Science.
Politics. Art.
Galileo scientifically
figured out that the earth is not the center of the universe. He got really
excited! This was great new information! But the Catholic Church, the de facto government,
not only failed to celebrate this scientific revelation, but all the church panjandrums
forgot revelations completely and instead got real pouty that some mere
scientist would refute the word of God and say the earth is not the center of
the universe. Oy, the heresy! So they arrested one of the greatest scientists
of the century, and threw him in the slammer.
Wouldn’t it
be funny if a modern government got upset by some facts?
If Galileo
were here today, his heresy would be stating the obvious.
Galileo
would ask questions no one wants to ask too loudly . . .
“Modern
people have democracy. How long do modern people vote against their best
interests?”
“They
doubt science? Yet they love the military? Do they not know that the military
is built on science? That without scientific exploration, we would not have
self-navigating bombs? And radar? And radar-evading jets? And it’s not just the
military that science enables. Science enables the highways you all drive every
day, and pure science promulgated the prototype of the internet, on which you
all also drive every day. All because of science. And you disparage science?
For this larval level of stupidity I came back here? After being jailed by the
pope for doing science?”
“Frances
Bacon was knighted. He was knighted? For what does a scientist need a tin suit
and a sword? And for what I was I jailed?”
How does the
genius scientist convince small-minded power mongers to please just let me keep
on stretching the boundaries of human knowledge?
This doesn’t
exactly bring us to art, but one must wonder . . . if small minded power
brokers have so much trouble with the truths of science—which confers lavish
benefits of human life—how do they tolerate art? Because art is even weirder: while
it shares with science urges to stretch the boundaries of human experience, unlike
science art produces permanently useless objects whose only distinction from
the ordinary materials of which they are made is the way they look. And yet,
every society around the world values art. The forms vary widely. The apparent uselessness
binds.
Science. Politics.
Art. It’s like having three feet that you keep looking at. Twice. You want them
to dance . . .
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