Mythcrafting in Cosmos

The new reboot/reimagining of Carl Sagan’s seminal TV series Cosmos premiered this past week, starring Neil deGrasse Tyson as our guide through time and space. If you’ve read my past entries on this blog you know I’m something of a Tyson fan – I find his approachable demeanor and down-to-Earth discussion of astrophysics to be engaging and enlightening. I’ve been looking forward to the premiere of Cosmos ever since I’d heard that it was being revived in 2012. Well, the wait is finally over, and boy howdy was it worth it. If you haven’t taken the opportunity to watch this show, I highly recommend it. Nothing else on television right now offers such a compelling exploration of the history of the universe, and I sorely hope Cosmos does well enough to be renewed by FOX when it finishes its first season run this summer.

I had already planned to write up my impressions of Cosmos before I even saw the episode, but as luck would have it I was handed a perfect opportunity to tie the show in to the themes of this blog. It is entirely unsurprising to me that Cosmos would employ some of the methods I’ve talked about to frame scientific research in such a way as to be interesting to laypeople, but some of the stylistic and narrative choices made by the show’s writers and producers will serve extremely well to highlight the way stories convey meaning that pure information wouldn’t – for better or for worse. The show opens with the introduction of “The Spaceship of the Imagination,” a conceit borrowed from the original Cosmos to make it conceptually easier to move our viewpoint around in space and time. The sleek, fluid form of the ship  is unlike most spaceship design utilized by humans, either in reality or fiction, and the lone figure of Tyson standing on the craft’s “bridge” frames him as a nearly omniscient observer, traveling the known universe with no more than a thought. I have to say, I can see the benefit of using this particular trope. It draws viewers in in a way that a simple voiceover or talking head never would.

If you’ve watched Cosmos already – and if you haven’t, you really should. I’m serious. Stop reading this and go watch it. Okay? I’ll wait. … Awesome, right? I told you – if you’ve watched it, and you’re reading this, you probably know precisely what segment I’m most interested in talking about. That would be the story of Giordano Bruno, the 16^th-century Italian monk who began teaching heretical views on the universe and was ultimately burned at the stake. Cosmos portrayed Bruno as a deep, soulful man who discovered the idea of an infinite universe and was evermore persecuted for it. Bruno is portrayed as sad but convicted, preaching his infinite universe in the face of ridicule from his peers and punishment from his superiors. What caught my eye in particular was the depiction of the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Their visual design was cartoonishly evil – deep, black eyes, horrid scowls, sharp lines, etc.

As I watched this segment, I couldn’t help but feel that there was something more to the story that wasn’t being talked about. On top of that, I got the distinct impression that the stylistic choices could ultimately do a disservice to Cosmos’ attempt to invite traditionally anti-science people to reconsider their position. As it turns out, Cosmos left out a fair bit of Bruno’s background. While the events in the story are basically accurate, I would have to say that Bruno himself was somewhat over-idealized into the perfect scientist martyr. In real life, Giordano Bruno was ill-tempered, argumentative, and arrogant. He also preached a number of things that ran deeply counter to the Roman Catholic Church – he was ultimately convicted of eight different heretical teachings, of which his infinite universe was only one, and far from the most important one.

So why did the writers and illustrators of Cosmos  take these artistic liberties with Bruno’s life? I think the answer is fairly apparent, actually – like the vast majority of mythmakers, their goal was not simply to tell a story, but to communicate a certain truth to their audience. In this case, I think their intended message was fairly anti-Church, as in “look at this poor faithful man who just wanted to show everyone the infinite universe. He’s getting unfairly murdered by the evil Church just for daring to teach something different about science!” And therein lies the problem. The writers of Cosmos were so eager to claim Bruno as a true martyr to the cause of Science that they end up glossing over some important details and simplifying the story considerably from its complicated origins in history. It’s very risky to do something like that, especially on a topic this touchy, because there are always going to be people who take it a certain way – the lesson you want to convey in your story may not be the same lesson that people hear. I can easily imagine a person of devout faith and on-the-fence about science coming away from watching Sunday’s Cosmos seeing scientists as underhanded opportunists just trying to sully the Church’s reputation. That’s not true, but the way they chose to tell their story tell does indeed reveal something about their agenda. 

The segment on Giordano Bruno was obviously written and illustrated with a specific political goal in mind. It wasn’t simply a conveyance of fact, it was a carefully-constructed Myth designed to impart a particular wisdom to its listeners. Whether that wisdom is accurate or not, it was woven into the tale – if the writers hadn’t wanted to make the point about the Church being anti-science, they wouldn’t have included it. There were many other scientific pioneers who contributed to our understanding of the universe in more direct and valuable ways than Giordano Bruno, but none of them were burned at the stake for doing so.

