Is Science Enough for a Cosmic Perspective?
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s scientistic take on enlightenment in “Starry Messenger”

According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, we need a cosmic perspective to save us from the pitfalls of tribalism, and science supplies us with one. So, Tyson wrote Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, to make that case.
In his words,
Starry Messenger is a wake-up call to civilization. People no longer know who or what to trust. We sow hatred of others fueled by what we think is true, or what we want to be true, without regard to what is true. Cultural and political factions battle for the souls of communities and of nations. We’ve lost all sight of what distinguishes facts from opinions. We’re quick with acts of aggression and slow with acts of kindness.
And he says, “Think of Starry Messenger as a trove of insights, informed by the universe and brought to you by the methods and tools of science.”
How could a cosmic perspective help? By overcoming our parochial biases, which bog us down in petty cultural divisions. We need merely focus more on the evidence by being objective, and again, since science is the height of objectivity, science shows us the way.
As Tyson puts it,
After thinking deeply about how a scientist views the world, about what Earth looks like from space, and about the magnitude of cosmic age and of infinite space, all terrestrial thoughts change. Your brain recalibrates life’s priorities and reassesses the actions one might take in response. No outlook on culture, society, or civilization remains untouched. In that state of mind, the world looks different. You are transported.
You experience life from the lens of a cosmic perspective.
The nature of a cosmic perspective
I wholeheartedly agree that our species needs a cosmic perspective. Personally, I argue for a combination of naturalism, existentialism, cosmicism, and pantheism.
There’s just one problem with Tyson’s proposal: it’s too pettily scientistic and thus still too tribal to adopt it as it stands.
Just ask yourself whether the cosmic perspective in question is strictly scientific. Notice, for instance, that the topics Tyson covers in his book, he says, are “war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, race, each an artificial battlefield on the landscape of life.” So, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Starry Messenger is mostly philosophical — and of course, it is. Tyson draws on science, but the worldview as a whole — Tyson’s cosmic perspective — is philosophical. Specifically, it’s the philosophy of Brave New World-style neo-positivism.
Yet Tyson can hardly even bring himself to use the word “philosophy.” Absentmindedly, he implies that philosophy has some worth, as when, in talking about our slight genetic difference from chimpanzees, he hastens to say, “What a difference that 2 percent makes! We have poetry and philosophy and art and space telescopes.” Or again, he asks rhetorically, “What are we to a grizzly or polar bear? Are we sentient beings, capable of art and philosophy and science and civilization? No, we’re free-range meat.”
But take a look at his assurance that “whatever opinions you currently hold, an infusion of science and rational thinking can render them deeper and more informed than ever before” (my emphasis). Plainly, Tyson recognizes the difference between science and a broader application of reason, but even in the context of talking about politics, religion, truth, beauty, cosmic perspectives, and so on, he doesn’t feel the need to concede that there’s a name already for that relevant kind of general reasoning. It’s called “philosophy,” and it got its name long before the Scientific Revolution.
Mind you, it’s worse than that since although he reserves entries in his book’s extensive index for everything from “wine” and “World Cup” to “mollusks” and “Xena: Warrior Princess,” there’s no entry for “philosophy.” Nada, zip, zilch. Let that sink in: a book on the manifestly philosophical need for a “cosmic perspective,” with an exhaustive index, yet no entry at all for “philosophy.”
That’s not an accident.
Tyson’s anti-philosophical outburst
Why is Tyson so reticent to talk about philosophy?
Maybe it’s because he showed his true colours in the infamous 2014 Nerdist podcast, in which he said that philosophy is a harmful waste of time.
‘My concern here,” he said, is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it’s, “What are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?”’
Moreover, ‘if you are distracted by your questions so that you can’t move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world. And so, the scientist knows when the question “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a pointless delay in our progress.’
Now, Tyson thinks that having a cosmic perspective is crucial to human progress. That’s why he says he wrote Starry Messenger. It’s just that he wants the credit to go to science, not philosophy, which is, as I said, lame and petty.
This isn’t just an academic turf war, which would be of little consequence to the broader public. No, the problem is that Tyson is confused about the nature of both science and philosophy.
Tyson’s whitewashing of science
Let’s start with science. Tyson’s on the right track in saying, “Science distinguishes itself from all other branches of human pursuit by its power to probe and understand the behaviour of nature on a level that allows us to predict with accuracy, if not control, the outcomes of events in the natural world. Scientific discovery often carries the power to broaden and deepen perspectives on all things” (my emphasis).
And he makes the reasonable point that,
When people disagree in our complex world of politics, religion, and culture, the causes are simple, even if the resolutions are not. We all wield different portfolios of knowledge. We possess different values, different priorities, and different understandings of all that unfolds around us. We see the world differently from one another, and by doing so, we construct tribes based on who looks like us, who prays to the same gods as we do, and who shares our moral code.
