Reminds me of the part of Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut where a couple of people in a bar are talking about how scientists have discovered the secret to life, which turns out to be “proteins.” If memory serves though, the characters aren’t rueful about this fact and resentful toward science for spoiling the mystery of the “rainbow” of life; rather, they’re just casually disinterested, as they would be if “scientists” had discovered a planet millions of lightyears away, since all they really know is that the password is “proteins.” I think their attitude may be more healthy than Keats’s, because if you’re going to not understand something, it makes more sense to be indifferent than resentful.
Banality’s a recurring Vonnegut theme. Reading that exchange, I got the impression that he’s using the science-destroys-wonder meme as a way of expressing it, just like manipulating human history in order to deliver a minor spaceship part or tagging the firebombing of Dresden with “so it goes”. We shouldn’t read too much into the fact that the characters aren’t resentful of it; Vonnegut’s characters never are.
I’m not sure we have enough evidence to say that Vonnegut thought we should be resentful towards science for spoiling the beauty and terror of the unknown, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t regard that kind of spoiler—or indifference to it—as a positive thing. And that seems to me like it maps pretty well to “the dull catalogue of common things”.
I haven’t read as much Vonnegut as I’d like to, but I read that theme of Cat’s Cradle as being closer to the disconnect “normal” people feel from scientists who are seen as not just inscrutable creators of technology but also moral authorities (reflected in characters like the secretary and general IIRC).
Mainly though, it’s less science-destroys-wonder and more directionless-science-destroys-everything, which no one will prevent if they don’t know they should. (I just read Three Worlds Collide today and the plot point introduced near the end about what happened with the mathematical constant is a more optimistic version of events for a similar discovery.) From what I have read of Vonnegut, the non-resentful characters are still non-resentful in order to convey part of the message, even if they are common.
Reminds me of the part of Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut where a couple of people in a bar are talking about how scientists have discovered the secret to life, which turns out to be “proteins.” If memory serves though, the characters aren’t rueful about this fact and resentful toward science for spoiling the mystery of the “rainbow” of life; rather, they’re just casually disinterested, as they would be if “scientists” had discovered a planet millions of lightyears away, since all they really know is that the password is “proteins.” I think their attitude may be more healthy than Keats’s, because if you’re going to not understand something, it makes more sense to be indifferent than resentful.
Banality’s a recurring Vonnegut theme. Reading that exchange, I got the impression that he’s using the science-destroys-wonder meme as a way of expressing it, just like manipulating human history in order to deliver a minor spaceship part or tagging the firebombing of Dresden with “so it goes”. We shouldn’t read too much into the fact that the characters aren’t resentful of it; Vonnegut’s characters never are.
I’m not sure we have enough evidence to say that Vonnegut thought we should be resentful towards science for spoiling the beauty and terror of the unknown, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t regard that kind of spoiler—or indifference to it—as a positive thing. And that seems to me like it maps pretty well to “the dull catalogue of common things”.
I haven’t read as much Vonnegut as I’d like to, but I read that theme of Cat’s Cradle as being closer to the disconnect “normal” people feel from scientists who are seen as not just inscrutable creators of technology but also moral authorities (reflected in characters like the secretary and general IIRC).
Mainly though, it’s less science-destroys-wonder and more directionless-science-destroys-everything, which no one will prevent if they don’t know they should. (I just read Three Worlds Collide today and the plot point introduced near the end about what happened with the mathematical constant is a more optimistic version of events for a similar discovery.) From what I have read of Vonnegut, the non-resentful characters are still non-resentful in order to convey part of the message, even if they are common.
Interestingly, I thought of the same scene when I read Wrong Questions. It’s definitely useful for exploring a handful of LessWrong concepts.