In the space of a few hours, I insulted an old high school friend by linking, in response to a message about how proud he was to have his mouth washed out with soap as a child, to the very funny Monty Python skit about which rich jerk had the hardest childhood; aggrieved my sister-in-law by posting this in response to her complaints about negative campaign advertising; and came close to alienating another life-long friend by suggesting that Ayn Rand and Kurt Vonnegut were aiming at the same thing, to wit: enlightened self-interest, each defending selfishness (the one in terms of money-making, the other in terms of being a sloth) as somehow helping the common good.
Sometimes, I have a muzzle and use it. But the steam needs to escape, and I guess here is as good a place as any for it. A great and distinguished writer whom I was able to add to my list of "friends" because he went to school with my sister, recently gushed about the triumphs of science, in the discoveries of the great Alexandrian tomb in Amphipolis in northern Greece, on the one hand, and in the landing of a spacecraft on a comet:
Today is a magnificent day for science--the field of intellectual enquiry which a large proportion of the population, and its leaders, don't "believe" in--in many forms, looking both deeply back into the past and thrillingly into the future. First, the announcement this morning of the remarkable findings at Amphipolis, where an early Hellenistic tomb (or hero-shrine) clearly belonging to someone of tremendous importance has yielded at last a burial chamber and human remains, which will now be studied using the full array of scientific tools in order to solve the mystery of who was in the grave. Then, a few hours later, the fabulous and breathtaking news of the landing of a probe on a comet 300 million miles (!) from Earth will allow vast new understanding of space. A marvelous day for intellectual enquiry and civilization all round, I'd say.One of the comments made reference to the rise in anti-intellectualism, which is, of course, nonsense. Has there ever been an era which has issued more diplomas, even measured per capita, than ours? Is there some other period of time with as many teachers? Or with so many "experts" on absolutely every subject, no matter how minute? The difference, it seems to me, is that the anti-intellectuals today have equal access to the tools usually reserved for and monopolized by their opponents.
I guess I really lack the courage to go up against the great master, or even one of his disciples, and perhaps I just want to stop trying to rain on various parades. But here's what I wanted to say against the post:
Is it really impossible to be at once intellectually curious and at least somewhat skeptical of the idea of science as an unalloyed good? Is there any scientific advance of the last two centuries which has not brought about at least as much harm as the good we keep hearing about? Is there a horror of the 20th or 21st century which was not help greatly by what scientists, however good their intentions, brought forth upon this world? Let us set aside the most obvious examples of explosives (at least we have the money for the Nobel prize!) of ever-increasing magnitude and other inventions which were certain to be used as weapons. What of, say, the light bulb, the internal-combustion engine, computers and the internet? What of refrigeration? What of advancements in agriculture and building sciences, making it to cheap to make things to eat and places to sleep for larger and larger populations (living more often and longer because of advances in medicines)?
I am reminded almost daily of Auden's take on all this. The relevant part goes thusly:
This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.
If only I had the heart to blurt this out, too.
