Upload
shivani-panchal
View
217
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review
1/5
7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review
2/5
At times Brown seems to be having fun with us. In the early few pages once Langdon
arrives at the physics lab, Kohler, the director is showing him around and they pass a
wind-tunnel experiment where a woman is floating in the room.
Friction, Kohler said. Decreases her aerodynamics so the fan can lift her. He
stared down the corridor again. One square yard of drag will slow a falling bodyalmost twenty percent.
That was it. That one quick sentence, and author Brown tweaks or kids with us by
dropping a dramatic hint:
He never suspected that later that night, in a country hundreds of miles away, the
information would save his life.
I dont really care for that sort of cheap tool of trying to peak our interest in what
comes, but Brown seems to like that sort of device.
For me the more interesting parts of the book have to do with one historical story and
one theological / philosophical theme.
The historical story is that of the Illuminati. On Browns account this was a secret
organization founded by Galileo and other scientists after Galileos trial. They form
this secret society so that on the surface they can do what Galileo did, denounce his
scientific theory in order to save his life, but at this secret level they can continue their
scientific world and at the same time quietly and secretly battle the power of religion
to interfere with science.
Historians of such groups, like Robert Langdon, our super hero, had thought the group
had simply died out over the years, where it had, for some centuries, hidden itself
inside the Masonic movement, something even most Masons didnt know.
Now it seems they never really faded away, and now, with their possession of the
anti-matter, they are in a position to do something about this conflict.
Brown details a history of this group. His treatment is quite persuasive and one finds
oneself coming to think that this group might well be historical, and might really bewhat Langdon tells us it is. When that happened I had to quickly bring myself up short
and say: whoa, wait a minute, this is a book of fiction, and Dan Brown is not Robert
Langdon At times that phenomenon, the bringing me to the edge of thinking of this
as HISTORY, not FICTION, almost made me want to get on the web and see what
was there about the Illuminati. Happily I resisted. First of all, to do the sort of
historical research to figure out whether this was pure Dan Brown fiction or rooted in
7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review
3/5
something historical, would have taken much more time than I was willing to spend,
and probably involve skills I dont have.
However, there was a second major theme about which I do know a good deal and do
have lots of the skills. The central theme of religion versus science.
The central question is of the existence of God, and the origins of the cosmos. This isone question, not two in Dan Browns formulation. The battle is between the religious
folks, especially in this novel, the Roman Catholics, who following scripture, believe
God created the cosmos out of nothing, and the scientific community which tends not
to believe in such a creating spirit, but is working on scientific explanations for the
origins of the cosmos. The Big Bang theory wont work as a solution since it puts off
the question where did the matter come from that went bang. Even some Catholic
theologians could accept The Big Bang, but still hold that God created the original
matter and caused the bang to bang.
One of the theses put forward in the novel is that this work of Vittoria Vetra and her
father with anti-matter, might be close to a solution to this old question in a way that
satisfies BOTH the scientific community and the religious community, so that the old
split between religion and science would be seen as bogus.
And, on the novels hypothesis, this explains the Illuminatis involvement, since they
are bitterly opposed to religion and wouldnt want this accommodation to come to
fruition.
Throughout the novel there is a running sub-theme of this question about the possiblecompatibility of scientific and theological understandings of the origins of everything,
the cosmos, this planet Earth and the people on it. Kohler, the director of the physics
lab sees these questions a being historically theological and religious questions, but
increasingly scientific ones:
And these answers are in a physics lab?You sound surprised.
I am. The questions seem spiritual.
Mr. Langdon, all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time,
spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did notunderstand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a
flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has
now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all Gods will be proven to be false
idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There
are only a few questions left, and they are the esoteric ones. Where do we come from?
What are we doing here? What is the meaning life and the universe?
7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review
4/5
Langdon was amazed. And these are questions CERN is trying to answer?Correction. These are questions we are answering.
The novel uses an omnipotent narrator, and Brown allows the discussion of these
topics to remain at the surface and with a rather strong bias to the view that the
scientific views on the question of the origins of the cosmos are inadequate.
On another issue he does the same sort of trivial move. Langdon asks the camerlengo
(aide to the Pope) how is it that can God be both omnipotent and benevolent given
what happens to people in the worldthis is a version of the problem of evil
argument: How could a good God allow such suffering in the world.
The camerlengo cites parenting and yet claiming even a good parent might let a child
skateboard, when he might get hurt. Langdon answers that he would allow it but give
the child some guidance and then let him learn on his own. The camerlengo replies:
So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your childs pain, you
would choose to show you love by letting him learn his own lessons?
Now, that reply might work to solve the problem of the benevolent parent allowing
his or her child to use a skateboard, but it utterly ignores the question of a God who is
not only supposed to be benevolent, but also omnipotent. And in the case the
camerlengo sites, the child is willful about the skateboarding. The interesting cases are
when people who do everything their God has asked, yet great misfortune, even death
come to them. An omnipotent God would know this an, were the God truly
benevolent, wouldnt seem to be able to allow this to happen.
In another place one of the theologians attacks the positions of science:
Who is the God science? Who is the God who offers his people powers but no moral
framework to tell you how to use that power? What kind of God gives a child fire but
does not warn the child of its dangers? Science textbooks tell us how to create a
nuclear reaction and yet they contain no chapter asking us if it is a good or bad idea.
This too is a trivial reply. It already assumes what it asks, namely that there must be
an absolute and external source of this knowledge. However, it is evenTHEOLOGICALLY possible that the human beings must choose what is morally
good and acceptable in the face of a world where we humans do know for sure what
the answers to such questions are.
7/31/2019 Angels and Demons Book Review
5/5
The frustration for me with this sort of theological / philosophical argumentation
which Brown presents is that he gives it the appearance of sophistication, but the
discussions remain at the level of the trivial.
It leads me to suspect the same situation may well be true of the scientific questions
involved, but that Im just not sophisticated enough in science to know where the lackof seriousness occurs.
Despite these quarrels, the novel, while perhaps not intellectually exciting, is certainly
an excellent thriller. I read the 571 page book in about 3 days, and that is reading with
some serious attention, not racing. I kept wanting to know what would happen next,
and spent hours in my comfortable reading chair, nice glass of wine next to me, and
enjoyed being transported into a world of dangerous fiction which Id never want to
participate in, but had lots of fun reading about it.