On the Road Again is an on-line course run by Simon Draper for the Cambridge U3A. Simon set an end of course challenge to describe a fantasy journey with four companions, living or dead, in around 250 words. This was my fantasy.
We’re off to sea on HMS Beagle to retrace part of the myth rebutting 1831-36 voyage – we don’t have five years so will limit ourselves to Brazil, Patagonia, Chile and the Galapagos (that’s still almost four years). My companions are Charles Darwin, Rosalind Franklin, Ruth Padel and Rowan Williams. Why them? Darwin is there to guide us and explain the evolution of the thinking; Franklin brings the 20th century science of genetics; Ruth Padel offers art and imagination; and Williams is the liberal Christian voice. I hope we will all get on. (I initially considered inviting Richard Dawkins and Anne Widdecombe, but thought we might end up witnessing an unpleasant example of survival of the fittest.)
Darwin will need to accommodate to 21st century thinking and manners; we others will have to respect his 19th century perspectives and avoid being know-alls. I hope we will all prove to be people with emotional intelligence, the ability to listen, learn and understand. Franklin the rational scientist will bounce off the poetic Padel; Darwin and Williams will share and work through the doubts that science poses for faith and vice versa. I’ll contribute scepticism, a belief in the magical, those things that exist just a little beyond our understanding.
When we dock back in Plymouth, I hope we will all share a sense of wonder at the beauty and intricacy of the world, that we will have reconciled the rational and the spiritual as essential components of what it is to be human. Darwin will know how natural selection works and maybe won’t wait 23 years before publishing On the Origin of Species.
My theme music is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8_lxAjpVXc
Darwin was a couple of decades too early to take photographer, but he did have two artists, Augustus Earle (from 1832-33) and Conrad Martens (from 1833-34).