All this is not to say that the segment wasn’t wonderfully produced and visually stunning. But still, its important to look for the hidden narrative threads in the stories we hear. Stories, particularly mythic ones, are told for specific purposes, and as consumers of media it is ultimately up to us to filter these myths and discern the purposes in their telling. It is either greatly ironic or greatly appropriate that the best way to approach the series Cosmos is with a healthy dose of skepticism – which I would like to think is how a scientist like Carl Sagan would have wanted it.  

The Story of How We Got Here

I’ve already touched on this a couple times, but no discussion of the conversation between religion and science could possibly be complete without a thorough examination of the debate between Evolution and Creationism. For years – decades, even – proponents of each side have argued, usually at high volume, for the veracity of their chosen side and the utter tripe of the other. Meanwhile, the great lot of folk in the middle, whether they ascribe to one model, the other, or some sort of fusion, wish that everyone would calm down a little bit, while perhaps, on occasion, discreetly cheering for one of the louder people on “their side” when he or she scores points. 

It’s an interesting dynamic, and a fairly modern one as well – this debate didn’t exist in a significant way until a few hundred years ago, at the rise of the modern scientific age. As discussed in the previous entry, one of the key shifts that changed the discourse was an increasing emphasis on factuality as the key arbiter of truth, and it was the dawn of the modern scientific age when we finally began to have some empirical evidence for our assertions. Science shifted from “natural philosophy” towards empiricism – and suddenly, what could previously be viewed as speculation became assertions of the way things actually were.

It was around this same time, for example, that one of the first great modern scientific/religious tiffs arose – that of exactly which heavenly body orbited which. The traditional assertion, of course, was that the Earth was the center of the cosmos, and everything else orbited around it. As astronomical observations became more precise, this model grew increasingly complicated as it tried to explain the ever-stranger paths the planets took through the sky. Eventually, some folks, e.g. Copernicus, realized that everything would be much, much simpler to explain if Earth was demoted from Center of the Cosmos to Orbiting Body – like the rest of the planets. This caused something of an outroar from the Church. Notably, this outroar was NOT because the heliocentric model lacked appropriate evidence or a rigorous test, but because it conflicted with the Church’s mythos.

Eventually, of course, as evidence mounted, it became clearer and clearer that the Earth was not, in fact, at the center of much of anything, and the Church finally admitted that maybe they’d gotten that one a little bit wrong. And so, thusly ended the first great conflict between newly-emerging empirical science and the long-established mythological Church. Well, not really ended, per se. It’s mostly laid to rest today by simple virtue of overwhelming evidence, though there are still a very small number of people who staunchly defend the geocentric model, absolutely convinced that God would not stick God’s glorious creation off in some random corner of the Cosmos. 

Obviously, the debate between Creationism and Evolutionism isn’t there yet – unless you ask a scientist, in which case it obviously is, or unless you ask a Religious fundamentalist, in which case it is, but the opposite. That was a confusing sentence. Let’s try again. There are a lot of folks on both sides of this particular debate who are absolutely convinced that they are correct and the other side is totally wrong.  I may turn off a reader or two here by saying that, factually speaking, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the Theory of Evolution. Even if Evolution has not in fact happened, then God has apparently seen fit to create a world that gives the appearance of having evolved over a lengthy period of time.

We find, unsurprisingly, that proponents on both sides tend to present their arguments to the broader public in a narrative format. They may argue facts and logic and reason, but ultimately, each side wants its story about the origin and development of life on Earth to be seen as the right story to believe – the proper myth for explaining the world around us. 

There is a book by one of my favorite Scientific evangelists, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, called Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution. The introduction to the book is entitled “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and it recounts the story of the origins of the universe from the Big Bang onward through the evolution of humankind. I found it very telling that Tyson titled the introduction that way – it reveals both the intent and the methodology of the entire book. This book is not meant as a factual explanation of observed phenomena. It’s meant as an exploration of a story – the establishment of a myth. Tyson bases his myth on factual evidence in order to give it more authority, but the facts are not the final purpose of the myth. What is the final purpose? To communicate to the reader the wondrousness of scientific exploration and discovery. Tyson’s description of the origins of the universe is sweeping and dramatic. He uses facts, but he weaves them into an intense sensory experience that leaves the reader thinking “wow!”

Interestingly enough, this is often the purpose of Creationists, as well – to leave the reader with a sense of wonder at the story and the powers behind it. Truthfully, I think this is the real source of the conflict between Creationism and Evolution – both sides believe they have an incredible, fantastic, meaningful story about who we are and how we got here. Both sides also believe that the other side’s story lacks the vitality of their own, and so they seek to assert their rightness, that their story is the only story that carries authority.

