ABSTRACT
Modern sciences have their own preferred ways of seeing and saying the origins of the universe and of life. They have their dominant metaphors (Big Bang, Cosmic Soup, Double Helix) and their more or less grand narratives (quantum theory, evolution, genetics). Before reviewing some instances of the accounts of origins (‘creation myths’) offered by contemporary science, we shall briefly consider the origins of modern science itself. For in some respects the modern scientific project is arguably far more radically ‘creative’ than any project in the arts traditionally conceived. That is, science ceaselessly seeks to prove and promote ‘new’ kinds of knowledge even as it seeks to extend and refine – and, if necessary, disprove and supersede – ‘old’ kinds of knowledge. This is clearly both a ‘creative’ and ‘destructive’ process. It proceeds by successive stages of proof and disproof, doubt and refutation. Indeed, according to Karl Popper, it is the very capacity of science to be disproved by systematic experiment and observation as well as argument that sets it apart from sheer belief or mere opinion (see Popper in Kearney 1995: 196-210). In the latter respect all the preceding accounts of creation in the present chapter are strictly neither provable nor disprovable. In a modern sense they are ‘non-scientific’.
