The American Institutes of Physics run an occasionally updated news feed, Physics News Updates, that I have in my RSS subscriptions. Yesterday, for some reason, it coughed up a squib about last week’s Pluto news, which starts:
Just as in the Bible Adam achieved dominion over the objects of the earth by naming them, so scientists partly establish human dominion over the cosmos by naming or classifying all things animal, vegetable, or mineral.
While I find myself in the odd position of being the token Defender of Religion on ScienceBlogs, or at least the local Tolerator of Religious Language in Public Statements, let me just note that I’m sort of uncomfortable with this phrasing as the opening of a science story. I realize that it’s more of a literary allusion than a religious statement, but the book of Genesis is so politically charged these days that it feels inappropriate.
Which is pretty sad, actually– not only have fundamentalist loonies given religion a bad name, they’ve also ruined one of the great wellsprings of Western literary culture.
Which is pretty sad, actually– not only have fundamentalist loonies given religion a bad name, they’ve also ruined one of the great wellsprings of Western literary culture.
This is an important point, actually. Everybody who is “fully educated” in western civilizaiton should have at least passing familiarity with the Bible, for the same reason they should have passing familiarity with Shakespeare and the various Greek and Norse myths and all kinds of other things that I probalby don’t know as well as I should. They are all things to which an awful lot of other culture makes constant references, and without the context of which that culture doesn’t make sense.
You don’t have to believe anything in the Bible for it to be a valuable work of literature and part of the creative history of the human race.
It’s very, very irritating that the Fundamentalist Loonies insist that the Bible is to be read literally. Indeed, I find it irritating that it is considered to be the revealed “Word of God” in the sense that God “wrote it”, somehow, channeling through the authors. Not only is that bad religion (the same people tend to think that God is something beyond human ken, so why the Word of God can be expressed fully and accurately in human language betas me), but it cheapens it as human literature… and, of course, drives rational people nuts.
-Rob
It could have been worse. It could have started out by saying, “Just as Adam achieved dominion . . .”. At least they qualified it as an allusion from the Bible. I have seen many, many news stories that take a bible story as a given, as if it actually happened. Keep an eye out and you will see them too.
What this episode does is show the importance of semantics and the way that semantical concerns are simultaneously a matter of fact in the world and freely chosen convention. The word “semantics” is sadly often used as a pejorative term denoting meaningless nitpicking, but in fact relates to the way we carve nature at the joints. We decide on the definitions of our terms, and often do it by concensus in groups that are designated as experts (Hillary Putnam pointed this out decades ago) and the meanings of our terms do matter as we are seeing.
The ancient Hebrews notion of nominalism, that a thing is its name or that knowing or saying a name gives you control over the object, has deep problems, of course, (this is why Jews can’t even call God by name, although writing it doesn’t seem to have the same effect — so much for that pen being mightier than the sword) but the idea that there is power in naming is absolutely right because it names do more than point, they provide structure for understanding (this, of course, is exactly what George Lakoff argues in explaining what he means by “framing”)
Of course, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the original quote does have something meaningful about it.
We do obtain at least the feeling of control over things by naming and classifying them. And, yes, we can gain some insight and understanding about things by classifying them. If we start out not knowing much, trying to look for patterns and classifying them is often a good way to start.
And, if you view the Bible reference as a literary reference, it doesn’t have to set off the “religious attack on science” alarm bells. Yes, it should set off those bells at least a bit, since the cultural context of right now has those bells very sensitive. However, the quote might have also worked as:
Just as in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Earthea”, people can gain power over others and over nature by knowing their true names, so scientists partly establish human dominion over the cosmos by naming or classifying all things animal, vegetable, or mineral.
Of course, Wizard of Earthsea and sequels are not as well-known works of literature as the Bible…. And, there’s no cultural war going on right now to establish the Earthsea books as Literal Truth That Should Be Taught To Kids In Science Classes.
-Rob
1. Even I, as a rather intransigent atheist rather enjoyed that Biblical reference…it made the story more memorable than your run of the mill Physics today / focus blurb.
2. It made making a provocative point I hadn’t seen before in the too-dreary punditry on this Pluto issue.
3. Somehow I don’t think your average Physics World subscriber is really going to interpret the story as providing support for Biblical literalism or creationism.
4. Since when did making references to any work become verboten simply because not all people share all its assumptions?
Just a minor point, Jews aren’t allowed to write the name of G-d either. In the hebrew, the lord’s name in abbreviated as yod yod and is then pronounced “adonai” which means “lord”. It’s gotten so far that in hebrew school we were taught that you can’t even write out the word “god”, hence hyphen, a habit I still haven’t managed to break.
I think the idea behind that one, however, is that writing is impermanent, and can be destroyed. The name of G-d shouldn’t be destructable…
I find that statement absurd but not because it mentions the Bible. When our alien overlords arrive, we will achieve dominion over them by giving them a name minutes before our destruction.
Actually I think the original point about human dominion is the most interesting of anything here. The last time I watched Jeopardy, one of the right “questions” was, “What is the superior vena cava?” which made me think of how the superior vena cava has no idea we’ve named it that, that it’s related to the inferior vena cava, that it empties into the right atrium or how we will soon know details of all the genes required to make a superior vena cava wind up as the same structure in all humans or other species that have one.
Then there are things in physics that we separate into individuals until we see a pattern that lets us see them as parts of a unified whole, yet reality never changed.
People do give words a reality they don’t deserve, or the Bible wouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s fundamentalist loonies who did that, but human nature, both the nature of those who embrace some words too words and the nature of those who reject those words too much, while embracing other words. They are only words. Reality remains the same apart from our cultural evolution regarding how we see reality.
Ah yes, and while they are only words, substituting “words” for “much” as I just did really screws up an idea. Why can’t there be telepathy? I’d believe in our dominion if we could have that. Or am I supposed to believe the opposite? Then can I get telepathy? Whatever God says, I’ll do it. And to think that makes people uncomfortable.
David, funny enough, that is perilously close to the “ontological argument” for the existence of god (or g-d or gawd if you prefer) – Google St Anselm for a laugh at some of the most arse-frontwards thinking you’re ever likely to see!