Broca's Brain: The Romance of Science

construct a cosmology that differs significantly from one of the perinatal stages? [28] Is our ability to know the universe hopelessly ensnared and enmired in the experiences of birth and infancy? Are we doomed to recapitulate our origins in a pretense of understanding the universe? Or might the emerging observational evidence gradually force us into an accommodation with and an understanding of that vast and awesome universe in which we float, lost and brave and questing?

It is customary in the world’s religions to describe Earth as our mother and the sky as our father. This is true of Uranus and Gaea in Greek mythology, and also among Native Americans, Africans, Polynesians, indeed most of the peoples of the planet Earth. However, the very point of the perinatal experience is that we leave our mothers. We do it first at birth and then again when we set out into the world by ourselves. As painful as those leave-takings are, they are essential for the continuance of the human species. Might this fact have some bearing on the almost mystical appeal that space flight has, at least for many of us? Is it not a leaving of Mother Earth, the world of our origins, to seek our fortune among the stars? This is precisely the final visual metaphor of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was a Russian schoolmaster, almost entirely self-educated, who, around the turn of the century, formulated many of the theoretical steps that have since been taken in the development of rocket propulsion and space flight. Tsiolkovsky wrote: “The Earth is the cradle of mankind. But one does not live in the cradle forever.”

We are set irrevocably, I believe, on a path that will take us to the stars-unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed, we destroy ourselves first. And out there in the depths of space, it seems very likely that, sooner or later, we will find other intelligent beings. Some of them will be less advanced than we; some, probably most, will be more. Will all the space-faring beings, I wonder, be creatures whose births are painful? The beings more advanced than we will have capabilities far beyond our understanding. In some very real sense they will appear to us as godlike. There will be a great deal of growing up required of the infant human species. Perhaps our descendants in those remote times will look back on us, on the long and wandering journey the human race will have taken from its dimly remembered origins on the distant planet Earth, and recollect our personal and collective histories, our romance with science and religion, with clarity and understanding and love.

REFERENCES

CHAPTER 3

THAT WORLD WHICH BECKONS LIKE A LIBERATION

FEUER, LEWIS S., Einstein and the Generations of Science. New York, Basic Books, 1974.

FRANK, PHILIPP, Einstein: His Life and Times. New York, Knopf, 1953.

HOFFMAN, BANESH, Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. New York, New American Library, 1972.

SCHILPP, PAUL, ED., Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist. New York, Tudor, 1951.

CHAPTER 5

NIGHT WALKERS AND MYSTERY MONGERS

“Alexander the Oracle-Monger,” in The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1905.

CHRISTOPHER, MILBOURNE, ESP, Seers and Psychics. New York, Crowell, 1970.

COHEN, MORRIS, and NAGEL, ERNEST, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. New York, Harcourt Brace, 1934.

EVANS, BERGEN, The Natural History of Nonsense. New York, Knopf, 1946.

GARDNER, MARTIN, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York, Dover, 1957.

MACKAY, CHARLES, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Noonday Press, 1970.

CHAPTER 7

VENUS AND DR. VELIKOVSKY

BRANDT, J. C., MARAN, S. P., WILLIAMSON, R., HARRINGTON, R., COCHRAN, C., KENNEDY, M., KENNEDY, W., and CHAMBERLAIN, V., “Possible Rock Art Records of the Crab Nebula Supernova in the Western United States.” Archaeoastronomy in Pre-Columbian America, A. F. Aveni, ed. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1974.

BRANDT, J. C., MARAN, S. P., and STECHER, T. P., “Astronomers Ask Archaeologists Aid.” Archaeology, 21: 360 (1971).

BROWN, H., “Rare Gases and the Formation of the Earth’s Atmosphere,” in Kuiper (1949).

CAMPBELL, J., The Mythic Image. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1974. (Second printing with corrections, 1975.)

CONNES, P., CONNES, J., BENEDICT, W. S., and KAPLAN, L. D., “Traces of HCl and HF in the Atmosphere of Venus.” Ap. J., 147: 1230 (1967).

COVEY, C., Anthropological Journal of Canada, 13: 2-10 (1975).

DE CAMP, L. S., Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme. New York, Ballantine Books, 1975.

DODD, EDWARD, Polynesian Seafaring. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1972.

EHRLICH, MAX, The Big Eye. New York, Doubleday, 1949.

GALANOPOULOS, ANGELOS G., “Die aagyptischen Plagen und der Auszug Israels aus geologischer Sicht.” Das Altertum, 10: 131-137 (1964).

GOULD, S. J., “Velikovsky in Collision.” Natural History (March 1975), 20-26.

KUIPER, G. P., ed., The Atmospheres of the Earth and Planets, 1st ed. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1949.

LEACH, E. R., “Primitive Time Reckoning,” in The History of Technology, edited by C. Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and Hall, A. R. London, Oxford University Press, 1954.

LECAR, M., and FRANKLIN, F., “On the Original Distribution of the Asteroids.” Icarus, 20: 422-436 (1973).

MAROV, M. YA., “Venus: A Perspective at the Beginning of Planetary Exploration.” Icarus, 16: 415-461 (1972).

MAROV, M. YA., AVDUEVSKY, V., BORODIN, N., EKONOMOV, A., KERZHANOVICH, V., LYSOV, V., MOSHKIN, B., ROZHDESTVENSKY, M., and RYABOV, O., “Preliminary Results on the Venus Atmosphere from the Venera 8 Descent Module.” Icarus, 20: 407-421 (1973).