Cosmic Suicide

            From Descartes to Newton, Darwin and von Neumann the scientific tradition has relied on the belief in the supremacy and infallibility of scientific knowledge. Powers may be questioned, but not knowledge. Science has led to increasing dominance over nature and other men, and allied itself with political power that have increased the ability to dominate and control society. This, in the last ten or twenty years has begun to be brought into question. Von Neumann's biographer observes that the new awareness of the larger world of many peoples and cultures, and the danger of abstractions and how these abstractions are played out on the historical arena indicates that science must be changed. The emphasis should be put on "people instead of things and  [we should] subordinate science and technology to their human context".

            Von Neumann speculated the that the occurrence of: 

supernovae in the heavens, those mysterious stars that which suddenly are born in great brilliance and, as quickly, becoming celestial cinders- could be evidence that sentient beings on other planets had reached the point in their scientific knowledge where we stand now [and] having failed to solve the problem of living together, had at least succeeded in achieving togetherness by cosmic suicide.[1]

            Even if this comment is intended to be a piece of black humor, which seems likely, as it was a comment made to Admiral Strauss, the capitalist millionaire financier that helped destroy Oppenheimer' political career, and von Neumann's friend,  it is indicative of an apocalyptic mentality that can be seen to accompany transcendent claims to total knowledge and power. One finds examples of it mentioned earlier, in Hitler who, at the end of the war, wanted "world power or ruin". One finds it in centuries of Christian propaganda about the worthlessness of nature and the world and the need to destroy it as a last act of apocalyptic will to power. One finds it in the Jonestown cult, where the leader of the cult, who felt threatened, convinced nearly a thousand people to commit suicide rather the face the consequences of his own inequities.  The species of abstract mathematical and scientific knowledge that von Neumann inherited, espoused and helped create, had very little, if anything to do with people, with human rights or with democracy.  He could only envision "togetherness" in an act of global suicide. Rather than face the inequities and consequences of the scientific mentality, as Einstein appears to have been willing to do when he recognized that the scientific mentality is responsible for the ethical deteriorization that led to Nagasaki, von Neumann laughed and thought if funny that the world could only come together in the interests of human rights in an act of global murder.  This is a testament, I believe, to the impersonal, inhumane aspect of science, and an example of why science must be subordinated to the human context.

            Einstein had said that "we are guilty" meaning the scientists and the scientific mentality. Von Neumann could not question himself, or the belief in "science for science's sake" that put the rights of knowledge and power above human rights. Science is an abstraction not a living being. Science has no rights anymore than god has rights. These are ideas, however exalted they may seem. The only possible check on the abuses of knowledge/power in its many varieties and forms of abstraction, from 'god' to 'science' to 'history and 'truth' appears to be a more exacting application of human rights doctrine.

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