SCIENCE & SCIENTISM

"Even with its sparkling thousand points of light, the night sky is a dark and inhospitable place. Mocking our human frailties of both body and mind, the world of the heavens enchants us all the same with a voiceless call that tugs at our sense of being. Whether viewed with our own eyes from some isolated vantage point on a clear night, or as telescopic images that no fleshly retina could ever render, the night sky fascinates. In this computer age of virtual worlds and a seemingly unbounded menu of entertainments, we remain awed by the immensity and grandeur of the heavens. They have a unique and timeless appeal.

In Part One, we saw that human history is the story of seeking both to discover the natural borders of our world and to find meaning in those boundaries. Our most distant boundary has always been the proverbial dome of the sky, the celestial sphere, the medium in which we are enclosed.

In the 1960s when Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message,” he was not speaking of the cosmos. Nevertheless, his discourse on the burgeoning electronic environment of television and computers has application well beyond its sociological context. Consider the way we continue to seek a message in the medium of the universe. We are embedded here, entrenched and rooted on a small planet looking out at a big expanse and wondering, what is it all for? As Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle is said to have remarked, if indeed the heavens “be not inhabited, what a waste of space.” Of course, as intriguing as extraterrestrials may be in the movies, we are not simply interested in the possibility of alien neighbors; we seek the history of the universe because, from its message, we believe we will find insight into our terrestrial condition. McLuhan argued that we have a difficult time understanding societal change because our eyes and minds are tuned to the past—traveling forward while watching the rearview mirror. In astronomy as well, our perspective on the present is derived from our view of the past."

Man, however he may seek, can never be anything more than what he really is- 1500 grams of neurons mounted on an "ape", never to be certain of anything except what its senses relay to it. For it is not only the "proverbial dome of the sky" which confines us, but this vault (κρανίον ) as well, so to speak.

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