Clarence Darrow (left) and William Jennings Bryan chat in court during the Scopes Trial.
In 1925, high school teacher John T. Scopes was tried by the state of Tennessee for violating the now-infamous Butler Act, a law which outlawed the teaching of evolution in public schools. What transpired in the trial seems, at first glance, like a relatively straightforward debate between prosecution and defense. However, when one investigates the unstated premises of their legal arguments, one discovers that they are founded upon radically different philosophical values. In this manner, the debate between prosecution and defense in the Scopes trial is, in essence, a debate between fundamentalist and modernist worldviews. Yet here too, appearances can be misleading. In first approaching the differences in philosophy which separate modernism from fundamentalism, I was struck by the sheer depth of disagreement which divides them. Their values seem in many ways to be the inverse images of each-other. Yet the starkness of this divide was itself intriguing to me. I began to question whether the separation between these two worldviews was perhaps an indication of some common ancestry, that the two may share—at the root of their divergence as ideas—a common origin. In pursuing this question, I have produced no answers. Rather, my intention in writing this paper is to direct my reader through three stages of questioning, each building upon the one before. The first of these stages relates to the legal arguments put forward in the trial, and is rooted in textual support from the trial itself. The second is concerned with the unstated philosophies which underlie the legal arguments of prosecution and defense, and is based primarily on my own subjective inference. The third and final stage of my analysis is concerned with the raising of a question: are the modernist and fundamentalist perspectives truly separate, or are they united at the source?


Darrow questions Bryan during the Scopes Trial (July 20, 1925) (Smithsonian)

The legal argument of the prosecution is based on three key premises. First and foremost, the prosecution argues that “the legislature of the state of Tennessee… [has a right] to control the public school system”, and that “in the passage of [the Butler Act] the legislature abused no discretion, but used only the reasonable means at hand” (86-87). They assume, in short, that the Butler Act, which outlawed the teaching of evolution in public schools, is constitutional. Second, they assume that the theory of evolution is fundamentally incompatible with the account of creation contained in the Bible. Third, the prosecution asserts that the case relates only to whether or not the law in question was broken, and that any questioning of the legitimacy of the law itself is not relevant to the trial at hand (109). If one assumes these premises to be true, then the trial of John Scopes can be reasonably seen as a simple matter of law-enforcement: Scopes broke the law by teaching evolution in a public school, and he should therefore be punished.

If, however, one does not assume these premises to be true, then the situation becomes much more complicated. It is for precisely this reason that the argument of the defense is considerably more complex than that of the prosecution. The defense rightly recognizes that the argument put forward by the prosecution is indeed logical insofar as its statements follow logically from its premises. They choose, therefore, to focus their attention on the premises themselves. For if one can overturn the premises of an argument, then the broader argument must fall as well.

The defense applies this strategy by questioning the constitutionality of the Butler Act. In doing so, they begin by arguing that the vagueness of the Act’s language places an unreasonable burden on the high school teachers whom it seeks to regulate: the law makes reference to “the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible”, and yet there is considerable theological debate—both historically and at present—over the way in which that story can or should be interpreted. Similarly, the law makes it illegal to teach “that man has descended from a lower order of animals”, which—as a reference to evolutionary theory—is also imprecise, due to the way in which scientific theories must perpetually shift to accommodate new evidence (90). From the defense’s perspective, “[the demands of the law are] so uncertain and impossible that every man must be sure that he has read everything in the Bible and not only read it but understands it, or he might violate the criminal code” (90).
Secondly, the defense holds that the Butler Act gives undue preference to Christian beliefs. The law seeks to protect “the teaching [of] the theory of creation, as taught in the Bible, and [excludes] under penalty of the law any other theory of creation” (85). The defense argues that “to base a theory set forth in any version of the Bible to be taught in the public school is an invasion of the rights of the citizen… [b]ecause it imposes a religious opinion” (86). By giving legal preference to one religion over another, the defense argues that the law violates religious freedoms.

In addition to attacking the questioning the constitutionality of the Butler Act , the defense also employs a secondary argument. They contend that “to convict Scopes the prosecution must prove that Scopes not only taught the theory of evolution, but that he also, and at the same time, denied the theory of creation as set forth in the Bible” (102). The defense rejects the notion that the act of teaching evolution is itself an act of contradicting the teachings of the Bible. Rather, they claim that “there is no conflict with science and Christianity”, stating that “science occupies a field of learning separate and apart from the learning of theology which the clergy expound” (102). Furthermore, they intend to defend this claim through the testimony of biologists and theologians, who—they argue—should be brought into trial as “expert witnesses” (102).

While these arguments appear straightforward on the surface, they mask a broader philosophical debate between fundamentalist and modernist perspectives on the role of science in society, and on the effects of scientific inquiry on morality. In analyzing these philosophical differences, I will begin by unpacking the argument of the prosecution, and will then move on to that of the defense.

I stated earlier that the argument of the prosecution assumes the legality of the Butler Act, and views the trial as a simple case of law-enforcement. Yet this assumption carries with it a set of deeper and more powerful beliefs.

To begin with, the prosecution’s belief in the legality of the Butler Act touches on a central conflict between the authority of the majority and the authority of truth. From the fundamentalist perspective, the only form of knowledge which is considered to be “holy” is that of revelation: the word of God. Revealed knowledge, such as the story of Genesis in the Bible, originates not from a human source but from a divine one, and this distinction lends it special privilege in the workings of human life—namely, its exclusion from the whims of the majority. All other forms of truth, including that of empirical knowledge, result merely from the activities of humans and not the revelation of God, and reside—therefore—under the rightful jurisdiction of humankind.

