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The Bible is the most-read book that has ever existed, and there are uncounted millions of people in the world who, even today, take it for granted that it is the inspired word of God; that it is literally true at every point; that there are no mistakes or contradictions except where these can be traced to errors in copying or in translation.
There are undoubtedly many who do not realize that the Authorized Version (the "King James Bible"), the one with which English-speaking protestants are most familiar, is, in fact, a translation, and who therefore believe that every one of its words is inspired and infallible.
Against these strong, unwavering, and undeviating beliefs, the slowly developing views of scientist have always had to fight.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 1
Biological evolution, for instance, is considered a fact of nature by almost all biologists. There may be and, indeed, are many arguments over the details of the mechanics of evolution, but none over the fact -- just as we may not completely understand the working of an automobile engine and yet be certain that a car in good working order will move if we turn the key and step on the gas.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 1
The Bible, as a whole, deals with the legendary Abram (called Abraham later in life) and his descendants, but in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, there is a quick overview of earlier events from the creation of the Universe to the birth of Abram about 2000 B.C.
This period of primeval history is based on two documents, according to those who have most carefully studied the bible: the J-document and the P-document.
The J-document, which is the older, contains dramatic early legends that were current among the people of Israel and Judah. The tales of the J-document may have been written down and reached their present form some time before 700 B.C., [...].
The P-document is later and was gathered and put together during the time when the people of Judah (the Jews) were in captivity in the Tigris Euphrates regions in the sixth century B.C. At that time, the dominant tribe of the region was the Chaldeans, and their capital was in Babylon, so that the P-document picked up what we might call Chaldean or Babylonian views of cosmic history -- which in turn were based on nearly three thousand years of thought dating back to the Sumerians.
The two documents were combined by reverent editors, concerned to do as little damage to either as possible. The first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis reached the present shape by the time the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile -- say 500 B.C.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 2-3
All through the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis, there is a strong tinge of the Tigris-Euphrates; a Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian thread that is unmistakable.
This is not necessarily bad. The people of the Tigris-Euphrates region were the most sophisticated people in the world at the time and had elaborated the closest approach to what we might call science. They were ahead of other civilization in this respect -- the Egyptian, the Indian, the Chinese, the Cretan -- from the time when writing was invented to the time when the Bible took on its present shape, a period of three thousand years.
What's more, the Biblical writers and editors were thoughtful men who borrowed selectively, choosing what they considered good and rejecting what seemed nonsensical or unedifying. They labored to produce something that was as reasonable and as useful as possible.
In doing so, they succeeded wonderfully. There is no version of primeval history, preceding the discoveries of modern science, that is as rational and as inspiring as that of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis.
Nevertheless, humanity does progress.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 3
Early manuscripts of the Bible did not divide the various books into chapters and verses. It was only little by little that such divisions appeared. The present system of chapters and verse first appeared in an English Bible in 1560.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 6
Since the Bible and science both state that heaven and earth had a beginning, does this represent a point of agreement between them?
Yes, of course -- but it is a trivial agreement. There is an enormous difference between the Biblical statement of beginning and the scientific statement of beginning, . . .
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 7
Acceptable evidence is that which can be observed and measured in such a way that subjective opinion is minimized.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 7
Whatever the authority of the Bible, there has never been a time in history when more than a minority of the human species has accepted that authority. And even among those who accepted the authority, difference in interpretation have been many and violent, and on every possible point, no one interpretation has ever won out over all others.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 8
Science, too, has seen its share of arguments, disputes, and polemics; scientists are human, and scientific ideals (like all other ideals) are rarely approached in practice. An extraordinary number of such arguments, disputes, and polemics have been settled on one side or the other, and the general scientific opinion had then swung to that side because of compelling evidence.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 8
It is not reasonable to demand proof of a negative and to accept the positive in the absence of such a proof. After all, if science has not succeeded in proving that God does not exist, neither has it succeeded in proving the Zeus does not exist, or Marduck, or Thoth, or any of the myriads of gods postulated by all sorts of myth-makers. If the failure of proof of nonexistence is taken as proof of existence, then we must conclude that all exist.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg
12
The notion of an eternal Universe introduces a great many difficulties, some of them apparently (at least in the present state of our scientific knowledge) insuperable, but scientists are not disturbed by difficulties -- those make up the game. If all the difficulties were gone and all the questions answered, the game of science would be over. (Scientists suspect that will never happen.)
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 12
There, then is perhaps the most fundamental disagreement between the Bible and science. The Bible describes a Universe created by God, maintained by him, and intimately and constantly directed by him, while science describes a Universe in which it is not necessary to postulate the existence of God at all.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 13
This is not to say, by the way, that scientists are all atheists or that any of them must be atheists of necessity. There are many scientists who are as firmly religious as a non-scientist. Nevertheless, such scientists, if they are competent professionals, must operate on two levels. Whatever their faith in God in ordinary life, they must leave God out of account while engaged in their scientific observations. They can never explain a particular puzzling phenomenon by claiming it to be the
result of God's suspension of natural law.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 13
The first act of God recorded in the Bible is that of the creation of the Universe. But since God is eternal, there must have been an infinitely long period of time before he set our Universe into motion. What was he doing during the infinitely long period of time?
