The Pale Blue Dot and the knowledge systems of science and religion
Wessel Bentley
2021
Verbum et Ecclesia
Another perspective of ourselves 1 Just over three decades ago, on 14 February 1990, while heading towards the outer limits of our solar system, Voyager I 2 received an instruction to turn back its cameras towards earth. This was going to be its last glance at 'home'. This came as a request by Carl Sagan, a world-renowned astronomer and astrophysicist. The resulting image, named Pale Blue Dot (PBD) became an iconic picture of earth, showing the planet as a mere speck, embraced by a ray of
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... ht. 3 Sagan (1994) had the following to say about the image: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar', every 'supreme leader', every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there -on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. (p. 6) 1.This article is dedicated to Prof. Wentzel van Huyssteen. 2.Voyager I was launched by NASA on 5 September 1977 to explore the outer parts of our solar system. In August 2012, it entered interstellar space, the first human-made object to venture this far. 3.For a copy of the image, see https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-blue-dot/ Images, symbols and metaphors are synonymous with the human attempt to makes sense of truths that exceed the limitations of our rigid contextual delineations. In order to comprehend the deeper meanings gained through these tools we are required to employ imagination, cognitive vulnerability, and openness to the idea that there is more to life, reality and meaning than what meets the eye. This article uses the image named Pale Blue Dot as an iconic symbol, exploring the coexistence of science and religion. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article argues that coexistence and cooperation between science and religion is not only a responsible approach in the search for meaning, but is the ideal that reflects the limitations of our knowledge systems in a universe that far exceeds our current understanding and truth convictions.
doi:10.4102/ve.v42i2.2368
fatcat:qob7j5klszadjfbaorepctb4na