A second crucial element of the philosophy underlying the argument of the prosecution relates to the effects of rationality on moral behaviour. The prosecution’s desire to defend the outlawing of evolution in the public school curriculum allows us to infer three elements of their philosophy:

1) That the human spirit, if left without guidance, is prone to immoral acts.
2) That the means of remedying this behaviour is through the inculcation of religious faith; that faith, in tempering the influence of our innate (immoral natures) and introducing a code of morality in its place, promotes moral behaviour.
3) That reason, through its ceaseless inquiries, undermines our confidence in faith and moral norms, thus bringing us closer to our original state of immorality.

From the perspective of a Christian fundamentalist, the foundation of moral behaviour in society is the Judeo-Christian ethic as put forth in the Bible. If one assumes this to be true, then any theory which could undermine faith in the authority of the Bible would necessarily threaten moral behaviour as well.

In the worldview of the modernist, reason takes the place of faith. This is true on every level of the modernist philosophy, beginning with its regard for reason as the preferred qualifier of truth. Within the modernist worldview, knowledge is deemed truthful if it stands up to the scrutiny of the mind; the authority of the modernist is not the truth as revealed by God, but the truth as revealed by rational inquiry. It is the mind, not the soul—reason, not faith—which forms the bedrock of the modernist worldview. It is not surprising, then, that this high regard for reason would have implications for the treatment of scientific knowledge in society. Scientific knowledge, for the modernist, takes on a sort of “sacredness” owing to its being the product of a rational process. Just as the fundamentalist feels compelled to protect the word of God as contained in the Bible, the modernist is instinctively compelled to protect scientific knowledge, the sacred fruit of empirical inquiry. These contrary views regarding religious and scientific paradigms of “truth” are on clear display in the trial of John Scopes, in which both sides struggle to defend the sanctity of their respective truth paradigms: Genesis for the prosecution, evolution for the defense.

The modernists also have a drastically different perspective on morality and its relationship to reason and religious faith, one which is in many ways a mirror-image of the fundamentalist perspective. For the modernist, reason—not faith—is the greatest antidote to immoral behaviour. Indeed it could be argued that the modernist perspective here is in many ways more optimistic than that of the fundamentalists, as it seems to suggest a higher regard for the intrinsic potential of the human being. Unlike the fundamentalists, the modernists believe that humans can utilize their reasoning capacity as a means of bettering themselves both morally and intellectually—that the betterment of the human race is best achieved through the use and cultivation of the human spirit and intellect via rational inquiry, rather than through its suppression via faith.

While one can defend the merits of the scientific process and emphasize the ways in which it is distinct from religious faith, there is nevertheless one substantial and enduring similarity, a depth into which faith ultimately and invariably enters. If one looks at the foundations of science, one finds the process of empirical investigation, the trust in rationality. Yet on what basis is this trust truly placed? Can one say "empirical knowledge"? This is a circular argument, for what qualifies empiricism as "rational" if not its reliance on empirical observation? Similarly, what qualifies "empirical observation" as trustworthy apart from its characterization as "rational" or “reliable”? We trust these things, but we do not know why. Perhaps our reason for trusting them runs deeper and has more external/empirical support than is the case with religious faith, but ultimately our situation is much the same. The basis for our modern trust in rationality stems from an inspiration, an intuition, a trust in its virtue, which we cannot ultimately argue for. It exists, it is undeniable, it is contained within the joyful feeling of every discovery, every exploration, every successful (or, indeed, unsuccessful) application of the rational mind. Yet we cannot account for it; that spark of inspiration which tells us "Yes" to the method of the mind cannot be traced to the perception of our eyes, or to our ears, or to our instruments. It eludes our detection, while inspiring our beliefs and our actions. How so, then, are we truly different from the religious fundamentalists, the believers, those who place their trust, faith and joy in their belief in an undetectable God. Undetectable, yes, but deeply knowable all the same. Felt in the very fabric of their practice, as with ours. We cannot quantify that spark which lies at the center of our trust in science. This leaves us with a question to which the wise man should be humble: in relation to faith, is our distinction from religion one of nature, or degree?

These profound philosophical questions are further explored by Walter Lippman in his 1928 publication, American Inquisitors. In it, he offers his reflections on the Scopes trial, which he views as being but an iteration “of a wide conflict between scholarship and popular faith, between freedom of thought and popular rule” which symbolizes “the ancient conflict between freedom and authority” (Lippman 6, 8). He wonders whether “at the core of [the trial] there is not something of great importance which it behooves us to understand”, and proceeds to lead us on an effort to explore this line of questioning through the form of an imaginary Socratic dialogue between Socrates, Thomas Jefferson, and William Jennings Bryan (8). In keeping with his historical reputation, Socrates is used by Lippman as a mouthpiece through which to deconstruct the arguments of Jefferson and Bryan, so as to reveal their underlying premises. This process of deconstruction eventually arrives at a discussion on the nature of “divine revelation” as contrasted with “human reason”, a line of inquiry first initiated by Socrates’ reference to science as “the religion of rationalism” (19).
The character of Socrates raises the point that, within the social framework of the United States, the unquestioned authority of “divine revelation”—“God’s Word”—has slowly given way to a new order, one in which the authority of rationality has become paramount. What is it, Socrates asks, that “makes [one] so confident about human reason?” (40). This powerful question touches on an central issue which permeates Lippman’s text: on what basis has reason come to dethrone revelation as the foremost qualifier of truth, and how do these two concepts—seemingly so at odds with one another—actually differ? Revelation or reason? “God’s Word” or “human words”? Which Word do we trust more, and why?
The archetypal modernist might argue that, through reason, we transcribe the language of nature in such a way that we may understand it directly. This, they might argue, is the true ‘Word of God’.