When St. Augustine was asked that question, he is supposed to have roared, "Creating Hell for those who ask questions like that!"
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 13
The first syllable of the word "firmament" is "firm," and that gives an accurate idea of what the writer of the P-document had in mind. The firmament is the semi-spherical arc of the sky (it looks flattened on top and rather semi-ellipsoidal, but that is an optical illusion, and it was considered a hard and firm covering the flat earth. It was considered very much like the lid of a pot and assumed to be much the same material as an ordinary lid would be.
The word "firmament" (Latin firmamentum) is a translation of the Greek Steoroma, which means "a hard object" and which is, in turn, a translation of the Hebrew rakia, meaning a thin metal plate.
From the scientific view, however, there is no firmament; no sky to be viewed as a material dome. What seems to be such to our eyes is merely space stretching out indefinitely.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 33
["P-document" is a designation for some later Biblical manuscripts that were written by the priest-class. The designation Asimov used for the other, earlier, class of documents was "J-document".]
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
The emphasis here of herb yielding seed and fruit tree yielding fruit "after his kind" seems to mean that the apple tree, for instance, will produce more apple trees and nothing else; that carrots will produce more carrots and nothing else; and so on.
This is one of the verse that seem to indicate that life was divided into separate species at the very start and that there is no way in which one species can turn into another.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 39-40
What is a blessing under one condition, however, may not be a blessing under others. After a dry spell, there can be no blessing like a steady, soaking rain. But when the rivers are flooding, a day of steady, soaking rain is not a blessing but a curse.
In the same way, it has been frequently found among animals that overmultiplication during brief periods of unusually favorable conditions can lead to an overconsumption of food, which will in turn lead, when conditions become less favorable, to famine, to disease, and to a plunge in numbers well below the level that had been supported before the brief period of unusually favorable conditions. This is an example of the command "Be fruitful and multiply" turning into a curse.
--Isaac
Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 54
The word "man" is a translation of the Hebrew word adam. The word adam is not really a proper name, though it came to be used as one.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 60
Physiologically, the human being resembles other mammals just as much as other mammals resemble each other, and our species clearly belongs to the order of primates. Furthermore, the resemblances between the human being, on the one hand, and the chimpanzee, on the other, are so detailed, right down to the minutest point of physiology and biochemistry, that the real puzzle is that the small difference that do exist are sufficient to produce three different species.
The course of evolution, insofar as it explains the formulation of all the species of life, also explains the formulation of Homo Sapiens. There are no added features to the evolutionary account, not one, that must be added to account for the human being.
The only difference between ourselves and the other animals worth mentioning is that we have an extraordinarily large brain for our size. and an extraordinary supple pair of hands. The amount by which we exceed the chimpanzee and gorilla in this respect is sufficient to account for our science, art, philosophy, and philanthropy -- to say nothing of our crimes and follies.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 62
In fact, it is essential that animals be eaten if the components of their tissues are to be "recycled" and brought back into the general pool of material on which all living things depend for growth and multiplication. If animals were not eaten, all of potential life substances would be eventually tied up in the form of dead animals.
Of course, in default of all else, such dead animals decay, but by decay we merely mean that they are eaten by microorganisms of which the Biblical writers were unaware. In short, a pure vegetarian diet for all animals is simply impossible.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 66
To the Babylonians, it seemed to make astrological sense to suppose that each planet was in charge of a particular day (since each planet was in turn the province of a particular god). An eighth day in a week would be a day without a planet-god in charge, and this was unthinkable. The seven-day week it was, therefore, and one day in the week was given over to a religious celebration, and work was suspended either to allow time for the celebration or because the day was considered unlucky.
The Jews in Babylonian exile naturally observed the weekly day of rest, but could not accept the polytheistic justification and had to evolve one of their own.
The writers of the P-document therefore grounded it in the week of creation -- six days of divine labor and one day of divine rest. It was a case of the labors of God himself being made to fit the Babylonian week. That is why Creation took six days rather than any other number of days, and it is an explanation that does not involve the Greek concept of perfect numbers.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 74-75
From the scientific standpoint, the week is a purely artificial division that unnecessarily complicates the calendar. There are fifty-two weeks and on day in ordinary years and fifty-two weeks and two days in leap years. These additional days mean that every year starts on a different day of the week from the year before in a complex twenty-eight year cycle.
If those extra days were celebrated as additional days of rest without any weekday assigned to them, the calendar could be amde to repeat itself exactly, year after year. Indeed, it could easily be arranged to have every three-month interval repeat itself exactly over and over.
