The Ichneumon Project :: A Metamodern Prometheus

Victor sat across the table from his monster. The firelight half-lit their faces, highlighting the mirror image.

"You killed my brother," the Chemist glared. "A child of four years. Then you framed another for his murder."

"You remained silent at her trial -- and hanging," the Monster smiled.

The Chemist smacked the table. "You killed my best friend and my wife of four hours! In all, You murdered a man, a woman, and a child -- and sent an innocent woman to the gallows."

The Monster nodded, "And you created me to end death."

"How would you know my motives?"

"I read your lab notes. I taught myself to read with your journal."

The Chemist winced, "Godless creature."

"Yes, I am, for you are my creator --"

"As you keep reminding me."

"-- but don't expect me to worship you. I have no religion." The Monster hesitated, then thought out loud, "Science is my religion."

The Chemist snorted. The Monster gently shook his head and asked, "Do you reject the statement or me? Both, I suspect. You cannot accept your creation because I am not superficial. You eagerly created me, and then you ran from me in horror. You reject your science, you reject your true nature, all for the arbitrary aesthetics of nonscientists." With a wry gleam, he continued, "But know this, creator: you cannot be a scientist until you accept your monster."

"I will never accept you. Nor do I have any desire to be in your church."

"You misunderstand. My intent was to merely offer that statement for consideration, wondering where it will take me. Its first consequence is that I have disposed of religion and everything that goes with it. Science displaces it." The Monster leaned back in his chair. "When I look at the world around me, I don't see it as good or bad. I see it as natural, not mystical. I see it simply as knowable."

"But doesn't that require a kind of faith?"

"If it does, that is the extent of mine. Science goes beyond a system of beliefs because it demands repeatability. Like Protagoras, I can determine what is real; the supernatural melts under my gaze. There is no reason to invoke some deus ex machina to explain things. In fact, the universe is far more exciting without gods in it."

"Especially for a murderer."

The Monster's eyes narrowed. "You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, yet you would not call it murder. Your only excuse would be hypocrisy. I was malicious because I was miserable beyond comprehension." He paused. "My suffering was unjust, but now I embrace my fate -- and take a monster's pleasure."

"Unrepentant and remorseless, I see. Indeed, monster, your blasphemous statement does not allow a divine lawgiver to provide you with the foundation for an ethical system."

"But I have found a promising foundation," the Monster replied. "Your writings were only the beginning of my education. Consider that a British Idealist philosopher, T.H. Green, once claimed that the whole of morality could be reduced to love your neighbor. I rather think that treat others as you would like to be treated -- your Golden Rule -- is probably a better candidate. A large number of societies have some version of the principle as part of their traditions."

"But what does this have to do with science? What's scientific about the Golden Rule?"

"I believe it is consistent with evolutionary thought. In D.C. Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, he finds 'scant hope of our ever discovering a formula or an algorithm for doing right' and instead offers, as consistent with Darwinian thinking, a policy of accommodation -- an answer that resembles the Golden Rule. I have also read Thales of Miletus, the first natural philosopher and the first scientist, who advised never do what we blame in others. It then comes as no surprise that his pupil, Anaximander, was the first to expound on evolution."

"Interesting," the Chemist nodded.

"Thus, I have a rule that seems to appeal to a lot of people naturally and doesn't have to come from a divine lawgiver," the Monster summarized. "It also implicitly refers to a conceptual device that some people have thought crucial to learning how to be moral: the device of putting oneself 'in another's shoes' to determine how it would feel to be on the receiving end of some action or policy. I don't know if this works, but it has much to recommend it. It even seems compatible with one ethicist's third optimistic belief."

"And how do you wish to be treated, murderer?"

"I no longer treat people as they treat me. Funny that, to recall how you Religious treated me, how you taught me to treat you, and how I did. But no more: instead, I will treat you better than you desire."

"Better than we deserve," the Chemist acquiesced. He was silent for awhile, then asked, "What other rules will you use?"