The archetypal fundamentalist may respond to this argument with the simple phrase, “The proper study of Mankind is Man”. That is to say, they may argue that divine revelation—not reason—is the true Word of God, due to the fact that Man is the (truest) manifestation of nature (mankind created in God’s own image). Therefore, the empirical method of science, with its assumption that truth is to be discovered through the unfurling of nature, is not consistent with its own philosophy: if Truth (see: God) is to be found in Nature, and if Man is derived from Nature, then whatever “Truth” that exists in nature should also exist in Man. But here we are not talking simply of the purely physical/empirical dimension of humanity; Man is a singularly complex organism, one whose experience includes faculties (cognition, emotion, inspiration, indeed reason itself) cannot be fundamentally quantified. It is here, at the boundary-point between quantifiable and unquantifiable phenomena, that the scientific/rational and spiritual/religious perspectives invariably diverge: the scientific/empirical mind stays bound within the paradigm of the quantifiable, while the spiritual/religious mind moves beyond that which can be quantified, into the realm of feelings, emotions, and inspiration, that realm of which language is born, and to which it can never fully return . And it is precisely here, past the threshold of the unquantifiable, that it discerns the Word of God.

It is not difficult for one to observe that at the bedrock of all religious questioning and experience lies the concept of God. It is comparatively more difficult to identify the equivalent concept which underpins and unifies the domain of rationality. It is easy enough to point to the workings of the rational mind; it is pervasive throughout contemporary culture. But it is not the identification of rational behaviour—of rationality put to use—that is the challenge; rather, what we must set out to uncover is the root of such behaviour. We seek, then, the face of reason itself. It may well be the case that reason—the thing itself—cannot be bound into words. Yet, anticipating this potential shortfall, let us at least try to shed light on reason by way of its accompanying characteristics, so that—much like with a stenciled image—its inner form may appear, if only as the negative impression which emerges through the exposition of its immediate surroundings.

What is Reason? Can it be seen? Can it be heard? Can it—in its intrinsic, elementary form—be discerned, in any way whatsoever, by the senses? It cannot. We must conclude, therefore, that it is unquantifiable, and fails to meet the necessary prerequisites for empirical investigation. It cannot be empirically witnessed, and therefore it cannot be empirically verified. The existence or non-existence of reason is unfalsifiable; it cannot be accounted for by the empirical methodology of science. And yet, despite all of these observations, it is evident that reason is pervasive throughout our lives. We recognize the relative rationality or irrationality of human behaviour, we employ rationality as the very basis on which we evaluate claims to truth, and yet the basic, most fundamental definition of reason eludes our rational understanding. We must conclude that reason is visible only through its manifestations. Indeed, in explaining this difficult and paradoxical situation, one might to tempted to explain the issue by simply stating—indeed, quite truthfully—that “Reason works in mysterious ways”. In recalling the initial prompt of these investigations—the question of whether divine revelation and human reason are, in fact, fundamentally distinct—we would be wise to take notice of the fact that, if one were to substitute the word “God” for “Reason” in the preceding phrase, one would be left with perhaps the most common explanation of God as given by religious believers.

It is only a small minority of rationalists who focus their attention on the question of how to conceive of the basic identity or definition of reason itself. Indeed, very few go so far as to acknowledge the existence of such a question. Such rare individuals occupy a unique and wholly valuable perspective in relation to the science-religion cultural divide, as they are capable of experiencing firsthand that elementary foundation of rationality—reason as an entity unto itself—at a level more fundamental than that at which the empirical methods of scientific inquiry may operate. Such individuals transcend the restrictive dogmatism of both religious and scientific orthodoxies; they emerge, instead, upon a truly secular spiritual experience. Albert Einstein encapsulated this rich perspective in his 1949 publication, The World as I see It:

It was the experience of mystery—even if mixed with fear—that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

Such perspectives have emerged from both sides of the science-religion divide. Rudolf Otto, an eminent Protestant theologian of his time, profoundly impacted 20th century German theology through his 1917 publication, The Idea of the Holy. In its foreword, Otto states that his intention is to explore “that which may be called ‘non-rational’ or ‘supra-rational’ in the depths of the divine nature.” Furthermore, he acknowledges the paradoxical nature of rationality—that is, one’s inability to apply the rational mind toward the task of uncovering the nature of rationality itself. Otto refers to this intrinsic, natural form of rationality as “the rational aspect of that supreme Reality we call ‘God’”. In his opening chapter, titled ‘The Rational and the Non-Rational’, Otto argues against the “commonly asserted… [notion] that Rationalism is the denial, and its opposite the affirmation, of the miraculous”. This, he argues, “is manifestly a wrong or at least a very superficial distinction” (Otto 3). Otto coins the term numinous to refer to the human experience of that which is holy. What is notable about Otto’s use of this term is that it is applied not only with regard to theistic entities such as God(s), but also to a broader spectrum of human experience, one which is deeply compatible with the concept of secular spirituality. Otto uses this concept of the numinous to introduce a secondary term, that of the mysterium tremendum. Otto defines this term as referring to the feeling of profound awe and exaltation which one feels when one is “[i]n the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures” (13).