To set up so convenient and sensible a calendar sees, however, to be completely impossible because of the unwillingness of most people -- Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike -- to allow any modification whatever in the concept of the week.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 75-76
As the Jews' concept of God grew ever more exalted and abstract, they did not wish to profane the holy name by even pronouncing it, so the custom grew of substituting a title for the name. Whenever YHVH appeared in the biblical text or in a liturgy, the Jews would say Adonai (meaning "the Lord" instead. Therefore YHVH Elohim became Adonai Elohim, which is translated "the Lord God".
The Hebrew language in its written form consists of consonant only. The vowels are not included, but to people who know the language, that does not matter.
As Hebrew became less familiar to the Jews, however, and as the common language of every day use became Aramaic in Persian times, it became customary to make the vowel sounds in Hebrew by diacritical marks under the letters so that those unfamiliar with Hebrew could say it correctly. For YHVH, however, the vowels indicated were those for Adonai, since that was all one was supposed to say.
Using those vowels, YHVH became "Yehovah" or (later, because of German influence) "Jehovah." Either way, that is not the name of God, because the vowels are wrong.
We cannot say for sure what the name is, for there is no record of the correct vowels in the cautious writings of the Jews. (Only the high priest was supposed to pronounce the actual name of God, and that only when he was alone in the Holy of Holies within the Temple and only at the time of Yom Kippur -- and there hasn't been a high priest or a Temple, in the biblical sense of the word, for 1,900 years.)
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 78-79
The Hebrew word ayd, of which "mist" is the translation given in the King James, is a rare word that occurs in only one other place in the bb (Job 36:27). The translation is not certain; it could be a "flow of water" or even a "flood."
It is very tempting to suppose that it refers to an uprising of water from primordial dry ground to form the oceans and other waters of the Earth. Thus, whereas the P-document forms the dry land by separating it from the primordial muddy ocean, the J-document forms the ocean by producing if from the primordial dry land.
Here again it is the J-document, the more primitive of the two, that is closer to the scientific view of the Earth's origins -- surprisingly close in this respect. As I explained earlier, the oceans and atmosphere are thought to have formed secondarily, as the solid material of the originally dry and airless Earth slowly evolved into its separate layers.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 80-81
From the modern scientific viewpoint, however, we know that the breath is as material as the rest of the body and will not suffice to represent the immaterial essence of either life or God. In fact, there is no material thing that is the essence of life, but rather the complexity of organization that brings into being. Life is a biochemical-biophysical process, rather than a thing.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 82-83
Human beings find it difficult to live with the fact of mortality. We are, as far as we know, the only living species that is aware of the inevitability of death; the inevitability not only of death in general, but of our own personal death.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 87
This setting up of a forbidden action is common in folklore and is an easy way of explaining the presence of evil. If people are reluctant to suppose that evil can be visited upon them by an all-powerful divine being who is viewed as ultimately good, one can suppose that evil is a punishment brought by human beings upon themselves as a consequence of their own thoughtless, foolish, sinful, or vicious actions.
The phrase "this is the one thing you mustn't do" in any legend or folktale is invariably followed by that being the one thing the person warned must and does do.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 94
The feeling is all too common that knowledge is dangerous; that people are innocent and virtuous when they are unsophisticated, but that gaining knowledge introduces and opportunities that lead to sin and to destruction. We all know about the innocent country lad as opposed to the evil city slicker.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 96-96
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof:
This verse had an interesting connection with the history of science. When anesthesia was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century, there were some who felt that its use to reduce pain was a blasphemous attempt to avoid one of the punishments visited upon human beings by God. This verse was cited by physicians as an instance where God himself had used anesthesia when it was appropriate.
This was not a completely convincing argument, for God's use of anesthesia took place before the man been disobedient; the punishment of pain and of other unpleasantnesses came afterwards. Still, the verse had its influence, and made it a little easier for anesthesia to be accepted.)
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 99-100
Physiologically, there are good reasons for arguing the female is the more important and the male a mere adjunct. Among human beings, females have forty-six functioning chromosomes in each cell; males have forty-five plus a stub (the Y-chromosome). The male in this sense might be regarded as an incomplete and imperfect female, and it may be for this reason that females can better survive stress and have a life-span some six or seven years longer than males.
--Isaac Asimov, In The
Beginning, pg 101
The word "woman," by the way, is not in itself a feminine form of "Man, but is a corruption of the compound word "wife-man."
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 102
It is very likely, after all, that a monogamous relationship has always been common among human beings, since there are roughly equal numbers of each sex born. Therefore, if it is common for many men to be polygamous, it must mean that many other men must go without wives altogether, or that many women must be polyandrous.
Yet, whether monogamy is "natural" may be questioned. Many primate species are polygamous, and even among human beings there have been many cultures throughout history in which those who were wealthy enough or powerful enough collected as many wives as they could afford or could hold on to. Even where monogamy is enjoined by custom and by law, it seems almost impossible to suppress adultery, promiscuity, and prostitution.
