Enlightenment's road to Heaven or Hell

List-making is a popular sport, particularly at a moment in history that marks the end or beginning of an era. In addressing the question of "the five most significant moments of the millennium," I can't help but feel humbled by the many advances, the failures, the abject futility and the frequency of re-creation in human behavior.

There are events whose ability to shape history is incalculable, beyond the mere recitation of victims and beneficiaries.

The first of these in my opinion is Galileo's telescope, which produced the obvious scientific claim that the earth is not the center of the solar system around which other planets revolve. Galileo produced an emotional and religious revolution, one that challenged the legitimacy of the church and put in stark contention religion and science.

While Galileo was punished for his "heresy," the punishment was born out of fear that faith would be destroyed. In effect, church leaders were saying if the system on which religious doctrine is wrong, what will replace it" Without an answer, they lashed out at Galileo, confusing science with doctrine,. faith with empiricism. With this conflict modemity was born.

Second on my list is the Enlightenment, which introduced and made palpable rational thought. The idea that mankind could shape its destiny forcing into compliance history @s evolution was earthshaking. In its extreme manifestation the Enlightenment so apotheosized man's role that it severed the bond between an all powerful Creator and those who serve His will. That seeming loss of mankind's humility resulted in a fascination with Marxism, the French and Russian revolutions, as well as the rise of Nazism.

In its moderate form the rationalist idea was wedded to the presumption of original sin, so that a system of governmental checks and balances could emerge and a democratic republic could be seriously entertained. Modem forms of constitutional states owe their provenance to the positive dimensions of Enlightenment ideals.

Third is the founding of the United States, a land that combined theory and practice, the august with the Augustinian. A world without the United States, notwithstanding its critics, would be a diminished globe, not only diminished in wealth and technology but also diminished in spirit and verve.

Beacon of Liberty

It is not a cliche to argue America is the last best hope for mankind and the beacon of liberty. Had the United States never been created, the idea of a nation built on the foundation stone of religious freedom and economic opportunity would reside only in the hearts of well-meaning people.

My fourth candidate is the harnessing of electricity. What Edison's innovations engendered was a breakthrough in power generation, communications, human comfort and knowledge expansion. From the telegraph to the computer, electricity was "the engine that could."

Moreover, the wiring of electricity mirrored the hard wiring in the brain allowing the transmission of impulses at speeds comparable to those within the brain. Artificial intelligence is not possible without electricity. It is to modem life what fire was for Prometheus. New worlds are opened, including dangerous ones where computers with human instincts are declared sentient, seeking rights and protections given to human beings.

Last, is the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick (the Double Helix) in the early 1950s. While the full effect of genetic manipulation can only be contemplated and the mapping of the genome system will be completed a few years in the future, this discovery opens new frontiers for disease elimination and nightmarish scenarios out of a Mary Shelley novel.

While the technical and ethical challenges ahead are formidable, DNA and the subsequent research it has evoked raise the most basic question of the millennium: What does it mean to be human? At no point in the last thousand years have people been so perplexed about the answer to this query.

Clearly not every one of my candidates for "momentous events" of the millennium is positive. Words like "significant" and "momentous" imply a breakthrough effect. With that as the criterion I stand by my list, recognizing, as I do, that one man's view of history is another man's view of hell.

Mr London is president of the Hudson Institute and John M. Olin professor of humanities at New York University.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Dec 31, 1999
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