Again, science is supposed to save the day by presenting us with objective gatherings of evidence, to put us all on the same page. But how could an institution dedicated to the pragmatic business of probing, predicting, and controlling nature be objective and lofty in the way Tyson’s looking for?
Science, too, has an agenda. It’s the agenda of our species, so scientists don’t speak for the cosmos at large. Science is the institution that empowers humans with knowledge of nature’s weaknesses. The knowledge that counts is the empirical kind we can use to clear a path through the wilderness for civilization.
Tyson’s view of how science works is naïve — as you’d expect from a science popularizer. He says, for instance, that eventually scientists learned
not to claim knowledge of a newly discovered truth until a majority of researchers obtain results consistent with one another. There’s no law against publishing wrong or biased results. But the cost to you for doing so is high. If your research is checked by colleagues, and nobody can duplicate your findings, the integrity of your future research will be held suspect.
The replication crisis in many sciences shows, however, that that code is defunct. There’s no penalty for churning out sensational headlines that can’t be replicated, because everyone else is doing it, and you don’t advance your career in science by doing the grunt work of trying to replicate someone else’s findings. Also, this crisis shows that science has largely been captured by capitalist incentives, which is to say that science isn’t confined to an Ivory Tower but is part of the modern civilizational project.
Even in physics, the queen of the sciences, progress seems stalled by the fact that the cutting edge of knowledge calls for a transformation of scientific methods. The old methods no longer work because at the bottom of nature is the rank absurdity of quantum mechanics, black holes, the Big Bang, and the like. Consequently, theoretical physicists have had to rely less on experiments and more on speculative mathematics. The trick is to capture everything that’s known in an arcane mathematical model.
But that model of everything wouldn’t be perfectly objective.
Again, scientific knowledge is objective not just because scientists set aside their personal biases, but because they adhere to the humanistic prioritizing of our species’ progress, the latter being furthered by objectifying the subject matter. Who says the universe, a black hole, or the quantum wavefunction is an object, as in something visible, tangible, or relatively stable in form? Or when no one’s looking at nature, how could nature be an “object,” strictly speaking, as in something to which thought or action is directed?
No, objectivity is still anthropocentric, as is the scientific business of advancing the interests of our species. And not everyone agrees that scientific or civilizational progress is a good thing. For example, lots of ascetics, mystics, nomadic animists, and radical environmentalists don’t. So even from Tyson’s cosmic perspective, social conflicts would persist.
Return, then, to the problem of tribalism. Could science alone be the answer by providing us with a cosmic perspective? Nah, because you’d need philosophy for that.
Science fragments rather than unifies knowledge. The sciences divide into ever more specialized disciplines, each with its patchwork of maps or models. Which scientist sees the whole of nature? Only one with a robust philosophical mindset. Whether that scientist is humble and big enough to identify as a philosopher at that point, in drawing together scientific maps into a coherent worldview, is neither here nor there. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” as Shakespeare said.
Tyson’s short shrift for philosophy
Tyson’s crude take on philosophy was also revealed by his 2016 tweet: “Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.”
Starry Messenger expands on Tyson’s earlier report on that tweet and its social fallout. He points out that “The most virulent objection was the question of where such a country would get its morals and how other ethical issues might be established or resolved.”
Tyson answers with a series of red herrings:
Red herring #1: Tyson says the US Bill of Rights doesn’t talk explicitly about morality, yet it includes a whole amendment “that prevents the military from bunking in your home without your permission.”
Sure, but does that document justify the amendment with “evidence,” as required in Rationalia?
Red herring #2: Tyson says a “fully evidence-based” court verdict would redefine “not guilty” to mean “We think you are guilty but can’t prove either your guilt or innocence,” and would add a possible verdict of “innocence,” meaning “Evidence shows you did not commit the crimes as accused.”
Great! But who says a strictly evidence-based worldview would include the concepts of right or wrong in the first place? What bit of evidence demonstrates that some action is right or wrong, or that any person is good or bad? There’s evidence that we think and act in those terms, but that doesn’t show we’re objectively correct in doing so, or that morality would be grounded after our species is long gone.
Red herring #3: Tyson says that “morals evolve across time and culture, typically by rational analysis of the effects and consequences of previously held morals, in light of emergent knowledge, wisdom, and insight.”
Fine, moral values evolve. Does that mean the last ones standing are best? According to which body of evidence?
And notice how Tyson contradicts the edict of Rationalia by slipping in those references to “wisdom” and “insight.” Do scientific experiments dictate what’s wise or insightful? Nah, you need philosophy for that.
