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6th October 2015

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The Cosmos Primeval

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What is the source of the familiar phrase, “the forest primeval”? It derives from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie,

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives “primeval forest” as a special usage of “primeval” and defines it as, “a very old or ancient forest, esp. one in a natural state, untouched by agriculture or industry.“ “Primeval” itself (which can also be spelled “primaeval” or “primæval”) is defined as, “Primal, original, primitive; spec. of or relating to the earliest history of the world.”

For an ecologist, the forest primeval is a climax ecosystem with a high level of biodiversity. We usually think of a tropical rain forest in this regard, but there are also temperate rain forests (in Washington state you can visit the Hoh Rain Forest), and it is the temperate rain forest that perhaps best evokes the feeling of the “forest primeval” in the western imagination. For those of us originally from a temperate climate, a rain forest exudes exoticism rather than the primeval.  

Thus “primeval” carries connotations of a landscape unvisited by civilization. The phrase “the forest primeval” has come to represent for us a landscape never tamed, never domesticated, still wild, ancient but untouched, a wilderness possibly hostile to human interests, and at very least indifferent to them. One can easily imagine Cthulhu crawling out of some primeval landscape, and to imagine so would be an experience of dread.  

These contrasting ideas of a delicate and sophisticated climax community on the one hand, and on the other hand a dark, dangerous, and dreaded place where fools may rush in, but angels would fear to tread, between them summarize the anthropocentric attempt to come to an understanding of the earliest history of the world (as the OED puts it), which for us is time out of mind.

Again, I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft, and the striking opening paragraph of his short story, “The Call of Cthulhu”:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” 

As we seek to piece together a coherent account of our dissociated knowledge of the cosmos, these two aspects of a primeval ecosystem – the one of delicate diversity and the other of horrific dread – will both be present, though on the scale of galactic ecology, on which spatiotemporal scale the delicate emergent complexity of the terrestrial biosphere and human civilization may be understood to be a fragile expression. In other words, our civilization is like an exotic epiphyte in the branches of an ancient tree.

This is how we can understand ourselves: when we look into the universe, it is as though we are looking into a wilderness. There is no sign of any intelligent intervention, no matter if we look near or far, here or there, now or then. We do see a great expanse before us, as we would have much to see if we peered into the depths of the forest primeval (as ecologists do). The universe is not empty, only empty of intelligence. Hence the attractiveness of The Wilderness Hypothesis.

This is the cosmos primeval.

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This is the cosmos primeval. The twinkling stars and the galaxies,
Surrounded with dust and gas, in colors of fire, set against the blackness,
Stand like ancient torches, with light sad and prophetic,
Stand like hoary celestial sentinels in the afterglow of distant origins. 

Tagged: primevalOEDcosmologyclimax ecosystemclimax communityH. P. LovecraftThe Call of CthulhuHenry Wadsworth LongfellowEvangelinewilderness hypothesis

  1. geopolicraticus posted this