The Noble Lie

This talk is very fascinating. One of the most eminent voices in the scientific establishment expresses some of the strangeness in science, ideas like quantum physics, evolution, and atomism, which defy intuition.

What Dawkins doesn’t mention, but definitely knows, is that some of these ideas were not discovered by modern science but are as old as ancient Greece. The notion that all solid matter is mostly empty space, made up of building blocks called atoms, came from the philosopher Democritus.

One day, I will line out the progression from the Royal Society (the science club of Dawkins, Darwin, and all of the big British establishment scientists) to the secret society they claim as their predecessors, the “Invisible College” of the Rosicrucians.

It’s also interesting that Dawkins uses the metaphor “middle world” because both “Middle World” and “Middle Earth” are esoteric references to very old notions about our world - hanging by a thread between Heaven and Hell, between perfect Order and swirling Chaos, where Spirit and Matter collide.

Links

• Democritus [Wikipedia]