> Why are you onemonkey?
Monkeys are our friends, monkeys are fun, monkeys monkey about, monkeys don’t
grow up, monkeys don’t have jobs, monkeys are what we were.
My pseudonym and domain derive from the well known theorem which states that
given an infinite number of monkeys banging away on an equivalent number of
typewriters eventually one of them would produce the works of Shakespeare. In
and of itself not terribly interesting hypothesis, but I was inspired by
someone’s suggestion that the internet seemed to be a practical version of this
experiment that was actually proving the opposite. (This is the point of the
equation at the top of my page.) I am one of those monkeys banging away almost
randomly on his keyboard.
Them apes are more like us than most people realise or are willing to admit. I
encourage you to read about the apes that were taught sign language, their
story does a lot to undermine human egocentricity and misplaced arrogance about
how special or unique we are within creation.
Got very interested in cognitive science, developmental psychology,
evolutionary anthropology and all that Origins stuff at university the first time around but I was actually supposed to be doing sums and solving equations. I think the monkeys are more central to unravelling our own condition. Charlie Darwin was ahead of the
game on this one..
“Origin of man now proved.—Metaphysics must flourish.—He who understand baboon
would do more toward metaphysics than Locke. Plato says that our ‘imaginary
ideas’ arise from the preexistence of the soul, are not derivable from
experience—read monkeys for preexisttence. ” – Charles Robert Darwin, Notebooks
A monkey story (reported by my mother, I do not remember it.)…
When I was born, I was my mother’s first child (of three) and she was well
pleased with her achievement (as indeed am I.) Sitting up in her hospital bed,
she delighted in scandalising the nurses, by asking them to bring her ‘her
monkey.’ – ‘Mrs. Addyman, you can’t say that! He’s your little baby!’
- ‘Yes, but he looks like a monkey!’
- ‘He’s a beautiful baby.’
- ‘A beautiful monkey! Give me my monkey!’
Caspar Addyman
01 April 2001
