8.3: The partial re-enchantment of the world
Why had Lottie’s innocent question about the tree falling over led her tutor to talk of idealism and then enchantment? Since it sets the scene for our story, it is worth stepping a little back in time and witnessing some of her morning’s tutorial. *** Lottie arrives in Hipparchus’ study – an area in the back corner of the Potting Shed that he as somehow marked off, against all commune guidelines and etiquette, as his alone, with bookshelves – in a thoughtful mood. She tells him of the falling tree that, by chance she and pTravis had observed the previous night. “I had the feeling that our seeing it somehow made it more real. I don’t just mean we knew about it. But somehow our witnessing it made the actual event more real. Would it have been less so if we, and everybody else, hadn’t been there?” Hipparchus replies: “I wonder whether you have been subliminally channelling two famous limericks, the first certainly and the second possibly by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957), ...