What is particularly notable of Otto’s views is the extent to which they coincide with the perspective on spirituality expressed in Einstein’s text. These two wholly distinct individuals, in pursuing their respective philosophies to the furthest reaches of their rational minds, arrived upon what is in essence a singular and unifying conclusion: at the bedrock of all human inquiry—whether approached through rationality or through revelation—there exists a dimension of “Mystery”, of “the most radiant beauty”, that is “only accessible to our reason in [its] most elementary forms” (Otto 13; Einstein).

These views, united as they are despite the dramatic cultural differences of their authors, provide us with a conceptual alternative to the binary opposition between Modernist and Fundamentalist ideologies with which we are confronted in The Scopes Trial. In examining the philosophical foundations of the modernist and fundamentalist worldviews, one finds that these two camps are perhaps more similar than may be comfortable for us to believe. In a world where the divisions between ‘rationality’ and ‘irrationality’ are becoming increasingly entrenched, we would be wise to examine—with courage and open minds—the extent to which our respective ideologies may have grown from common soil. Perhaps, while our methods differ, our subject matter is the same.

“The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.”

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
—Carl Sagan
 



Works Cited

Moran, Jeffrey P. The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002. Print
Lippman, Walter. A Commentary on Dayton and Chicago. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Print.
Einstein, Albert. "The World as I See It." The World as I See It. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949. Print.
Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Trans. John W. Harvey. London: Oxford UP. Rudolph Otto: The Idea of the Holy. Scribd. Web. 18 Mar. 2012. .
Sagan, Carl. "The Backbone of Night." Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Dir. Adrian Malone. Prod. Gregory Andorfer and Rob McCain. PBS. 28 Sept. 1980. Television.
Sagan, Carl. "Who Speaks for Earth.” Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Dir. Adrian Malone. Prod. Gregory Andorfer and Rob McCain. PBS. 28 Sept. 1980. Television.

Part One: Elation

The city seemed to move—swelling, as though engrossed and enraptured by its own primal rhythm. People, shapes—figures and cascading blurs wrapped among themselves—drifted and were shook apart as though figments of some imaginary lightplay, distant memories of a fleeting and forgotten past. His mind lingered and fell into the crowd. Shapeless figures, structures, bodies, minds; a ceaseless intermingling of beginnings and ends, of unspoken thoughts and voiceless passions, the epicenter of some distant sanctuary, the birthplace of idols of that vastest of pantheons, the workings and doings of creation.

And from this place, he woke.

Under the arid sky of the metropolis, a network of winding tributaries buzzes with the frantic energy of humanity and its works. Man-made shadows drift over the figures of nameless forms, who fall into the cracks and passage ways of this self-containing sprawl, cast in the all-enveloping shadow of immense and brooding forms. Inside, a man sits waking in a char. He stares forward, his face in his palms, gripping at himself with the inward fascination of a man still dreaming. His tactile senses point him to the imagining of a distant world, a lifeless planet on which his facial features mark the contours of a barren land—his nose: great ridges; his cheeks: an empty plane. He can feel the light of its distant sun, illuminating its arid fields, its lifeless deserts, warming and stirring the planet within. Above him, the still-closed window stands brimming with the conductive sheen of frigid glass, illuminating the blue-lit room with the blurred shapes and contours of an imaginary Beyond.

Beyond the window, vast columns pierce the sky in tight-knit regiments, a phalanx of metal and glass stretching outwardly beyond the comprehension of the eye. Beneath them, a vast maze-work of streets and pathways roar with the cumulative rush of feverish motions.

The coldness of the glass runs through his cheek and down his spine, sending a nervous pulse of energy running outward through his body. The noise of city is muffled through the glass, its constant bass-tones resting in the space within his chest, a sinking presence, everywhere, rippling from the core. His mind echoes inwardly with the rippling of ceaseless machinations.

Hours later, he walked among the labyrinthine passageways of the city’s streets. Dazzling lightplay reflected from the sunlit husks of the monolithic buildings, as a cold flux of movement enveloped the fast-moving grounds. People, everywhere, rushed in accelerating movements, their bodies in unison—a network of transient forms. He watched these figures with an unreflecting gaze, his mind staring blankly at the ceaseless flow of moving bodies. He watched their forms meld into one another—trading spaces and occupying moments—until he could no longer trace the lines connecting the beginnings and the endings of their movements; all had become a blur of simple motion. Something, invisibly, had occupied his thoughts. He stopped moving. A subtle sound, of sands lifted and rising, whispered outwardly from the surroundings as though spurred by the warming influence of a distant sun. There was no visible source, no identifiable force of agency on which to attach the sound. Just the rhythm, which—building upon itself as though swept by a gust of spontaneity, of vacancy of form—was punctuated by a central point of sonic pressure erupting into a singular multitude, a divergent evolution of sounds. He stood transfixed and watching the fast-moving forms.

That night, the city commenced its descent into an uneasy slumber. Faceless shadows stalked the streets, the exhausted dregs of the day’s activities, lost in the kaleidoscopic matrix of their wandering minds. This was the sleepless nightmare, the side effect of the chronic pace of the city’s movements. He watched at a distance as the ceaseless energy of their elongated days slowly gave way to the encroaching tide of madness and decay. Their broken minds wandered the streets, pursued by their bodies. This was the breaking point, populated by those who no longer sought the dawn, but instead paced evenly through the city streets, their dormant memories weighing heavily on their still-born minds, marching helplessly amidst the darkness.

