Oddly enough, her death was unnoticed at Substack. I would have expected lots of attention there. They go on endlessly about people I’ve never heard of. So we’ll make a note here instead!
I used to read Dillard’s books, and absorbed an overall attitude toward nature and thinking. The big SPECIFIC thing I learned is the importance of Entertainment. Dillard spent lots of time observing critters, and realized that critters also spend lots of time observing the world for no obvious purpose. Fish, birds, mammals, humans, all do the same.
From there I pivoted to the BIG theme of science as entertainment.
Here’s the first mention of the subject in 2018.
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Why does an individual organism need senses? To answer seven important questions. The first six are universal from bacteria to humans. The seventh is not quite universal.
1. What time is it? Day or night? Winter or summer? Full moon or new? Time to fuck? Time to swarm? Time to die?
2. Where am I? Which way am I going? Up or down? Toward the light? Toward food? Toward enemies? With the magnetic field or against?
3. Where is food?
4. Where is poison?
5. Where are my friends, and what are they doing?
6. Where are my enemies, and what are they doing?
7. The non-universal non-question: Entertainment. This applies for sure to all the ‘intelligent’ critters from octopuses to mammals. When we’re not in immediate survival mode, we love to watch stuff happening. Entertainment merges smoothly into education. Watching somebody else catch a caterpillar or hammer a nail isn’t especially interesting; but when the catch misses or the hammer hits a thumb, it becomes entertainment AND education. Smart design, connecting pleasure to learning.
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Communities or colonies have mechanisms or workers to accomplish the last five purposes on behalf of the whole community. Bees have honey scouts and enemy scouts. Mammals generally send out disposable males to locate food and enemies. Plants and bacteria and modern humans use electrical networks to observe the activities of friends and enemies.
Seagull doing what intelligent critters do! Watching the world go by, hoping to see trouble or failure or disaster. Something to laugh at, something to learn from.
Does watching a watcher count as entertainment? Of course. Most of Youtube is reactions to reactions to reactions. Watcherwatcherwatching.
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