I‘ve been thinking lately about being human. This is not necessarily a new thing for me, but, especially when I teach new media, I find myself drawn to what we humans do and what it is that defines us as human. I understand that “human” has both a physical and discursive reality; i.e., we have our physical relationship to our environments that we experience through our body and its senses, and an ever-changing and evolving conception of ourselves in relation to the universe. Call the first relationship that of science and the latter that of philosophy. I understand that this distinction is wrought with problems, but it’s the distinction itself that concerns the scientific myth that we humans seem to privilege: that of order.

Part of being human is attempting to reconcile our relationship with nature. Nature, itself, is a tricky word — many things have become naturalized; for example, a woman’s biological clock, human curiosity in the unknown, gender, patriarchal privilege. I mean the physical universe that we find ourselves in and that thousands of years of mythology has tried to pattern and order so that our limited, but evolving, human intellect can make our environment more sensical and less chaotic. As our intellect evolved, our stories became more complex and subtle to mirror our increasing understanding of universe. We have progressed far, but there’s still much we have yet to fathom.

Astronomy has been one way that humanity seems to have always embraced as holding the keys to understanding. Whether is has been explained as the perfect abode of the gods, the offspring of Gaea, Uranus, or the abode of planets and galaxies, humans have always looked to the sky as a source of mystery and certainty — a place of grandeur and order in which lies the answers to many of our questions about ourselves and how we fit into the clockwork of creation — a position that many still embrace, a remnant of the Enlightenment and a position that gives credence to the religious faithful.

This idea becomes most apparent when reading Richard Garfinkle’s novel Celestial Matters. Historically placed about a millennium after Aristotle, Garfinkle’s novel is set in a real manifestation of a Ptolemaic universe: the characters live on earth at the center of the universe, around which circle the ’Ermes, Aphrodite, ’Elios, Ares, Zeus, Saturn, the fixed stars, and the Sphere of the Prime Mover. Garfinkle writes a hard science fiction novel of “alternate science” that could be called a novel of golden age sf, where an almost romantic faith in science can solve the problems of the world and help humanity though their most difficult endeavors.

Yet, science does not represent the only order of this world: there is a connection between science and religion, a mixture of Greek mythology and science that has progressed as if a two-thousand year old view of medicine in this world (one based on humors that is now seen as quaintly naive) was in reality accurate. While religion is an important part of the workings of this world, these are not the gods of Homer, but are more like allegorical representations of the characters’ dispositions and caprices. When Athena speaks through the protagonist Aias, he says something wise so that the other characters feel as if the god is present. Before picking up this book, any reader would be advised to review the Greek pantheon. I found myself having to look up a few names just for some context.

Another part of this combination of science and religion reminds me of the contention in many of the great Greek tragedies between a traditional, superstitious view of the universe ruled by the whims of the gods and one that upholds human reason and intellect as capable of understanding and explaining the world. Sophocles saw these as disparate and irreconcilable views of the universe that cause humans to err, losing faith in their traditions, blinded by the hubris that places humanity in a godlike position. The height of Athenian culture was also a time of insecurity and desperation for many, when the old religious ways were being usurped by a new focus in the powers of the human intellect. The height of Athens would not last for long in our history, but in Celestial Matters, Garfinkle reconciles religious devotion with that of philosophy turned science through an Aristotle that never was.

The heroes of this alternative universe — one that is strikingly similar in many ways — are Aristotle and Alexander, the former for his scientific knowledge and the latter for his military prowess. The culture is right out of Plato’s Republic, where poets are venerated, but banned; where the citizens and scientists are ruled by an elite class of Philosopher-Kings; where this hierarchy is maintained by a race of born Spartan warriors. Aristotle and Alexander represent that two concerns of this culture: military might and scientific positivism.

This western view, that of the “Delian League,” is contrasted with that of the Middle Kingdom, or eastern perspectives of the workings of the universe that prove, when given the chance, equally convincing in their view of how things work.

The lesson of Celestial Matters seems to be a liberal one: that no matter how much we know, there are always other ways of looking at it, other discourses, other orders. We only get into trouble when we privilege one system over another, no matter how certain we are of the Truth. Garfinkle’s protagonists are products of rigid systems, but there seems to be a faith that no matter how ossified the system, we, as humans, can transcend those systems to become more. We are not determined by our nature or our culture, that we are divine in our ability to wonder and imagine new possibilities. Garfinkle’s view depicts two seemingly disparate and irreconcilable cultures coming together for the benefit of something more than their ideas of the world. It’s sf like this that seems necessary in a polarized world like ours.

Check it out.