Annual Convocation: 2008
Charles Van Doren, Litchfield County, Connecticut
The Monster, the Chimera, and the Butterfly
I have been asked to say a few words about science, the enormous institution that looms over everything that is done at any college or university. We are a college, so we too must look up with wonder and dismay at the great arch that sometimes seems to define but also, perhaps, to inhibit our efforts to understand the world.
The great arch of science is not only overwhelming, it is also voracious. It crowds hungrily in amongst us, establishing what it calls a science of almost every art we practice, laying down rules and procedures artists think they don’t need, and establishing criteria of success or failure artists frequently don’t want to accept. To escape, artists dig deeper and range wider than they have ever had to do. Sometimes this leads to wondrous achievements; too often it produces meaningless exercises done merely for the sake of doing something scientifically correct.
The word “science” has a Latin root, of course, but the Latin scientia does not adequately translate either of two Greek words for knowledge, namely, episteme, knowledge about how to do things, and sofia, wisdom concerning why (or why not) to do them. The confusion between how to knowledge and wisdom, why knowledge, has persisted for twenty centuries, and it confuses our thinking about what we call science today.
One result of this is a deep and abiding conflict between two quasi-mythical creatures I have chosen to call the Monster and the Chimera. I have a few things to say about them.
Science without the humanities is a monster. The humanities without science is a chimera.
I don’t mean that scientists are monsters because they have little or no experience or education in those fields that are ordinarily referred to as humanistic: poetry, of course, and fiction and drama; philosophy, ethics, and history; perhaps psychology and sociology; also perhaps political theory (not political science), and of course education (if it is a genuine field of study and not mere empiricism). Scientists who know little or nothing of those matters can be and often are very good men and women, more ethical, in fact, than your average poets, who are often unpleasant people. But there are things that they simply don’t know, or know very little.
Take as an example the human heart. It is an organ, like the heart of a dog or rabbit or horse, and surgeons can cut open a man or woman’s chest, manipulate the exposed organ and disconnect and then reconnect the tubes that carry blood to and from the organ, sew the incision up again (or turn that task over to an assistant), and walk out the door without having said a word to the patient and with no knowledge whatever of his or her mental anguish – their fears, their hopes, their nightmares. In fact, it is often remarked that the less a surgeon knows about his patient – his victim? – the better for both him and them. The heart is a pump, and it is better for a surgeon to think about it as nothing but that.
This may be true and it may not be. The heart is not only an organ, it is also a metaphor. As a metaphor it stands for some of the deepest feelings human beings can experience. Men and women of any age, at least from puberty to senility, can fall in love and be in love and fall out of love without any physical manifestations whatsoever. A broken heart cannot be repaired by any surgeon, who is naturally uninterested in metaphors and may not even know the meaning of the word.
Is there in fact a cure for a broken heart? Maybe yes, maybe no. But whatever is the case, it is not a physical breakage that can simply be put back together and sewn up. And it can be as painful as a heart attack. For people who suffer a broken heart there is probably more value in reading poems or studying the history of famous (or infamous) lovers. Love is not love, Shakespeare said, that alters when it alteration finds, and whether or not this is a wise saying for those who love – in fact it may seem to pose obstacles to a successful love affair – it is nevertheless something always to keep in mind. If I love you and you change, what must I do to overcome my anguish if that is what I feel? What obligation has my love created in me to care for you if the change is for the worse? Is the obligation, if there is one, stronger even than my obligation to care for you if you suffer heart disease?
Speaking of metaphors, I want to mention a few in order to emphasize their power. Many metaphors are conveyed to us in words. Consider a little poem by Thomas Carew. Carew was a Cavalier poet of the 17th Century who wrote many poems, most of them raunchy semi-pornographic ditties much admired by school boys of an earlier day. But one of them, titled simply “Song” and dedicated to an unknown woman, is justly famous. There are four stanzas, each one incorporating a powerful metaphor. Here is the first stanza:
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
There is a good deal of “science” in these four short lines – science in the sense of 17th century philosophy. But the conceit, as we call this kind of metaphor, reaches far beyond philosophy in the ordinary sense. This lovely woman, the poet says, contains within herself not just the image of the beautiful flower but also its deepest essence. Where? In its “orient deep,” a metaphorical place that no science can ever reach. I suggest that you try to remember this quatrain for the rest of your lives, as befits any important metaphorical truth.
