New ‘Cosmos’ series gets history wrong

Published 9:35 pm Wednesday, March 12, 2014

It’s tempting to think that the resurrected “Cosmos” series, now running on several Fox networks, could reignite some old culture war skirmishes. And indeed, judging from some of show host Neil deGrasse Tyson’s comments, the series’ creators expect that it will.

But Cosmos and producer Seth McFarlane profoundly misunderstand the times and the very questions they purport to answer. Faith isn’t at war with science. Reason is at war with unreason.

When Carl Sagan’s original “Cosmos” aired in 13 parts in 1980, he led with the fundamental claim of modernism: “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Many heard in that phrase the claim that only the observable universe is real.

Whether Sagan meant that, precisely, is still the subject of some debate. But people of faith took issue, and countered that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in natural philosophy.

Yet that’s not the battle that’s raging now. Modernism is passé. The new way of seeing the universe is post-modern. Where modernism said only what can be measured is real, post-modernism says measures themselves are constructs, and reality and meaning are in the eye of the beholder. Interpretation, not intent, is what matters.

Put even more simply, modernism said “science is all the truth there is.” Post-modernism says what’s true for me might not be what’s true for you.

And here’s where “Cosmos” goes wrong. It dispenses with facts, in order to come to the “right” conclusions — a decidedly unscientific approach.

“The centerpiece of the first episode is a lengthy animated story about the persecution of the 16th-century monk and astronomer Giordano Bruno,” Time magazine explains. “The message is plain: there is a right side and a wrong side of intellectual history, and Cosmos is not afraid to say that science is on the right one.”

Only, the facts don’t fit with the narrative.

Giordano Bruno was not, in fact, a martyr for science. As disturbing as his persecution was, it was not a result of his cosmological theories. It was for his rejection of Catholic theological doctrine. He didn’t believe Jesus was anything but “an unusually skilled magician,” and he rejected pretty much every point of Catholic teaching. Real scientists of the day, including Galileo and Kepler, rejected him just as much (if not as forcefully or fatally) as the Church did.

And that’s important. Science should be about observable fact (Sagan got that right). Bending the truth to achieve an approved result is not scientific in the least.

Seth McFarlane claims his show is about separating science from politics.

“Long accepted scientific truths have been brought into question largely — who are we kidding? — by one side of the aisle, solely for the purpose of generating passion that could be shaped into various agendas,” he said last week.

But his very quote shows a political motive behind the reboot.

The original “Cosmos” was a modernist marvel — incomplete, according to people of faith, but admirable. The new “Cosmos” is merely a post-modernist mess.