Despite all this, monogamy may be desirable, but that doesn't mean it is natural.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 102-103
Human beings are the only animals that deliberate cover their bodies with extraneous material for reasons associated with what we call "modesty." Other animals might cover themselves with mud in order to be cool or might make use of an unused shell for security, but as far as we know, only human beings are modest.
We can't be sure at what stage in th evolution of humanity the use of clothing developed. It seems to make sense to suppose that clothing was first worn to protect sensitive regions, such as the genitalia, from too rough a contact with the environment. (When human beings stood upright, the genital regions were even more exposed than they had been.)
Clothing may have become heavier and more enveloping when human beings migrated into cooler climates, where warmth was needed.
Clothes for the sake of modesty (or sometimes immodesty, as when articles of dress are used to accentuate the sexual regions) may have arisen as a by-product of these more utilitarian origins of the custom.
On the other hand, there are primitive cultures today in which nudity is not considered shameful, and even in some advanced ones such as the Japanese or in nudist camps and beaches.
It seems reasonable to suppose that early in the history of humanity, modesty had not been invented, . . .
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 103-104
Sagan cam into existence in Jewish thought as an eternal anti-God, striving constantly to undo the work of Creation and restore Chaos; eternal vigilance was required to prevent that. Te thought then arose that the serpent was really the embodiment of Satan, a though presented with unparalleled magnificence in Milton's "Paradise Lost."
There is, however, nothing in the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden to indicate that. The notion of Satan seems to have been entirely an afterthought.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 107
The domination of women by men is a historical fact in most cultures, helped along by the fact that men are, on the average, larger and stronger than women are, and the further fact that women are periodically hampered by menstruation, pregnancy, lactation, and the need to take care of the young. Male domination is here justified as a punishment for the woman having been the first to yield to temptation.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 114
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:[...]
This would seem to be the most primitive portion of the entire tale of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were, presumably, immortal before they ate the fruit of the tree, but they were no threat to God then, for they lacked wisdom. Even after they gained wisdom and became "as one of us," they were still no threat to God for they were now mortal.
If, however, having gained wisdom, they also ate of the fruit of the tree of life and regained their immortality, they would, perhaps, become a threat. Wisdom and immortality together would be too much, and we have an odd picture of a timorous God.
It might be argued that God was not afraid of even a wise and immortal human being but merely did not want Adam to become immoral and override God's edict of mortality for him. In that case, we have the equally odd picture of a God who can be overridden.
However interpreted, this part of th story must date back to an earlier time when gods were much more human and possessed human failings (like the gods in Homer's epics) and before the priestly writers of the Babylonian period had drawn the picture of a transcendent and omnipotent God.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 117-118
Where did Cain get his wife?
A common assumption is that Adam and Eve had daughters as well as sons but that daughters routinely went unmentioned in the Bible. In that case, Cain married his sister, a case of incest there was no way of avoiding. (After all, Adam married his own clone.)
Another possibility is the one mentioned in connection with Cain's fear of being killed as an outlaw -- that numerous pre-Adamites existed and that CAin married one of these.
It is most reasonable to suppose that the legends of Cain deal with a primordial already-populates world, and the legends were artificially connected to the Adam-and-Eve story, thus creating difficulties.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 129
Immediately after Cain is described as taking up a wondering life in accordance with the avenging word of God, he settles down to build a city. Apparently, we are back to Cain, the farmer, of the fist eight verses of the chapter [ch. three].
Farming communities inevitably built cities, since the farmers had to huddle together for protection. Unlike herdsmen, they could not move about; they could not drive their herds ahead of the and move away whenever conditions seemed to grow insecure. They were nailed to the spot by their farms and had to protect those farms.
To have Cain, the farmer, build a city, therefore, makes sense. Naturally, to build a city implies a population. Even a very small and very primitive city would have a couple of hundred people in it. Therefore, those who are puzzled by the identity of Cain's wife would do better to puzzle over the identity of the people who populated Cain's city.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 129-130
And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters.
If Adam sired children as often as we do and had eight hundred years to do it in, he could easily have fathered four hundreds sons and four hundred daughters. If each of these were equally long lived and equally prolific, then in a mere four generations, twenty-five billion people would have been born.
In actual fact, the population of the Earth in 3500 B.C. (roughly the time of the immediate generations after Adam, according to the traditional chronology was about ten million --
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 138
"Two of every sort" seemed no big deal to the Biblical writers, who probably identified not more than a few hundred different animals altogether. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, a close and intelligent observer, writing about 350 B.C., could list only about five hundred species of animals.
Yet, we now know that there are some fifteen thousand species of mammals alone. Naturally, only a fraction of these are to be found in Biblical lands, and if the flood were a local phenomenon of the Tigris-Euphrates region (as it undoubtedly was), those would be all that mattered.
