Excerpt from Turtle Diary

Posted on April 24, 2007 in Reading

At three in the morning I sat in the dark looking out of the window down at the square where the fountain is not and I thought about the turtles. The essence of it is that they can find something and they are not being allowed to do it. What more can you do to a creature, short of killing it, than prevent it from finding what it can find? How must they feel? Is there a sense in them of green ocean, white surf, and hot sand? Probably not. but there is a drive in them to find it as they swoop in their golden-green light with their flippers clicking against the glass as they turn. Is there anything that can be done about it? My mind is not an organizational one….

There is no place for me to find. No beach, no breeding grounds. Do I owe the turtles more or less because of that? Is everyone obliged to help those who have it in them to find something? I bought a second-hand mathematical book, I don’t know why, on self-replicating automata. Not robots but mathematical models. The book said that random search could not account for evolution. Something evidently wants there to be finding. Time’s arrow points one way only. Even the moment just past cannot be returned to.

— Russell Hoban

How can we ever find for determinism or freedom of the will if we can’t reverse time and run things through once more?