.”

  “But the atmosphere can’t have been formed overnight. How did the earliest forms of life manage?”

  “Life began in the primal ‘seas’—which are what we mean by primal soup. There it could live protected from the harmful rays. Not until much later, when life in the oceans had formed an atmosphere, did the first amphibians crawl out onto land. The rest is what we have already talked about. And here we are, sitting in a hut in the woods, looking back on a process that has taken three or four billion years. And in us, this long process has finally become aware of itself.”

  “And yet you don’t think it all happened quite accidentally?”

  “I never said that. The picture on this board shows that evolution had a direction. Across the aeons of time animals have evolved with increasingly complicated nerve systems—and an ever bigger brain. Personally, I don’t think that can be accidental. What do you think?”

  “It can’t be pure chance that created the human eye. Don’t you think there is meaning in our being able to see the world around us?”

  “Funnily enough, the development of the eye puzzled Darwin too. He couldn’t really come to terms with the fact that something as delicate and sensitive as an eye could be exclusively due to natural selection.”

  Sophie sat looking up at Alberto. She was thinking how odd it was that she should be alive now, and that she only lived this one time and would never again return to life. Suddenly she exclaimed:

  What matters our creative endless toil,

  When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?

  Alberto frowned at her.

  “You must not talk like that, child. Those are the words of the Devil.”

  “The Devil?”

  “Or Mephistopheles—in Goethe’s Faust ‘Was soil uns denn das ew’ge Schaffen! Geschaffenes zu nichts hinweg-zuraffenV “

  “But what do those words mean exactly?”

  “As Faust dies and looks back on his life’s work, he says in triumph:

  Then to the moment could I say:

  Linger you now, you are so fair!

  Now records of my earthly day

  No flights of aeons can impair—

  Foreknowledge comes, and fills me with such bliss,

  I take my joy, my highest moment this.”

  “That was very poetic.”

  “But then it’s the Devil’s turn. As soon as Faust dies, he exclaims:

  A foolish word, bygone.

  How so then, gone?

  Gone, to sheer Nothing, past with null made one!

  What matters creative endless toil,

  When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?

  ‘It is bygone’—How shall this riddle run?

  As good as if things never had begun,

  Yet circle back, existence to possess:

  I’d rather have Eternal Emptiness.”

  “That’s pessimistic. I liked the first passage best. Even though his life was over, Faust saw some meaning in the traces he would leave behind him.”

  “And is it not also a consequence of Darwin’s theory that we are part of something all-encompassing, in which every tiny life form has its significance in the big
picture? We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every one of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor—we have not lived in vain. Thomas Hardy expresses the same thought in his poem Transformations’:

  Portion of this yew

  Is a man my grandsire knew,

  Bosomed here at its foot:

  This branch may be his wife,

  A ruddy human life

  Now turned to a green shoot.

  These grasses must be made

  Of her who often prayed,

  Last century, for repose;

  And the fair girl long ago

  Whom I often tried to know

  May be entering this rose.

  So, they are not underground,

  But as nerves and veins abound

  In the growths of upper air,

  And they feel the sun and rain,

  And the energy again

  That made them what they were!”

  “That’s very pretty.”

  “But we will talk no more. I simply say next chapter!’

  “Oh, stop all that irony!”

  “New chapter, I said! I shall be obeyed!”

  Freud

  ... the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her...

  Hilde Moller Knag jumped out of bed with the bulky ring binder in her arms. She plonked it down on her writing desk, grabbed her clothes, and dashed into the bathroom. She stood under the shower for two minutes, dressed herself quickly, and ran downstairs.

  “Breakfast is ready, Hilde!”

  “I just have to go and row first.”

  “But Hilde... !”

  She ran out of the house, down the garden, and out onto the little dock. She untied the boat and jumped down into it. She rowed around the bay with short angry strokes until she had calmed down.

  “We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor—we have not lived in vain...”

  She knew the passage by heart. It had been written for her. Not for Sophie, for her. Every word in the ring binder was written by Dad to Hilde.

  She rested the oars in the oarlocks and drew them in. The boat rocked gently on the water, the ripples slapping softly against the prow.

  And like the little rowboat floating on the surface in the bay at Lillesand, she herself was just a nutshell on the surface of life.

  Where were Sophie and Alberto in this picture? Yes, where were Alberto and Sophie?

  She could not fathom that they were no more than “electromagnetic impulses” in her father’s brain. She could not fathom, and certainly not accept, that they were only paper and printer’s ink from a ribbon in her father’s portable typewriter. One might just as well say that she herself was nothing but a conglomeration of protein compounds that had suddenly come to life one day in a “hot little pool.” But she was more than that. She was Hilde Moller Knag.

  She had to admit that the ring binder was a fantastic present, and that her father had touched the core of something eternal in her. But she didn’t care for the way he was dealing with Sophie and Alberto.

  She would certainly teach him a lesson, even before he got home. She felt she owed it to the two of them. Hilde could already imagine her father at Kastrup Airport, in Copenhagen. She could just see him running around like mad.