He observed one of them in a park overlooking a large body of water which stretched out and reached the blackened horizon. Its surface glistened with a multitude of miniscule, moonlit flourishes, rising and falling in cyclical motions atop the still, rolling waves, which drifted easefully amongst themselves—unmoved by the silent forces whose currents swirled dormant and invisible beneath their depths. Something old and powerful—direct and inevitable—lingered stalkingly behind the stunning symmetry of his eyes. And yet, buried deep within the powers of its reaching grasp, its wrestless longing to be felt and heard, beat the heart and soul of non-power itself. With these eyes, he stared ever-forward, passing slowly and evenly over the horizon, illuminated by the lightplay of distant waves, the ink-black darkness of the sky whose star-lit luminescence bore the portent mystery of an infinite expanse, an unceasing frontier beyond which there can be no further imagination: the boundary-point of ponderings, of measurements, of Knowing itself. His gray eyes danced with the quantum interplay of innumerable photons, as he sat transfixedly, staring into the beyond.

Part Two: Elegance

He awoke once more to the sound of that undying pulse. The light of the sky—cold, but not dim—cast a softened halo atop the streets’ blue shadows. Waking, he stirred. His eyes caught the soft glow reaching outward from the window. In the shower, water poured over him in sheets and layers, clusters of moist particles, self-containing harbingers of a vastness of prospective tomorrows, fusing and exploding in pockets of energy—an accelerating symphony of matter, manifest. The walls, tiles, fabrics of discarded clothing, all carriers of that sacred message, expressions of that pulse whose sound holds the birth-weight of innumerable worlds.

He sat and gathered his thoughts. Beneath the surface, his home was founded on a bedrock of faceless artefacts: photographs, human records—shadows and distant dignitaries of a bygone world. He sought solace in their shadows, their fleeting gaze and displaced meanings, which floated, groundless, deprived of a world. They are lost seeds with no soil to bear witness to their relevance: formless apparitions devoid of a context, place, or time.

He started at the photographs, and his eyelids quivered as though swayed by a distant wind.

Part Three: Exaltation

That night he dreamed of spectral illuminations, images bursting through the floodgates of his fast-opening mind. Fire, fire, coaxed by wood and rock, by scraps of shrubbery, dried wood fragments, leaves, crushed with boulders, moulded by hands, twisted and raised, sputtering from the smouldering Earth; he saw animals slain by men and scarred fields interspersed with rows of pooling water; he saw stones being stripped from the sides of colossal mountains, the movement of boulders by great lines of forms; he saw cities of wood and cities of stone, cities of marble heat-warped beneath the searing energy of a vibrant sun; he saw steam rising from the banks of rivers; vast migrations, their ranks stretched for miles; he saw the movements of millions as though driven by a sound, marching in unison, coordinated movement, driven by the pulse.

He was caught in the elementary graspings of that all-encompassing sound, echoing and resounding in the corridors perception.

His ears filled with the formation of words, distant utterances heralding the genesis of language, as the birth-song of evolution rushed powerfully through his veins. He heard voices in unison, rising and falling, but converging on the pulse. He felt it ricocheting and rebounding off of figures, thoughts, and dreams: a unifying message articulated in a single, all-pervading sound whose body seemed to move and glisten—perpetually shifting, eternally in flux—with all the motion and energy of creation itself.

From the unknowable ether of his mind’s eye, his city appeared. It breathed with a life and energy unknown to itself. Its people, broken and darting through its thoughtless streets, appeared hopeless and unknowing beneath an immensity of sky, permeated by wind. This sky, this wind, the colour of their eyes as they paced unseeingly about the city’s long passageways—all combined to illuminate what had been a shallow armour, the unloving resemblance of a civilization which had once arisen—with passion and sacrifice—from the fertile soils of the Earth.

Their presence carried with it the semblance of a bygone time, of a force of energy whose workings transcended the boundaries of rational forms. Their bodies—moving, unmoving—traced the contours of a once-vibrant paradigm whose structure had collapsed under the weight of its own creation, its own deliberations and wrongdoings, its excesses and secret passions and the hidden weight and terror of its vast, internal void.

The city stood radiant beneath an open sky.

And from this place, he woke.

I have seen
The sunken mysteries of my own mind
spread out before me,
enveloping everything,
breathing sunlight from their ephemeral dew.

I have heard
the silent rumblings of a desire yet unborn
the faint, pitching melody of longing,
as it wakes

And I have felt,
The myriad images brush against my skin,
brush up against my eyes, still closed
and beat great rhythms into my
closed and stirring eyes.

Yes, I have known
The soft line which breathes within the
narrows of necessity
The wisdom which whispers through
the mouth of restless fantasy,

And the thought—which knows
no boundary, but which
flows and speaks out endlessly
as it illuminates

the dream.

