The age of reason
In Pakistan, having a simple discussion on the origins of our species is to express a resounding death wish
The writer is a freelance contributor based in New Jersey
Here is a simple experiment. Next time you step out on a clear starry night, look up. Notice the star you see in the night sky and imagine how it could be a whirling galaxy far away. Recognise that as you look at this far-afield body, you may well be looking back in time. This is because the time it takes this star’s image to reach you, at the speed of light, is in millions of years. In a strange cosmic sense, then, you are in the presence of a past.
Observe the distance between the stars, those vast galactic spaces which look empty yet contain in them most of the energy of the universe — dark energy. Appreciate the sheer scale of this most spectacular celestial arrangement and your own size relative to it. Understand that it doesn’t just end here. This is just the observable universe. In an inflationary space, we may well be part of a universe among many others — a multiverse. This may seem far-fetched, but then the findings of science and our own intuitions about the world seldom overlap. Eighty years ago, we thought our galaxy to be the totality of our cosmos. Today we stand humbled in the knowledge that our galaxy is a mere note in a grand astral orchestra. Just linger on that for a few minutes. And when this realisation finally turns to epiphany, let it detonate in your brain like packed titanium, dismantling every remaining structure of ego-centricity therein.
The fact that we are on a spinning rock careening through empty space around bigger objects, similarly in orbit, is remarkable. That this pattern of ‘objects circling other objects’ repeats itself across varying scales — fractal pattern — is even more remarkable. Now, turn your focus to the quantum, where electrons exist in different places at once — superimposition — and things get queerer still. Yet we seem underwhelmed, almost jaded by this reality. This probably has more to do with how we approach this reality than the reality itself.
Let me elaborate. As a culture, we are not interested in science. Many among us regard scientists with a degree of suspicion one typically reserves for illusionists or con artists. To undercut the roots of such suspicion, it is important to trace them back to their origins. Let’s travel back a few centuries when men like Copernicus and Galileo hacked mercilessly at the established dogmas of the day. Displacing the common view that the Earth is the centre of the universe, these men altered our conception of the cosmos — antagonising the papal authorities of the day that insisted upon a geocentric view of the universe as it conveniently aligned with their entrenched beliefs. Galileo would subsequently go on to live the remainder of his life under house arrest.
However, in medieval Europe much of this started to change once the Enlightenment principles of reason and rationality started to take hold. This seemed a natural step forward for Europeans, who for a long time had conflated disease with sorcery, dissent with heresy and progress with conquest. Now contrast this with the Muslim world where progress collapsed centuries ago. Imagine the Baghdad of yore — the house of wisdom. A place where the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur — fond of philosophy and observational astronomy — sought fervently to revive the intellectual traditions of old. Hungry for knowledge, the caliph organised numerous foreign translations into Arabic, including classical works of Hindu, Persian and Greek scholars. He established royal libraries, translation bureaus, book repositories, and academies of scholars and intellectuals from across the empire. During his time, mosques became venues for lectures and debates; discussions on natural sciences and philosophy attracted thinkers and scholars from faraway places. Muezzins were required to have knowledge of the heavens. Professional scientists were hired as timekeepers who wrote treatises on astronomy and planetary motion. Mansur’s succeeding caliph, Al-Mamoon, stretched the envelope further. It was in his time when Ptolemy’s astronomy and Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics — long in abeyance in Medieval Europe — came alive and sparked an intellectual explosion that yielded near-unprecedented advances in mathematics and sciences. Ibn Sina’s The canon of medicine served as the leading text on medicine for 500 years. Creativity, too, flushed the scene. Muslim art and masonry inspired the Mudegar architecture style in Spanish Europe, among other creative jewels.
But that was a long time ago. Today’s Baghdad is a haunting cadaver of its ancient glory. And that may be true for most of the Muslim world. One could attribute this to a conspiracy of history and circumstance, but that would be to ignore centuries of Muslim intellectual complacency and dogmatic rigidity in a kaleidoscopic world. Take Pakistan, where having a simple academic discussion on the origins of our species and our role in the universe is to express a resounding death wish. Yes, our private schools and elite colleges manage to produce effective ‘workers’ primed for private sector wage labour, but where are our scholars and intellectuals? Part of it is, of course, low investment in education, and research and development. But let’s not reduce the issue to mere economics. Ours is a psycho-social malaise, one that has a great deal to do with celebrating mistaken archetypes. Take a look at our heroes, warriors all of them. We care little for the philosophical treatises of Ibn Rushd or Khuldune’s groundbreaking expositions on sociology and conflict. The mysticism of Rumi, the biting iconoclasm of Omar Khayyam, the eclecticism of Akbar — none of that remains today either. We have shrunk a giant like Iqbal to the two-nation theory. As for science, not only have we evicted it from our lands; we have jettisoned the scientific method itself. As a starting point, let’s recognise that science is not just your latest iPhone or Google watch. From experiments revealing free will to be largely a function of the brain’s biochemistry, to modern-day cosmology suggesting multiple universes where parallel probabilities could co-occur, to advanced Artificial Intelligence reshaping our current conception of sentience — all these areas of scientific inquiry are challenging the very basis of our understanding of human morality and consciousness. Yes, many questions remain, and probably will remain. But better the questions we can’t answer than answers we can’t question.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 1st, 2015.
