Ourania and the Virtue of Perspective
I believe perspective is a virtue. When serving a higher good, you can’t get anywhere meaningful if you don’t have perspective.
Imagine standing in a desert that stretches to the horizon in all directions. Great sand dunes rise and slope around you like waves, rippled by the wind. Millions and millions of tiny specks of sand pile up high and wide. Each speck - nearly invisible - is totally insignificant in a desert of others just like it. Take away one grain of sand and the desert remains unchanged.
But even in this desert that reaches as far as the eye can see, all of the grains of sand in view represent only an insignificant fraction of the total number of grains of sand on planet Earth. Take away all the sand you see and many millions of deserts just like it remain untouched.
But our planet, as colossal as it seems, is itself a speck when compared to the other celestial bodies nearby. 1000 Earths fit comfortably inside Jupiter. And 1000 Jupiters fit inside the Sun.
And the sun, which is 90 million miles away from Earth, is just one of the many billions of stars in our galaxy, which is over 500 quadrillion miles wide. An insignificant speck in a vast desert of insignificant specks.
Then there are many many galaxies. Two trillion at the latest estimate and the number keeps on growing as we learn to see more of our universe. Scientists predict that there might even be many more universes out there that we have yet to find a way to observe.
We are like that speck of sand. Take away our entire planet and the universe remains unchanged.
But then, we are not so small.
Let's imagine something else. Start with the body made up of organs, each made up of tissues, each made up of cells so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Every cell is an intricately orchestrated machine, managing inputs, sharing resources, sending out signals, and building new forms. Constantly working day and night to keep you doing everything you do.
Those microscopic cells are still built from something smaller. Organelles; mitochondria, nuclei, ribosomes and vacuoles, each performing distinct yet interconnected functions, moving around the molecules that make them as they come together and decay.
And these molecules, smaller still, are made up of atoms bonded with forces we are still seeking to fully understand. Atoms made of particles - protons, neutrons, and electrons- made from smaller particles - gluons, leptons, and quarks - too small to even imagine, moving in ways we can barely comprehend.
Yet human beings are doing the work to discover these depths.
86 billion neurons fire in our brains, trillions of synaptic connections activate as we identify, remember, and imagine the world, simultaneously executing processes, performing billions of calculations per second, investigating many contradicting possibilities in the form of concepts, stories, reason, and feel.
The scale of what is within us more than matches the scale of what is outside of us. We are vast and we contain multitudes. Zooming in and out reveals our limits and our potential. The scope and scale of it all reminds us of the importance of perspective.
Astronomy in Ancient Greece
Ourania is the muse of astronomy. A muse is a kind of spiritual being, appearing as a beautiful inspirational woman. In Greek mythology there are typically nine muses, each in charge of a different realm of science and art. The Nine Muses live on Mount Helicon, north of Athens, where they were worshipped by artists seeking inspiration.
Ourania's identifying symbol is a celestial orb and in Ancient Greek culture she functioned as the inspiration guiding scholars, astronomers, and philosophers in their study of the stars, the planets, and the skies.
But in Ancient Greek astronomy, the sky isn't just a window into outer space. As well as studying the movement of the stars, astronomers also used their discoveries to help inform theories about what was happening in the smallest details of the world they lived in, finding associations and commonalities that linked above to below. The study of the ordered movement of the night sky was connected to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding in general, seeking out the divine order and perceiving the laws of the universe.
Ourania embodies this essence of perspective and shows herself in all of these kinds of pursuits.
The Loss of Perspective
The purpose of gathering knowledge is not just to be clever or to pass a test. More knowledge allows us to grasp a wider context and account for more nuance, leading to better understanding, better decisions, and more successful strategies as we try to do things in the real world.
In ancient times great minds came together to exchange ideas and record their findings. Their discoveries were used by leaders and patrons to drive progress and prosperity. Scholars, alchemists, historians, and astronomers studied at the famous Library of Alexandria, gathering the world's knowledge onto countless scrolls. Homer’s epics, Hippocrates' medical treatises, and the ancient myths of forgotten lands sat side by side along with many other texts that have unfortunately been lost. Not everyone believed that those scrolls were worth preserving and so only a fraction of all that stored up knowledge remains today.
We don't even know for sure how the Library of Alexandria was lost.
We might think that this kind of information loss isn't possible in our era of backed up cloud storage and digital hard drives. But maybe you own some old floppy disks, videotapes, CDs, or USB drives that you can no longer access. Or you might have experienced the pain of a file disappearing from your computer without warning. Even with modern technology, data can become corrupted and obsolescent in a process known as "bit rot".
Without an active effort to preserve it so much information will vanish, just like the scrolls that were lost from the Library of Alexandria, and with it we will lose the perspective it provides.
The great philosopher Socrates distrusted the written word. He believed that information written down only contained a small part of what was meant to be understood. He believed that the lack of context and experience that comes with written information means it is inadequate as a form of knowledge transfer.