A time of revolution and of change, of both the catastrophic collapse and the meteoric rise of empires, the 19th century bore witness to a series of profound advances in both the natural and social sciences. Among the many highly influential figures of the 19th century, however, the ideas of two thinkers stand apart for the depth and extent of their impact: those of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. In his 1848 publication of The Communist Manifesto, Marx placed the existence of class struggle into a long-term historical perspective, arguing that—by proliferating social inequality and thus class warfare—Capitalism would lead to its own disintegration. In light of these circumstances, Marx called for the unification of the global working class under the banner of Communism. While Marx sparked a revolution of perspective in human social history, Darwin sparked a revolution of perspective in biological history. In his publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, Darwin challenged once and for all the prevailing notions relating to the origin and development of life. By positing natural selection as the force behind biological change, Darwin opened up a mode of thinking about nature which did not depend on the existence of supernatural forces. This proposition opened up a new paradigm of scientific inquiry into biological history, while also introducing profound philosophical and theological implications which continue to challenge structures of thought well into the 21st century. The new avenues of inquiry into biological history which were opened by Darwin’s work helped extend the reach of scientific inquiry into areas which had previously been inaccessible to science, including the exploration of existential questions which had until then been restricted to theological and philosophical interpretations. The expanded scope of scientific questioning heralded by Darwin has also served as a catalyst for the subsequent emergence of secular forms of spirituality, which are rooted not in organized religious dogmas but in a combination of Western scientific and Eastern spiritual traditions. By pursuing lines of inquiry into both social and biological history, Marx and Darwin permanently widened the scope of human intellectual exploration.

The publication of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 irreversibly altered the course of Western thought in relation to the social sciences. In it, Marx argues that Capitalism as a means of organizing society will invariably result in social inequality and class struggle, and that this social inequality is inherently unsustainable. Based on these key premises, Marx concludes that Capitalism will thus invariably lead to its own collapse, only to be replaced by Socialism, which in turn will develop naturally and necessarily into Communism. The true source of Marx’s influence, however, stems from his assertion in The Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” By arguing that class struggle is not an isolated problem arising from his particular 19th-century social conditions, but rather the consequence of a long series of social structures which have perpetuated social inequality throughout the course of human history, Marx succeeded establishing an awareness of how conditions such as inequality and social strife are but symptoms caused by the workings of a broader social structure. In simpler terms: Marx catalyzed the belief that social systems—such as Capitalism—are the vehicles through which wealth is allocated and inequality is assured. One of the most significant impacts of this intellectual contribution lies in its role in inspiring a newfound-sense of unity among the 19th-century working class. Marx argued that workers the world over are united in that they occupy a position in society in which the only form of capital which they possess lies in their own labour—their capacity to produce. Marx believed that the only means of ensuring the emancipation of the working class from this position of disempowerment was through the unification of the workers themselves, a view encapsulated in the singular appeal which concludes The Communist Manifesto: “The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”


This diagram shows the distribution of power among several key multinational financial institutions. Courtesy of TheyRule.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection represents a milestone of singular importance in the scientific and intellectual development of the human species. Just as the discovery of Newtonian physics extended the realm of scientific inquiry into the investigation of natural laws, Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection extended scientific inquiry into the most fundamental and essential questions of biology: the formulation and development of life. This newly-expanded scope of scientific inquiry was not only of interest to scientists, however. By attributing biological change to natural environmental processes, Darwin confronted the people of the 19th century with the revelation that the human species is itself involved in this process of gradual change, and is in fact continuously evolving over time, along with all other species. From this new vantage point of biological history, inquiring individuals the world over were given a theoretical foundation on which to ponder the ongoing evolution of the human species. Through Darwin’s theory of natural selection, a precedent had been set: for a growing number of people, the human species could no longer be considered separate from the diverse natural processes which surround it. We had found our place in the community of species, our chapter in the history of life. Since its initial publication in 1859, Darwin’s theory of evolution (along with its more modernized forms) has become a widely-used framework through which to understand the universe, the human species, and the intersection of the two. In this way, one of the most significant and under-emphasized aspects of the legacy of Darwin’s work lies in its influence on the development of secular spirituality—that is, concepts of spiritual experience which lie outside the parameters of organized religion and theology. In the legacy of Darwin’s work, we see the development of a science which—through the empiricism of the scientific method—has arrived upon an understanding of the interconnectedness of all life: a notion which is entirely consistent with certain non-empirical traditions such as Taoism and Zen Buddhism. In this way, evolution serves as a scientific bridging-point between Eastern and Western philosophies and methodologies. In the post-Darwinian era, the fusion of traditionally ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ perspectives has incorporated itself into the discourse of disciplines throughout the Arts and Sciences. It is in this context of intellectual cross-fertilization that Albert Einstein, in his 1931 essay The World as I See It, held that “the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”


The phylogenetic tree shows the evolutionary interrelationships of species and the way in which they are linked by common ancestors.

The propagation of Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection led to a permanent expansion of mankind’s perception of itself and its place in relation to the whole of biological history. The effects of this widened influence can be seen in some form across a wide variety of disciplines. Perhaps most notably, it has contributed to the development of non-dogmatic forms of secular spirituality which incorporate elements derived from both Western and Eastern outlooks and methodologies. By extending the reach of scientific inquiry into the farthest expanses of biological history, Darwin’s theory of evolution helped expand the time-frame through which human observers approach questions relating to the origins and ongoing development of life. A similar phenomenon occurred under the influence of Marx: by analyzing the perpetuation of class struggle and inequality across a vast historical timescale, Marx introduced a new perspective of time to the social sciences. Marx’s analysis contributed to a sense of unity among the workers of the 19th century by placing the struggle of the working class into a long-term historical context. Through the lens of Marx’s historical perspective, the worker of the 19th century was not an isolated individual but rather the inheritor of a historical injustice which has been changing hands throughout history, since the earliest recorded instances of human social organization. In effect, by developing his thesis across an immense historical time-frame, Marx did to social history what Darwin did to biological history. In his writings, Marx gave the workers of the world a past, and—in so doing—ensured them of the promise of a future. While the 19th century is renowned for its high pace of intellectual innovation and social change, the contributions of Marx and Darwin stand apart for the unique role they played in expanding the parameters of human inquiry in both the natural and social sciences. Marx succeeded in introducing a belief in social systems as the catalysts for grassroots social conditions, while Darwin widened humanity’s perception of biological change by defining it as the product of complex interrelationships and interactions across all aspects of the natural world. In both cases, each pioneered a new mentality of looking at the world which have today become all but self-evident in our culture, engrained—perhaps irreversibly—in our institutions, our societies, and—most notably—in our minds.

