WEBVTT

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Well, if this were a poetry
reading in Dublin, Ireland,

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in a saloon, this would be
the moment in the evening

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when somebody in
the back of the room

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would bawl out to the type
up front making like a poet,

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ah, shut up and give us
a song, you blatherer.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it's always struck
me as curious the poetry

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that we read on
the page is often

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got so far away from song.

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There was a time, of course,
when the all poems in English

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were sung.

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And back in Shakespeare's
day, every courtier

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could turn a song lyric.

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Well, I guess it's
one of the things you

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try to do if you still like
a rhyme and meter which

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have stuck around
in songs of course.

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And since this is such an
intellectual crowd here

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tonight, I thought I would
give you a really high class

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intellectual song which takes
us through a few centuries

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of intellectual
history in Western

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Europe in a few minutes.

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This song is called
Great Chain of Being,

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and I sort of made the tune up.

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Now Great Chain of Being is, of
course, an old received idea.

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Back in the late Renaissance
I guess, most people in Europe

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who thought about
it would accept

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this idea of the
great chain of being,

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a metaphor if you like, a way
of explaining the universe.

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And I don't need to
refresh many of you who

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find this idea in
Shakespeare's plays

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even then what the great
chain of being was,

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but you know everything
in the universe

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is arranged in a
sort of hierarchy

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like links going down a chain.

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At the top you have
God, the Father,

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then going down the chain
of being a little more you

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have angels underneath God.

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Going farther on
down you have man.

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Then the next link
down would be woman.

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Don't get me wrong.

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I'm not arguing for the
great chain of being,

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I'm just trying to remember
what the heck it was.

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And then underneath
women you had children,

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and then underneath
all these human links

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you would have all
important animals,

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higher mammals,
rhinoceros, giraffes down

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to unimportant animals like
newts, and slugs, and worms.

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And then continuing down the
chain and importance then

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you come to plants.

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I suppose high in the chain
would be a giant Redwood trees

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and low on the chain would be
Brussel sprouts or pond scum.

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And then, going down
the chain still further.

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So you have minerals.

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High up would be gold and
jewels, precious stones.

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And low down would be mud, dung.

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And everything has its
place in this hierarchy.

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And everything's
connected together.

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That's just the way they
looked at the universe.

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And of course, as we
recall, it was a universe

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with the Earth at the center
and sun, moon, stars, planets

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all circling the
Earth attending on us.

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Then of course in
the Renaissance

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something happened to this
symmetrical view of things.

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So the song's sung
by a guy who wonders:

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whatever happened to
the great chain of being

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and what if anything have we
got today to take its place?

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[SINGING] Drinking smooth wine
in a castle or digging potatoes

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knee deep in dung.

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Everybody in creation
knew just how high

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or how low he hung on
that ladder with Lord God

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at the top, dumb mud
at the bottom rung.

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Great chain of being,
great chain of being.

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Well no, man was top
dog on Mother Earth

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and woman was his marrow bone.

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And a woman giving suck to a
child cut more ice than a woman

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alone.

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And the cruddiest of
sparrows glittered

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more than any precious stone
in hierarchy, in hierarchy.

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Well then, Copernicus
picked up his hammer,

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Galileo held the spike and
they hit that great chain

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a wallop just as
pretty as you like.

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Old Earth went flying
from its center

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like the sprocket out of a bike.

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All its spokes busted,
all its spokes busted.

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Well, nowadays every creature
goes rattling around worked

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loose from that golden chain.

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And the angle worm and the angel
can't connect with each other

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again.

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And me I'm fixing to let myself
play out in the pouring rain.

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Snapped off and dangling,
snapped off and dangling.

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Well now, I wonder who's been
sitting in the good Lord's

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old arm chair.

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I wonder if they're
still snakes down below

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and a blessed mother up
there keeping an eye on me

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or just the credit
bureau and Medicare.

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Is seeing believing?

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Is seeing believing?

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