Observe the distance between the stars, those vast galactic spaces which look empty yet contain in them most of the energy of the universe — dark energy. Appreciate the sheer scale of this most spectacular celestial arrangement and your own size relative to it. Understand that it doesn’t just end here. This is just the observable universe. In an inflationary space, we may well be part of a universe among many others — a multiverse. This may seem far-fetched, but then the findings of science and our own intuitions about the world seldom overlap. Eighty years ago, we thought our galaxy to be the totality of our cosmos. Today we stand humbled in the knowledge that our galaxy is a mere note in a grand astral orchestra. Just linger on that for a few minutes. And when this realisation finally turns to epiphany, let it detonate in your brain like packed titanium, dismantling every remaining structure of ego-centricity therein.
The fact that we are on a spinning rock careening through empty space around bigger objects, similarly in orbit, is remarkable. That this pattern of ‘objects circling other objects’ repeats itself across varying scales — fractal pattern — is even more remarkable. Now, turn your focus to the quantum, where electrons exist in different places at once — superimposition — and things get queerer still. Yet we seem underwhelmed, almost jaded by this reality. This probably has more to do with how we approach this reality than the reality itself.
Let me elaborate. As a culture, we are not interested in science. Many among us regard scientists with a degree of suspicion one typically reserves for illusionists or con artists. To undercut the roots of such suspicion, it is important to trace them back to their origins. Let’s travel back a few centuries when men like Copernicus and Galileo hacked mercilessly at the established dogmas of the day. Displacing the common view that the Earth is the centre of the universe, these men altered our conception of the cosmos — antagonising the papal authorities of the day that insisted upon a geocentric view of the universe as it conveniently aligned with their entrenched beliefs. Galileo would subsequently go on to live the remainder of his life under house arrest.
However, in medieval Europe much of this started to change once the Enlightenment principles of reason and rationality started to take hold. This seemed a natural step forward for Europeans, who for a long time had conflated disease with sorcery, dissent with heresy and progress with conquest. Now contrast this with the Muslim world where progress collapsed centuries ago. Imagine the Baghdad of yore — the house of wisdom. A place where the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur — fond of philosophy and observational astronomy — sought fervently to revive the intellectual traditions of old. Hungry for knowledge, the caliph organised numerous foreign translations into Arabic, including classical works of Hindu, Persian and Greek scholars. He established royal libraries, translation bureaus, book repositories, and academies of scholars and intellectuals from across the empire. During his time, mosques became venues for lectures and debates; discussions on natural sciences and philosophy attracted thinkers and scholars from faraway places. Muezzins were required to have knowledge of the heavens. Professional scientists were hired as timekeepers who wrote treatises on astronomy and planetary motion. Mansur’s succeeding caliph, Al-Mamoon, stretched the envelope further. It was in his time when Ptolemy’s astronomy and Aristotle’s natural philosophy and metaphysics — long in abeyance in Medieval Europe — came alive and sparked an intellectual explosion that yielded near-unprecedented advances in mathematics and sciences. Ibn Sina’s The canon of medicine served as the leading text on medicine for 500 years. Creativity, too, flushed the scene. Muslim art and masonry inspired the Mudegar architecture style in Spanish Europe, among other creative jewels.
But that was a long time ago. Today’s Baghdad is a haunting cadaver of its ancient glory. And that may be true for most of the Muslim world. One could attribute this to a conspiracy of history and circumstance, but that would be to ignore centuries of Muslim intellectual complacency and dogmatic rigidity in a kaleidoscopic world. Take Pakistan, where having a simple academic discussion on the origins of our species and our role in the universe is to express a resounding death wish. Yes, our private schools and elite colleges manage to produce effective ‘workers’ primed for private sector wage labour, but where are our scholars and intellectuals? Part of it is, of course, low investment in education, and research and development. But let’s not reduce the issue to mere economics. Ours is a psycho-social malaise, one that has a great deal to do with celebrating mistaken archetypes. Take a look at our heroes, warriors all of them. We care little for the philosophical treatises of Ibn Rushd or Khuldune’s groundbreaking expositions on sociology and conflict. The mysticism of Rumi, the biting iconoclasm of Omar Khayyam, the eclecticism of Akbar — none of that remains today either. We have shrunk a giant like Iqbal to the two-nation theory. As for science, not only have we evicted it from our lands; we have jettisoned the scientific method itself. As a starting point, let’s recognise that science is not just your latest iPhone or Google watch. From experiments revealing free will to be largely a function of the brain’s biochemistry, to modern-day cosmology suggesting multiple universes where parallel probabilities could co-occur, to advanced Artificial Intelligence reshaping our current conception of sentience — all these areas of scientific inquiry are challenging the very basis of our understanding of human morality and consciousness. Yes, many questions remain, and probably will remain. But better the questions we can’t answer than answers we can’t question.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 1st, 2015.