On the occasion of Stephen W. Hawking's 60th trip around the sun, we consider a social phenomenon that reveals something deep about human nature
By Michael
Shermer
Scientific American Magazine
- June, 2002
BRAD
HINES
In
1998 God appeared at Caltech.
More
precisely, the scientific equivalent of the deity, in the form of Stephen W.
Hawking, delivered a public lecture via his now familiar voice synthesizer. The
1,100-seat auditorium was filled; an additional 400 viewed a video feed in
another hall, and hundreds more squatted on the lawn and listened to theater
speakers broadcasting this scientific saint's epistle to the apostles.
The
lecture was slated for 8 P.M. By three o'clock a line began to snake around the
grassy quad adjoining the hall. By five, hundreds of scientists flipped
Frisbees and chatted with students from Caltech and other universities.
When
Hawking rolled into the auditorium and down the aisle in his motorized wheelchair,
everyone rose in applause--a "standing O" just for showing up! The
sermon was his customary one on the big bang, black holes, time and the
universe, with the theology coming in the question-and-answer period. Here was
an opportunity to inquire of a transcendent mind the biggest question of all:
"Is there a God?"
Asked
this ultimately unanswerable question, Hawking sat rigidly in his chair, stone
quiet, his eyes darting back and forth across the computer screen. A minute,
maybe two, went by. Finally, a wry smile formed and the Delphic oracle spoke:
"I do not answer God questions."
What
is it about Hawking that draws us to him as a scientific saint? He is, I
believe, the embodiment of a larger social phenomenon known as scientism.
Scientism is a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for
all phenomena, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces
empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate
for an Age of Science.
Scientism's
voice can best be heard through a literary genre for both lay readers and
professionals that includes the works of such scientists as Carl Sagan, E. O.
Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins and Jared Diamond. Scientism is a
bridge spanning the abyss between what physicist C. P. Snow famously called the
"two cultures" of science and the arts/humanities (neither encampment
being able to communicate with the other). Scientism has generated a new
literati and intelligentsia passionately concerned with the profound
philosophical, ideological and theological implications of scientific
discoveries.
This being the Age of Science, it is scientism's shamans
who command our veneration.
Although
the origins of the scientism genre can be traced to the writings of Galileo and
Thomas Huxley in centuries past, its modern incarnation began in the early
1970s with mathematician Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, took off in the
1980s with Sagan's Cosmos and hit pay dirt in the 1990s with Hawking's A Brief
History of Time, which spent a record 200 weeks on the Sunday Times of London's
hardcover best-seller list and sold more than 10 million copies in 30-plus
languages worldwide. Hawking's latest work, The Universe in a Nutshell, is
already riding high on the best-seller list.
Hawking's
towering fame is a result of a concatenation of variables that include the
power of the scientism culture in which he writes, his creative insights into
the ultimate nature of the cosmos, in which he dares to answer ersatz
theological questions, and, perhaps most notably, his unmitigated heroism in
the face of near-insurmountable physical obstacles that would have felled a
lesser being. But his individual success in particular, and the rise of
scientism in general, reveals something deeper still.
First,
cosmology and evolutionary theory ask the ultimate origin questions that have
traditionally been the province of religion and theology. Scientism is
courageously proffering naturalistic answers that supplant supernaturalistic
ones and in the process is providing spiritual sustenance for those whose needs
are not being met by these ancient cultural traditions. Second, we are, at
base, a socially hierarchical primate species. We show deference to our
leaders, pay respect to our elders and follow the dictates of our shamans; this
being the Age of Science, it is scientism's shamans who command our veneration.
Third, because of language we are also storytelling, mythmaking primates, with
scientism as the foundational stratum of our story and scientists as the
premier mythmakers of our time.