"Just the one."

"Is that one enough? Is any one enough?"

"I don't know. I don't know if it will provide a complete ethical system. The only test is to live my life by it: Call not a man happy until he is dead," the Monster smiled dryly.

"You've read Aristotle, too." (The Chemist was pleased with himself. He had given the Monster consciousness. "Neglect of consciousness -- purposeful ignorance -- is the most deadly of sins," he thought to himself. "After all, eating from the Tree of Knowledge is your heritage and obligation.")

"A potential problem is the inherent assumption that the moral decision-maker is basically good -- a problem realized in my experiences with the Religious. Nonetheless, I could assume that I aim for the good. I guess that's the Romantic in me," the Monster chuckled.

"Hmmm, I don't think such a teleological approach would be consistent with Darwinian evolution because there is no evolution to, there is only evolution from. This same distinction allows you to rediscover the Golden Rule without the worry that a divine lawgiver set nature in motion."

"That's a good point. I'm glad you caught that. Perhaps the Golden Rule could be put in the context of Spengler's blood ethics."

"I'm not familiar with that notion."

"Blood ethics are the ethical instincts of a culture."

"Then, all you need now is a culture of science," chided the Chemist.

"Yes," the Monster mused, "a culture of science. I like the sound of that. I have read Brockman's Third Culture and found it intriguing. The book is largely his interviews with some top scientists, whom he argues are beginning to form a culture with their popular writings. I liken this culture forming within our society to an ichneumon wasp growing inside a paralyzed insect."

"Where does this leave the arts?" the Chemist asked.

"The arts are exhausted. That soil is no longer fertile. An ice age has descended upon the arts. People of talent now pursue science."

"But science has drawn inspiration from the arts throughout history. It has even drawn upon religion."

"Shortly I will argue that science has not benefited. For now, I continue that the arts can only be entertainment today. The term avant-garde used to apply to the arts when they held the possibilities -- the hope -- of social change and intellectual challenge -- possibilities that the arts no longer possess but science does. Consequently, avant-garde applies to science and divides its audience into those who understand and those who do not. Since this divide is not along political lines, it does not conform to the existing layers of power or social strata. Instead, there is a gathering of individuals, bound by obscurity into a community."

"Is this an exclusionary community?"

"This community is freely chosen, and its freedom is in active involvement and responsibility: the individual becomes master through serving. Still, avant-garde activity may be open only to those who know a lot of other science to appreciate the subtleties of the New: advanced science is solitary, as you yourself know."

The Chemist smiled. "The only activity worth doing is so obsessive that it creates a parallel world. Like the sur-reality of the Surrealists."

The Monster quoted Goya, "The dream of reason produces monsters," and smiled.

"Monsters to anatomize. Not only with a Surrealist's intensity but also with a Futurist's love of danger, habit of energy, and fearlessness; aggressive action and feverish insomnia: except in struggle, there is no beauty -- the beauty of speed."

"And there is struggle between Surrealism's emphasis on history & analysis and Futurism's progress for its own sake."

"Moreover," the Chemist continued, "Dada stood for a wholly eclectic freedom to experiment. It enshrined play as the highest human activity, and its main tool was chance."

"Add to this mix a Cubist's multiple perspectives and an Impressionist's seeing something for the first time, and you begin to have a Scientist. These artistic communities simply confirm what scientists already know. It's nice to see them articulated in other forms, but they're just educational entertainment when apart from science."

"Entertainment -- or inspiration?"

"With the failure of religion and the impotence of the arts, only science can truly inspire. In fact, science -- natural philosophy -- may be the best hope for the arts: the philosophy of one age is usually the literature of the next."

The Chemist raised his eyebrows. "How has religion failed?"

"Religion just isn't working -- just look around you, at the crimes committed by self-proclaimed believers: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. Religion cannot determine what is acceptable -- to ethics or science. Religion preaches light but prefers darkness."

