Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the same advancements of knowledge that we would expect to witness in a
civilization whose science was millions of years in advance of our own had
also achieved analogous results in the realm of biological evolution.
The spiritual meaning hinted at in these stories can be traced to the
narrative forms they have borrowed from religious traditions. The scientist
visitor in
E .T.
comes down from heaven to sojourn briefly among the child-
like of this planet. Only certain innocents are able to recognize him, and
yet, much as with his New Testament counterpart, we recognize that he is
the face of the very ancient of days. All of nature's power is incarnate in
him, enabling him to levitate balls, read minds, revive wilted flowers, and
ultimately even resurrect himself. But in spite of his manifest benevolence,
E.T. is rejected and hunted down by those who are his earthly counterparts,
by Pharisaical scientists whose integrity has been compromised by a corrupt
alliance with a secretive and paranoid government. But their tomb of glass
and steel cannot hold him. Before he ascends back into the heavens, he
gathers his friends and promises to be with them always.
One might reasonably object that such messages do not really support
my thesis since they are only loosely related to science, that if cinematic
and television representations of science derive religious meaning from this
nature-science identity, this is only because they reflect the culture of the lay
consumers they were created to entertain. But many who have given voice to
this science-as-spiritual destiny theme have been respected members of the
scientific community. A generation ago this was Jacob Bronowski, whose
1974 BBC series on the history of science,
The Ascent of Man
, later became
the inspiration for another program that I will also discuss, Carl Sagan's
Cosmos
(1980).
8
Judging from the similarity that Bronowski's title bears to
Darwin's
Descent of Man
(1871), we would be correct in supposing that it was
devoted to the subject of human evolution, but it clearly takes liberties with
this scientific subject. The “ascent” in its title in fact signals a narrative form
that Bronowski could not have derived from evolutionary science. Broadly
speaking, the program unfolds as an incrementum, a climactic historical
progression in which biological evolution gives rise to civilization, civiliza-
tion to science, and science now to all of humanity's future hopes. Science,
having arisen from biological evolution, has now become nature's mecha-
nism of progress. As such, it has special apocalyptic import for Bronowski;
because science alone follows the path of evolution, only science can bring
humanity through the travail that had thus far marked the twentieth cen-
tury. The counterpart to HAL in Bronowski's tale is Nazi Fascism, which,
by attempting to fix knowledge as political dogma, arrested the upward flow
