Pru reads Lewis Carrol’s memories of Alice - Monday Morning Memo

Lewis Caroll was a mathematics professor who stuttered when in the presence of anyone except young children.

LC took the 3 young daughters of his boss on a boat ride down a canal on July 4, 1862, in a rowboat traveling on the canal from Folly Bridge, Oxford, to Godstow for a picnic outing, 10-year-old Alice asked Charles Dodgson (who wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll) to entertain her and her sisters, Edith (aged 8) and Lorina (13), with a story. As the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed the boat, Dodgson told the girls a story about Alice and her adventures after she fell down a rabbit-hole into Wonderland.

At the end of the day, the children begged him to write down the story for them. So he did.

– Season 3, episode 1, Great Canal Journeys, London to the Sea (Amazon Prime)

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
by Lewis Carrol, 1871

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July—

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear—

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?

(1871, Through the Looking-Glass)

“In ‘A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky,’ Carroll conveys the implacability of time through images of its consequences – the ‘paling’ of a ‘sunny sky,’ – the changing of a season, and the loss of wonder or innocence that often accompanies the transition to adulthood.” – Andea Siso

“University of Pennsylvania psychologist Philip Tetlock made a 20-year study that tested the ability of experts to make accurate predictions about geopolitical events. The results showed that the average expert in a given subject was also, on average, a horrific forecaster. Some of the most narrowly specialized experts actually performed worse as they accumulated credentials. It seemed that the more vested they were in a worldview, the more easily they could always find information to fit it.

There was, however, one subgroup of scholars that did markedly better: those who were not intellectually anchored to a narrow area of expertise. They did not hide from contrary and apparently contradictory views, but rather crossed disciplines and political boundaries to seek them out.

Tetlock gave the forecasters nicknames, borrowed from a well-known philosophy essay: the narrow-view hedgehogs, who ‘know one big thing’ (and are terrible forecasters), and the broad-minded foxes, who ‘know many little things’ (and make better predictions). The latter group’s hunt for information was a bit like a real fox’s hunt for prey: They roam freely, listen carefully and consume omnivorously.

Eventually, Tetlock and his collaborator, Barbara Mellers, assembled a team of foxy volunteers, drawn from the general public, to compete in a forecasting tournament. Their volunteers trounced a group of intelligence analysts who had access to classified information. As Tetlock observed of the best forecasters, it is not what they think but how they think. They argue differently; foxes frequently used the word ‘however’ in assessing ideas, while hedgehogs tended toward ‘moreover.’ Foxes also looked far beyond the bounds of the problem at hand for clues from other, similar situations.”

- David Epstein, The Washington Post, July 20, 2019