Word: lungfish
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Some 400 million years ago a fish dug its head into the mud, began to breathe with lungs, explains Joel. Next natural development would have been for it to be able to crawl out on land, but the lungfish never got that far. The only benefit it got from its lungs was the ability to live through periods of drought. Encysted in sun-baked mud it could live on air and its own tissues for months, even for years. From the papyrus roots of Lake Victoria Joel two years prior had collected specimens of the fish, called Kamongo...
...evolutionary futility of the gradually disappearing lungfish looks to the Anglican priest like a crack in the Divine Plan. Joel does his best to widen the crack by comparing Man's brain to Kamongo's lung, both ingenious developments, neither leading anywhere much. Joel likens life to whirlpools in a stream of energy, likens the living matter of cells and bodies to inorganic rubbish whirlpool-caught. The gyroscopic adjustment of the whirlpool to obstacles in its course gives an illusion of intelligent purpose to the rubbish it holds together. Really, all the purpose animating the rubbish is to spin...