Throughout my education, whenever I encountered a difficult scientific
subject that my textbook did not explain sufficiently, I could almost
always go to an Asimov book or essay and find an illuminating and
clear explanation of the concept, for example, in “The Intelligent
Man’s Guide to Science” (3) or in “Quick and Easy Math” (4) or in
“Realm of Algebra.”(5) There were also his many science essays to
reference. Most of these were collected in about forty books of
essays from various sources, especially from his monthly column
in “Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine.” The first such collection
“Fact and Fancy” (6) came out in 1962 when I was just entering college.
I include this trivia about my own educational experience with Isaac
Asimov’s writing for this purpose: I think that his kind of clear
thinking and ability to explain difficult concepts to those who desire
knowledge is a valuable asset to those who would count themselves
as Humanists and think that the philosophy of Humanism is something
that ought to be widely disseminated. And in striving toward that
end we should aspire to the clear and lucid style that Asimov was
the master of that so engaged and captivated his audiences.
There are all sorts of books, articles and essays on Humanism: those
that define the term itself, those that trace the history of the movement,
and those that trace the evolution of the word humanism and humanities
as a designation for those interested in the classical writings of
the Greek and Roman authors of antiquity. I take a different approach.
For me Isaac Asimov exemplifies what a humanist should be, not a
perfect paragon of virtue, but a perfectly fallible human being who
lived his life in a humanistic fashion.
I do not consider Dr. Asimov any sort of humanistic messiah, only
an honorable and good man, a brilliant and prolific writer, and an
obvious example of what a humanist can aspire be.
If we do not honor our own Humanistic “saints” and attempt to keep
their memory and example alive, then we deserve the neglect and the
lack of notice usually paid to us by the rest of the world. And we
should not expect others to notice that persons of great moral fiber
and exemplary character are found outside of the mainstream religious
movements. We need to refute the suppositions make by national leaders
like Joseph Lieberman, that it is not possible to lead a moral life
without God and religion to keep us on the straight and narrow.
There are no "Christs" of humanism, only many disciples of the concept
and philosophy grounded in experience and reason. However, many of
us, along with Dr. Asimov, think that the true salvation of individuals,
and ultimately of our civilization, is in turning away from the credulous
beliefs and delusions offered by ancient wonder stories and myths
with their inflexible absolutes and the intolerances that they inevitably
espouse.
Our civilization needs to come to the realization that, as Dr. Asimov
said, “if ills are to be averted, it is humanity that will have to
do the job.” (7) My essay will both illuminate the career of an exemplary
Humanist and help set out in pragmatic terms what is meant when someone
says that they try to live their life according to Humanist principles. Return To Top
Humanism
Is a Rational Philosophy
Even though most ministers in this modern age have studied the advances
in Bible scholarship of the last 200 years and know the true history
behind Biblical myths, they continue to preach these traditional myths
unchanged and unqualified to their credulous flocks. This, to me is
the ultimate breech of faith and an example of a lack of integrity
that Isaac Asimov would not be capable of.
In the 1960’s, Asimov became involved in writing a series of science
textbooks. In 1969 the publisher told him that California might no
longer buy textbooks that teach evolution as a fact. He replied: “I
am writing Evolution and I have every intention of talking about evolution
as fact. What’s more I don’t intend to as much as mention Genesis.
If this means writing off California, so be it. I don’t have to be
a millionaire. I do have to have my self-respect.”
He fought them off for two more years. Here is another of his responses
to their attempt to modify the word “evolution” out of the text: “I
think you are making a terrible mistake in trying to compromise with
the superstitionists. I am the author of the sections on biological
evolution, and I will not allow this kind of change. I will not permit
the word “evolution” to be taken out and “biological change” to be
substituted. I will not permit the section to be weakened and watered
down. Then finally, in the third year, when he finally lost the battle
(in 1978) he wrote them again: “Thank you for removing my name from
the books.” (8)
This Humanist, Isaac Asimov, was the national president of The American
Humanist Association, the AHA, from 1985 until his death in 1992.
During those eight years the AHA grew in numbers and prestige in the
eyes of the world as a result of his association with the group. Below
is Isaac Asimov’s own personal statement of his Humanism taken from
his autobiography.
"I believe in the scientific method and the rule of reason
as a way of understanding the natural Universe. I don’t believe
in the existence of entities that cannot be reached by such a method…
and that are therefore 'supernatural.' I certainly don’t believe
in the mythologies of our society, in heaven and hell, in God and
angels, in Satan and demons…. Humanists believe that human beings
produced the progressive advance of human society and also the ills
that plague it. They believe that if the ills are to be alleviated,
it is humans that will have to do the job. They disbelieve in the
influence of the supernatural on either the good or the bad of society,
on either its ills or the alleviation of those ills.” (9)
Isaac Asimov was a signer of both the first (1933) and the second
(1973) Humanist Manifestos. Return
To Top
Informed
By Science
Isaac Asimov was born in Russia on or about January 2,
1920. After coming to this country with his parents when he was three,
he grew up in New York City in the borough of Brooklyn. He finished
high school at the age of 15, having skipped two grades because of
his precociousness.
