which he has chanced to meet, as they are driven in all directions. But each boasts of having seen the whole.”
If scientists allow themselves to be seen as Prometheus giving the power of fire to humanity, then they may start thinking of themselves as demigods. J. Campbell [1988b] reminds us that “Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.” Bronowski [1973] speaks feelingly and eloquently of the danger of this scientific egotism:
“[Mathematician] Johnny von Neumann was in love with the aristocracy of intellect. And that is a belief which can only destroy the civilisation that we know. If we are anything, we must be a democracy of the intellect. We must not perish by the distance between people and government, between people and power, by which Babylon and Egypt and Rome failed. And that distance can only be conflated, can only be closed, if knowledge sits in the homes and heads of people with no ambition to control others, and not up in the isolated seats of power.”
The luster of an individual’s contributions to science is tarnished by the near certainty that some other scientist would have made the same contribution sooner or later. One can help erect the scaffolding of the scientific cathedral, but the scaffolding later will be torn down and forgotten. One can cling to the comfortable fantasy of scientific immortality, but today’s scientific breakthrough will be tomorrow’s naïveté.
“Voltaire, when complemented by someone on the work he had done for posterity, replied, ‘Yes, I have planted four thousand trees’. . . Nearly a score of centuries ago, Marcus Aurelius reminded us that, ‘Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, the rememberer and the remembered.’” [Teale, 1959]
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” [Solomon, ~1000 B.C., Ecclesiastes 10:11]
[Image removed for copyright reasons] (Wikisource contributor note)