Ironically, Plato wrote down what Socrates said about this in a book called Phaedrus:
"At the Egyptian city of Naukratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Thoth; the bird known as the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic, calculation, geometry, astronomy, draughts and dice, but his great discovery was writing.
Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt ... Thoth came and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and dismissed others…
When they came to writing, Thoth claimed that this would make the Egyptians wiser and give them better recall; specifically improving both memory and wisdom.
Thamus replied:
O most ingenious Thoth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the advantages and disadvantages of his own inventions to their users. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.
What you have discovered here is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will actually know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality of it."
If stored knowledge won't last forever and our interest in preserving it begins to fade as soon as it is recorded, we are in real danger of permanently losing a wealth of information. The only things we will be able to really know are things that we can see immediately in front of us. But almost all of the useful information is not obvious. We can't hope to gain a greater perspective if we cannot access the kind of information that requires generations of work to discover.
Our collective knowledge and wisdom - gathered and preserved over millennia - is at constant risk of disappearing into a collective amnesia. Like the lost wisdom of ancient civilisations, our knowledge is always at risk of being completely forgotten. Our task is to both safeguard it and add to it, not only for ourselves but for future generations, maintaining its availability, adaptability, and applicability.
Mertonian Norms
Sociologist Robert K. Merton studied the scientific community of the 1930s and 40s. He noticed that science wasn’t about approved narratives, individual genius, or flashes of insight. It was about the collective effort of a community, shaped by shared expectations and behaviours. He published his discoveries in a paper titled "The Normative Structure of Science".
In this paper he described four core values that guided scientific work:
Communalism - Knowledge discovered by the scientific community is treated as property of the scientific community as a whole, openly shared and accessible to anyone willing to do the necessary work to understand it.
Universalism - Claims are judged objectively on their own merits and treated according to the same high standards, no matter the status and identity of individuals making the claim.
Disinterestedness - Scientists don’t act out of personal interest for profit and status but instead their drive comes from the desire to seek out truth, learn more about the world, and gain greater perspective for the benefit of all.
Organised Scepticism - Challenging ideas and being critical is expected and encouraged, continually questioning claims and testing evidence to see if current understanding still fits new discoveries.
These four principles are abbreviated into the acronym CUDOS and are known together as the Mertonian Norms.
They are the forerunner to my model for applying perspective, which I simply call “Ourania”
When we look at things on a global level, we find that the universe is unimaginably vast. This sense of scale can make us feel small, reminding us that we are just tiny specks in an infinite cosmos. When we properly take in this reality, it brings us to a place of humility. All of our discoveries, all of our achievements, all of our inventions and creations, are just the glimpse of an unending expanse. There is so much of the world that we just don't know.
But this humbling thought doesn’t diminish our motivation, it inspires it. The unknown isn’t something to fear, but something to explore. We adventure into the mysteries of the universe, to chip away at the mountain, one discovery at a time. The more we learn, the deeper we dive into both the massive and the miniscule, perceiving universal truths at every scale, the more we add to the precious archive of human knowledge.
We have the ability to toggle between these two viewpoints, big and small. Zooming out reminds us of our insignificance; zooming in reveals our complexity and interconnectedness. This teaches us to balance the humility needed to remain disinterested in our own gain against the ambition needed to push further and find out more.
This is what happens when we have perspective.
Ourania is our spiritual example for someone who embodies and identifies as someone with perspective. A world with more Ouranias, where perspective is considered a virtue, is a world that truly values knowledge. Both the preservation and application of the knowledge we have already worked to establish and the exploration of the far greater body of knowledge that we haven't yet realised.
When we do this, we ensure the continuation of our wisdom by putting it to good use. This requires consistent and deliberate effort. We must involve ourselves in the process of learning and building so that we retain the perspective that allows us to make wise decisions for the benefit of all. We cannot simply rely on technology to do all of our thinking for us.
Ourania is a key character in my world-building project called "Atherealis"
Atherealis is a beautiful land of peace and abundance organised into a confederation of 18 city states, each overseen by their patrons: nine inspiring women, appearing as The Muses of ancient Greek myth, and nine heroic men, appearing as The Worthies of medieval chivalry.
The Patrons rule with justice and wisdom as a council, meeting in a grand complex of civic buildings known as The Capital.
This huge collection of castles, cathedrals, palaces, and gardens sits at the centre of Atherealis and is home to an elite class of specially trained stewards, universally revered for their exceptional intellect, physical prowess, and emotional resilience.
These volunteers dedicate themselves to serving their communities on behalf of the patrons, living purposefully, according to their to their ancient motto:
"Vitalitas Prosperitas Agentia"
Their hard work grants them access to a vast library of profound manuscripts and magical artefacts concealed deep in the labyrinthine structures of The Captial. This library continuously grows as the stewards engage deeply in mysterious studies and experiments.
Who knows what treasures could be hidden within those cloistered halls?
In future posts I will be talking more about the muses and the worthies and how they embody key virtues that we can take into the future.
- What kind of knowledge do you think we should be preserving to ensure a better future?
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