Alexander: One fleeting victory for reason – Quad City Times

The great sky wolves devoured the sun Monday.

You won't see that headline in any American newspaper. Nor should you.

But that was the Viking explanation for a solar eclipse. In fact, the concept of a mythical beast or god consuming the sun was a pretty standard interpretation for much of antiquity. To the ancient Chinese, it was a veracious dragon. In Vietnam, a celestial toad swallowed either the sun or moon during a solar or lunar eclipse.

These were agricultural cultures, mind you, completely dominated by anecdote and the rhythm of the growing seasons. Those shadows of polytheism still exists today, remnants permitted by later, more powerful monotheistic traditions as a means to more easily sway recent converts.

Easter, for instance, is probably a fusion of Catholic doctrine and more ancient pagan spring festivals, built around the planting calendar and an associated concept of rebirth. The egg has long been a tangible, powerful symbol of new life. And that pre-Christian tradition sticks around today.

Point is, myths come and go. They're the necessary result of a curious species that spends an unprecedented amount of time pondering the world around it. And there tends to be substantial upheaval and pushback whenever a seminal moment throws shade at the established intellectual tradition. Entire political power structures are built around belief systems. Entire institutions derive their power from the myth itself. Overturning an established myth is, often, a direct assault on a civilization's cultural and political framework.

It's no surprise then that Galileo was put on trial in 1633 for suggesting earth revolved around the sun and offering conclusive evidence to prove it. The Vatican convicted the Italian naturalist of heresy, tantamount to a 17th century blacklisting, and forced him to recant his findings. It wasn't until 1992 that Pope John Paul II admitted the church's error after a 13-year investigation.

For more than 350 years, the story of Galileo's trial has stood as a symbol of the inherent tension between religion and rationalism.

On Monday, millions of Americans turned their gazes skyward to watch the moon blot out the sun. This time, it was widely understood that the entire event is just a chance occurrence of orbiting bodies passing by one another. With incredible accuracy, scientists predicted precise moments when the sun would be fully eclipsed by the moon. And Americans of all political and religious stripes took those predictions for granted.

It's a notable level of confidence in the predictive abilities of scientific observation and mathematics in a moment when similar endeavors are scrubbed from government websites and blasted as hoaxes of the most politically motivated kind. Such charges, mind you, would not be foreign to Galileo. They were the same accusations made against him.

Attempts to objectively measure the universe put us on the moon. It split the atom. It created a network that transmits information at light speed. It nearly doubled average life expectancy and eradicated polio.

And yet, scientists still fight for legitimacy, even though they are the one's whose only real agenda is understanding. That's because those in power weaponize irrational fear. Baseless conspiracy theories are wrongly cast as legitimate doubt. One can't pose legitimate questions about that which they don't understand.

But new information threatens those whose entire access to power is rooted in old systems. With that understanding, no one should be surprised that we're still arguing about evolution 158 years after Darwin published his widely confirmed mechanism for speciation. Nor should anyone be shocked that billions have been spent on delegitimizing climate science.

Almost 400 years ago, merely predicting Monday's eclipse could have been a capital offense. But rationalism soldiered on. It reshaped how the universe is understood. It built political systems, including the United States. And, on Monday, people accepted the calculus that accurately predicted the event.

On Monday, millions looked skyward and understood they weren't seeing the wrath of an angry god or hungry serpent. And that's only because those honestly seeking truth refused to back down.

Read more here:

Alexander: One fleeting victory for reason - Quad City Times