Babel Fish

Anatomy of a babel fish as explained in the BBC TV series

“Probably the oddest thing in the Universe.”

—The Guide

The Babel Fish is a small, leech-like, yellow fish, by putting this into one's ear one can instantly understand anything said in any language; this is how Arthur Dent is able to understand the other beings he encounters on his travels. The Babel fish has led to important profound consequences for the Universe; apart from the philosophical implications the Babel fish has started more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

What the guide says

"The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconcious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish."

Philosophical implications

Oolon Colluphid used the Babel fish as the main theme of his best-selling book, Well That About Wraps It Up For God. More specifically, Colluphid uses the Babel fish as an argument for intelligent design (or - and there are some subtle differences here) in a version of the so-called teleological argument for God's existence. But Colluphid then goes further - using the existence of the Babel fish to try to prove that God does not exist.

The whole argument runs, roughly, as follows.

1. God refuses to prove that (S)He exists because proof denies faith and without faith God is nothing.
2. Man then counters that the Babel fish is a dead giveaway because it could not have evolved by chance. So the fish proves that God exists - but hence also, by God's own reasoning (see 1) that God does not exist.
3. God says that (S)He hadn't thought of that (hadn't thought of 2) and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.

It should be noted that most leading theologians (together with the original author of this article) think that Colluphid's argument is "a load of dingo's kidneys."

A counterargument to Oolon's theory is Arajag's reincarnations. The unlucky Arajag says "I had to fight for this one!", referring to his current reincarnation in the Cathedral of Hate. Now, if that fight involved discussion with some God-like being, then such a being would have to exist - which seems to imply that, actually, the babel fish is simply yet another byproduct of pure coincedence. But perhaps Arajag is just crazy as a bat.

External links

• http://www.bablefishfx.com/

See further

• Michèle Friend, 'God . . Promply Vanishes in a Puff of Logic' in Nicholas Joll ed., Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).