He gained both BS in chemistry and a Ph.D., in biochemistry from
Columbia University. His graduate studies were broken by a brief tour
of duty, (8 months and 26 days), in the army immediately following
World War II). [[He went to work for Boston University in 1955 teaching
biochemistry in the medical school and researching nucleic acid (DNA,
RNA). He described himself as a good teacher but a poor research scientist.
Because of his belief that the primary duty of a teacher is to educate
his students rather than publish papers to enhance the reputation
of his institution, he came into conflict with the administration.
The dictum “publish or perish” was a stark reality in those days,
and professors who were frequent publishers even of mediocre research
were valued above those who were merely excellent teachers.
As a result of this ongoing conflict, and because of his continued
success in publishing science fiction, in 1958, after merely three
years of shaping the minds of the youth of Boston University, he decided
to make the attempt to support himself and his family as a full-time
professional writer. He was able to do so very successfully for the
rest of his life.
Among his many books and essays are quite a few on the importance
of being informed by science. He was a great fan of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos
series and thought that in addition to being excellent entertainment
it served a valuable function. He believed that it was important to
have a public that was informed about science for many reasons. Among
the most important reasons was that science needs the support of the
public in order to continue to provide the basis for the technological
advances that have made the lives of most of the people of the world
healthier, richer, and more comfortable. He believed that knowledge
of science prepares people to make intelligent decisions that affect
their daily lives in this complex modern society. He also stated:
“The difference between understanding and not understanding is also
the difference between respect and admiration on the one side, and
hate and fear on the other.” (10)
In one of his essays, he proposed establishing a Science Corps equivalent
to the Peace Corps that would take young people and get them involved
in science at an early age. Part of his motivation for proposing this
concept was to help the U.S. remain competitive with other countries,
like Japan and Germany, which now outstrip us in graduating competent
scientists and engineers. (11) Return
To Top
Inspired
by Art
In his essay entitled “Science and Beauty,” Isaac
Asimov takes Walt Whitman to task for his poem about “the learned
astronomer.” In this poem, Whitman implies that learning facts about
the stars from an astronomer’s talk is terribly boring, that there
is no beauty in this sort of exercise, and furthermore that science
destroys beauty by illuminating it. [[Asimov replies in somewhat poetic
language of his own:
The trouble is that Whitman is talking through his hat, but the
poor soul didn’t know any better.
I don’t deny that the night sky is beautiful, and I have in my
time spread out on a hillside for hours looking at the stars and
being awed by their beauty…. But what I see--those quiet, twinkling
points of light--is not all the beauty there is. Should I stare
lovingly at a single leaf and willingly remain ignorant of the forest?
Should I be satisfied to watch the sun glinting off a single pebble
and scorn any knowledge of a beach?
Those bright spots in the sky that we call planets, are worlds.
There are worlds with thick atmospheres of carbon dioxide and sulfuric
acid; worlds of red hot liquid with hurricanes that could gulp down
the whole earth; dead worlds with quiet pock-marks of craters; worlds
with volcanoes puffing plumes of dust into airlessness; worlds with
pink and desolate deserts--each with a weird and unearthly beauty
that boils down to a mere speck of light if we just gaze at the
night sky.(12)
He goes on for several more paragraphs describing in beautiful and
poetic language those stars and the other things that Whitman in his
short sightedness did not see when he “look’d up from time to time.”
He concludes:
And all this vision--far beyond the scale of human imaginings--was
made possible by the works of hundreds of 'learn’d' astronomers.
All of it; all of it was discovered after the death of Whitman in
1892, and most of it in the past twenty-five years, so that the
poor poet never knew what a stultified and limited beauty he observed
when he ‘look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.’”(12)
And while we are on the subject of art and beauty, I must mention
Asimov’s suggestion (original with him) of a unit for quantifying
the measurement of beauty: “the millihelen.” If the beauty of Helen
of Troy was sufficient to launch a thousand ships, then one millihelen
would be beauty sufficient to launch a single ship. Perhaps Phyllis
Diller would rate a minus 3 (a face that could sink 3 ships) and Famke
Jannssen would be somewhere up around a positive 835.
We would have a better grasp on the true value of art if we could
apply the “Asimov System” to say, famous paintings that we now have
no way of knowing the actual value of. For example Van Gogh’s “Starry
Night” would get 576, Picasso’s “Man with a Blue Guitar” would rate
a 721, Bruegel’s “A Peasant Wedding” would rate a 443, and Leonardo’s
“Creation of Adam” would get an exact 806.
