On Monday 26 November Nasa’s Mars InSight probe touched down.
It is a wonderful technological achievement. Please note, I am using the adjective intentionally, ‘wonderful’ – an achievement that is (and should be seen as) ‘full of wonder’.
Underwhelming loss of wonder
But what has been noticeable has been the lack of excitement generated by the event. Sure, there were the now-expected photos of the Nasa scientists awkwardly high-fiving as the probe landed, but then the news quickly faded into the background. Even the name of the probe is markedly less interesting than other missions. Early Nasa flights were characterised by names of mythological gods, ‘Mercury’ and ‘Apollo’, but now we are into catchy and not very inspiring acronyms ‘Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport’ – InSight.
Yes, the name does what it says on the tin, but this is the pinnacle of exploration, our ‘final frontier’. Shouldn’t there be greater marvel and awe? Even one of the British scientists working on the mission seemed to find it all a bit mundane, ‘Where we land is an intentionally dull place,’ said Neil Bowles, a planetary scientist at Oxford University, involved in the mission. ‘It’s flat, empty and hopefully not very windy. And that is precisely what we need.’
If all this seems a bit far off from your lived experience, then please reflect on how you feel now in January about any tech gifts you got for Christmas. How excited were you when you got it? How quickly did the sheen and joy (if there was any) wear off? It is the same phenomenon. A loss of wonder in the universe – not because the wonder has ceased to be there, but because there’s something wrong with how we perceive it.
Glory and delight
C. S. Lewis wrote about something which has been developed by the philosopher Charles Taylor, namely that the medieval view of the cosmos was one where the night sky was tingling with life, more a festival of dance than an impersonal machine. As humans we were like children peering in at the window of a great mansion to see the chandeliers glistening and a wonderful celebration. Theirs was an enchanted universe. No less ordered and governed by laws, but infused with glory and delight. Our universe is one of ‘space’ (note the word implies emptiness). As the 2012 Facebook advert celebrating 1 billion users stated: ‘The universe – it is vast and dark, and makes us wonder if we are alone’.
The role of technology in these two different perspectives is also markedly different. In the medieval cosmos, technology (yes they did have it then!) helped them pull back the curtain and gaze more intently on the glory within. That is why Psalm 111.2 was carved above the first Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge: ‘The works of the Lord are great; sought out of all them that have pleasure therein’. It was not that they were unscientific, but that science itself had the role of revealing wonders to induce pleasure.
Today technology has a different function; to explore, but to what end? As the Facebook advert put it: ‘Maybe the reason we make all of these things is to remind ourselves that we are not (alone).’
The theatre of God’s glory
It is one of the great tragedies that so often science and technology are pitted against a belief in God. Tragic not just because it is a gross misrepresentation of the truth, but because in doing so science and technology are disrobed of the glory God imparts to them.
What would it look like in your life to rediscover your wonder in the cosmos as a theatre of God’s glory and therefore a greater joy in technology as a gift from God to reveal the greatness of his works?
