OPTIONAL THEME:
KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY
PROMETHEAN DREAMS
Otto Dix (1929-32) Triptychon Der Krieg (War Triptych) Tempera on wood. Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden.
ANCIENT MYTH IN MODERN DRESS
Strange as it seems, the Artificial intelligence and Existential threats class activities contained allusion to ancient myths. Indeed, no exploration of Knowledge and Technology, or The Natural Sciences as an Area of Knowledge, is complete without some reference to the Promethean archetype. Whether we view forbidden knowledge myths as as “useful social fictions” or “highly persistent memes,” these ancient, pre-scientific constructs loom large in the human knowledge edifice. In Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control (2019: X), Stuart Russell appropriates the Greek legend of Midas, as well as Genie in the bottle stories (from the Arabian Peninsula and Persia), to emphasize the unforeseen consequences of what we might wish for.
Fiery dragon-worm in a mountain creating a volcano
C.G. Jung (1915-30)The Red Book: Liber Novus. Plate 54. First published in 2009. W.W. Norton & Co, New York.
“Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language…
The most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. ”
a thought provoking transition
Exceptionally I do not propose a specific class activity here. Instead, the forbidden knowledge archetypes serve as thought-provoking transitions to Knowledge and Religion, Knowledge and Indigenous Societies, The Human Sciences, and The Arts. The following Knowledge Questions capture this intention:
What is the role of analogy and metaphor in the acquisition of religious knowledge?
What is the role of folklore, rituals and songs in acquiring and sharing knowledge?
Is human behavior too unpredictable to study scientifically?
Do the human sciences and literature provide different types of knowledge about human existence and behavior?
FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE GALLERY
PROMETHEUS MYTH
A black-figure Lakonian vase painting (c. 570-560 BCE) depicting the Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders and Prometheus being tormented by an eagle sent by Zeus to eat his liver as punishment for giving mankind the gift of fire.
Gregoriano Etrusco Museum, Vatican
Image by Karl-Ludwig G. Poggemann.
“Prometheus moulded men out of water and earth and gave them also fire, which, unknown to Zeus, he had hidden in a stalk of fennel. But when Zeus learned of it, he ordered Hephaestus to nail his body to Mount Caucasus, which is a Scythian mountain. On it Prometheus was nailed and kept bound for many years. Every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured the lobes of his liver, which grew by night. That was the penalty that Prometheus paid for the theft of fire until Hercules afterwards released him.
”
ICARUS AND DAEDELUS
Antonio Tempesta (1606) The Fall of Icarus from The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Plate 75. Etching print. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
“When he had put the last touches to what he had begun, the artificer balanced his own body between the two wings and hovered in the moving air. He instructed the boy as well, saying ‘Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them.Travel between the extremes.”
THIS IS THE WORST THING I’VE EVER WItNEsSEd
Hindenburg Zeppelin on fire at the mooring mast of Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937.
Image: Nationaal Archief
““It’s burst into flames! It burst into flames, and it’s falling, it’s crashing! Watch it! Watch it! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It’s fire—and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames; and the—and it’s falling on the mooring-mast… This is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. “Oh, my Jesus!” Four, or five hundred feet into the sky and it—it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It’s smoke, and it’s flames now and the frame is crashing to the ground… Lady, I—I—I’m sorry. Honest: I—I can hardly breathe. I—I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah;—I can’t. Listen, folks; I—I’m gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice. This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed…””
PANDORA’S BOX
Opening Pandora’s box
Illustration: Frederick Stuart Church
MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN
Image: Open Mind BBVA
Richard Rothwell (1840) Portrait of Mary Shelley. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, London
“It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs...”
EATING THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT
Michelangelo (1509 and 1510) The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden. Fresco. Sistine Chapel, Rome.
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”
DESTROYER OF WORLDS
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was the American theoretical physicist who directed the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos where the first nuclear weapons were developed. At the end of World War II the terrible destructive power of the atomic bombs “little boy” and “fat man” were unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.
The 'Little Boy' atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. 170,000 were killed. 90 percent of the city was destroyed. The subsequent 'black rain' of radioactive particles generated radiation-related diseases among the survivors.
Photo: Yosuke Yamahata, assigned to document the destruction.
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
AFTERWORD:
El sueño de la razón produce monstruos
Francisco Goya (1797) Preparatory drawing for «El sueño de la razón produce monstruos». (The Sleep of Reason produces monsters) Pen and bougainvillea ink. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
«El autor soñando. Su yntento solo es desterrar bulgaridades perjudiciales, y perpetuar con esta obra de Caprichos, el testimonio solido de la verdad.» The artist dreaming--his intention is only to banish harmful vulgarities and to perpetuate with this work of Caprichos the solid testimony of Truth.
…we see Goya himself, his head on his arms, sprawled across his desk and fitfully sleeping, while the air above is peopled with the bats and owls of necromancy and just behind his chair lies an enormous witch’s cat, malevolent as only Goya’s cats can be, staring at the sleeper with baleful eyes. On the side of the desk are traced the words. “The dream of reason produces monsters.” It is a caption that admits of more than one interpretation. When reason sleeps, the absurd and loathsome creatures of superstition wake and are active, goading their victim to an ignoble frenzy. But this is not all, Reason may also dream without sleeping, may intoxicate itself as it did during the French revolution, with the day-dreams of inevitable progress, of liberty, equality and fraternity imposed by the violence, of human self-sufficiency and the ending of sorrow, but not by the all too arduous method which alone offers any prospect of success, but by political rearrangements and a better technology.
Aldous Huxley (1943) from The Complete Etchings of Goya, with a Foreword by Aldous Huxley. Crown Publishers, New York.
A LAsT GENERATIVE QUESTION
Explain, with real-life examples, Aldous Huxley’s “all too arduous method which alone offers any prospect of success”?
Francisco de Goya (c. 1797) The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razón produce monstruos) Plate 43 of the 80 in the Los Caprichos series. Etching aquatint, drypoint and burin.
Francisco de Goya (c. 1819-1823) The dog. Oil mural on plaster transferred to canvas. Museo del Prado, Madrid