A change in plans

After brooding for an unnecessarily long time over a temporary title for the book project last week, I've decided to scrap The Pulse of Life as a contender. As my wife pointed out, it sounds like the title of a school filmstrip, and I wasn't very happy with all the vitalistic baggage that came along with it.

I have instead formulated a title that (I think) comes closer to the gestalt of the book I'm working on. Unless something better springs to mind, I am going to call it Life's Sublime Riddle.

If for no other reason to keep track of my own thoughts, I will briefly recount how I came up with the title. In doing a little research on the debates between Daniel Dennett and Stephen Jay Gould in the 1990's, I stumbled upon H. Allen Orr's review of Darwin's Dangerous Idea. The review was prefaced with a quote by Ernst Haeckel, from his Generelle Morphologie, which read;

Evolution is henceforth the magic word by which we shall solve all the riddles that surround us.

I fixated upon the word "riddle," seeing evolution not necessarily as a solution (although it can be one) but as a riddle itself. You see, a riddle is more than just a vexing question; it is something meant to intellectually challenge and tax the person trying to solve it. Indeed, even though it is abundantly clear that life evolved and that natural selection plays a central role in driving that evolution, there are still evolutionary riddles to solve.

Life's Riddle sounded a bit plain, though. I plucked "splendid" as an adjective at first, for solving the riddles of evolution is a rewarding and fascinating task, but then the title became too close an approximation to the title of Peter Bowler's book, Life's Splendid Drama (which is, in turn, lifted from the works of William Diller Matthew). Making use of the thesaurus, I tried to find another word that might fit, and "sublime" seemed to be what I was looking for. Using "sublime" rather than "splendid" makes it a little more clear that "life's riddle" is something that is awe-inspiring, not just interesting.

My only lament is that I have not had the time to work more on the book itself. Between bustling from work to class to home, I have had little time to sit down and write. I hope to continue my progress tonight, but my other responsibilities either leave me no time or no energy to continue my work. Indeed, so far it is apparent that I am ill-adapted to this semester's schedule, but there is little I can do other than try to get through it.