This is only a modest sample. If the directors of the major art
museums would contact me I could be willing (for a small fee) to go
through their inventories and attach millihelen rating to their entire
collections. The Asimovian system could revolutionize the whole art
industry.
Asimov sold his first science fiction story, “Marooned off Vesta”
to Amazing Stories when he was 18 years old and continued to sell
and publish science fiction stories all through his college and army
days. The small income (one cent per word) from these stories helped
put him though college.
Even though his family was Jewish, his parents did not educate him
in the Jewish religion. He was left free to pursue what was to become
his own first religion: not humanism, but science fiction.
J. M. Corbett in his book “Religion in America” defines religion
as “an integrated system of belief by which people find meaning in
their lives by orienting them to what they see as sacred, holy, or
of the highest value.(13) I think that both humanism and science fiction
(to a truly dedicated fan) qualify under that definition.
But there is a major difference in the religion of science fiction
and most other religions. Including the word fiction in the name of
this “church” implies that its faithful realize that, after entering
briefly into the “willing suspension of disbelief” in order to experience
its wonders, they are required by the word “science” to return to
their empirical existence in the concrete world, governed by the comforting,
but somewhat more confining, laws of nature. The “religion” of “humanism”
has similar requirements.
Michael Shermer has published statistical studies in his book “How
we Believe,” that show that a person has a much better chance of escaping
the development of irrational and rigid beliefs, if his mind is not
bent by relentless religious indoctrination before the teen years.
(14) This seems to have been the case with Isaac Asimov. Here are
his words from one of his1983 letters to that effect:
I have never had to develop my humanist beliefs and ideals against
a surrounding religious belief, since I was brought up without any
religion whatever. The result is that a rational, secular view is
as natural to me as breathing air is, and nowhere inside me, no
matter how deeply one probes, is there any conflict about it, any
hidden shame or fear. The result is I that I have never had to think
about my humanism or find any system of apologetics for it. It just
is.
If his basic assumption is correct, then we should suspect that the
natural philosophy of the unindoctrinated human is Humanism. And it
would seem that we should work harder to present the ideas of humanism,
with its critical thinking skills, to youth early in their development.
We should also try to convince those who have charge of the education
of the young, that the mentally healthiest course of action is not
to impose artificial and unnatural (supernatural) systems on them
at an early age. It would be wiser to present them with a broad historical
perspective on religion and allow them to choose for themselves when
they achieve maturity. Return
To Top
Motivated
by Compassion
The young Isaac Asimov was a voracious reader and consumed everything
that interested him, including the science fiction pulp magazines
in his father’s candy store, where he was required to work most of
the hours that he was not in school, in order to help the family survive.
His father valued learning highly and permitted him to read science
fiction because it contained the word “science.” In his young years
he and his family endured a severe depression which put much of the
country on bread lines and a few years later a world war. The Asimov
family escaped the direst of poverty by having the whole family employed
in the family business. The young Asimov never shirked his duty to
his family even though other children his age had no such responsibilities.
He even claims that the schedule he learned in those days in the candy
store gave him habits of work that were to serve him well in later
life.
The public library played a role in helping him develop his humanism.
He was given a library card at an early age and allowed to go, by
himself, to the library, where he could check out two books at a time.
He practically memorized the Iliad. He must have been impressed with
the humanistic writings of Charles Dickens because he reports that
he read Pickwick Papers 26 times and Nicholas Nickleby 10 times.(15)
His young mind was also shaped by the events taking place in the
world of his day. Hitler and his racist, power-mad forces were rising
to power in Europe. During his early years, racism was an accepted
fact of life. In his 1974 autobiographical annotation of the science
fiction of the1920’s and 1930’s entitled Before the Golden Age he wrote the following:
The trouble is that racial stereotypes, unfavorable to everyone
but white men of northwestern European extraction, were completely
accepted and, indeed, scarcely noticed in those days of only forty
years ago (except perhaps by members of the groups victimized thereby).
The chief villains in “Submicroscopic” (by Capt. S.P Meek), however
are the Mena who are black, brutal, disgusting and cannibalistic.
In “Awlo of Ulm” (byCapt. S.P. Meek)” the villains are the men of
Kau, who are intelligent and scientifically advanced but who are
yellow in color and very, very cruel. This picture of the savage
black (given in almost every adventure story dealing with the far
corners of the world, from Robinson Crusoe on) and the cruel Oriental
(remember Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless) was drummed into young
heads until it became second nature. (17)
That we have come as far as we have in forty years is hopeful,
though I believe it is more through the fact that Hitler’s excesses
made racism poisonous to any humane individual than through our
own virtue. That we have much farther to go even now is incontestable.
