If you were given an exorbitant financial grant to conduct a research project to study the nature of the unicorn, would you do it? Suppose the grant money was in the millions of dollars—you are a famous natural scientist at a prestigious university—would you in any way be tempted to accept the grant money?
My guess is no. You would not stake your reputation on such an investigation even though it means turning down a huge amount of dollars. But suppose you were promised the funds regardless of your research results. Why, you could study: A Field Guide for Identifying Unicorns by Sound by Craig Conley, as a starting point.
“This book weaves precious bits and pieces of evidence like a Celtic braid, gathering from a wide variety of sources: chronicles of yore, modern-day eyewitness accounts, oral histories and folk traditions, and, of course, myths and legends from around the world.”
You could travel c
ontinents where the fabled creature might have existed. Deep within forests, you could chat to native peoples to get their notions about unicorns. Now that much of the Earth's ice sheet is melting, you could visit uncovered pristine areas hoping to find traces of the fabled animal, maybe even locate a preserved corpse or two.
No? Well then, how about paid research to locate Shangri-La, or the Cyclops, or Atlantis, or a dodo bird? It would be foolish for any respected scientist to hunt for such places or creatures, except possibly for the dodo bird which was first discovered on the island of Mauritius but became extinct by 1681. Of course, there has always been tremendous scientific interest in Atlantis.
So what is the point of all this impractical searching? As a writer, I believe that our species searches for answers, only when it has a hint that an answer exists. Hunting for unicorns is stupid because there never was any real evidence that the single-horned creature ever existed. The same holds true for Cyclops. This legendary one-eyed character had its existence only in fables.
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Article comments
1 - Dr Dreadful
The key is in the kind of hints these various sages and pioneers were getting.
The deistic approach centers on the not altogether logical assumption that since there seems to be an overall structure to the universe, it must have been made by someone or something. Once you make that huge an assumption, you see the signs everywhere.
The scientific approach stops short of that. It observes that since the various natural laws appear to be inextricably linked, there may or must (depending on who you talk to) be some sort of overarching law that governs all the others. Whether such a law was actually enacted by a (conscious?) entity is beyond the remit of science, at least for the space/time being.
I personally feel that although the cosmos does show evidence of a creator, he was probably drunk at the time. I mean, come on.
2 - Rege Schilken
To me, there is a paradox here. On the one hand we search for answers when we (anyone) have an intimation there is an answer to be found. At times we even state our research via the null hypothesis, hoping to, "ah-ha," discover an answer we suspect is there.
On the otherhand, human beings have always searched for the "ultimate" explanation for the universe as IF it is out there.
I don't think the problem lies outside in reality; it is embedded within our mind which refuses to accept meaninglessness even though there is no real alternative. It is as if the logic part of our brain hits a dead end.
3 - Cindy
"our mind which refuses to accept meaninglessness even though there is no real alternative" - So you are an existentialist then?
The irony for me is - Even in finding that there is no answer, you have your answer....
4 - Regis
I guess I might be called an existentialist, but I am not happy with the fact that there is no answer.
Kierkegaard: "The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think."