The anthropocentric universe Part I

Today, when scientists talk people listen. For many people science has taken on the mantle formerly worn by religion. It promises salvation from a great many of life’s problems and claims to offer the only possible way to save the planet from its inevitable, looming fate, which has been brought on by the bad management of our natural resources, overcrowding and the excesses of...yes, science.

It would not be wrong to assume, when listening to scientists, that the future is going to present few problems science will not effectively be able to deal with, and as long as we keep supplying scientists with tax-dollars, we have little to worry about. Yet, we have been down that road before. There was a time when tithes supported the researches of alchemists, necromancers, astrologers and wizards, and it was they who stood beside Kings and Heads of State, rather than the Science Advisers we see today.

The picture of the poor alchemist or lone magician bent over his work, supported by his meagre earnings as he quests for Truth and Knowledge, has as much countenance as that of the lone scientist setting up a laboratory in his basement or town-house garage.

To be honest there were some astrologers, alchemists and wizards who toiled on alone, as there are today certain scientists who choose to go down that route, James Lovelock (of the Gaia theory fame) being a prime example, but the reason for their position tends to be more the nature of the individual pursuit of their studies than the effect of their calling.Magicians who dabbled with the conjuration of devils in the past, were naturally not in as great a demand as those who specialised in casting horoscopes and divining where wells lay. Scientists who choose to champion an unpopular area of research today are cut off from the fold and have, therefore, to strike out on their own.

But no one, given half a chance, will not choose to be part of the mainstream, and the mainstream like a self-regulatory free market mechanism, dictates (for ill or good) what the general thrust of the discipline will be.

Cynical as this may sound to those who think that science (like magic, once) is ruled by high ideals and a thirst for knowledge, it is nonetheless true and it works in a more or less desirable direction, as it tends to guide magicians and scientists alike towards an area of study useful to those who employ them. After all, he who pays the piper, invariably, calls the tune.#

So, scientists today hold the awe of the masses, not least because they tread in areas of thought that fascinate everybody but which few people are properly equipped to explore themselves. Not surprisingly, when scientists talk, they also couch their language behind a thicket of jargon reminiscent of secret initiation rites and use symbols which to the untrained eye may as well be runes. Does all this sound familiar?

Scientists don’t yet say abracadabra, but I have heard them speak of “the transmutation potential of morphogenic field phenomena on the inverse wave interface.” The reason I’m not impressed by such things anymore is because I have heard the explanations and they are far from impressive (like the one above referring to a change in the weather!).Science (which originally, in true market-forces style, sprang from a branch of magic) has today cornered the ‘Explanations about the Universe’ market and is seeking to monopolise our trust. In the face of the decline of the power of religion, the erosion of social institutions, the uncertainty of new values and mores and the constant thirst for answers that is the hallmark of man, science has certainly caught our attention.

Books on popular science (not unlike what I am writing here one) now vie in sales with fiction best-sellers. The promises of scientists about the security of the future sound like the hawking of elixirs promising to cure all ills and the vying for attention, prestige, and research money bring to mind the Hapsburg court in Austria and its armies of astrologers, or the Senate of Rome and its attendant priests who were at hand to read the entrails of sacrificed animals.

Now, it may sound like I object to all this. Far from it. I admire what science has achieved to date and applaud the brave, new concepts put forward for the future. But at the same time we should keep things in a certain perspective. None of this is really ‘new.’ Nor has science just ‘discovered’ terrific new insights that will permanently change the nature of man’s interaction with the Cosmos.

Like I said earlier, we have been down that road before. And one only needs to listen carefully to realise that science today is in the business of rediscovering rather than discovering, very much like the time of the Renaissance that was sparked off in Italy and which rediscovered the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, restated it, and then claimed it for its own.

To be sure, science is an exciting field to be working in today. The bespectacled, white lab-coated, boring stereotype of the scientist, if it was ever true, has gone the way of the dodo. Scientists today have to be as good at presenting their theories as they are at formulating them; this means that they must have a little of the showman in them; and this, unfortunately, attracts not a few charlatans to the profession.

Over the last few years, as the money has become scarcer, either because there are that many more scientists chasing after it, or else because there are other demands, just as legitimate and often far more pressing being made upon it, the clamour and the claims have got louder.

It is necessary then, to sort the facts from the hype and listen carefully to what these ‘new’ scientists are saying about their achievements to date, their theories, and the world we will all soon be inhabiting.