Archaeopteryx Ontology (phylogeny) Making connections Commentary

Richard Owen, Thomas Henry Huxley evolution

Archaeopteryx

• Our little friend Archie
• talks to all of us
• with feathers and wings even if it cannot fly
• claws and teeth even if it cannot frighten
• a bird to lovers of birds
• an ancient reptile
• to lovers of dinosaurs
• between pages of limestone
• as the rarest pressed flower
• induces a state of mind that bridges
• present and past
• imagines reality
• and recognizes the unrecognized
• giving us a time, a precedent,
• 170 million years ago,
• when denial of precedent
• reached this delicate passage.

Ontology (phylogeny)

• The embryo of the bird
• recapitulates
• its history written in stones.
• The Solnhofen limestones of Bavaria
• used for fine lithographic printing
• were found preprinted
• with delicate asymmetrical feathers
• and fragile bones
• retelling a story finer than history
• makes its own world new
• and the new world its own.

Making connections

• In this light
• exposed in the interstices of stone
• we think
• of fears
• errors
• failures
• yet we may leap instantly
• between symbol and name
• name and individual
• individual and species
• believing and seeing.
• To say a thing is possible
• almost admits it has happened.
• A point on the hyperbole
• arbitrarily close to the asymptotic
• might never be reached.
• Faith is as inexplicable as love,
• whatever works
• and whatever reason cannot muster.
• Yet nothing could be easier.
• To refuse is almost as if
• being human were a weakness
• not a strength.