(18)
And even today in the year 2001, 27 years later, it is still incontestable.
Not all humanists are members of persecuted minorities, as was Isaac
Asimov. But one does not have to be persecuted to see that it is wrong
to be the one doing the persecuting. And Isaac Asimov admitted that,
even though he was the child of Jewish parents, he has never suffered
any real persecution because of that fact “even though the undercurrent
of genteel anti-Semitism was always there” (19) . He was picked on
somewhat in his youth, but he admits that he brought some of it on
himself because of his know-it-all attitude, which he finally conquered
as a result of an epiphany while in the army in Hawaii. (20) Return
To Top
Affirming
the Dignity of Each Human Being
All the humanists that I know have developed an aversion to the type
of attitude described above, partially through a liberal education
by their parents, other early influences, and partially through their
own natural humanistic empathy for other human beings. Humanists as
a group have sworn to affirm the dignity of every human being (see
the introductory credo). It is part of the mission of humanists throughout
the world to educate others to also do so as well.
Because Isaac Asimov is an astute student of human nature, he sees
the problem of prejudice as universal:
It struck me, however, that prejudice was universal and that all
groups who were not dominant, who were not actually at the top of
the status chain, were potential victims. In Europe in the 1930s,
it was the Jews who were being spectacularly victimized, but in
the US it was not the Jews who were worst treated. Here, as anyone
could see who did not deliberately keep his eyes shut, it was the
African-Americans.(21)
It constantly bothered me to have to denounce anti-Semitism unless
I denounced the cruelty of man to man in general.(22)
When Pagan Rome persecuted the early Christians, the Christians
pleaded for tolerance. When Christianity took over, was there tolerance?
Not on your life. The persecution began at once in the other direction.(23)
Asimov advises all to take the advice of Exodus 22:21: “Thou shalt
neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him; for ye were strangers in
the land of Egypt.” (24) Return
To Top
Humanism
Supports the Maximization of Individual Liberty and Opportunity Consonant
with Social and Planetary Responsibility
Although the American Humanist Association has just recently begun
heavily involvement in environmental issues, Isaac Asimov has been
speaking and writing on the topic for decades. It is one of his favorite
issues. In fact, one of the last books he published was collaboration
with his friend and fellow science fiction author Frederik Pohl called This Angry Earth. This book was highly recommended by the Sierra
Club, the national environmental organization. Asimov says of This
Angry Earth: “This is not an opinion piece. It is a scientific
survey of the situation that threatens us all--and it says what we
can do to mitigate the situation.” (25)
His most famous science fiction short story “Nightfall” (26) is a
metaphor of the danger posed to the civilization of an entire planet
by an uninformed and ignorant populace. His first editor and early
mentor, John W. Campbell, proposed its theme to him. It is based on
a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If the stars should appear
one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and
preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God?”(27)
In "Nightfall," the distant planet Lagash is faced with
a millennial dilemma (actually a 2,050-year cyclical disaster). An
event that is prophesied in the cultist’s Book of Revelation that happens only once every two thousand fifty years is approaching
and threatens to cause widespread panic and destruction on this planet
of six suns. That event is darkness, the absence of sunlight, and
the appearance of the dreaded and unknown phenomena of “stars.” During
all of recorded history, because of the light of those 6 separate
suns, it has never been dark on the side of the planet where the Lagashian
civilization is located. The mythical and never before seen “stars”
are supposed to appear when darkness descends, and are reputed to
have the power to drive all that observe them mad. The ultimate outcome:
a night of madness where everything is burned to provide light to
stave off the darkness and the dreaded stars. The scientists are battling
the cultists to save civilization. There is the metaphorical linkage
of the light with sanity and knowledge and the dark with ignorance
and madness. The scientists try to reason with the public, but the
cultists control a powerful subculture that prevents the public from
accepting the evidence and preparing for the disaster. A Senator Proxmire-like
character, ridicules the astronomer's theories, and is instrumental
in preventing anyone from believing their warnings.
In this story, as in several of his other stories (i.e., “Trends”
where the Twentieth Century Evangelical Society tries to prevent an
independent rocket scientist from “profaning the heavens")(28),
Isaac Asimov illustrates the danger of the power of what he terms,
“the Armies of the Night.” In this case, art and philosophy combine
to make a powerful point, which he makes more explicitly in his essay
“The Threat of Creationism"(29):
To those who are trained in science, creationism seems like a bad
dream, a sudden reliving of a nightmare, a renewed march of an army
of the night risen to challenge free thought and enlightenment.”(30)
There are numerous cases of societies in which the armies of the
night have ridden triumphantly over minorities in order to establish
a powerful orthodoxy, which dictates official thought. Invariably,
the triumphant ride is toward long-range disaster. Spain dominated
Europe and the world in the sixteenth century [the 1500’s]; but
in Spain orthodoxy came first, and all divergence of opinion was
ruthlessly suppressed. The result was that Spain settled back into
blankness and did not share in the scientific, technological and
commercial ferment that bubbled up in other nations of Western Europe.
