Zodiac Ceiling at Grand Central Terminal, New York City
Photo by Kidist P. Asrat
Deember, 2012
The article below is a re-write of a blog post with the same title from Camera Lucida. It will probably go in Reclaiming Beauty's Chapter Five: Beauty in Nature.
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A Most Ancient Galaxy
By: Kidist Paulos Asrat
Scientists at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto discovered in 2012 a rare spiral galaxy that is 10.5 billion light years from earth (1). David Law, the principal scientist, says, "The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding. Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design' spiral galaxies simply didn't exist at such an early time in the history of the universe." He is clearly awed by this structure.
Yet, it takes a 10-billion-year-old structure to pull these modern scientists out of their jaded haze. Alice Shapley, an astrophysicist from UCLA opines, "The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks (2)." She adds, "Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?" Her colleague David Law would probably agree with her.
"What a dumb, vulgar thing to say," retorts writer Lawrence Auster "about objects ten billion years old, a hundred thousand light-years across, and each containing hundreds of billions or even tens of trillions of stars. No scientist in 1950 or 1970 would have said it (3)."
He continues: "Far too often, scientists, like their fellow elites in contemporary liberated society who believe in nothing higher or truer than the disordered human self, seem to have no sense of appropriateness, no inherent respect for anything, for the isness of anything. They must drag everything down to the commonest level and make it appear to be as messy and meaningless as we ourselves - even objects that are infinitely vaster and older than anything we can conceive, and that express an order of which (notwithstanding scientific theories which claim to explain far more than than they really do explain) we have no idea."
Modern liberals (which is the majority of the West now) have no principles with which to guide their observations of the world around them. The Good, the True and the Beautiful are no longer those solid principles with which they try to understand the world around them. These principles were formed partly through religion (specifically Christianity) and partly through our cultural history and traditions. Society was thus constantly informed how to differentiate between good and evil, beautiful and the less beautiful, the true and the untruthful.
Now, since we have cast aside these traditions, and since religion is just something one harks back to on Christmas or a christening, we no longer have that to guide our understanding of the world.
The tremendous beauty, complexity and mystery of the universe is smeared with the ugly words of a modern "scientist." Beauty, rather than rising things up to its level, is now dragged down to the putrid messes of the ugly. And this is just how modern people would have it, since bringing things down to the "equal" level of ugliness is much easier than bringing it up to the difficult hierarchical requirements of beauty.
If scientist are not in awe of what they're discovering, how can they have respect for their work? Why bother to spend hours, days and even years looking through a metal funnel if they are not impressed by what they see? Otherwise, they may as well spend their days looking at the crumbs on their desks. But this is how the likes of David Law really do see their work, and hence their crass and crude comments on these celestial bodies.
Pre-modern scientists had a much better sense of the mysterious, and of the mystical, and were much more humble than their post-modern inheritors. It was God who got discarded so that David Law and Alice Shapley can arrogantly opine their conclusions. Things are now measured in terms of man's limitations, who nonetheless considers himself a god, rather than God's infinity.
We are stuck with a funnel which restricts our view. The Words of Science have become the word of god. In our blasphemy, and our sacrilege, beauty evades us, and leaves us to our own crude devices. We deserve what we see.
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References:
1. Sasaki, Chris. 2012, July 18. Astronomers discover "Astounding" Spiral Galaxy. University of Toronto News.
http://news.utoronto.ca/astronomers-discover-astounding-spiral-galaxy
2. Wolpert, Stuart. July 18, 2012. Astronomers Using the Hubble Space Telescope Report the Earliest Spiral galaxy Ever Seen. UCLA Newsroom.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/astronomers-report-the-earliest-236446.aspx
3. Auster, Lawrence. September 11, 2012. Hubble Telescope Has Found Ancient Galaxy that Scientists Say Shouldn't Exist. View From the Right
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/023258.html
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Posted By: KIdist P. Asrat