God speaks of destroying all flesh, however, and in addition to the mammals there are fifteen thousand species of other land vertebrates and an enormous number of species of other land animals. There are at least a million species of insects with more being discovered every day. There are five hundred different species of fleas alone.
It would seem that if God's instruction are taken literally, the ark must have contained anywhere from two to four million animals, some four-fifths of them insects.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 157
There is an automatic, taken-for-granted male chauvinism in the Bible and, therefore, in the English language. The P-document refers, when it must, to "male and female," with the male always first. The J-document refers to "the male and his female," reducing the female to the status of property. (Would not the phrase "the female and her male" seem unthinkable?)
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 159
If one were to accept the verse literally and assume that the Flood covered the entire world as we know it today (as, in fact, most Biblical readers did assume, and probably still do assume today), then we would have to imagine that the sea level rose five and a half miles in order to cover even the Himalayas. The amount of water required to raise the sea level by that amount is over three and a half times the total quantity of water on Earth.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 164
The dove, which Noah sends out as a second bird, does perform an effective reconnaissance function. [...]
If the dove could find no resting place because the waters were on the face of the whole earth, she must indeed have reconnoitered far and wide. Here again is an indication that the Flood was a local phenomenon and that the Sumerian knowledge of the world at the time of the Flood was restricted indeed.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 170
From the scientific view, the promise of no further flood cannot fail, for there is not enough water on Earth to make such a flood possible either in Noah's time or since.
If, however, we assume the meaning of "earth" to the Sumerians -- as representing a river valley and immediately neighboring territory -- the promise has not been kept. There have been innumerable flooding disasters in the last four thousand years, some of which drowned more people than the Sumerian flood of 2800 B.C. or thereabouts is likely to have done. Every year, in fact, sees flooding somewhere.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 180
[Witness the Cataclysm of Boxing Day 2004 in which a tsunami rolled out from the epicenter of an earthquake on the Indian Ocean floor and left an estimated 150 to 180 thousand dead in its devastation of coastal regions as far away as Somalia, Africa. --MN]
Canaan is, of course, the land later dominated by Israel. If we translate Genesis 10:6 into modern geographic language, it would read: "And the sons of Ham: Nubia, Egypt, Libya, and Canaan." This actually marks the extent of the Egyptian Empire in the times of its greatness between 1800 and 1200 B.C.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 195
We have no knowledge of when human speech drifted apart into separate languages. For one thing, we don't know when the ability of speech originated and by what steps a formal language was developed. It is quite likely we will never know, but it seems reasonable to suppose that languages were already differentiated thousands of years before civilization began.
--Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, pg 208
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As far as I can tell, the gentleman was serious in his provincialism, and in considering that, that to which he is accustomed has the force of a natural law. It reminds me of the pious woman who set her face firmly against all foreign languages by holding up her bible and saying, "If the English language was good enough for the prophet Isaiah, and the apostle Paul, it is good enough for me."
--Isaac Asimov, Prefixing It Up, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Nov 1962
[reprinted
in the collection of essays Asimov On Numbers, pg 123]
Because pagan philosophy and Christianity were alike geocentric and therefore anthropocentric, it was easier for the Roman Empire to become Christian. There was mutual reinforcement in this particular all-important respect, and Christianity, which made geocentricity and anthropocentricity a central dogma, called Aristotle, Ptolemy, and similar Greek thinkers to its aid, to impress those intellectuals who would not be satisfied by the word of the Bible alone.
And because geocentric is not, in fact, an accurate picture of the universe, all scientific inquiry became undesirable. Any investigation that would try go beyond Aristotle and Ptolemy and find a non-geocentric picture of the universe that might explain it better, became dangerous to revealed religion.
--Isaac Asimov, The Tragedy of the Moon (a collection of essays), pg 19
Even though the Ptolemaic system had become so top-heavy as to be embarrassing in its deficiencies, it was not till the sixteenth century that the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus dared present a heliocentric theory once more, and even he preferred not to publish till 1543, when he was sure he was going to die soon anyway. Then it took another full century before the intellectual world of Western Europe accepted heliocentrism fully in the face of religious resistance. Bruno had to burn
and Galileo had to recant before geocentrism vanished.
--Isaac Asimov, The Tragedy of the Moon (a collection of essays), pg 20
[Some attributions are to the first works in which the quotes appeared, sometimes with an annotation indicating the anthology in which the essay was reprinted. Some quotes were extracted from original books. Those not attributed to a specific source were picked up at random. --MN]
Then too, in 1610 there were still some, among the educated ignoramuses, who refused to budge from the ancient position that all heavenly bodies, without exception, circled the Earth. Here at least were four bodies that clearly and visibly circled a body other than Earth. They circled Jupiter.
The only way to deny this was to refuse to look at them, and some great thinkers of the day actually did just that. They refused to look through the telescope, reasoning that since the satellites were not mentioned in Aristotle, the weren't there, and that to look at them would merely unsettle the mind.