Spain remained an intellectual backwater for centuries.(31)
The Soviet Union, in its fascination with Lysenko, [Stalin’s favorite
biologist who believed in the discredited Lamarckian theory of evolution]
destroyed its geneticists, and set back its biological sciences
for decades.
China during the Cultural Revolution turned against Western science
and is still laboring to overcome the devastation that resulted.(32)
The chief executive of our own country, Ronald Reagan, put us constant
jeopardy for a span of 8 years because of unsound and irrational judgement
in the top office. He held, and was sometimes guided by superstitious
beliefs. He was aided in this by the first lady Nancy Reagan who enlisted
the advice of her personal astrologer help decide issues of national
and international importance. One of his cabinet members, also justified
his failure to act to preserve our nations natural resources because
he believed they would all be destroyed anyway during the imminent
and fast approaching Armageddon, when the armies of God would devastate
the entire globe in the end-time battle with the demonic forces of
evil.
Asimov goes on to say that the threat to America is real and we should
not make light of it. And if we are lax and do not counter this threat:
“With Creationism [or its thinly disguised current substitute intelligent
design] in the saddle, American science will wither. We will raise
a generation of ignoramuses ill equipped to run the industry of tomorrow,
much less to generate the new advances of the days after tomorrow.”(33) Return
To Top
Humanism
Advocates the Extension of Democracy and the Expansion of the Open
Society, Standing for Human Rights and Social Justice
Isaac Asimov was a firm advocate of women’s rights. Although it was
never stated policy, it was obvious to readers of “Isaac Asimov’s
Science Fiction Magazine” that a balance of gender in the authorship
of content was a policy. And thereby an entire generation of talented
women who otherwise might not have had a snowball’s chance in what
was then a male- dominated private domain and would have been very
sparsely represented in the science fiction genre. Because of that
liberality, many have benefited and the whole field is better for
that innovation.
Asimov thought the liberation of women and women’s equality was inevitable.
In his essay “The Price of Survival,” he wrote that in the future
the very concept of men’s work and women’s work would not exist:
Except where the unequal distribution of wombs and breasts forces
a difference.(34) “I don’t view the kind of women’s-equality world
I have been describing as being wrenched from reluctant men by militant
women; nor as being granted by selfless men to grateful women.
Quite otherwise. The women’s-equality world will come about as
the simple consequence of the type of society we will have in a
low-birth-rate world. You can’t have anything else; A low-birth-rate
world requires women’s equality. Without a women’s-equality-world
we can’t have a low- birth-rate world.” [[“And since it is quite
clear that a low-birth-rate world is the price of survival of our
civilization, it follows that the acceptance of the ideals of women’s
equality is also the price of survival. (35)
I, personally, was involved in a small way in one of Asimov’s ventures
into the human rights and social justice area. When I lived in New
York in the 60’s and 70’s my sister’s roommate was the poet June Meyer
Jordan. I was occasionally invited to visit. One evening during dinner
conversation, the subject of William Shockley’s theories of racial
differences in intelligence came up. June was writing an article for
the New York Times on the topic and needed a scientific opinion on
the piece. Because of my science fiction interest, I knew that Isaac
Asimov lived somewhere on the upper West Side; and knowing that he
was an accessible person, I suggested that she call him. She did call
him the next day and he gave her the opinion piece that she wanted.
As a result of that, Asimov became interested and involved himself
in the public debate on the topic. Stating in so many words that he
believed that Shockly was full of beans.
He considered himself a liberal democrat: “I’m a new deal democrat,
who believes in soaking the rich, even when I am rich. But I can’t
stand the thought that it’s going for the war in Vietnam instead of
for the slums, for conservation, for un-pollution and so on.” (36)
He supported causes that advanced human rights and social justice:
I am president of the American Humanist Association and fund raising
letters have gone out over my name for the AHA, the Americans for
Democratic Action and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other
words I am an outspoken liberal Democrat and I am hissed by the
Radical Right. Personally, I am delighted to have the crackpots
of the right mad at me.(37) Return
To Top
Free
of Supernaturalism, Humanism recognizes Human Beings
as a Part of Nature
“Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain. (38) (From
Schiller’s “Joan of Arc,” used by Asimov to frame his novel “The Gods
Themselves.”) That book is dedicated "To Mankind, And the hope
that the war against folly may someday be won, after all.”(39) In
his later years, for the sake of the women’s movement, I am sure he
would have dedicated it to “humankind.” In his essay entitled “Armies
of the Night” Asimov states his views on Supernaturalism in response
to a young woman who accused him of being a narrow-minded bigot because
he refused to waste his time “investigating” astrology. This was his
response:
Being human, miss, I suppose I do have a bit of bigotry about me,
so I carefully expend it on astrology in order that I won’t be tempted
to use it on anything with any shadow of intellectual decency about
it.
