Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
55 years ago--seems like last year--the Phantom found himself dissecting a frog in his freshman biology class at university, staring down at the heart he had just flayed open, at the spiral valve of the amphibian heart, which allowed oxygenated blood to be separated from unoxygenated blood, which sent oxygen rich blood to the aorta and on to the brain and kidneys and muscles, while the unoxygenated blood shunted off to the lungs where it could get oxygen. What dazzling engineering! O what immortal hand or eye could frame that symmetry?
Beholding that tiny, breath-taking valve, perfect in form and symmetry, the words of Blake's poem rang in the Phantom's ears. He had just read that poem that very morning, and later in the day would attend a symposium on that poem and it seems like Kismet.
As a fledgling student of science, the Phantom was being steeped in evolutionary theory, the explanation for the immense variations in anatomy and physiology throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. Environmental demands impinging on genetic variation, selecting out those organisms who happened to carry forth advantages wrought by that Santa's bag of genes, from which a vast array of possibilities were plucked and released to find a niche in the world.
But looking at that spiral valve, it was difficult for the Phantom to imagine that shape, that delicate, perfect, swirling thing occurred by chance: Its perfection looked like mute testimony to design, and by implication a creator and not some blind watchmaker, someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
And so the Phantom became a secret apostate, a doubter, a heretic. He did not bring that heart to his professor and ask how such a perfectly wrought thing could have occurred by chance, and while he learned evolutionary theory, he, at some level, never really believed it. Had his professor been Professor Condit, the Phantom could have approached him, because Dr. Condit is approachable and would likely have not been offended, but intrigued, and then noted spirals are common in nature. But in those days, at the first of the Ivy League institutions through which the Phantom slogged, such questions were an invitation to disaster, or so the Phantom thought at the time.
He did, occasionally, challenge an evolutionary explanation, as when an instructor insisted white skin was an adaptation to low sunlight but for the most part, the Phantom just let it slide. Like some figure in Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" he went along with the party line, and recited the gospel when required, but he always clung to his doubts and his poetry.
But then, listening to an episode of "This Week in Virology" that lovely podcast which now claims 3 hours of the Phantom's week every week, one of his favorite cast members, Rich Condit, remarked, off handedly as Dr. Condit so often does, casting out pearls non chalantly , as he does, "The spiral: it's amazing how often that occurs in nature."
And a 5 decade wall off abscess surfaced: The Phantom Googled and found Dr. Condit's remark had wide and deep support. And the Phantom realized, swirling winds, swirling fluids often form spirals and it was just possible, over eons, that spiral valve was just another beautiful splash of paint in the evolutionary story and in some way, that set the Phantom's mind at ease and he could think of evolution again as something he could believe in.
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