It’s a setup that promotes conflict rather than cooperation. I would love to see a shift in the discourse. There are, of course, contexts in which one story is more appropriate than the other. Evolution, for example, belongs in a Biology class, while Creation does not. But both stories are valuable, not only to the people who believe them to be factual, but to everyone. They both have lessons for us – things we can take away that change the way we see the world around us. They are both mythic, offering up insight into our complex, often frightening world. We can argue factuality forever and never really get anywhere productive with it. But, we can also find some common ground, because even though these two stories come from different sources, many of the themes they communicate resonate with one another. It’s really pretty cool, when you stop to think about it.

Mythology's Role in Society

So, when we last left this, we were beginning to discuss the role of storytelling in the conversation between religion and science. We need to get a bit more in depth, though, to really appreciate how storytelling functions in our society. I touched on in briefly, but I imagine it would be beneficial to put a little more into it.

The study of storytelling is usually called Mythology. Now, the word Myth is pretty loaded when you talk to both scientific and religious people. It typically gets tossed around as an accusation, as in “Evolution is a myth!” A quick Google search for “creation evolution myth” returns piles upon piles of results advocating one side by calling the other a myth. It is, in short, something of a dirty word.

But not so, say the Anthropologists! Mythologists know that myths are not mere made-up tales to be discounted. Myths are an important vehicle for any culture to communicate understanding of the nature of the world around it, and to try to explain why that nature is the way it is. Many myths, regardless of how fantastic they seem, contain an intrinsic link to the observable world, providing an explanation or an origin for that observation. There is a rather important implication to these myths – that the world around us is a certain way, and often it is entirely beyond our control. Myths are more than stories, they are insights and wisdom, packaged in a way that can be easily comprehended and remembered, even when the factual understanding of a situation is lacking.

So, in my mind, calling a scientific or religious story a Myth is neither inaccurate nor an insult. It is merely an accurate representation of how these narratives function in our society today. For a very long time, there was little conflict between science and religion, mostly due to the fact that there was little factual understanding of the world around us. Even when we began making verifiable discoveries, however, those discoveries were viewed as largely in line with religious principles. Many of history’s greatest minds – Isaac Newton, for example – were deeply religious people seeking to better understand the way God had designed the universe to function.

Things have become somewhat more difficult in the last century, however. There has been a growing belief, on both sides, that in order for a myth to be meaningful it must also be factual, and arguments have erupted over whose facts are accurate. The rise of both the biblical literalism movement and the so-called “new atheism” has driven a large wedge in between science and religion in the public perception. Each side lays claim not only to the truth contained in their myths, but also to factual accuracy. 

This is why approaching both scientific and religious explanations as Myths can provide novel insight. Myths are functionally independent of fact. While a myth can indeed be factual, a myth does not need to be in order to fulfill its primary purpose of noting and explicating the nature of the world around us. Take, for example, the popular American myth of John Henry, the Steel-Drivin’ Man. The historical accuracy of this story is certainly up for debate, but the point of the story is not to report on the events of a race between a convict laborer and a mechanized steam drill. Instead, the story is meant to communicate insight about the “human spirit” and to warn of the dehumanizing risks of the machine age. We tell the story and sing the songs with great enthusiasm not because we believe they are factually accurate but because we believe they reveal something worthwhile and important.

The waters really have been muddied when it comes to science and religion because it seems as though a lot of people have lost track of the distinctions between facts, truths, and myths. The interesting thing is, for most people’s day-to-day lives, the actual facts are relatively unimportant. It does a real estate agent very little good to know that the universe is approximately 14 billion years old, for example. Often times it is the truths contained within these stories – these myths – that become the most important part for us. In some ways, people are beginning to catch on. There is a growing trend of popular engagement with scientific principles and research. Science is being presented not merely as a way to discover new, more accurate facts, but as a way to discover meaningful truths about ourselves and the universe as well.

Scientists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku are more and more writing and speaking directly to the public about not only their scientific research, but about scientific discovery in general. Tyson will soon be on TV hosting a revival of Carl Sagan’s seminal popular science series COSMOS, which famously presented cutting-edge scientific research and discovery in a philosophical, even mythological, context. 

In our next entry, we’re going to go in depth into one small part of this new scientific approach, exploring side by side two creation myths – one built on religion, and one on science, but both surprisingly similar. Stay tuned!

Finding a different approach to Religion and Science

Any attempt to develop some kind of cooperative framework between science and religion needs to start out by acknowledging the issues these two topics have had with each other, both in the past and in modern times. There wouldn’t, after all, be any need to develop a cooperative framework if the two hadn’t come to odds so often and so dramatically over the years. So, that’s where this handy guide to nearly everything is going to begin. There have been a couple different ways people have tried to reconcile the two, so I think it would be handy to start out by reviewing those, and how useful they seem to be on the whole.

• I'm right, you're wrong and also stupid and/or damned
• This is pretty straightforward. Many people believe that the only true choice between science and religion is science OR religion. It has to be one or the other because they seem to make contradictory claims about the nature of the universe. So, people raise the banner for their chosen side and spend a great deal of time sounding very angry at people on the other side. For example, on the religious side you have Young-Earth Creationists who absolutely insist on the literal truth of every word in the Bible, including the 7-day creation story. About thirty percent of Americans fall somewhere in this category, or at least claim to. Young-Earth Creationists routinely insist that any attempt to explain the origins of Earth and life that doesn’t involve a garden, forbidden fruit, and a talking snake are devil-inspired trickery to lure people to hell. On the science side, you have the “New Atheists,” of whom Richard Dawkins is likely the most famous member, insisting that all religious belief is silly backwards superstition that causes only harm to society and should be snuffed out as thoroughly as the belief that bloodletting is a valid medical treatment.  These two sides tend not to get along very well. Unfortunately, they also tend to get a LOT of press coverage, because they are typically loud, confrontational, and entertaining. 
• Non-Overlapping Magisteria
• This is an idea named and given shape originally by Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist. Gould felt that science and religion both had legitimate areas of expertise and authority, but that those areas were distinct from each other. According to this idea, there are certain things science is qualified to tell us, and there are certain things religion is qualified to tell us, but those things concern different aspects of our lives. For example, it is science’s job, not religion’s, to tell us how Earth was formed and how life arose, because these are questions that can be explored and evaluated using direct physical evidence and critically evaluated reasoning. On the other hand, it is religion’s job to tell us why we are here, because scientific inquiry can only tell us about the immediate physical universe.
• Divine Guidance, Physical Process
• You can find a growing number of both scientists and theologians who plant themselves firmly on a middle ground between the two fields. They are unwilling to reject either field, but seek instead to find ways that the two might overlap. This framework requires taking a somewhat more relaxed view of the literal truth of scripture, instead asserting that some things written in the bible are metaphorical rather than literal. This framework commonly promotes ideas like “guided evolution,” in which life arose and evolved over billions of years, but in that time was directed by God’s will. In some ways, the theory of Intelligent Design fits into this category as well, given its assertion that life is too complicated to have arisen through random processes and must have been designed by some intentional agent.
   

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I think it provides a decent overview of some of the major ideas, enough to give you a sense of how people have approached this problem. Now then, let’s talk about the framework I’m planning on using.

If you ask any anthropologist, they’ll probably tell you that storytelling is a BIG part of just about every human culture. It’s not really that surprising; just look at how much money we pump into movies, television, and books. Even music tends to tell stories. It’s just how we are. But anthropologists know that stories are often how we try to understand the world. There are a couple people who did some extensive work in understanding how we use stories to communicate whose work has been very helpful to me – Claude Levi-Strauss and Joseph Campbell. Levi-Strauss proposed way back in the 1950s that we could learn a lot about how a culture functions by looking at the structure of that culture’s myths and stories – and we can find common relationships between cultures in the common structures of their stories. Campbell, meanwhile, proposed that many entirely separate myths are really the same story, or at least share a lot of common themes and ideas, and that these themes and ideas can suggest something deeper about human nature. 

At this point, you’re probably wondering just what this method I’ve been talking about is, so it’s probably a good time for the payoff here. Basically, what I’m hoping to do is to try to understand both religion and science as different ways of telling stories. I’m not trying to diminish either field, or suggest that either one is somehow frivolous or untruthful. Rather, what I’m trying to do is look at how the human predisposition towards storytelling plays into our notions of what religion and science are trying to tell us. When we break it down, most of the big theories in science and most of the big beliefs in religion are really stories, or at least we understand them as stories. I think a lot of the conflict between religion and science, at least at the non-academic levels, comes from people not knowing what to do with conflicting stories, and the academics leading the argument don’t really know what to do with conflicting stories either.

So, we’re going to try to use this notion of looking at the stories, and looking at the structures beneath the surface of the stories, to try to understand how religion and science can coexist and cooperate. In my next entry, I’ll go more in detail and provide a few examples of both religious and scientific stories, specifically looking at how stories that seem totally different on the surface in fact share a lot of common structure. Stay tuned!