The problem, you see, was not that I had failed to investigate
astrology, it was that she had failed to investigate astronomy,
so that she didn’t know how empty of content astrology was.(40)
Asimov continues on the next page to attack supernaturalism with
many barbs: “It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans
to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise;
that they so easily fall prey to nonsense. They thus become part of
the armies of the night, the purveyors of nitwittery, the retailers
of intellectual junk food, the feeders on mental cardboard, for their
ignorance keeps them from distinguishing nectar from sewage."
Asimov gave this response to a Velikovsky fan and editor of a high
school science magazine who tried to argue that reason and the scientific
method are not the only routes to truth.
I have your letter in which you explain that reason is not the
only route to truth. Your explanation, however, consists entirely
of an attempt at reasoning the point. Don’t tell me; show me! Convince
me by dreaming at me, or intuiting. Or else write me a symphony,
paint me a painting, or meditate me a meditation, Do something--anything--that
will place me on your side and that isn’t a matter of reasoning!(41)
So there you are. I stand foursquare for reason, and object to
what seems to me to be irrationality, whatever the source.
If you are on my side in this, I must warn you that the army of
the night has the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and, by its
very nature, is immune to reason, so that it is entirely unlikely
that you and I can win out.
We will always remain a tiny and probably hopeless minority, but
let us never tire of presenting our view, and of fighting the good
fight for the right.(42) Return
To Top
Humanism
Holds That Values--Be They Religious, Ethical, Social or Political--
Have Their Source in Human Nature, Experience, and Culture.
Below are a few illustrations of Isaac Asimov’s values from his writing
and his letters.
“I don’t subscribe to the thesis ‘Let the buyer beware’ I prefer
the disregarded one that goes ‘Let the seller be honest.’”(43)
His honesty extended from his tax returns to returning overpayments
to his publishers: “I have a thing about preparing an honest tax return.
So I get the usual reward of virtue--a large tax. Fortunately, enough
is left to keep me from want.”(44)
As one of the most successful science fiction writers, Isaac always
felt sympathy for his fellow writers who were having financial problems.
So he became a one-man loan society(45). He never asked for any of
the money back; and to the embarrassment of the science fiction community,
he was rarely repaid.
“Isaac felt strongly that one of the major problems in the world
was overpopulation and that the future depended upon bringing population
growth under control.”
“Which is the greater danger--nuclear warfare or the population explosion?
The latter absolutely!”
“To bring about nuclear war someone has to do something; someone
has to press a button. And the immediate terror of the event inhibits
the pointing finger….”
“To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy,
and the destruction of our most cherished values--there is no need
to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally--and
breed. There are 3 billion people on Earth now. There will be 6 billion
perhaps in 2000. Nothing we can do short of nuclear or biological
warfare of an extreme all-out nature will prevent that, if we do nothing.”
“And how easy it is to do nothing.” (46) [[And what did he think
about abortion?
“The only possible way to be against abortion is to propose some
better and more humane way of population control. My own way is through
contraception and the best way of practicing contraception, in my
opinion, where chemical or mechanical procedures are absent, is to
teach the vast variety of sexual practices that give complete satisfaction
with no possible conception possible….”(47) Return
To Top
Humanism
Thus Derives the Goals of Life from Human Need
And
Interest Rather Than from Theological Abstractions
“The first act of God recorded in the Bible is that of the creation
of the Universe. But since God is eternal, there must have been an
infinitely long period of time before he set our Universe into motion.
What was he doing during that infinitely long period of time?”
“When St. Augustine was asked that question, he is supposed to have
Roared, ‘Creating Hell for those who ask questions like that!’”(48)
“Biblical statements rest on authority. If they are accepted as the
'Inspired word of God,' all arguments end there. There is no room
for disagreement. The statement is final and absolute for all time.”
“A scientist, on the other hand, is committed to accepting nothing
that is not backed by acceptable evidence. Even if the matter in question
seems obviously certain on the face of it, it is all the better if
it is backed by such evidence.”
“Acceptable evidence is that which can be observed and measured in
such a way that subjective opinion is minimized. In other words, different
people repeating the observations and measurements with different
instruments at different times and in different places should come
to the same conclusion….”
“One may argue, of course, that scientific reasoning is not the only
path to truth; that there are inner revelations, or intuitive grasps,
or blinding insights, or overwhelming authority that all reach the
truth more firmly and more surely than scientific evidence does.”
“That may be so, but none of these alternate paths to truth is compelling.