--Isaac Asimov, The Tragedy of the Moon (a collection of essays), pg 77
[Also reprinted in Part I. --MN]
During the Middle Ages, especially, the notion of the spinning earth seemed wrong. For one thing, the Bible stated that, during a certain battle, the Israelite commander Joshua had ordered the sun and moon to stand still so the battle might be completed and won. Didn't this imply that it was the heavens which moved, not the earth?
Besides, if the earth were spinning (some people argued) there would be a terrific wind. And if you jumped upward, you would come down in a different place. Birds flying from their nests would be swept away and never find the way back -- and so on.
In 1543, however, the Polish astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, published a book, which worked out the mathematical details of a system in which the earth and the other planets moved about the sun. Gradually, this view won out and the earth was accepted as just one small planet among many others. So it began to seem quite ridiculous to imagine a whole immense universe circling about one small planet every twenty-four hours. Anyone who accepted the Copernican system had to believe the earth was spinning.
And there is no wind because the air moves with the earth. [...]
Yet even as late as 1633, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei [...] was forced by church authorities to admit he was wrong in thinking that the earth moved.
--Isaac Asimov, The Double Planet, pg 24
Forward: The Role of the Heretic
What does one with a heretic? We know the answer if the "one" referred to is a powerful religious orthodoxy: The heretic can be burned at the stake. If the "one" is a powerful political orthodoxy, the heretic can be sent to a concentration camp. If the "one" is a powerful socioeconomic orthodoxy, the heretic can be prevented from earning a living.
But what if the "one" is a powerful scientific orthodoxy? In that case, very little can be done, because even the most powerful scientific orthodoxy is not very powerful. To be sure, if the heretic is himself a scientist and depends on some organized scientific pursuit for his living or for his renown, thing s can be made hard for him. He can be deprived of government grants, of prestige-filled appointment, of access to the learned journals. This is bad enough, and not lightly to be condoned, but it is peanuts compared to the punishments that could be, and sometimes are, visited on heretics by the other orthodoxies.
Then, too, the religious, political, and socioeconomic orthodoxies can be universal in their power. A religious orthodoxy in full flight visits its punishments not on priest alone; nor a political one on politicians alone; nor a socioeconomic one on society leaders alone. No one is immune to their displeasure. The scientific orthodoxy, however is completely helpless if the heretic is not himself a professional scientist -- if he does not depend on grants or appointments, and if he places his views before the world through some medium other than the learned journals. Therefore, if we are to consider the scientific heretics, we must understand that there are two varieties with different powers and different immunities.
Let us consider the two kinds of scientific heretics: (1) There are those who arise from within the professional world science and who are subject to punishment by the orthodoxy. We might call these heretics from within "endoheretics." (2) There are those who arise from outside the professional world of science and who are immune to direct punishment by the orthodoxy. these heretics from without are the "exoheretics."
Of the two, the endoheretics are far less well known to the general public. the endoheretic speaks in the same language as does the orthodoxy, and both views, the endoheresy and orthodox, are equally obscure to the non-scientist, who can, generally speaking, understand neither the one nor the other nor the nature of the conflict between them.
If follows that if we consider the great endoheretics of the past, we find that the general public was not ordinarily involved. In the few cases where the public was involved, it was almost invariably on the side of the orthodoxy. The patron saint of all scientific heresies, Galileo, was, of course, an endoheretic. He was as deeply versed in Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy, which he dethroned, as were any of his Aristotelian/Ptolemaic opponents. And since in those days and in his particular society, the scientific and religious orthodoxies were the same, Galileo had to run far greater risks than later endoheretics did. Facing the Inquisition, he had to consider the possibility, not of a canceled grant, but of physical torture. Yet we cannot suppose that there was any great popular outcry on behalf of the rebel. The general public was not concerned, nor even aware, of the dispute. had it been made aware, it would certainly have sided with the orthodox.
Next to Galileo, the greatest of the endoheretics was Charles Darwin, whose views on the evolution of species through the blind action of chance variation and natural selection turned biology upside down. Here the the general public did know of the controversy and did, in a very general and rough way, have a dim view of what it was all about. And the public was definitely on the side of the orthodox. The public has remained anti-evolution to this day. Science had accepted Darwin without, up to this time, respectable dissent. The more sophisticated churches no longer quarrel publicly with Darwin's views. But the general public, in what is probably majority opinion if a vote were to be taken, stubbornly adheres to the tenets of a lost and dead orthodoxy of a century and a quarter ago.