  Hilde was now quite herself again. She rowed the boat back to the dock, where she was careful to make it fast. After breakfast she sat at the table for a long time with her mother. It felt good to be able to talk about something as ordinary as whether the egg was a trifle too soft.

  She did not start to read again until the evening. There were not many pages left now.

  Once again there was a knocking on the door.

  “Let’s just put our hands over our ears,” said Alberto, “and perhaps it’ll go away.”

  “No, I want to see who it is.”

  Alberto followed her to the door.

  On the step stood a naked man. He had adopted a very ceremonial posture, but the only thing he had with him was the crown on his head.

  “Well?” he said. “What do you good people think of the Emperor’s new clothes?”

  Alberto and Sophie were utterly dumbfounded. This caused the naked man some consternation.

  “What? You are not bowing!” he cried.

  “Indeed, that is true,” said Alberto, “but the Emperor is stark naked.”

  The naked man maintained his ceremonial posture. Alberto bent over and whispered in Sophie’s ear:

  “He thinks he is respectable.”

  At this, the man scowled.

  “Is some kind of censorship being exercised on these premises?” he asked.

  “Regrettably,” said Alberto. “In here we are both alert and of sound mind in every way. In the Emperor’s shameless condition he can therefore not cross the threshold of this house.”

  Sophie found the naked man’s pomposity so absurd that she burst out laughing. As if her laughter had been a prearranged signal, the man with the crown on his head suddenly became aware that he was naked. Covering his private parts with both hands, he bounded toward the nearest clump of trees and disappeared, probably to join company with Adam and Eve, Noah, Little Red Riding-hood, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

  Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the step, laughing.

  At last Alberto said, “It might be a good idea if we went inside. I’m going to tell you about Freud and his theory of the unconscious.”

  They seated themselves by the window again. Sophie looked at her watch and said: “It’s already half past two and I have a lot to do before the garden party.”

  “So have I. We’ll just say a few words about Sigmund Freud.”

  “Was he a philosopher?”

  “We could describe him as a cultural philosopher, at least. Freud was born in 1 856 and he studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He lived in Vienna for the greater part of his life at a period when the cultural life of the city was flourishing. He specialized early on in neurology. Toward the close of the last century, and far into our own, he developed his ‘depth psychology’ or psychoanalysis.”

  “You’re going to explain this, right?”

  “Psychoanalysis is a description of the human mind in general as well as a therapy for nervous and mental disorders. I do not intend to give you a complete picture either of Freud or of his work. But his theory of the unconscious is necessary to an understanding of what a human being is.”

  “You intrigue me. Go on.”

  “Freud held that there is a constant tension between man and his surroundings. In particular, a tension—or conflict—between his drives and needs and the demands of society. It is no exaggeration to say that Freud discovered human drives. This makes him an important exponent of the naturalistic currents that were so prominent toward the end of the nineteenth century.”

  “What do you mean by human drives?”

  “Our actions are not always guided by reason. Man is not really such a rational creature as the eighteenth-century rationalists liked to think. Irrational impulses often determine what we think, what we dream, and what we do. Such irrational impulses can be an expression of basic drives or needs. The human sexual drive, for example, is just as basic as the baby’s instinct to suckle.”

  “Yes?”

  “This in itself was no new discovery. But Freud showed that these basic needs can be disguised or ‘sublimated,’ thereby steering our actions without our being aware of it. He also showed that infants have some sort of sexuality. The respectable middle-class Viennese reacted with abhorrence to this suggestion of the ‘sexuality of the child’ and made him very unpopular.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “We call it Victorianism,
when everything to do with sexuality is taboo. Freud first became aware of children’s sexuality during his practice of psychotherapy. So he had an empirical basis for his claims. He had also seen how numerous forms of neurosis or psychological disorders could be traced back to conflicts during childhood. He gradually developed a type of therapy that we could call the archeology of the soul.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “An archeologist searches for traces of the distant past by digging through layers of cultural history. He may find a knife from the eighteenth century. Deeper in the ground he may find a comb from the fourteenth century—and even deeper down perhaps an urn from the fifth century

  B.C.”

  “Yes?”

  “In a similar way, the psychoanalyst, with the patient’s help, can dig deep into the patient’s mind and bring to light the experiences that have caused the patient’s psychological disorder, since according to Freud, we store the memory of all our experiences deep inside us.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “The analyst can perhaps discover an unhappy experience that the patient has tried to suppress for many years, but which has nevertheless lain buried, gnawing away at the patient’s resources. By bringing a ‘traumatic experience’ into the conscious mind—and holding it up to the patient, so to speak—he or she can help the patient ‘be done with it,’ and get well again.”

  “That sounds logical.”

  “But I am jumping too far ahead. Let us first take a look at Freud’s description of the human mind. Have you ever seen a newborn baby?”

  “I have a cousin who is four.”

  “When we come into the world, we live out our physical and mental needs quite directly and unashamedly. If we do not get milk, we cry, or maybe we cry if we have a wet diaper. We also give direct expression to our desire for physical contact and body warmth. Freud called this ‘pleasure principle’ in us the id. As newborn babies we are hardly anything but id.”