Cosmic Demigods
A brief excerpt from Gleiser's latest book, The Prophet and the Astronomer
THROUGHOUT HUMAN CULTURE, IN LEGENDS, myths and fables, there is manifest a great fascination with fantastic journeys, the exploration of unknown lands, 'earthly or beyond. In these otherworldly realms, flesh-and- blood heroes meet gods, dragons and unicorns, battle evil spirits and descend into fiery pits of hell. Moses climbed Mount Sinai to meet God; Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, while looking for the fabled Gold Fleece, battled fire-breathing bulls and sowed a dragons teeth; Hercules, one of Jason's crew members, descended into Hades and captured Cerberus, the three-
headed dog that guarded its entrance; King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table searched for the Holy Grail; and so on. Each of these fantastic journeys has an element of self-transcendence, a contact with a higher realm of being, where the real mixes with the unreal. The hero returns deeply transformed by his experiences, not the flesh-and- blood person who started the voyage but a demigod, a leader, one who has acquired some secret knowledge not shared by common mortals, one who inspires a higher morality. It is the fantastic element of these narratives that permits the deep transformation of the self that the traveler undergoes. But fantasy not only transforms, it also captivates. We, the audience, immerse ourselves in the heroes' magic and, in so doing, also become heroes, learning as we marvel; the narratives symbolize our search for knowledge and meaning, which may be revealed to lis if we are brave enough to probe the unknown, to behave like heroes.
It is not very difficult to expand this argument to include the search for scientific knowledge. Scientists also wrestle with the unknown in search of enlightenment; in order to expand scientific knowledge, we must probe into unknown territory, a process of exploration that oftentimes requires great intellectual courage. Like the mythic heroes,: we transform ourselves through our search, learning to face the awesome creativity of nature with humility.