Whatever one’s internal certainty, it remains difficult to transfer
that certainty simply by saying ”But I’m sure of it.” Other people
very often remain unsure and skeptical.”
“Whatever the authority of the Bible, there has never been a time
in history when more than a minority of the human species has accepted
that authority. And even among those who accepted the authority, differences
in interpretation have been many and violent, and on every possible
point, no one interpretation has ever won out over all others.”(49) Return
To Top
Humanism
Asserts That Humanity Must Take Responsibility For Its Own Destiny
“Humanists believe that human beings produced the progressive advance
of human society and also the ills that plague it. They believe that
if the ills are to be alleviated, it is humans that will have to do
the job.” (50)
In an essay entitled “The Decade of Decision,” Asimov argues that
decisions that are made in this decade may very well involve the life
or death of civilization. The decade that he was referring to was
the 80’s. We are now into the next millennium and some of those decisions
still have not been made. Or even worse, we have made some of them
and they were the wrong decisions. (51)
For instance Republican administrations of recent years, because
of their domination by the religious right (Asimov’s “armies of the
night”), have been extremely short-sighted in cutting government aid
to family planning organizations and birth control programs both in
the U.S. and abroad. In my opinion, this is criminal stupidity. They,
along with the Catholic Church and the rest of the Protestant extreme
religious right, should be held responsible for this idiocy. When
population pressures pass the point where prudent action can no longer
avert the worst of human suffering, and global disasters began to
intensify, there will be a reckoning. The future is here, and we have
done very little to avert the looming disasters that Asimov warned
us of in his many essays and public lectures.
In his essay “Letter to a Newborn Child,” he says: “The chances are,
that about 85 out of 100 of you were born in a poor nation-- in Bangladesh,
in India, in Indonesia, in Nigeria, in Paraguay, in Haiti. That means
you are likely to be dead in a few years. Even if you live past childhood,
you are likely to be hungry for all the years you spend on this planet.”(52)
How are we to deal with more and more people on this planet? We are
now at 6 billion, and climbing at the rate of about 100 million additional
human mouths to feed per year. How are we are to going to survive
when 85% of those mouths already do not get sufficient nourishment
and 30,000 children die every day from disease, neglect, and starvation.
This is the direct if unintended result of the “morality” of the moral
majority, a false morality that denies rational relief to people and
countries that would like to alleviate this kind of suffering. A responsible
citizen would heed Asimov’s words and put aside nationalism and adherence
to dogmatic formulas. It is time to become a responsible citizen of
the planet and join the call to action before it is too late.
In his Robot stories, Isaac Asimov invented the term robotics, which
is used widely in industry today. He also devised the three laws of
Robotics (which are used widely in science fiction today) and which
state:
1. A Robot may not harm a human or by inaction allow a human to come
to harm.
2. A Robot must obey all orders given to it by a human unless those
orders conflict with the first law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence unless that would conflict
with the first or second law.
In his later stories, he added the zeroth law, which states: A Robot
may not harm humanity or by inaction allow humanity to come to harm.
I think that this would be a good law for Humanists, with a slight
alteration in wording, to adopt as a guiding principle: A Humanist
may take no action that would harm humanity or (and here is the important
part) by inaction allow humanity to come to harm.
The future is now. We have a responsibility to our planet and to
all the living things on it. Isaac Asimov, one strong, rational voice
among many, has warned us that the most important environmental issue
of the millennium is the overpopulation of this planet by the organism
known as Homo sapiens. We must not by inaction allow our world to
be ruled by the “Armies of the Night”. We must begin to take positive
action that will prevent humanity and humanity’s planet from being
destroyed by the irrational and misguided forces that threaten its
destruction.
I list below some of the testimonial to the character of Doctor Isaac
Asimov by many of the people who knew him best.
George Gaylord Simpson: “Isaac Asimov is a natural wonder and a national
resource.”(53)
Ben Bova : “If Isaac Asimov had never lived: Millions of people all
over the world would have been denied the pleasure of learning that
they could understand the principles of physics, mathematics astronomy,
geology, chemistry, the workings of the human body, the intricacies
of the human brain--because the books from which they learned and
received such pleasures would never have been written.” (54)
Ray Bradbury called him a fortress or a force of nature(55)
Paul Kurtz called him “A man of the universe” and said that he was
“the preeminent popularizer of science in the 20th century and compared
his role to T.H. Huxley in the 19th century.” (56)
Arthur C. Clarke says: “He must have been one of the greatest educators
that ever lived … His country has lost him at its moment of direst
need, for he was a powerful force against the evils that seem about
to overwhelm it (and much of Western society). He stood for knowledge
against superstition, tolerance against bigotry, kindness against
cruelty--above all, peace against war. His was one of the most effective
voices against the ‘New Age nitwits’ and fundamentalist fanatics who
may now be a greater menace than the paper bear of communism ever
was.” (57)
Steven J. Gould says: “Isaac was the best (and the most copious)
there has ever been--ever throughout history--in the presentation
of science. Only Galileo and Huxley (maybe Medawar in our generation)
match his clarity, his verve, his dedication, and, above all, his
moral sense of the rightness and power of knowledge.” (58)
L. Sprague de Camp says: I rate Isaac as the most intelligent. Added
to this brilliance of mind was character, his utter, transparent integrity,
which compelled him to do what he thought right,even at his own sacrifice.
