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When once we might have followed the yellow brick road on our way to meet the Wizard, today we must, instead, follow the science. No destination is identified; it is enough that we follow whither it leads and for an indeterminate amount of time.

Which seems more reasonable, following a specific root, to a specified destination, within an estimated amount of time, or simply following blindly at the behest of unknown quantities for no sure reason other than it serves their purpose?

You will, of course, have spotted the flaw in the question. Our journey to meet the Wizard is purely imaginary, whereas following the science leads to vaccines and eventual control over the pandemic which makes them necessary. Lest we forget, however, following the science led directly to the immediate death of upwards of 120,000 people over four days in August of 1945. Science – and its more practical brother, Technology – has also brought us to the edge of extinction as our atmosphere continues to lose the struggle against the pollutants with which we have poisoned it – pollutants produced along with the profits of industry.

Those imaginary stories in which we follow yellow brick roads on our way to meet with Wizards always end in salvation and jubilation. It seems unlikely that the story of science will have such a joyous outcome.

Yet there are voices crying in the wilderness, warning of the dangers of ignoring reason in favour of more imaginative ways of thinking. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth at our apparent foolhardy pursuit of the irrational, for down such routes lies the death of thousands as the planes fly into buildings.

This is fear-mongering at its worst. This slight of hand has us counting the dead at the hands of religionists while ignoring the dead of science. Let’s, instead, do as they say and do the maths: 120,000 in four days dead from science as opposed to 1,000,000 over the 196 years of the Crusades. However macabre it may be to count casualties, it is necessary in order to counter the duplicity of those who hide behind the hyperbole they hurl at others.

Yet the simple truth is that no religious war has ever led to the dropping of nuclear weapons. That has only ever occurred on the order of the self-identified “leader of the free world”, provided with the means by those in white coats who cared only about doing the science, with little thought to its real-world application.

Dancing and singing one’s way down a yellow brick road in search of wizards has harmed exactly no one, while science is red in tooth and claw.

The irony is that if we really were to curtail that activity which produces tales of wonder and awe, gods and demons, and, yes, even superheroes, we would simultaneously erase our ability to do science.

Science might require the application of a particular method if it is to produce pandemic-busting vaccines but this isn’t where it begins. Sir Isaac Newton dabbled every bit as much in the arcane arts as he did in those areas of knowledge we now dub ‘science’. To Newton, there would have been little difference between alchemy and astronomy, both were worthy of the attention of anyone who truly sought knowledge. Yet, those who would have us dream less and reason more, now dismiss alchemy disdainfully, lumping it with astrology and tarot cards as Medieval mumbo-jumbo.

Nevertheless, one great Twentieth-century thinker could see in alchemy a “symbolic representation of the individuation process”. By no means, let us be clear, should alchemy be accepted by the academy of sciences – it is recognised that the actual pursuit of a formula that would change base metals into gold is, at best, the very epitome of pseudoscience. Yet, as Jung was able to show, even the most ridiculous of human endeavours can be replete with meaning. At least, this is so if we recognise the wisdom of Alexander Pope, who, in 1734, published his Essay on Man, in which he enjoined us to:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

Like the Devil, himself, the greatest trick of science is that way it diverts our gaze. The devil diverts our gaze away from his existence in our lives; science diverts it away from our lives. Science is very much an extroverted enterprise, focused entirely outwards. This is no bad thing, in and of itself, but neither is it sufficient unto itself.

Those who advocate the following of science are always eager to point out that it causes no wars. This is probably true, but only because, not concerned with the who of humanity, science is devoted entire to the where. It was this blinkered view of the world that led to the discovery of the atom, then it was our innate need to bend our environment to our will that led to the splitting of that indivisible piece of matter.

Imagine, for a moment, what it meant to be a scientist at that moment in 1932 when Cockcroft and Walton first split the atom. Since 400 B.C.E., when Democritus proposed the word, it has meant “uncuttable”. And science cut it! Fingertips must have tingled at that moment!

Culturally speaking, the Ancient Greeks are the closest actual human beings have ever got to being God, in so far as they created the world as we know it today – however unrecognisable it would be to a So-crates dragged through time by a hapless Bill and Ted. So, when Cockcroft and Walton split the atom, they not only changed the scientific world-view, they literally called God into question. Little wonder then, that science is placed on such a high pedestal.

As far as human achievements go, it’s hard to argue against the primacy of science (though I’d make a case for the Arts as our greatest achievement, though it’s easy to see why science gets the funding that is constantly being cut from the arts).

We once told ourselves stories of gods and heroes because this was the only way we had of making sense of the harsh, uncaring world in which we found ourselves. Those stories enabled us to survive (the same stories we’re now told to ignore). The discoveries of science haven’t made the world any less inimicable to human survival, but they give us the means to dominate our environment. Stories give us the means to humanise it.

There are, however, truths which science has no hope of comprehending. Hence, the “soft” sciences – those areas of study that take Pope at his word and study the who of humanity as opposed to merely our where.

We now find ourselves in the place we once reserved for deities – and, if we’re honest, also the place of demons. If we are going to dispense with religions, the purpose of which was always to objectify what it is that makes us human, then we have to accept those objectifications as part of who we are – so, if we would be God, we must accept that we are equally the Devil!

Science may one day bring us to a full understanding of our whereabouts in the physical world, yet it will add not a jot to our understanding of who we are and how we are to live as fully human, or even clarify what it al means.

The ready response to this, of course, is that it all means nothing at all. Or, at least, it means nothing beyond, “[w]e’re collections of atoms, and we should be nice to one another.”

Anyone willing to accept such a diminution of the human is, as surely as any tyrant, guilty of genocide – or worse, humanicide.

It goes without saying that science, as a tool, has great utility – but that is all it is, a tool. It is the Swiss Army knife of tools, maybe, yet still merely a way of doing something. It is no way to live and, certainly, no way of being human.

Why, when we are so clearly capable of going untold distances beyond ourselves, to lands paved with yellow brick roads which lead to wizards, should we so limit ourselves to the merely mundane? This is the destination to which science leads.