Do we care what's true?
Does it matter?
… where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise
wrote the poet Thomas Gray.
But is it?
Edmund Way Teale in his 1950 book Circle of
the Seasons understood the dilemma better:
It is morally as bad not to care whether a
thing is true or not, so long as it makes
you feel good, as it is not to care how you
got your money as long as you have got it.
It's disheartening to discover government
corruption and incompetence, for example;
but is it better not to know about it?
Whose interest does ignorance serve?
If we humans bear, say, hereditary propensities
toward the hatred of strangers, isn't self-knowledge
the only antidote?
If we long to believe that the stars rise
and set for us, that we are the reason there
is a Universe, does science do us a disservice
in deflating our conceits?
In The Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche,
as so many before and after, decries the “unbroken
progress in the self-belittling of man”
brought about by the scientific revolution.
Nietzsche mourns the loss of “man's belief
in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplaceability
in the scheme of existence.”
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe
as it really is than to persist in delusion,
however satisfying and reassuring.
Which attitude is better geared for our long-term
survival?
Which gives us more leverage on our future?
And if our naive self-confidence is a little
undermined in the process, is that altogether
such a loss?
Is there not cause to welcome it as a maturing
and character-building experience?
To discover that the universe is some 8 to
15 billion and not 6 to 12 thousand years
old1 improves our appreciation of its sweep
and grandeur; to entertain the notion that
we are a particularly complex arrangement
of atoms, and not some breath of divinity,
at the very least enhances our respect for
atoms; to discover, as now seems probable,
that our planet is one of billions of other
worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy and that our
galaxy is one of billions more, majestically
expands the arena of what is possible; to
find that our ancestors were also the ancestors
of apes ties us to the rest of life and makes
possible important—if occasionally rueful—reflections
on human nature.
Plainly there is no way back.
Like it or not, we are stuck with science.
We had better make the best of it.
When we finally come to terms with it and
fully recognize its beauty and its power,
we will find, in spiritual as well as in practical
matters, that we have made a bargain strongly
in our favor.
But superstition and pseudoscience keep getting
in the way, distracting us, providing easy
answers, dodging skeptical scrutiny, casually
pressing our awe buttons and cheapening the
experience, making us routine and comfortable
practitioners as well as victims of credulity.
