The Firmament of Time is another book by Loren Eiseley [review of The Star Thrower] that is worth reading again for anyone interested in ideas, science, the humanities and, well, life itself! Eiseley is a special writer who was/is able to bring together in a cohesive whole ideas from the sciences and emotions and feelings from the humanities. It consists of six lectures he delivered when he was a Visiting Professor of Science at the University of Cincinnati way back in 1959. In a foreword he tells readers that the “purpose of the lectures was to promote among both students and the general public a better understanding of the role of science” as it evolves in time. Of course, since then science and especially technology has continued its rapid growth and influence on us in the 21^st century.

I am giving my grandchildren this book for Christmas in the hope that they too will read and re-read it and learn from Eiseley. My hope is that the next time we go out in the woods together we can all put our cell phones down and look at the marvels of nature directly.

At about the same time that Eiseley was lecturing, C. P. Snow was talking and writing about what he famously called “the two cultures”.

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.” — C. P. Snow 1959 [available here]

It is almost fifty years since Snow’s warning about two cultures. The term two cultures has entered the general lexicon as shorthand for differences between two attitudes. These are:

1.    the increasingly constructivist world view from the humanities, in which the scientific method is seen as embedded within language and culture; and hence relativistic.

2.    the scientific viewpoint, in which the observer can still claim to objectively make unbiased and non-culturally embedded observations about nature.

And it is almost thirty five years [1979] since The Glyph published an exchange between John Searle and Jacques Derrida that called for people to pay attention to postmodernist theories of language and reality. I remember reading the exchange at the time and in the interest of objectivity I admit that I thought then and think now that Searle was the winner. I also should admit that I had no idea what Derrida was up to most of the time.

Searle speaking about Derrida in an interview here says:

Searle: With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, “He says so and so,” he always says, “You misunderstood me.” But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.

Eiseley in these pages is interested in connecting us with nature through science, but with a sense of the wonder and awe that nature provides for us in her and our evolutionary journey through time. Eiseley is a great story teller. Here he is at his best:

There is a story about one of our great atomic physicists – a story for whose authenticity I cannot vouch, and therefore I will not mention his name. . . .

This man, one of the chief architects of the atomic bomb, was out wandering in the wooes one day with a friend when he came upon a small tortoise. Overcome with pleasurable excitement, he took up the tortoise and started home, thinking to surprise his children with it. After a few steps he paused and surveyed the tortoise doubtfully.

“What’s the matter?” asked his friend.

Without responding, the great scientist slowly retraced his steps as precisely as possible, and gently set the turtle down upon the exact spot from which he had taken him up.

Then he turned solemnly to his friend. “It just struck me,” he said, “that perhaps, for one man, I have tampered enough with the universe.” He turned and left the turtle to wander on its way.

In the introduction by Gary Holthaus he points out “We have to find someplace to put the best of ourselves. We may try many things: we paint, write poetry or songs, build houses, or try farming — all various efforts at locating our best. Loren Eiseley put the best of himself into wonder and writing.”

He did indeed and that is what makes his books so rich.

 

© 2014 Bob Lane

 

Bob Lane is an Honorary Research Associate in Philosophy and Literature at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia.