This is a discussion from National Public Radio involving legendary film-director Werner Herzog, renowned novelist Cormac McCarthy and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss on the intersection of art and science, the origins of civilisation and the end of the human race.
Krauss begins the discussion by echoing Professor Richard Feynman – on whom Krauss has written a major biography Quantum Man – that ‘science takes a lot of imagination’. Its origins is the desire to know how things work. This is the breakthrough in human civilisation that returns us to the pre-Socratic philosophers, who were the first to abandon magical or supernatural explanations for natural phenomenon and sought instead rational – or scientific – causes. Their determination to sideline the role of the gods had the profoundest consequences, not only in attempts to explain natural phenomenon but also how men and women organised their societies, i.e. in the realm of politics, ethics, history and so on.
Imagination, of course, is also what we associate with art. Art starts with a tabula rasa, a blank canvas or a blank piece of paper on which the artist, using their imagination, then turns into a cultural artefact.
Thus, for Krauss art and science ask the same questions. What is our place in the cosmos? Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? If science is interested in the mystery of nature, then art, literature and music (at its best) is interested in the mystery of the human experience and the human soul. If, according to Feynman, the theoretical physicist, ‘the world is a mess of jiggling things’, then for the great artist, ‘being is chaos’ and it is on this unstable, unpredictable ground that human endeavour and human thinking takes place.
Krauss, Herzog and McCarthy all agree, therefore, that when we accept that the universe is an unfriendly and hostile place we are forced to confront our own insignificance. For Krauss, the scientist, following on from Richard Dawkins-inspired Atheist Bus Campaign, in which the message ‘There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy life’, was plastered on the side of London buses and driven around the capital, the realisation of our own insignificance should be a source of liberation, enabling us to appreciate the universe and imagine it not just as it is but as it might be for the betterment of humanity.
However, the artist McCarthy isn’t so keen on these optimistic views. By all means, take god out of natural and human affairs, but what remains won’t be enlightenment and happiness but tragedy. Indeed, is this not what we were taught 2500 years ago?
As McCarthy says: ‘If you look at classical literature, the core of literature is the idea of tragedy. You don’t really learn much from the good things that happen to you. Tragedy is at the core of human experience. It’s what we have to deal with. That’s what makes life difficult and that’s what we want to know about, what we want to know how to deal with. It’s unavoidable. There’s nothing you can do to forestall it; so how do you deal with it? All classical literature has to do with things that happen to people they really rather hadn’t.’
Herzog, the student of Greek civilisation, agrees with McCarthy that happiness won’t be the result of more rational explanations of the universe and human nature. Indeed, if science and art tells us anything about the long-term prospects of humanity, it isn’t that human beings will become increasingly perfect but that they will be wiped out. It might take 2000 years or 200,000 years, it might be the result of self-destruction or evolution, but soon there will be a planet with no human beings.
Not quite ready to give up his optimistic scientist’s outlook, Krauss, while accepting McCarthy’s and Herzog’s assertion that the human species is, one way or another, destined for extinction, and agreeing that our demise might not be such a bad thing and that we shouldn’t be depressed if we disappear, still wants to accentuate the positive. Thus, Krauss says, doomed as the human species is, ‘we should be thrilled that we're here right now and make the most of our brief moment in the sun.’
