Acid Song Read Online Free

tested?”
    ‘It is, if I do say so myself, an excellent question, and perhaps I should explain why.’
    Richard looked to Amanda for permission to digress, and her shrug told him that he could do what he liked, for nothing educational would make it onto the final tape. Although Amanda would deny it, she was in the end one who led with her heart, and followed with her eyes; tailor-made for the age of sound and vision. Richard by contrast was a dinosaur, slow-moving and wary of warm-blooded slogans. He also took a certain pleasure in loitering in the path of progress. Not today though. The cards were all hers.
    ‘“If you had been listening more carefully,” Watson blustered, “you surely wouldn’t ask such a question. What is your field of speciality, Sir?”
    ‘“Mathematics,” I answered, sensing that he was bluffing.
    ‘“Figures,” Watson replied, and obliging laughter rippled as he scanned the auditorium for another question, presumably expecting me to sit down. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. For he hadn’t answered me.
    ‘“I would have been more impressed by that comment Mr Watson,”I rather shouted, drawing attention back to myself, “had you not made the prediction retrospectively. Which brings me back to my question. In what respect can we consider your theory predictive?”
    ‘He turned back to me then, and rolled his eyes, as if this was too tedious a business for him to be wasting any more time on.
    ‘“Look,” he informed the auditorium, letting out an exasperated sigh and running his hand through his foppish Oxford cut. “This complaint has been around since the time of Darwin, and despite being roundly beaten on any number of occasions, it simply refuses to die. I am almost reluctant to add to the punishment, lest it is some form of masochism which keeps it coming back for more.” He paused to give the congregation a moment to appreciate his wit. I waited for the killer blow. “Selection theory predicts that wherever there is complexity, there will be design. It predicts, in human terms, that there will be shared characteristics across cultures, that there will be average tendencies to behave in a certain way, and it predicts that these tendencies will be consistent with reproductive utility in the past. How many more predictions do you want?”
    ‘And still I didn’t sit, because now I smelled a hint of victory. And the very possibility of it, in front of my own, against a combatant of international standing, was simply irresistible.
    ‘“Considerably more predictive than that, Sir, I would respectfully submit,” I told him. “For unless you can show me the competing theory which explicitly predicts no such shared characteristics, or can outline for me right here and now a discovery which would shake your confidence in your theory, I am afraid I find it hard to accept that what you are doing amounts to any sort of science.”
    ‘A little knowledge is, as they say, a dangerous thing, not least because of the appetite it gives one for battle. I didn’t, back then, know what I was talking about, not really: I was just flailing about, seeing what I might hit. And what I hit, by luck not design, was the softest and fleshiest part of his agenda.
    ‘The questions moved on, but he was shaken and his performance suffered. I had become the story, at least in the eyes of those who saw in Stephen Watson a threat to all they held dear.
    ‘Susan of the attentive breasts embraced me as I left the auditorium, and I was whisked away by a group of admirers to a pub off-campus, where we drank and made instant legend of that single brief encounter. And as the empty jugs crowded out our table, we did something even more outrageous. We made plans for a new sort of research centre, an institute where scientists and social scientists would work alongside each other, complementing rather than denying one another’s contribution. I had no idea at the time just how well-connected some of these people