We’re Tormented and Tantalized by Cosmic Wildness

How science confronts us with the farce of nature’s godless creativity

Crop of image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Paradoxically, what we might as well call the Age of Science, in which microscopes and telescopes showed us the alien extents of nature both near and far is also a narcissistic age in which many of us have retreated to our inner depths.

Scientists found they had to develop a method of objectification to understand nature’s counterintuitive complexities, and this kind of knowledge proved alienating. We compensated for this secular form of apocalyptic revelation, for this stand-in for the Godot who never arrived as promised by the messianic scriptures, by indulging in a culture of individualism that’s explicitly, proudly aimed at fulfilling our petty desires.

Capitalism, democracy, modern art, and the rule of law are humanistic in that they prioritize our interests as we set aside theological fantasies and attempt to blot out the real world’s inhumanity by giving free rein to our artificial self-expressions. The weirder the universe seemed, according to scientific explanations, the more we were compelled to delve into our unconscious and into the human creative potential.

Consequently, modern philosophers faced the problem of bridging this apparent dichotomy. Rene…