Concept Summary      Chapter 10

According to Aristotle, we are rational animals. But we are also evolution's paradox, the "glory and shame of the universe," the "greatest achievement" or perhaps its "worst mistake." We have come to understand the atom and in the 1980s some of our most educated people calmly and steadfastly used our "lucidity" to plan for World War IV, even though the destructive force of a nuclear World War III could equal 15 tons of dynamite for every person on this Earth. One nuclear bomb is incredibly destructive, easily destroying a major city, yet both the former Soviet Union and the United States had enough bombs to target the major cities of the other many times. Experts disagree whether a full nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and the U.S. would have led to human extinction, but according to Schell we at least reached a zone of unprecedented uncertainty regarding this question.

Each side believed that it needed to negotiate from a position of strength, and each side had sound historical, political, and strategic reasons for its policies. Like a knife reason cut up the possible to form a rational world view for each side, each unfortunately seeming to feed on the other's fear. The United States said "Never again" to policies that risked a new Pearl Harbor; the Soviets said "Never again" to invasion without striking first. We stood then on the edge of a dangerous abyss, playing a dangerous psychological game, where the United States declared it would use nuclear weapons first if it thought it needed to, and the Soviets would strike first if they thought the United States thought it needed to.

As we enter the twenty-first century the danger of a nuclear war between superpowers has lessened. Atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological weapons, are still with us, and most important, so is the same dangerous psychology that produced the terror of the cold war. The equation is simple: advancing technology mixed with racism, ethnic hatred, and competitive global power struggles over dwindling resources equals a dangerous future of possible extinction. Soon, one ethnicity may have the biological technological capability to eliminate another ethnicity from the face of this Earth. What will keep humans from using these new weapons against each other?

We have perhaps one hope. The same cognitive ability that has produced a zone of extinction might be our salvation. We may be a "bit of stellar matter gone wrong," but "we are that which asks the question." Freeman Dyson argued that we could trick ourselves into a safer world. We may not he able to change our nature, but advancing technology, coupled with mutual understanding of each other's world views, could make our strategic differences a contest of information and return war to warriors. Not enough, said Carl Sagan. We need much more than just different weapons. It is our perception of being different, with different needs and fears, that pushes the button of our reptile ancestry. This perception can be ameliorated only by adopting a larger, more stirring perspective -- a perspective that is true, the cosmic perspective.

These meliorist philosophies, both presupposing that our lives can improve through human effort, could rest, however, on quicksand. It could be worse, there could be no hope at all. Out of the libraries may come the astronomer and the concerned technologist, but they are disguised schizophrenics, according to Nietzsche. There is no meaning to life for the nihilist. Our rational ability makes us aware of this, causing a psychic trembling, and then makes psychological consolations and dangerous metaphysical cases that in the long run produce insanity in groups, nations, and epochs. For Nietzsche, objectivity, progress, and God are myths. There is no truth, only interpretation, no direction, only freedom, no purpose, only a circular pointlessness.

Adopting a large perspective of our scientific culture, we see a meandering path, a pageant of ideas and responses to an awesome universe, a mélange of intellectual embraces. We don't know whether the path has a purpose; perhaps it should be enough that we are on it; perhaps we should just play on. We don't know if our curiosity is a gift or a curse, but it is reasonable to continue our faith in the self-corrective nature of science all the while knowing that it may be an illusion and that there may be no epilogue to our search. Science presupposes assumptions it can never prove, but we can justify its method heuristically: It forces us to be intimate with the world and to critically discuss our myths. Clearly other ways of embracing the world exist, but just as clearly, science is one of the best, and is the best given the proper domain and certain questions. This less pretentious view of science humbles us, tempers our egocentricity, and preserves a childlike wonder of and respect for our place in the universe.

Our species is now at an awesome crossroad -- a serious business that few think about. Test this thought. Think what it would mean if there were no more human thought, devotion, inspiration, and holy curiosity, no more passion of the lover or the discoverer, only the silence of nothingness.