Galileo and Darwin won out. Along the way, a number of the endoheretics did win. But never by public pressure. And never by a majority vote of the general public. They won out because science is a self-correcting structure, and because observation, experimentation, and reasoning eventually support those heresies which represent a more accurate view of the universe and bury those orthodoxies which are outpaced. In the process, orthodoxy gets bad press. Looking back on the history of science, we might suppose that every endoheresy was right -- that each wore the white hat of heroism against an evil and short-sighted orthodoxy. But that is only because the history of sciences is naturally selective. Only the endoheresy who was, in the end, shown to be right makes his mark. For each of those, there may have been perhaps fifty endoheretics who were quite wrong, whose views are therefore scarcely remembered, and who are not recorded even as a footnote in the history books -- or, if they are, it is for other, non-heretical, work.
What then, would you have the orthodox do? Is it better to reject everything and be wrong once in fifty times -- or accept everything and be wrong forty-nine out of fifty times and, in the meantime, send science down endless blind alleys? The best strategy, of course, would be neither, but to reject the forty-nine wrong out of hand and to accept and cherish the one right. Unfortunately, the day that the endoheretical pearl shines out so obviously amid the endoheretical garbage so as to be easily plucked is the day of the millennium. There is, alas, no easy way of distinguishing the stroke of intuitional genius from the stroke of folly. In fact, many an utterly nonsensical suggestion has seemed to carry much more of the mark of truth than the cleverly insightful stroke of genius.
There is no way, then, of dealing with the endoheresies other than by a firm (but not blind or spiteful) opposition. Each must run the gauntlet that alone can test it.
For the self-correcting structure works. There is delay and heartbreak often enough, but it works. However grim and slow the self-questioning process of science may be (indeed, that the process exists at all is a matter of pride to scientists), science remains man's only self-correcting intellectual endeavour.
The problem of endoheresy, then, is not a truly serious one for science (though it may be, we all know, for the individual endoheretic); and the questioning process is not one which must be carried out in public.
But what of exoheresy?
We had better first be sure of what we mean by an exoheretic. Science is split into endless specialties, and a specialist who is narrow-minded and insecure may see anyone who is not bull's-eye on target within the speciality as an "outsider."
Robert Mayer was a physician and James P. Joule was a brewer who dabiblicaled in physics. Neither had academic credentials, and, while both of them recognized the existence of the law of conservation of energy, their observations went for nothing. Neither could get his views accepted. Hermann Helmholtz, third in line, was a full academician, and he gets the credit.
When Jacobus van Hoff worked out the scheme of the tetravalent carbon atom, the orthodox chemist Adolph Kolbe denounced the new concept intemperately, specifically and contemptuously mentioning the fact that van Hoff was teaching at a veterinary school.
But this kind of attitude won't do. If we wish to be fine enough and narrow enough, then all scientific heretics are exoheretics in the eyes of the sufficiently orthodox, and the term becomes meaningless. Nor should we label as exoheretics those who are not formally educated but who, through self-education, have reached the peak of professional excellence. Let us, instead, understand the word exoheretics to refer only to someone who is a real outsider, one who does not understand the painstaking structure built up by science, and who therefore attacks it without understanding.
The typical exoheretics is so unaware of the intimate structure of science, of the methods and philosophy of science, of the very language of science, that his views are virtually unintelligible from the scientific standpoint. As a consequence, he is generally ignored by scientists. If exoheretical views are forced upon scientists, the reaction is bound to be puzzlement or amusement or contempt. In any case, it would be exceptional if the exoheresy were deemed worthy of any sort of comment.
In frustration, the exoheretic is very likely to appeal over the heads of the scientists to the general public. He may even be successful in this, since his inability to speak the language of science does not necessarily prevent him from speaking the language of the public. The appeal to the public is, of course, valueless from a scientific standpoint. The findings of science cannot be canceled or reversed by majority vote, or by the highest legislative or executive fiat. If every government in the world declared, officially, that the Earth was flat, and if every scientist were forbidden to argue the contrary, the Earth would nevertheless remain spheroidal, and every scrap of evidence maintaining that conclusion would still exist.
Nevertheless, the appeal to the public has other rewards than that of establishing scientific proof. (1) A favorable public response is soul-satisfying. The exoheretic can easily convince himself that his position at the center of a cult demonstrates the value of his views. He can easily argue himself into believing that people would not flock to nonsense, though all history shows otherwise. (2) A favorable public response, can be lucrative. It is well known that books and lectures dealing favorably with a popular cult do far better than do books and lectures debunking it, even when the books in favor may be poorly written and reasoned, whereas the books against may be models of lucidity and rationality. (3) A favorable public response may hound scientists into open opposition, and they may express with injudicious force, their opinion of the obvious nonsense of the exoheretical views. This very opposition, casting the exoheretics into the role of martyr, works to accentuate the first two advantages.
Public support or no, the exoheretics virtually never prove to be right. (How can he be right when he, quite literally, doesn't know what he's talking about?) Of course, he may prove to have said something somewhere in his flood of words that bears some resemblance to something that later proves to be so, and this coincidental concurrence of word and fact may be hailed by his followers as proving all the rest of the corpus of his work. This outcome, however has only cultic value.
