Religious symbolism is all around us. Most cultural landscapes around the world are dominated by the symbols of towers, spires and domes that occupy the heart of settlements from villages to cities. These architectural structures are dominant because they are often on a grand scale, but also occupy the social heart of settlements, often on high-ground or proximal to water both of which provide innate symbolic reaction. This is true across all faiths, whether it be a stupa of a temple in Thailand, the domes of a church in Florence or a mosque in Istanbul.
In more granular form, there is religious symbolism in both the public and private realm, from the “spirit houses” of animism and ancestor worship in south-east Asia, to the road-side shrines of Catholic Europe. Personal habit offers a more literal religious sign, whether the orange robes of Buddhist monks or the hijab of Muslim women or crosses round the necks of Christians.
2. The continued struggle of Darwinism
In 1859, Charles Darwin published his book, “On the origin of species”. This revolutionary work explained for the first time how all species we see on Earth today have evolved over geological timescales through the many biophysical and social processes he collectively termed “Natural Selection”.
The theory was hugely controversial. Although some clergy simply adopted the process as an instrument of God’s design, other theologians attacked it as heresy. The most famous confrontation was the public debate at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce, argued against Darwin's explanation and human descent from apes. Thomas Huxley's famous retort: “I would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his gifts”, came to symbolise a triumph of science over Religion.
But has science and freethinking triumphed over Religion and dogma? The “Darwin-Ape” picture (above) published in Punch magazine in the 19th Century was seen as a symbol of ridicule as much as homage. In 1864, Disraeli asked, "Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new-fangled theories."
In Tennessee in 1925, John Scopes was prosecuted in the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, under the Butler Act, which made it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." Although this act was repealed in 1967, George W Bush has since stated that the “jury is still out on evolution”.
There have also been unfortunate examples called Social Darwinism, where eugenics has been proposed and even carried out in some of the most hated acts of the 20th Century as a way of aiding “natural selection” of the human species.
Presently, US Christian fundamentalists continue to push the creationist agenda by teaching Intelligent Design and focusing on gaps in the fossil record. This dogma is strongly refuted by modern neo-Darwin scientists such as Richard Dawkins in the UK. But even here the national curriculum states that “pupils should be taught...how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence [for example, Darwin's theory of evolution]”. Some private schools sponsored by Tony Blair, teach creationism at the expense of natural selection.
3. Can a symbol help the cause of understanding?
The Ichthys or fish symbol, below, was used by early Christians to identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ. Ichthys is the Ancient Greek word for "fish”, which also forms the acronym "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour" in Greek. By express their affinity to Christianity through this code, they hoped to avoid persecution.
Helped by symbols like this, Christianity grew until the Roman Emperor, Constantine I, adopted the faith and reversed the persecutions of his predecessors. Cynics have said that Constantine’s conversion was political not spiritual, but Christianity flourished and spread afterwards through the organisation of the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church.
Given that 21st Century Christianity and creationism has the support of two the most powerful recent leaders in the West, does this pose a threat to freethinking and evolutionary science? Do free-thinkers need a symbol and a code? Probably not! Scientist teachers will fight to teach natural selection in Biology lessons. Animal and plant husbandry will still go on, as will bio-engineering. Eugenics through genetic medicine will progress, despite temporary halts during ethical debates.
But outside of school and university biology lessons and high-tech laboratories, what is it that reinforces the idea that natural selection exists and should be learned and even celebrated and rejoiced? Does anyone really see natural selection at work on a day to day basis? After all it took homo-sapiens 200,000 years to realise it, and even then it was only through the eyes of a few men a mere 150 years ago.
Do we need to put clues out in the public realm, to prompt people to wonder in this process? Perhaps this would also help in the democratisation of the ethical debate on where the human species could or will go? If we do need clues, would these be literal or abstract. What would an abstract clue look like?
Would it be a literal depiction of the beautiful double helix of DNA? Would it be the almost minimalist art of a genetic fingerprint?
Would the co-joining of the male and female sex symbols lead people to explore the importance of sex in creating variety in populations? Might it be a biological equivalent of E=MC2 that signifies variation in a population, i.e.
If anyone saw this equation, would they bother to ask why it was there or what it signifies? Or might it be a series of different coloured or shaped island forms symbolising how new species develop in isolation from their mainland cousins? Might it be a timeline showing just how recently homo-sapiens has existed in biological time, never mind geological time? This would require empirical research.
4. What has this to do with me, I’m a Landscape Architect?
Firstly, artists have long exploited the aesthetic beauty of natural selection mechanics. One can have one’s own genetic fingerprint mounted in glorious colour in your wall at home. But at the moment this art is in buildings and concerned largely aesthetics.
Landscape Architects work outside where natural selection is actually happening around us. And we claim we are just as concerned with society as aesthetics. How many landscape schemes have been influenced by the science of natural selection? I am not referring to the evolution of symbolism or the evolution of cultural landscapes, i.e. the changing extended phenotype of our gene pool (The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins 1999). I am taking about sex and death and extinction and mutation and diversity and survival and their direct links to evolution. Perhaps the Holocaust memorials offer one example - albeit a very negative one - of eugenics. Are there any more positive examples?
Second, and more importantly, does our view on creationism versus natural selection affect our philosophical or ethical position and therefore our designs? Has the longer cultural history of creationism still moulded who we are and what we think?
• Is creationism anthropocentric? Does it encourage us to view humans as a species apart created by the divine hand of God? If so, do our designed landscapes re-enforce the dominance of God and man?
• Is the much younger neo-Darwinism non-anthropocentric? Does it give each biotic community - or even the whole global ecosystem - equal moral standing? If so, do our designed landscapes reduce the position of man and deny God? Do they simply re-enforce the continued struggle for existence of combinations of genes expressed through extended phenotypes?
Ian Thompson (2007) cites Carolyn Merchant’s ‘Ground for Environmental Ethics” (1992). She splits human ethical theories or positions into two:
• Anthropocentric
(ego-centric ..............................homocentric)
• Non-Anthropocentric
(bio-centric................................ecocentric)
She suggests that most landscape architects are ethically homocentric. The ethics of this position are to “acknowledge that the stewardship of nature is an important concern, but...because this in turn is thought to contribute to aggregate human happiness...human happiness depends ultimately upon the natural systems. It can be argued that human beings take pleasure in the richness and diversity of the natural world, so the loss of biodiversity, for example, is of concern because it threatens those satisfactions.”
One can argue that the homocentric position is entirely consistent with neo-Darwinism. In fact, I suspect there are few creationist landscape architects? The homocentric view reflects the human gene pool’s struggle for survival in an otherwise wild and dangerous planet that threatens its successful reproduction.
5. The "hand of creation" or the "theatre of genes"?
I fear that if we over-emphasise - wittingly or otherwise - the importance of humans and human delight in our landscape, we are hindering the new “enlightenment” of neo-Darwinism. If we continue in our designs to emphasise:
• stability versus struggle
• “here and now” versus “geological time”
• static versus mutation and change
• homogeneity versus heterogeneity
• globalisation versus islands
• tidiness versus chaos
• technology solutions versus natural regeneration
• cultural order versus “natural” order
• symbolism of dogma versus free thinking
...we risk supporting:
• creationism versus evolution through natural selection
Perhaps this change of emphasis is the symbolism I seek and must investigate further?
No comments:
Post a Comment