The word ALGEBRA floated across the sky, surrounded by a series of multivariable equations. Next came the word ALGORITHM with a diverse array of formulas. Then AZIMUTH with a diagram depicting angles on the earth’s horizon. The flow accelerated…NADIR, ZENITH, ALCHEMY, CHEMISTRY, CIPHER, ELIXIR, ALCOHOL, ALKALINE, ZERO…
As the familiar Arabic words streamed by, Langdon thought how tragic it was that so many Americans pictured Baghdad simply as one of those many dusty, war-torn Middle Eastern cities in the news, never knowing it was once the very heart of human scientific progress.
“By the end of the eleventh century,” Edmond said, “the greatest intellectual exploration and discovery on earth was taking place in and around Baghdad. Then, almost overnight, that changed. A brilliant scholar named Hamid al-Ghazali—now considered one of the most influential Muslims in history—wrote a series of persuasive texts questioning the logic of Plato and Aristotle and declaring mathematics to be ‘the philosophy of the devil.’ This began a confluence of events that undermined scientific thinking. The study of theology was made compulsory, and eventually the entire Islamic scientific movement collapsed.”
The scientific words overhead evaporated, and were replaced by images of Islamic religious texts.
“Revelation replaced investigation. And to this day, the Islamic scientific world is still trying to recover.” Edmond paused. “Of course, the Christian scientific world did not fare any better.”
Paintings of the astronomers Copernicus, Galileo, and Bruno appeared on the ceiling.
“The Church’s systematic murder, imprisonment, and denunciation of some of history’s most brilliant scientific minds delayed human progress by at least a century. Fortunately, today, with our better understanding of the benefits of science, the Church has tempered its attacks…” Edmond sighed. “Or has it?”
A globe logo with a crucifix and serpent appeared with the text:
Madrid Declaration on Science & Life
“Right here in Spain, the World Federation of the Catholic Medical Associations recently declared war on genetic engineering, proclaiming that ‘science lacks soul’ and therefore should be restrained by the Church.”
The globe logo now transformed into a different circle—a schematic blueprint for a massive particle accelerator.
“And this was Texas’s Superconducting Super Collider—slated to be the largest particle collider in the world—with the potential for exploring the very moment of Creation. This machine was, ironically, positioned in the heart of America’s Bible Belt.”
The image dissolved into a massive ring-shaped cement structure stretching out across the Texas desert. The facility was only half built, covered with dust and dirt, apparently abandoned midway through its construction.
“America’s super collider could have enormously advanced humankind’s understanding of the universe, but the project was canceled due to cost overruns and political pressure from some startling sources.”
A news clip showed a young televangelist waving the bestselling book The God Particle and angrily shouting, “We should be looking for God inside our hearts! Not inside of atoms! Spending billions on this absurd experiment is an embarrassment to the state of Texas and an affront to God!”
Edmond’s voice returned. “These conflicts I’ve described—those in which religious superstition has trumped reason—are merely skirmishes in an ongoing war.”
The ceiling blazed suddenly with a collage of violent images from modern society—picket lines outside genetic research labs, a priest setting himself on fire outside a Transhumanism conference, evangelicals shaking their fists and holding up the book of Genesis, a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish, angry religious billboards condemning stem-cell research, gay rights, and abortion, along with equally angry billboards in response.
As Langdon lay in the darkness, he could feel his heart pounding. For a moment, he thought the grass beneath him was trembling, as if a subway were approaching. Then, as the vibrations grew stronger, he realized the earth was indeed shaking. Deep, rolling vibrations shuddered up through the grass beneath his back, and the entire dome trembled with a roar.
The roar, Langdon now recognized, was the sound of thundering river rapids, being broadcast through subwoofers beneath the turf. He felt a cold, damp mist swirling across his face and body, as if he were lying in the middle of a raging river.
“Do you hear that sound?” Edmond called over the booming rapids. “That is the inexorable swelling of the River of Scientific Knowledge!”
The water roared even louder now, and the mist felt wet on Langdon’s cheeks.
“Since man first discovered fire,” Edmond shouted, “this river has been gaining power. Every discovery became a tool with which we made new discoveries, each time adding a drop to this river. Today, we ride the crest of a tsunami, a deluge that rages forward with unstoppable force!”
The room trembled more violently still.
“Where do we come from!” Edmond yelled. “Where are we going! We have always been destined to find the answers! Our methods of inquiry have been evolving exponentially for millennia!”
The mist and wind whipped through the room now, and the thundering of the river reached an almost deafening pitch.
“Consider this!” Edmond declared. “It took early humans over a million years to progress from discovering fire to inventing the wheel. Then it took only a few thousand years to invent the printing press. Then it took only a couple hundred years to build a telescope. In the centuries that followed, in ever-shortening spans, we bounded from the steam engine, to gas-powered automobiles, to the Space Shuttle! And then, it took only two decades for us to start modifying our own DNA!
“We now measure scientific progress in months,” Kirsch shouted, “advancing at a mind-boggling pace. It will not take long before today’s fastest supercomputer will look like an abacus; today’s most advanced surgical methods will seem barbaric; and today’s energy sources will seem as quaint to us as using a candle to light a room!”
Edmond’s voice and the roar of pounding water continued in the thundering darkness.
“The early Greeks had to look back centuries to study ancient culture, but we need look back only a single generation to find those who lived without the technologies we take for granted today. The timeline of human development is compressing; the space that separates ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ is shrinking to nothing at all. And for this reason, I give you my word that the next few years in human development will be shocking, disruptive, and wholly unimaginable!”
Without warning, the thundering of the river stopped.
The sky of stars returned. So did the warm breeze and the crickets.
The guests in the room seemed to exhale in unison.
In the abrupt silence, Edmond’s voice returned at a whisper.
“My friends,” he said softly. “I know you are here because I promised you a discovery, and I thank you for indulging me in a bit of preamble. Now let us throw off the shackles of our past thinking. It is time for us to share in the thrill of discovery.”
With those words, a low creeping fog rolled in from all sides, and the sky overhead began to glow with a predawn light, faintly illuminating the audience below.
Suddenly a spotlight blazed to life and swung dramatically to the back of the hall. Within moments, nearly all the guests were sitting up, craning backward through the fog in anticipation of seeing their host appear in the flesh. After a few seconds, however, the spotlight swung back to the front of the room.
The audience turned with it.
There, at the front of the room, smiling in the blaze of the spotlight, stood Edmond Kirsch. His hands were resting confidently on the sides of a podium that seconds ago had not been there. “Good evening, friends,” the great showman said amiably as the fog began to lift.
Within seconds, people were on their feet, giving their host a wild standing ovation. Langdon joined them, unable to hold back his smile.