Wells, Einstein, Hugo Gernsback, John Campbell, Arthur C. We do have the names of the people who made the scientific description of reality emotionally real for us-Isaac Newton, Jules Verne, H.G. Yet in spite of the photographs, for some it will always be “turtles all the way down.” Why do we believe NASA? Why do we believe the scientists and the reality of those photographs? What is the foundation of our faith in the “scientific” view of the universe? Who convinced us? Science has shown us a cosmic view grander and more astonishing than ever imagined.
In two thousand years we have gone from debating whether the new day began at dawn or at sunset to dividing time into nanoseconds. Tacit acknowledgment of the nature of time and the inexorable course of its single direction are part of our daily perception, yet this is relatively modern. The future is a place toward which we are forced to travel, no matter how fiercely we cling to the safe anchor of the past. Now the incomparable images brought to us by genetic researchers, NASA and those astonishing Hubble Telescope photographs have expanded our vision beyond all horizons-yet we meet ourselves, once again, on the other side. Travelers, storytellers and mystics expanded our horizon, pushing back the walls until we covered the globe-and we met ourselves on the other side. Beyond those walls lay monsters and chaos. The western world began in a clay-model universe only as big as the horizon, with a roof, four walls and a very deep cellar.