Montpelier
There didn’t seem to be much excitement generated around here by the much-ballyhooed solar eclipse on Monday. That’s possibly because it was only partial — neither the dog nor I could tell that it was occurring — but the internet lit up with photos of folks here and there peering into cardboard boxes, through welder’s goggles, or in one case squinting upward without any eye protection from the Truman Balcony of the White House.
We heard, however, no suggestions that scientists, whose overwhelming consensus on the subject of climate change has by many been labeled a hoax, were perpetrating another. Folks spent millions to migrate into the path of totality, to the delight of some towns where the millions were spent. Households that hadn’t used their colanders in years, perhaps, dragged them out and with their iPhones photographed the patterns of little crescents cast by the round holes. Television stations broadcast the phenomenon as it occurred. Some of the commentary by kids with microphones seemed a little breathless to me, but I just put that down to my old age. In spite of the background drumbeat of ominous news from Washington, the country managed, for a few hours, to enjoy a low-key transcontinental garden party.
It was not always thus. In spite of the presence of the Flat Earth Society — “a place for free thinkers and the intellectual exchange of ideas” — most of us can see (and experience, if we travel far) that the Earth is a globe spinning in a nice discrete little solar system. Orbiting space stations broadcast videos of the moon’s shadow moving across the face of the surface below. And sure enough: Orbiting clocks do run differently from those fixed on Earth. To ask someone if he or she “believes” such information is the wrong question. Belief is for phenomena that can’t be proven empirically; scientific conclusions are for the data-driven.
Animals other than ourselves are, of course, aware of natural phenomena — earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods — and many can sense their approach well before we can in the absence of our technology. But even though they may avoid digging burrows in flood plains, it’s not likely they wonder why they occur. That’s the genius, and the curse, of our species.
It didn’t come to us all at once. We ascribe phenomena to what we know, and what we know has only fairly recently been developed, in the roughly 600 years since the end of the Dark Ages. Long before that, when the first humanoids experienced good or ill fortune, they began wondering why, and came up with what they knew. They could experience wind by blowing on their hands; so the great, devastating winds they experienced must have been made by a much larger, and very upset, version of themselves. They were subject to the same natural phenomena we are today, but had no sense of natural causes. They could have considered them random, but that’s not the way human beings are built. We want to know what — or who — is causing the disruption.
Those ancients may have been without the means to determine true causes, but just as we do today, they no doubt had members of their bands more than eager to explain them, and thus rise to prominence and leadership by virtue of their presumed connection to the mysterious. The land, sea and air became populated by spirits who could bless or curse; but universally, if you sought to please them, it was going to cost you something. Disputes over territory and resources soon became clashes of culture and religion.
Long centuries elapsed before observant geniuses like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton began to both challenge church doctrine and test their theories explaining natural phenomena. They were viewed askance, and in Galileo’s case even silenced. But they were on the right track, just like Darwin 300 years later. That his theories are still considered controversial or even heretical in our age of DNA evidence and precise fossil dating is absurd — but entirely human.
It’s fairly easy to see how far science has brought us in just one lifetime. I was impressed, some years ago, by a marker on a distinctive-looking lake in the Canadian Arctic. Bombers headed overseas during the Second World War passed directly over that waypoint and set their bearings for Europe. Imagine the uncertainty of navigating by only a compass, through the dark and wind, and predicting the time at which you could look down— assuming it was clear — and see Ireland.
On the other hand, I was intrigued this week to watch a film clip of the disgraced, but since rehabilitated evangelist Jim Bakker, who ascribed the “darkness over the land” to the election of Barack Obama as president. Surely, I thought, nobody in his right mind would believe such arrant tripe. Well, I was wrong. The faithful apparently flock by the hundreds to his new development, where they are treated to predictions of the end times, whose imminence is advanced by the “signs in the skies.” Bakker’s guests corroborate his claims by citing not Bill McKibben, but the writers of the Old Testament. It’s coming, and soon.
Meantime, Bakker is hawking rations to tide us over during the evil days: dried food with a shelf life of 30 years. It’ll sustain a family for at least a year for a couple of hundred bucks. I don’t know how well they’re selling, but nobody seems to be pointing out that the faithful, according to my reading, won’t be needing any rations after the Apocalypse; they’ll be in another state of being. Still, it’s probably irrational of me to hope for a more nearly rational world.
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