“Which aspects of our nature will prevail… is uncertain,
particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part
of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space.
Fanatic ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.”

- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Tonight, I see the Internet as a sort of controlled state of dreaming: directed, curated... semi-lucid, like a dream.

Vague interests, inklings, compel us to a certain place of knowledge, a node of interest amid seas of information. This place, though unique, is not independent or separate from the rest of the network of which it is one; instead, it exists only within the context of the network as a whole, in relation to the complementary, surrounding, and otherwise-relevant nodes with which it is connected.

So in this way, to use the Internet is to enter into a group network, one which compliments and interacts with your own individual node. Your ideas, preferences and interests determine the course of your interaction within the network, yet there is always some degree of separation distancing you, a whole person, from the content and concepts with which you are interacting.

Is not the use of the Internet, then, akin to a state of dreaming?

In both realms, we play a role which is both active and passive; we exist in a state which is both reactive and proactive.

We read, and we write.

To what extent can we suspend our individuality in favour of a more networked experience?

Should we, in fact, do so?

Do we want to do so?

These are brave questions, which I expect will be met with brave answers in the years and decades ahead.

Humanity’s future, though uncertain, is ever-changing.

We know this much is true.

An antenna dish, large and unwavering, sits in a valley of old-growth trees whose bark foretells the legacy of layering and unlayering, whose silent constructions shape and determine the confines and apparent boundary-points of the natural world. Long live the flow of boundless energies: that focal point of nature whose gift predates the workings of nature herself. You are that all-empowering Infinity, that point beyond which there are no further horizons, being, as you are, at the very center of things. Outwards and inwards, as energies we flow. The constructors and constructions of a world we call our own. Our musings are born of the same impulse that gave birth to ourselves.

An inkwell sits patiently, buoyant in an ocean of inarticulate possibility. Inexpressible sadness, inextricable joy—you are the twin musings of all creation. You are fingers, pointing at the moon.

(The following is an excerpt from 'Contact' by Carl Sagan)



“Do Buddhists believe in God, or not?” Ellie asked on their way to have dinner with the Abbot.
“Their position seems to be,” Vaygay replied dryly, “that their God is so great he doesn’t even have to exist.”
As they sped through the countryside, they talked about Utsumi, the Abbot of the most famous Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan. A few years before, at ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, Utsumi had delivered a speech that commanded worldwide attention. He was well connected in Japanese political life and served as a kind of spiritual adviser to the ruling political party, but he spent most of his time in monastic and devotional activities.
“His father was also the Abbot of a Buddhist monastery,” Sukhavati mentioned.
Ellie raised her eyebrows.
“Don’t look so surprised. Marriage was permitted to them, like the Russian Orthodox clergy. Isn’t that right, Vaygay?”
“That was before my time,” he said, a little distractedly.
The restaurant was set in a grove of bamboo and was called Ungetsu—the Clouded Moon; and indeed there was a clouded moon in the early evening sky. Their Japanese hosts had arranged that there be no other guests. Ellie and her companions removed their shoes and, padding in their stocking feet, entered a small dining room which looked out on stalks of bamboo.
The Abbot’s head was shaved, his garment a robe of black and silver. He greeted them in perfect colloquial English, and his Chinese, Xi later told her, turned out to be passable as well. The surroundings were restful, the conversation lighthearted. Each course was a small work of art, edible jewels. She understood how nouvelle cuisine had its origins in the Japanese culinary tradition. If the custom were to eat the food blindfolded, she would have been content. If, instead, the delicacies were brought out only to be admired and never to be eaten, she would also have been content. To look and eat both was an intimation of heaven.
Ellie was seated across from the Abbot and next to Lunacharsky. Others inquired about the species—or at least the kingdom—of this or that morsel. Between the sushi and the gingko nuts, the conversation turned, after a fashion, to the mission.
“But why do we communicate?” the Abbot asked.
“To exchange information,” replied Lunacharsky, seemingly devoting full attention to his recalcitrant chopsticks.
“But why do we wish to exchange information?”
“Because we feed on information. Information is necessary for our survival. Without information we die.”
Lunarcharsky was intent on a ginkgo nut that slipped off his chopsticks each time he attempted to raise it to his mouth. He lowered his head to meet the chopsticks half-way.
“I believe,” continued the Abbot, “that we communicate out of love or compassion.” He reached with his fingers for one of his own ginkgo nuts and placed it squarely in his mouth.
“Then you think, she asked, “that the Machine is an instrument of compassion? You think there is no risk?”
“I can communicate with a flower,” he went on as if in response. “I can talk to a stone. You would have no difficulty understanding the beings—that is the proper word?—of some other world.”
“I am perfectly prepared to believe that the stone communicates to you,” Lunacharsky said, chewing on the ginkgo nut. He had followed the Abbot’s example. “But I wonder about you communicating to the stone. How would you convince us that you can communicate with a stone? The world is full of error. How do you know you are not deceiving yourself?”
“Ah, scientific scepticism.” The Abbot flashed a smile that Ellie found absolutely winning; it was innocent, almost childlike.
“To communicate with a stone, you must become much less… preoccupied. You must not do so much thinking, so much talking. When I say I communicate with a stone, I am not talking about words. The Christians say, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ But I am talking about a communication much earlier, much more fundamental than that.”
“It’s only the Gospel of Saint John that talks about the Word,” Ellie commented—a little pedantically, she thought as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “The earlier Synoptic Gospels say nothing about it. It’s really an accretion from Greek philosophy. What kind of preverbal communication do you mean?”
“Your question is made of words. You ask me to use words to describe what has nothing to do with words. Let me see. There is a Japanese story called ‘The Dream of the Ants.” It is set in the Kingdom of the Ants. It is a long story, and I will not tell it to you now. But the point of the story is this: To understand the language of the ants, you must become an ant.”
“The language of the ants is in fact a chemical language,” said Lunacharsky, eyeing the Abbot keenly. “They lay down specific molecular traces to indicate the path they have taken to find food. To understand the language of the ants, I need a gas chromatograph, or a mass spectrometer. I do not need to become an ant.”
“Probably, that is the only way you know to become an ant,” returned the Abbot, looking to no one in particular. “Tell me, why do people study the signs left by ants?”
“Well,” Ellie offered, “I guess an entomologist would say it’s to understand the ants and ant society. Scientists take pleasure in understanding.”
“That is another way of saying that they love the ants.”
She suppressed a small shudder.
“Yes, but those who fund the entomologists say something else. They say it’s to control the behaviour of ants, to make them leave a house they’ve infested, say, or to understand the biology of soil for agriculture. It might provide an alternative to pesticides. I guess you could say there’s some love of the ants in hat,” Ellie mused.
“But it’s also in our self-interest,” said Lunacharsky.
“The pesticides are poisonous to us as well.”
“Why are you talking about pesticides in the midst of such a dinner?” shot Sukhavati from across the table.
“We will dream the dream of the ants another time,” the Abbot said softly to Ellie, flashing again that perfect, untroubled smile.
Reshod with the aid of meter-long shoehorns, they approached their small fleet of automobiles, while the serving women and proprietress smiled and bowed ceremoniously. Ellie and Xi watched the Abbot enter a limousine with some of their Japanese hosts.
“I asked him, If he could talk with a stone, could he communicate with the dead?” Xi told her.
“And what did he say?”
“He said the dead were easy. His difficulties were with the living.”

