Why we are here:

Our signature Bible passage, the prologue to John's Gospel, tells us that Jesus (the Logos) is God and Creator and that He came in the flesh (sarx) to redeem His fallen, sin-cursed creation—and especially those He chose to believe in Him.

Here in Bios & Logos we have some fun examining small corners of the creation to show how great a Creator Jesus is—and our need for Him as Redeemer. Soli Deo Gloria.

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Saturday, December 10, 2005

Two Fat Books


Two fat books have been added to my library in the past few days, thanks to my too-fast trigger finger on the “Order Now with One Click” button at Amazon.com and free shipping on orders over $25. The books are of similar dimensions, each being 9 ½ x 6 ¼ inches. One is somewhat thicker (2 ½ inches) to the other’s 2 inches. But since the thinner book has smaller print, I think the word content of the two volumes might be roughly equivalent.

“Stop with the biblio-trivia and tell us what the books are, already!” OK here is the bibliographical info:

Wilson, Edward O., Editor and with Introductions by: From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books


Marshall, I. Howard, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer and D. J. Wiseman, Editors. New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition. Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996 (2004 Printing)
New Bible Dictionary


The reason for boring you with trivial information about book dimensions is to emphasize the point that it is not the paper, cardboard, thread, glue and ink that make a book what it is. Nor is it those funny little symbols, in and of themselves, strung together in short groups to make words, which are strung together to make phrases, clauses and sentences, paragraphs and chapters. What makes a book, in any useful sense of the word, is the information embedded within those strings of symbols.

That information remains hidden until and unless a human being decodes and interprets it. It takes children six, seven, eight years to learn how to decode that information and several more years to learn how to express themselves effectively using that code. The whole process is exquisitely complex. Things can go wrong. Ask any dyslexic, or an unfortunate child who was exposed to the disastrous “whole language” fad in reading education.

Translating that printed code into speech is even more complex. I once took a course called “The Anatomy and Physiology of the Auditory and Speech Mechanisms.” The course covered every muscle from the waste up, (including by favorite, the tensor veli palatini) the anatomy of the respiratory system and the nerves supplying it, the ear and its innervation and most of the brain. (I’m sorry, but anyone who fools himself into thinking that all of that stuff just “evolved” is just plain deluded or nuts! Pardon me for sounding a little like Richard Dawkins, who uses similar adjectives when referring to creationists—and pardon this editorial interruption.)

In terms of complexity, the transmission of information from one human mind to another human mind is of another order of magnitude higher than all of the above. If the communication is through face-to-face speech, people have to talk precisely and repetitively to have any assurance that a thought in one person's head has been received and understood by the other. If communication is through the written word, the writer must write even more precisely, because there is usually no opportunity for feedback. (In fact, this dumb paragraph has been rewritten several times and I’m probably still not communicating.)

“But Bioman, you surely are going to tell us why you selected the two books you are using as examples. You didn’t pick them, did you, simply because they are fat recent arrivals.” Ah, yes. Bioman has an ulterior motive (or actually a higher motive.) I picked them because of their similar size, weight, word count and amount of information to emphasize not their similarity but the enormous contrast between the two volumes. The contrast lies in those non-material entities called ideas. Ideas are more than information. Information is a non-material entity riding on a material substrate, such as the printed word (or in some electronic medium.) Ideas are non-material entities riding on a non-material substrate—information. They are abstractions of abstractions. And that is what makes them so wonderful, yet so potentially dangerous.

Beside their physical similarities, the kinship of our two fat books lies in the fact that they are both attempting to communicate big—in fact, world-shaking—ideas. The contrast—Bioman is finally getting to it—lies in the antithesis of the big ideas in the two books and the night-and-day difference in the effects the two have wrought in the world. Just a glance at the two titles should make that self-evident. The analysis of those ideas, however, will have to wait for a future bloggeration. I have overextended my visit for this session. Was that a cliff-hanger—or a cliff dropper?

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