We see, then, the vast difference between the effects of the views of endoheretics and exoheretics. First, the public is generally not interested in the endoheresy, or if aware of him at all, is hostile to him. The endoheretic therefore rarely profits from his heresy in any material way.[1] The public, on the other hand, can be very interested in the exoheretics and can support him with a partisan and even religious fervor, so that the exoheretics may, in a material way, profit very considerably by his heresy.
Second, the endoheresy is sometimes right, and since startling scientific advances usually begin as heresies, some of the greatest names in science have been endoheretics. The exoheretic, on the other hand, is virtually never right, and the history of science contains no great advance, to my knowledge, initiated by an exoheretic.
One might combine these generalization and, working backward (not always a safe procedure), state that when a view denounced by scientists as false is, nevertheless, popular with the general public, the mere fact of that popularity is strong evidence in favor of its worthlessness. It is on the basis of public popularity of particular beliefs, for instance, that I, even without personal investigation of such matters, feel it safe to be extremely skeptical about ancient astronauts, or about modern astronauts in UFO's, or about the value of talking to plants, or about psi phenomena, or about spiritualism, or about astrology.[2]
And this brings me to Velikovskianism at last.
Of all the exoheretics, Velikovsky has come closest to discomfiting the science he has attacked, and has most successfully forced science to take him seriously. Why is that? Well --
(1) Velikovsky has been a psychiatrist, so that he has training in a scientific specialty of sorts and is not an utter exoheretic. What's more, he has the faculty of sounding as though he knows what he is talking about when he invades the precincts of astronomy. He doesn't make very many elementary mistakes, and he is able to use the language of science sufficiently well to impress a layman.
(2) He is an interesting writer. It's fun to read his books. I have read every book he has published and hope to read any he writes in the future. Although he doesn't lure me into accepting his views, I can well see where those less knowledgeable in the fields Velikovsky deals with would succumb.
(3) Velikovsky's views in Worlds In Collision are designed to demonstrate that the Bible has a great deal of literal truth in it, that the miraculous events described in the Old Testament really happened as described. To be sure, Velikovsky abandons the hypothesis that divine intervention caused the miracles and substitutes a far less satisfactory hypothesis involving planetary Ping-Pong, but that scarcely alters the fact that in our theistic society any claimed finding that tends to demonstrate the truth of the Bible is highly likely to meet with general favor.
These three points are enough in themselves to explain Velikovsky's popularity. Supply the public with something amusing, that sounds scholarly, and that supports an idea it wants to believe, and surely you need nothing more. Erich von Daniken and his theories of ancient astronauts have succeeded on little more than this, even though his books are less amusing than Velikovsky's, sound less scholarly, and support something less substantial than belief in the Bible.
Velikovsky, however, has succeeded beyond such popularity. Because of the climate of the times when Worlds In Collision was published, there was an astronomical overreaction. The appearance of excerpts from his book, prior to publication, in Harper's, Reader's Digest, and Colliers, and the widespread publicity given to his views, goaded some astronomers into an attempt at censorship. To paraphrase Fouche, this was worse than immoral; it was blunder.
The fact that Velikovsky could then portray himself as a persecuted martyr has cast a Galilean glow upon all his endeavours, and has canceled out any attempt on the part of astronomers to demonstrate, clearly and dispassionately, the errors in the Velikovskian view. All attempts in this direction can be (and are), dismissed as persecution.
It also give a glow of heroism to Velikovsky's followers. They can attack an orthodoxy -- ordinarily such attacks are accepted as courageous -- and can do with complete safety, since in actual fact (as opposed to Velikovskian fantasy) the orthodoxy does not, and indeed cannot, strike back.
From the standpoint of science, is Velikovskianism nothing but an irritation and a waste of time? Not at all. It has enormous benefits. For one thing, Velikovskianism, and indeed, any exoheretical view that becomes prominent enough to force itself on science, acts to puncture scientific complacency -- and that is good. An exoheresy may cause scientists to bestir themselves if only to gather firm and logical reasons for the rejection of the exoheresy -- and that is good too. An exoheresy may cause scientific activity which, in serendipitous fashion, may uncover something worthwhile that has nothing to do with the exoheresy -- and that is very good, if it happens. The Fates keep science from remaining unchallenged. Science is in far greater danger from the absence of challenge than from the coming of any number of absurd challenges.
At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in 1974, scientists as a group responded to Velikovsky's exoheretical challenge for the first time. [...]
It was altogether fitting and proper that Velikovsky and his opponents agreed to hold this discussion at the AAAS meetings. Though one could be sure from the start that nothing scientists could say would in the least move the Velikovskians, and that no amount of mere logic would shake their faith, it was still a good thing -- for science.
--Isaac Asimov, Scientists Confront Velikovsky, pg 7-15,
[an anthology of papers at a seminar addressing Velikovsky's work which was hosted by Carl
Sagan. --MN]
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.
--Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.
--Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
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