There is a lingering humour, a taunting presence in the mundane scenery of sensory experience. The glamour and appeal of natural sounds, and—sadly, misguidedly—the sacredness of human utterances—are all too often robbed of their magic and immediacy by the bullet-train of ceaseless categorization which takes place, as though driven by an unassailable force of agency, in that all-pervasive engine-room of the mind.

Let me try to re-phrase this obscurity:

The sound that resonates through our ears and into our hearts and minds owes its existence to the atmosphere. Meaning: sound cannot exist in a vacuum, due to the fact that it depends on the ability of unseen particles to vibrate in waveform harmonies amongst themselves. Our atmosphere allows for the existence of these particles’ vibrations by distancing us ever so delicately from the mute blackness in which we are framed. Our language hinges on the borders of soundlessness; our meaning floats atop an ocean of inarticulate possibility.
We are ghosts within the machine, fragile emissaries of a cosmic imagination, whose silent searchings echo the poetry of soundless forms.
__________________________________

{ What is emptiness but the home of possibility?
What is fullness but the offspring of a void?

Silence is the root of exposition
While expression is the heartbeat of the unseen and unheard }

He sat heavily on the cushioned surface, eyes jittering out the window. Inside, a warm room, its low-lit scenery accented by the blue-cold glare emanating from beyond café windows, those moderating view-panes and embassies to the external. Outside, cool air shifted imperceptibly in convective motions, as visibly all was still and unmoving as morning air. Coffee cups lay on the tables. The mugs and juice bottles—empty, half-empty—containing worlds. His mind was a labyrinth. His eyes, spinning and scanning over printed words—pages, flickering—were hailed by a singular image emerging from the mist.

Alligator.

Alligator became the central focal point of his sensory universe. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make of a man a fish, a star, an alligator. And so it was. Reptilemind. Crocodylidade sapien sapien, crawling on four ambidextrous limbs over the porous waves and sub-waves of biological perception.

Who's to say what a reptile feels?
The stark immediacy of physical form?
The weightlessness of freeform imagination?
The omnipotent macro-actualization of non-doing?
The infinite polyverse of the mind?

Or is it, rather, rapt only in that unspoken, underlying imperative that drives the evolutionary process? That singular verb that underpins the biological experience?

Exist.

When we exhale, we are reliving the moment which birthed the Cosmos, the moment which signaled the semi-instant transition from unfathomable density to near-infinite expanse.

When we breathe, we relive the life cycle of the Universe: in exhaling, we witness its birth; in inhaling, we witness its death, its re-collectivization into hyper-density—the return to the sub-atomic universe. Breathe in: the universe in a grain of sand. Breathe out: there are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of our world.

We breathe the life cycle of the Universe—its construction and its destruction; its synthesis and its dissemination; exhaling its birth, inhaling its death.

We are, each of us, the creators and destroyers of worlds—the living manifestations of the Cosmos. Our articulations are the expressions of the star stuff which spurred our creation.