Andrew Marvell was another 17th century poet, several levels above his contemporary Carew. He lived at a time of revolution when it wasn’t easy or safe to write and publish anything about politics. Marvell was a brave man, and he wrote a so-called “Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell’s Return out of Ireland.” He could have merely composed a paean of praise for the triumphant Irish campaign of Oliver Cromwell, the victor in the recently concluded civil war that had ended with the execution of King Charles. But Marvell had more to say than that. He, like many Englishmen, was deeply moved by the death of the first English king ever to be publicly executed, and he described it in unforgettable lines. The poem is written in the so-called ballad meter, which has two longer rhyming lines followed by two shorter rhyming ones in each stanza. The poet describes the trap Cromwell had set for the king,
Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope
That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrooke’s narrow case:
That thence the royal actor born
The tragic scaffold might adorn:
While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene:
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try;
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right,
But bowed his comely head,
Down, as upon a bed.
Here, in these few lines, several powerful metaphors are imbedded. The most powerful, of course, is the metaphor of the scaffold as a stage set on which the king, the royal actor, plays the leading part in this tragedy. The armed bands – the audience – claps its bloody hands, but of course only metaphorically – their hands are not actually bloody, although the audience condones this bloody deed. The royal actor plays his part well, which includes his trying, with his keener eye, the axe’s edge. Ordinarily, of course, one “tries” the edge of a blade with one’s finger; but the king’s arms are bound and he can only try the edge of the axe with his eye, which, because he is the king, is keener than that of an ordinary man. Finally, the king bows “his comely head, Down, as upon a bed.” Thus does the royal actor bow to the audience at the end of the play.
Note that in the last stanza I quoted, the statement that the king does not call “the gods with vulgar spite / To vindicate his helpless right” is not a metaphor. It is a statement of fact with far-reaching consequences for the history of England. One consequence was that Marvell himself survived the reversal of the revolution, when Cromwell, now dead, was succeeded by the son of Charles I; and survived not only himself but also helped his mentor to survive, John Milton, a much more dangerous man than Marvell ever was as well as an even greater poet.
Metaphors do not need words to evoke images in the mind. Lady Jane Grey was born in October 1537. She was beautiful and intelligent; she was also very well educated and could read both Latin and Greek at the age of 12. Unfortunately, she was a pawn in the hands of unscrupulous politicians who first arranged for her marriage to the dying Edward VI and then to the son of the duke of Northumberland. When she was still only 16 and after the death by tuberculosis of Edward she was declared queen of England by her father-in-law, thereby passing over Mary and Elizabeth, the two legitimate daughters of Henry VIII. When she heard the news she fainted. She “reigned” for only nine days, after which Mary, the favorite of the populace, was place on the throne in her stead.
Lady Jane was imprisoned and all might have gone well enough if her father-in-law had not again intervened. He was overthrown and she and her husband, his young son, were beheaded on February 12, 1554. She was still only sixteen years old. Her death was followed by almost universal mourning throughout England. I remember the date – February 12 – because it is my birthday, as well as Abraham Lincoln’s and Charles Darwin’s.
Many paintings and sketches of her execution have been made, but the best-known of them was painted by Paul Delaroche in 1832. The painting is in the National Gallery, in London. It is one of a half dozen pictures that are most “popular,” that is, admired by the populous but not necessarily by the critics. These few pictures are segregated in a special room at the entrance to the museum, a room that the cognoscenti pass by with their noses in the air. But if they do so they are missing something – well, not great, but at least wonderful.
The painting is titled “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey.” Lady Jane is blindfolded and is depicted stumbling forward and extending one of her hands toward a block of wood in front of her; she reaches for it, her fingers spread. A priest is holding her partly upright, almost tenderly half embracing her, but she is obviously very weak. In the left background her lady in waiting raises her hands in prayer, an agonized look on her face. In the right foreground the executioner, half in shadow, is standing, leaning on the axe with its great curved blade.
I first saw the painting more than fifty years ago, and I have seen it several times since – in fact, every time I visit London. But only recently did the great metaphor strike me. I was standing in front of the painting; a couple stood close by. Suddenly the woman said, “Look at her hair!” “What about her hair?” her companion said. “Her hair – it’s tied up, drawn up leaving her neck bare!” Her companion was silent for a moment. “Her beautiful neck,” he finally said. I could see tears running down his cheeks.
