Angels in the Whirlwind

The relative quiescence of a nascent semester, the brand-new (or near-new, depending on your point of view) millennium and an undeniably new presidential administration together provide the perfect opportunity to look back upon my understanding of the world and extrapolate from my limited knowledge to its future. So, I offer this humble columnist's view on the "state of the species."

At the moment the most salient characteristic in human society is our infatuation with science. Yes, only infatuated, for we have not exchanged vows, we haven't committed to science "till death do us part." We have a puppy love; we like science because it gives us shiny things. Case in point: well over half of American adults do not believe that the human species descended from earlier forms of animal life, and yet nearly everyone has ridden in a vehicle powered by internal combustion.

But how can this be? The same process of investigation that lead to the concepts used in a car engine lead to evolutionary theory. Only hypocrisy or arbitrariness could allow us to discard one for the other. I shouldn't even have to say this, but as far as science goes, evolution is as "proven" as anything becomes. Numerous fields of evidence from vestigial structures to genetic correlation to documented speciation support the scientific community's acceptance of evolution. The volume of such evidence puts evolutionary theory alongside such staples of science as atomic theory or cell theory.

Of course, you don't see a majority of the public pooh-poohing the idea of cells or atoms, and with good reason. These ideas do not mess with the way we perceive ourselves. The presence or absence of atoms does not throw a monkey wrench into our 16th-century self-concept. Scientific investigation, when not self-applied, is lauded and useful, but when it threatens to rock our pedestal, well, it is all just "theories" anyway. We accept the fruits of science and rational, empirical exploration of the physical world without embracing these precepts in our bones, without having the stomach to accept what they tell us about ourselves. In short, we are "fair weather rationalists," ignoring science when desirable, and embracing it when it makes us happy. We will trust our life to science by boarding an ordinary jetliner, but when science tells us of our lowly and improbable origins, we just don't buy it.

And what a shame this hypocrisy is, especially in this particular circumstance. We have harnessed the atom and mapped the genome, but public figures do not talk of our shared ancestry, or the hard and lucky road that we have drunkenly walked down to become sentient. We cannot refer to the rich history of our species, because the concept of that history is not by any means shared. How can we have a vision of the future of humanity without a coherent, rational concept of its past? But the real danger in this half-commitment, this milking of science without purchase, is the strange worldview that it allows. Instead of an accurate concept of the human, we get away with a fuzzy, mushy, spiritual concept that attempts to transcend the material and fools us into believing in a fuzzy, mushy, warm blanket of a universe. As the myth of our centrality in the universe spills over into our concept of the universe, massive complacency results. We are not nearly as afraid for our existence as we would be if we perceived the universe as it truly is, cold and hard, unfeeling, just as happy to see us pulverized by comets in a game of cosmic roulette as it is to watch us slowly incinerate ourselves with greenhouse gases.

Existence in our cold universe requires constant vigilance, a continual battle against entropy, not warm words and the delusion that we are somehow "different." Contrary to the inaugural ramblings of George W., no angel is directing this whirlwind of a universe. The sooner we admit that no magical blanket, no invisible, magical spirit protects us from our own stupidity, the more probable it becomes that we will survive for a significant chunk of time. It is time that we grow up, finally make a wife of science, face facts, take responsibility for our own survival and use our new bride to cover our asses before the cold winds of the universe scatter our corporeal stardust to the far reaches of deep space once again.

B.J. Greenleaf '01 is a physics concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.