Humans invent monsters as a way to cope with their own imperfect knowledge. Norse sailors traveling around the various seas observed a gigantic, long-legged creature and without any way to understand what it was concocted the Kraken. What is superstition but what we create to fill the oft-monstrous gaps between effects we can readily observe while at the same time having no earthly idea what must have caused it.
Mariners throughout history detested whistling, to the point of violence. Was it because making that noise actually challenged the wind, as many came to believe down through the long centuries, provoking its vicious backlash in an unforeseen storm threatening the whistler’s vessel and crewmates? Or were sailors untrained in meteorology merely groping for some way to explain why some ships were lost but not others?
Read Full Article »