Then Tyson points out that his tweet was concerned not with morals but policies, and it’s the government that decides on policies. Thus, Tyson’s point about Rationalia would be that science should inform the government’s choice of policies.
Doubtlessly, that kind of empiricism would improve government policy on many fronts, especially when anti-intellectual conservatives are in charge.
But even this seemingly innocuous proposal is naïve. The problem is that the truth often hurts. Thus, for thousands of years, leaders have deemed it necessary to hide the truth from the unwashed masses. Lies spread faster than truths because we prefer to deceive ourselves, which is why the ancient philosophical dictum was simply for us to strive to know ourselves.
Now, Tyson understands that we’re prone to self-deception. Indeed, he says the nature of science can be summed up in one sentence about objectivity: “Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into believing that something is true when it is false, or that something is false when it is true.”
Again, great! The lack of self-deception would be a hallmark of a cosmic perspective. But how does a mere body of evidence help perfect our character in that way? How could science make us virtuous? For that, you need philosophy — and religion, art, and culture more broadly.
What if the evidence isn’t what we want to hear? What if the cold, hard evidence shows that God is dead or absent, and that life has no cosmic business persisting because its emergence is accidental and pointless? What if we’re doomed to attempt to progress by warring with nature, and what if this conflict will ultimately destroy our species?
Should dark knowledge, too, be spread far and wide, or is there reason to hide some knowledge from the public? The Scientific Revolution was based on the “modern” conviction that knowledge should be made public rather than kept for an elite to exploit the lower class’s ignorance with self-serving dogmas. But in that respect, scientists were guided not strictly by evidence but by the philosophy of secular humanism. There’s no mere body of empirical evidence that dictates we should be humanists, or that we should appreciate the strengths of our species and deem them sacred and worthy of being perpetuated until the end of time.
Indeed, a cosmic perspective on life would seem to count against humanism since the latter would appear arbitrarily anthropocentric. From the cosmic perspective, all of life would seem like a nothingburger, like a lightning strike between two timeless periods of darkness. Whence, then, the humanist’s prejudicial optimism about progress, given Tyson’s contention that we need a cosmic perspective?
To be sure, a rational case can be made for humanism. But you’d need philosophy for that.
So, the real answer to Tyson’s critics on the status of morality in Rationalia is that philosophy can step in to provide a rational case for our values. But once again, Tyson extends to philosophy no such credit.
The closest he gets is his suggestion that
In Rationalia, you could create an Office of Morality, where moral codes are proposed and debated. What moral codes would the citizens of Rationalia embrace? That is, itself, a research project. Countries don’t always get it right. Neither will Rationalia. Is the enslavement of people with dark skin an okay thing? The US Constitution thought so for 76 years. Should women vote? The US Constitution said no for 131 years.
Just possibly, those “debates” in Rationalia would take on a philosophical tone rather than a strictly scientific one. Then again, Tyson doesn’t seem to think so since he speaks naively of “getting it right,” as though morality were like arithmetic. Do humanists “get it right” in recognizing the merits of minorities and women? Is humanism supposed to be objectively correct? Show me the evidence that rights exist as objective facts — and I’m talking about the rights even of old white men.
Alas, precisely because moral values are subjective evocations and thus collective fictions, science won’t properly dictate the results of those debates in Rationalia’s Office of Morality. You might just as well decide how quantum mechanics is to proceed by having a debate about Don Quixote.
The downside of a cosmic perspective
But as I said, we should agree with Tyson that a cosmic perspective would be revelatory and transformative. That’s a euphemism for saying, mind you, that this perspective would be lethal to our species and would destroy us altogether or turn us into transhumans.
What Spinoza called the “perspective from eternity,” and Thomas Nagel the “view from nowhere,” would terminate not just our parochial illusions and preoccupations, but the social classes and generations that would prefer to be blissfully ignorant. Happiness in the sense of contentment, it seems, is for sheeple.
There’s no guarantee that the cosmic perspective would be simply a good thing. That kind of perspective might be honourable in that it would foster intellectual integrity and steer us away from childish debates about pseudoproblems. But honour and happiness are two separate values.
Indeed, to see the world and us from the universe’s perspective, as it were, would be dehumanizing. As Buddhists understand, we tend to be attached to our egos and our families, tribes, and species. Evidently, even Neil deGrasse Tyson is emotionally and economically attached to his tribe of fellow scientists. To free ourselves from that kind of myopia is equivalent to enlightening us in the classic sense.
But too much light is a bad thing. Lucifer the light-bringer, Icarus, and Prometheus were brought low by their hubris, according to myths. Or if we’re scientistic Philistines, we could confirm the same lesson just by staring at the Sun.
No it is not.