Just when it looked like we had a breakthrough in Chapter 4, chapter 5 goes off on yet another – “wow, isn’t the moon amazing” tangent. It firstly examines the old wives tale that people go nuts at full moon, find substantial experimental evidence and then completely disregards the probably reason: namely it is lightest at full moon. Instead, via a tortuous route involving molluscs it suggests that humans can sense the periods of the moon. OF COURSE WE CAN: WE HAVE EYES.

This tangent does go via the four seasons and the angle of rotation of the Earth and some nice little facts that with just a few angles different the Earth could well be much more unfriendly to life, and even uninhabitable. Or at least full of fish. (It also makes the ludicrous assumption that higher life forms would not exist on a waterworld because it is impossible to discover fire under water). What has any of this got to do with who built the moon? Well, nothing really, yet again we do not get much closer to the nub. However the moon does help create tidal motion which in itself helps stabilise the Earth’s angle of rotation, stopping it from falling over (as Venus and Mars have done in the past). So another chapter hinting towards some sort of “the moon was built to help foster life” argument.