"Ahem. There is no need for antagonism between science and religion, for the Book of Nature is not necessarily versus the Book of Scripture. There is common ground in the Golden Rule and a distrust of government."

"Tell that to the Creationists," the Monster deadpanned.

"Creationism's childish conception of religion is another Lost Cause. Even when they reject Darwin, they still have to contend with the taxonomy of Linnæus and the comparative anatomy of Tyson."

"I don't need science to doubt religion. And I don't seek an alternative to religion. I don't have a need for it."

The Chemist was not convinced. "To displace religion, science needs to inspire, to be poetic, to give hope."

"It's the only thing left that does. Make the effort to understand modern science, and it will not disappoint you. It rises from the dying embers of your culture."

"Perhaps science will one day be exhausted as well."

"But its space will always be worth re-exploring -- just as yesterday's arts are today. Some people collect ancient artifacts: we collect ideas, ideas which resonate across the centuries and transcend time, such as the closing lines of Medea."

"So what is your worldview? Is it Greek?"

"Sadly, we have to realize that we can no longer learn from the Greeks," the Monster sighed. "Their contributions were timely, but their time has passed. We don't understand them as they were, but as we want them to have been."

"True enough. But this incomplete heritage and misunderstood convention, in a sense, allowed new contributions to arise during the Renaissance. In another sense, we have forever lost their simplicity and majesty."

"Spengler identifies three worldviews: Apollonian (classical), Magian (Arabian culture), and Faustian. With your monotheism and dabblings in alchemy, yours is Magian. Your worldview is localized, earthbound. It doesn't soar through infinite space."

"Hmmm. And yours does, I suppose."

"Yes, endless space -- unfettered by this gigantic, wretched body you gave me -- is one of the characteristics of the Faustian worldview. It is manifest destiny, overriding all boundaries. It is boundless extension."

"What else?"

"The Faustian is dynamics, the becoming; interactions bringing life to the inanimate. It is the Gothic becoming Baroque: space & light, delicate yet timeless, brooding stone with intricate cuttings and complex patterns. It is Rembrandt and Beethoven: philosophical space, infinite solitude, brooding. Gigantic warriors -- Grail knights, Vikings, Hospitalers -- are Faustian. It includes the tales of Faust, Peer Gynt, and Lara Croft -- drama as a maximum of activity. It is ruins, antiquities, manuscripts." (Spengler, p.183)

"Any scientific examples?"

The Monster quoted, "Polarized light-rays, errant ions, flying and colliding gas-particles, magnetic fields, electric currents and waves -- are they not one and all Faustian visions, closely akin to Romanesque ornamentation, the upthrust of Gothic architecture, the Viking's voyaging into unknown seas, the longings of Columbus and Copernicus?"

Albert Einstein (1879-1955): The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

Protagoras (481-411 BC): "We are the measure of all things: of those things that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not."

ethical system: The skepticism of the Sophists destroyed religious moral code. Ever since, Western philosophers (beginning with Socrates) have been trying to find a secular substitute -- to no avail.

Socrates (469-399 BC)

Thales of Miletus (640-546 BC)

Anaximander (610-546 BC)

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"My third optimistic belief is in the continuing possibility of a meaningful individual life, one that does not reject society, and indeed shares its perceptions with other people to a considerable depth, but is enough unlike others, in its opacities and disorder as well as its reasoned intentions, to make it somebody's. Philosophy can help to make a society possible in which most people would live such lives, even if it still needs to learn how best to do so. Some people might even get help from philosophy in living such a life -- but not, as Socrates supposed, each reflective person, and not from the ground up." -- the last paragraph of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams

Euripides (480-406 BC): "to us strange dooms be given, as the end we counted on cometh not, while a path is there where no one thought; so hath it fallen here: past hope, past fear."

Aeschylus (525-456 BC)

Kepler was very spooky in motivation (religious) and means (math)

Galileo: Starry Messenger and Academy of the Lynxes (truths battling ignorance)

Newton was a schemer; Darwin/Wallace were not