Hub Zwart

Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project (HGP), needs no further introduction I suppose. For more than a decade (from 1993 onwards) he has headed the HGP as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). One of the highlights in his career was the moment when, on June 26 2000, together with President Clinton and Craig Venter, he announced that the deciphering of the human genome was rapidly approaching its completion. On this occasion, Clinton stated that “today, we are learning the language in which God created life”. In The language of God, Collins not only discloses the fact that he acted as Clinton’s ghost-writer, urging the latter to include these lines (p.3), but he also explains his reasons for doing so. For him, DNA really is the language of God. The book is his “coming out”, so to speak, as a Christian. For Collins, the famous announcement on June 26 of the year 2000 was not only a highlight in the history of the life sciences. It was also a moment of religious significance, a religious “celebration”, an “occasion of worship”.

This paper subjects Dan Brown’s most recent novel Origin to a philosophical reading. Origin is regarded as a literary window into contemporary technoscience, inviting us to explore its transformative momentum and disruptive impact, focusing on the cultural significance of artificial intelligence and computer science: on the way in which established world-views are challenged by the incessant wave of scientific discoveries made possible by super-computation. While initially focusing on the tension between science and religion, the novel’s attention gradually shifts to the increased dependence of human beings on smart technologies and artificial intelligence. Origin’s message, I will argue, reverberates with Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, which aims to outline a morphology of world civilizations. Although the novel starts with a series of oppositions, most notably between religion and science, the eventual tendency is towards convergence, synthesis and sublation, exemplified by Sagrada Família as a monumental symptom of this transition. Three instances of convergence will be highlighted, namely the convergence between science and religion, between humanity and technology and between the natural sciences and the humanities.