Science Building
Meditation on the dedication of a new science building (celebrated with a day of hideous pronouncements from the N.I.C.E.*):
Science without wisdom is superstition;
Knowledge without virtue is death.
__________________
*pronouncements like those of Dr. Kurt Benirschke, who began by identifying himself as a former German paratrooper who “jumped out of planes for Mr. Hitler” and came to America in 1946 because “nothing was happening in Germany,” and who, after showing a famous 1940s photo of a very crowded Coney Island, as who should say “look at this verminous overpopulating human race,” proceeded to argue that since, thanks to human beings, all wild animals will be extinct in a few years, we must freeze tissues from zoo animals, as he has done, in order to be able to clone them in future for purposes of scientific study. He ended with a slide of “the most beautiful animal in the world,” a southeast Asian monkey, depicted in soulful-eyed close-up, who will soon be extinct thanks to human tourism and therefore ought to have his nuclei frozen along with the other 1000 or so species of animal tissue the professor has preserved in liquid nitrogen at the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park for the sake of future research. The purposes of such research were not mentioned.
pronouncements like those of Dr. David Baltimore, keynote speaker, Nobel laureate in microbiology and retiring head of Cal. Tech., who wants us all to study science not only because all our gadgets depend on it and because only science can save us from an avian flu pandemic and because we are all having to make difficult decisions about medical procedures and because superstitious religion, which we though we’d finally gotten over, is once again rearing its ugly head, but because science now at long last is addressing “children’s questions” such as “Why is there something instead of nothing?” and “In the big bang what banged?” and “What is consciousness?” That, as Plato said, “the eye cannot see itself” or, as Wendell Berry says, “we cannot comprehend what comprehends us” seems not to have occurred to him.
Not all the speakers were so N.I.C.E.: The noble Dr. Brent Eastman, who pointed out that though we must prepare for major disasters in which thousands might suffer, a doctor must and can treat people only one at a time, and the good Dr. Fred Walker provided welcome contrast.
(N.I.C.E. is the acronym for the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.)
Please return to the two-line meditation above before it is too late.
Science without wisdom is superstition;
Knowledge without virtue is death.
__________________
*pronouncements like those of Dr. Kurt Benirschke, who began by identifying himself as a former German paratrooper who “jumped out of planes for Mr. Hitler” and came to America in 1946 because “nothing was happening in Germany,” and who, after showing a famous 1940s photo of a very crowded Coney Island, as who should say “look at this verminous overpopulating human race,” proceeded to argue that since, thanks to human beings, all wild animals will be extinct in a few years, we must freeze tissues from zoo animals, as he has done, in order to be able to clone them in future for purposes of scientific study. He ended with a slide of “the most beautiful animal in the world,” a southeast Asian monkey, depicted in soulful-eyed close-up, who will soon be extinct thanks to human tourism and therefore ought to have his nuclei frozen along with the other 1000 or so species of animal tissue the professor has preserved in liquid nitrogen at the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park for the sake of future research. The purposes of such research were not mentioned.
pronouncements like those of Dr. David Baltimore, keynote speaker, Nobel laureate in microbiology and retiring head of Cal. Tech., who wants us all to study science not only because all our gadgets depend on it and because only science can save us from an avian flu pandemic and because we are all having to make difficult decisions about medical procedures and because superstitious religion, which we though we’d finally gotten over, is once again rearing its ugly head, but because science now at long last is addressing “children’s questions” such as “Why is there something instead of nothing?” and “In the big bang what banged?” and “What is consciousness?” That, as Plato said, “the eye cannot see itself” or, as Wendell Berry says, “we cannot comprehend what comprehends us” seems not to have occurred to him.
Not all the speakers were so N.I.C.E.: The noble Dr. Brent Eastman, who pointed out that though we must prepare for major disasters in which thousands might suffer, a doctor must and can treat people only one at a time, and the good Dr. Fred Walker provided welcome contrast.
(N.I.C.E. is the acronym for the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.)
Please return to the two-line meditation above before it is too late.
posted by G.Rap | 6:14 AM
4 Comments:
Dr. Rapp:
What?! What exactly are you responding to? Whose building went up, where? And what do those quotations mean? Help!
Last week the new science building on our campus was dedicated. The whole day was devoted to lectures and presentations by visiting scientists and the keynote speaker mentioned. My purpose was not mainly to bash the speakers, though the two I quoted were irksome. Some of the speakers, as I noted, were good. It was to invite people to contemplate my two meditation sentences.
Although Dr. Bernirshke didn't mention the purpose of preserving those animals for future research, it is a very logical thing to do. When I was little, my parents would make me do things all the time, often without understanding exactly why they were making me do that task. I understood that there was importance behind the act, but rarely did I understand what the importance was until I was older. Certainly everyone has such experiences, whether they are taking out the trash, or visiting an old people’s home.
Surely there is grave importance in trying to preserve these species of animals, whether or not we can understand that purpose now. Surely you can see the importance of Dr. Bernirshke's work whether or not any of us understand the importance.
Moreover, Dr. Baltimore's belief that people ought to understand these complex scientific issues that are upon us before making decisions about whether they are right or wrong is a perfectly reasonable point of view. I personally see the world as a mixture of scientists and philosophers. The scientists give us means to survive, and hopefully to live better lives. The philosophers teach us how to use these new means properly. If either side is ignored, there are consequences.
I guess I just want you to write more on what you think about the Science Day, because as a philosopher I see your position in keeping these scientists in check. But surely you still respect what these scientists are getting at?
Evander’s “it is a very logical thing to do” is right. My point is that it is a logic without human heart or soul. It implies that preserving tissues and cloning for the sake of scientific study is a reasonable substitute for living in a world with animals. Dr. Benirschke predicts that there will soon be no more wild animals. (My teacher predicted that there would be no animals at all.) Could the doctor’s laboratory clones possibly make such a world more desirable to live in?
Dr. Benirschke is not analogous to parents who make children do things they will understand only later. Parents are generally wiser than their children and know that when the children grow up they will appreciate what their parents made them do. In promoting his frozen zoo, Benirschke is far from exhibiting such wisdom. He exhibits rather the worship of a kind of knowledge that has stepped outside the community of men, the sacredness of life, the compassion for our fellow creatures, and made not only animals but men into mere objects of logical but soulless observation.
I have nothing against Dr. Baltimore’s idea that we should all understand as much science as possible—for its own sake and to help us make good decisions. What I object to is the implication that scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge, that it has effectively done away with religious tradition, spiritual insight, and faith, or ought to have done so, and that it alone—so long as obscurantists don't interfere—will be able to answer the children’s questions like “where did we come from?” and “what is consciousness?” To believe that such questions can eventually be answered by science is a kind of superstition that makes the church’s response to Galileo look like enlightenment itself.
Science is good because pursuit of truth is good. But if pursuit of truth is good, so are justice, humility, wisdom, faith, and kindness. They all have the same credentials, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in "The Abolition of Man". A science loyal to universal principles of value is not only good but essential to our lives. But the kind of truth-seeking that steps outside the jurisdiction of the other virtues, that would abolish the authority of all other virtues by making them mere specimens under its microscope, is not a virtue at all but a monstrosity. A science loyal to nothing but itself is kind of Moloch, to which, if we are not loyal to those other virtues, we will be sacrificing not only the animals but all future human generations.
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