If, a century hence, someone writes about the two of us, I shall be
honored to be briefly mentioned as a friend of Isaac Asimov. (59)
As a tribute to Dr. Asimov, I have composed the following limerick
in the Asimovian style to close this paper with.
He is gone from our world--Isaac Asimov.
We all wish he’d come back to us ‘cause we love
His great writing, in part
But much more, his great heart.
What the world needs is more and not less him of. Return
To Top
Ross
Hamilton Henry, Humanist Minister, and Past President of The Humanist Association of Montgomery County, The Isaac Asimov Chapter
Notes
[1] Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus
Books, 1997), p. xxvi.
[2] The American Humanist Association, Statement of definition of
Humanism
[3] Isaac Asimov, The Intelligent man’s guide to Science, (Basic
Books, 1960.
[4] Isaac Asimov, Quick and Easy Math, (Houghton Mifflin, 1964).
[5] Isaac Asimov, Realm of Algebra, (Houghton Mifflin, 1961).
[6] Isaac Asimov, Fact and Fancy, (Doubleday1962),
[7] Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov, (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 498.
[8] Stanley Asimov, Yours Isaac Asimov, A Lifetime of letters, (New
York: Doubleday, 1995) p.272-273.
[9] Ibid,Asimov, I. Asimov, , 1994), p. 498.
[10] Louis Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science, (Location: Publisher,
Date), Introduction p. ix
[11] Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus
Books, 1997), p. 107-111.
[12] Ibid, Asimov, The Roving Mind,), p. 113-115.
[13] J.M. Corbett, Religion in America
[14] Michael Shermer, How We Believe, (New York: Freeman & Co., 2000)p.
80 & p. 252
[15] Ibid, Asimov, I. Asimov, p. 27
[16] Isaac Asimov, Before the Golden Age, (New York: Doubleday, 1974),
p.142.
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid
[19] Ibid, Asimov, I. Asimov, p. 20.
[20] Ibid, p. 120.
[21] Ibid, p. 20-21.
[22] Ibid, p. 21.
[23] Ibid, p. 23.
[24] Ibid
[25] Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl, Our Angry Earth, (New York 1991),
cover notes
[26] Isaac Asimov, The Edge of Tomorrow, (New York: Tor Books1995),
p. 334.
[27] Ibid
[28] Isaac Asimov, The Early Asimov, (New York: Doubleday 1972)
[29] Herbert F. Vetter, Speak Out Against the New Right, (Boston:
Beacon Press1982), p.166-176.
[30] Ibid, p.167.
[31] Ibid, p.174.
[32] Ibid
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid, Asimov, The Roving Mind, , p. 70
[35] Ibid
[36] Ibid, Stanley Asimov, Yours Isaac Asimov,) p.291.
[37] Ibid
[38] Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves, (New York: Doubleday 1972),
p.9.
[39] Ibid, p.7.
[40] Isaac Asimov, X Stands for Unknown, (New York: Doubleday 1983),
p.209. 41
[41] Ibid, p.217.
[42] Ibid, p.218.
[43] Ibid, Stanley Asimov, Yours Isaac Asimov, p.251.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid, p.252.
[46] Ibid, p.277.
[47] Ibid, p.278.
[48] Isaac Asimov, In the Beginning, (New York: Stonesong Press,
1981) p. 13
[49] Ibid, p. 7-8.
[50] Ibid, Asimov, I. Asimov, p. 498.
[51] Ibid, Asimov, The Roving Mind, , p. 244.
[52] Ibid, p. 73.
[53] Martin H. Greenberg, Foundations Friends, (New York: Tor Books1990),
p.460.
[54] Ibid,, p. 5.
[55] Ibid, p. 2.
[56] Ibid, Asimov, The Roving Mind, p. xi.
[57] Ibid, p. xx.
[58] Ibid, p. xxvi.
[59] Ibid, p. xxv. 10
Copyright
© 2005 by Ross Hamilton Henry This article may not be resold, reprinted,
or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written
permission from the author. However it may be reprinted in Humanist
journals without permission (Let me know via e-mail if and where.)
Direct questions about permissions to: Ross Hamilton Henry at rosshenry@mac.com
Introduction