Her lovely young neck, with her hair tied up leaving it bare for the axe to do its terrible work… I too started to cry, and tears are in my eyes as I describe the scene today. The bare neck of the beautiful young girl is one of the most powerful metaphors I have ever seen, and not a word is said.
I don’t want you to think my imagination is always bloody. I will give you one more metaphor to dwell on. It is in a poem by Emily Dickinson. Stay with me: it’s only four lines long.
Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn,
Indicative that suns go down,
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.
The metaphor here comes in the third line, when the grass is said to be “startled.” But grass cannot be startled; it is alive, of course, but not conscious. It has no feelings, like ours. But for Emily grass did have feelings, as did every living thing as well as the world itself. That is a great conceit, or idea, and this little poem is one of the loveliest I know. I will return to this in a moment.
If scientists are not monsters, then what does it mean to say science itself is? It is monstrous in its hideous carelessness. Like a great beast yearning to be born, it slouches down the years, spitting out human desires and dreams as it marches onward. Heedless of need, wanton and cruel, its ambition seeks ever new openings for its desire to exploit the tender weakness of nature, vast but limited, leaving devastation in its wake.
Why then do I say that the humanities are a chimera, which in fact is another kind of monster, apparently gentler but really not so? There are two reasons. The first is sentimental, the error of believing that feeling is all. If feeling were all, the race would long since have become extinct, because feeling is helpless before nature, whether external or merely human. We must possess the armor science provides to protect us from ourselves. Emily Dickinson’s poem is sentimental.
The second reason is the error of believing that beauty is important in the arrangement of the universe.
Here is another metaphor, even more dangerous than the other. The obviously limited character of nature is an illusion. The Earth, our Earth, our crowded, lovely little home, is a speck in our galaxy to say nothing of the great circling spheres of other universes, separated by vastness beyond imagining. Is the World beautiful, taken all in all? Is any God capable of making it stand and obey? Does any great Mind care even to try?
Do we need to think about these things? Can we avoid doing so? I don’t believe so. We will always fail to understand almost everything. But science and the humanities together, in league, hand in hand, can help us understand something. Is that important? If not, what is?
Together we have a chance, albeit slender, to endure. Divided, we will certainly fail.
I wrote the foregoing – more than once, in fact – several weeks ago. I intended to read it this morning.
But last night I had an extraordinary dream. I dreamed that I had asked my daughter to read the speech and that she was critical of it and suggested that I make some changes. In fact she typed out these changes on two sheets of paper – and I was able, in the dream, to read her text. I have never had that kind of dream before.
I have now forgotten most of her text, but I do remember the gist of it. I am younger than you, she wrote, and I have a daughter myself who is even younger than you. Lily is six years old. Think of what I will need when I am as old as you are, she wrote, and especially what Lily will need, seventy years from now.
It is all very well to talk of metaphors and blame scientists for not understanding them, she wrote. Seventy years from now Lily will need a world to live in that has been shaped and protected by scientists, not poets. Scientists will warn her of the approach of any dangerous object in the sky, and try to protect her if it hits the Earth. Scientists, not poets, will endeavor to identify new sources of disease and create drugs and procedures to overcome them if possible. Scientists not poets will attempt to find new sources of food as well as trying to develop ways to control the ever growing population of the Earth, as well as to protect, if at all possible, the few remaining wild animals that live on it with her. Lily will have long since learned that utility, not beauty, is the measure of good things and bad. She will hope that governments are elected that will courageously endeavor to make a better world for her than the one into which she was born. Most important of all, she will pray, as do I and you, too, that the terrible scourge of war will be averted and controlled. None of these things requires metaphors, good ones or bad.
All of these sentences I dreamed, the text almost exactly as I have written it here.
But now I wonder if she – that is, my dreaming self – was correct. Of course there is truth of a kind in those statements. But will scientists really make a world in which it will be possible, if not easy, to be happy?
I know the danger of trying to control science, trying to shape and direct its onward rushing search for its kind of truth. Will there not be another danger, greater than any other? The danger of thinking we know what is really good for us, and requiring others to accept our views. Will Lily cry out against the scientifically perfected world she lives in, as I cry out against my own?
I’m not going to try to answer these questions. They are for you to answer if you wish to, and if you don’t, others will answer them for you and in your name.
I’m only going to remind you of a koan of Lao-Tse, and see if it will give you any help in these troubled times. It is simplicity itself, as were all of his sayings.
“What the caterpillar thinks is the end of the world,
the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”
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University of Connecticut