'The dark religions are departed and sweet science
reigns'
A
great concept but a very lame plot! With the show of hands, how many people
found this novel conflicting? This book, supposedly a graduation gift for me
didn't turn out to be as good as I expected.
So,
let's settle down for a talk in detail.
CONCEPT:
Where do we come
from?
Where are we going?
The
answers of these two mysteries lie at the heart of the human experience.
Science vs. Religion has mostly been the theme of Robert Langdon. In this story,
he finds himself strangled in the maze of his dear friend, who is also a genius
scientist, Edmond Kirsch. Mr Kirsch doesn't agree with Church who says human
came from the God and they are going back to the God. So, he tries to find an
answer himself. Finally after years of hard work, Kirsch discovers a ground-breaking theory that can change the whole world. He finds the answer to the questions;
where do we come from? And where are we going?
So, Where do we come from?
During
1950s, scientists Miller and Urey, rejecting the idea that God invented the
life, decided to do an experiment in the lab to prove that some chemicals are
enough to make the earthy atmosphere to create lives. After the long experiment,
they found out that their chemicals had produced several amino acids. Nothing
else interesting happened during the course of their experiment and Of course,
just amino acid is not a solid evidence of existing of life.
Fast-forward,
after more than 50 years, comes our genius, Edmond Kirsch who declares that
Miller and Urey were not patient enough to wait for the required amount of time and even if
they had waited, the changes couldn't have occurred during their life-time.
Then he introduces the same test-tube Miller and Urey were working on and declares
that Miller's student continued this experiment and did all the test and analysis
with the sophisticated techniques to find out that the chemical fluids now
contains the building blocks of RNA, which could eventually become DNA. I
must say this totally blew me away and I was so excited. While I am writing
this, I remember how excited I was while reading this part. So, let me change
my score from 3 to 3.5 stars. After all, I was enjoying it.
So,
all that experiment was lacking, was time. It took 50 years of mark to
create RNA. How long more would it need to create DNA and eventually living
organism and from that to people like us? Don't you find that fascinating?
Isn't it exciting? You know what? I am going to upgrade my score to 4 stars
now.
Since
I am also a scientist, I got even more excited to discover what exactly
was happening in that little test-tube during this 50 years? The
magic word we are looking for here is 'Entropy'. And what exactly is the
Entropy? It is a measure of disorder in microorganism. The law of entropy states
that things fall apart. Let’s think about some examples. Imagine you
work really hard to make sand castle. Seconds later, a wave comes in and washes
away the castle. But have you ever seen while you are just relaxing in the beach, minding
your own business, all of the sudden wave comes in and deposits sand in
the shape of a sand castle? No right? This is what I am talking about. Here is
another example. Someone makes you a really nice cup of tea. Then
you forget to drink it and after a while it becomes cold. That is entropy. It
makes hot tea cold but it doesn't reheat your tea or ask your friend to do
it. Ok, enough examples. But wait, I forgot what I was talking about.
Oh
yea, the thing is we live in entropic universe. Ok, everyone got it but how can
lifeless chemicals magically organise themselves into complex life-forms? As it
turns out, life is not the only example of the universe creating order. Non-living
molecules organise themselves all the time into complex structures. Look at the
examples of a tornado vortex, a snowflake, a rippled riverbed etc. etc. So that
means sometimes the universe does organise matter-which seems to be the
exact opposite of entropy. So which is actually true? Does universe prefer
order or chaos? Nature!-in an effort to promote disorder-creates little pockets
of order. Hmm. makes sense that means your friend will never reheat your
tea.
So
what does entropy have to do with the origin of life? As turns out, life is an
exceptionally effective tool for dissipating energy. All living
organisms-including humans-which consume organised matter as food, convert it
to energy, and then dissipate energy back into the universe as heat. So that
means, the life indeed spontaneously emerged from lifeless matter as result of
nothing more than the laws of physics. Then
Edmond shows the stimulated Miller-Urey's amino acids in millions of years
turning into DNA. Just wow!
and Now let’s talk about Where are we going?
Here
just for reference, let’s imagine humans are the result of some law of entropy
of non-living things. After millions of years, some living organism are formed
then comes Darwinian evolutionary theory (survival of fittest), and
fast-forward we are in present world. So what’s next? Are we going back to
being non-living stuffs at some point? Here is the clue- have you discovered
anything unusual in last decade?
Technology
has overcome people. This is the age of Industry 4.0. People talk about
digitalisation, personalisation. They are hugely dependent on their laptops and
smartphones. Even my 7 months old niece gets really excited when she sees a phone
:0. The point here is, human has become machine dependent. There will be a time
(in less than a century) when human will be entirely swallowed up by machine.
This doesn't sound too vague when people are talking so much about artificial
intelligence (AI) now. People are even talking about in-coupling AI into human brain.
Who we kidding right? So, Edmond says that if it runs like this at some point,
there will be only machines in this world and extinction of human, just like a
fate of dinosaurs (scary enough!).
STORY:
The
good thing about Dan Brown's book is, you cannot rest until you finish it. I
was so hooked up in the book that I was happy that I was finishing this 500
pages book fast but also sad thinking it will be finished soon. If you are familiar
with Brown's book, you know by now that he takes you to different cities, goes
deep into the meaning of some churches or buildings, there will be codes and
puzzles Langdon has to break to solve the mystery that will eventually save the
world or himself. These codes are always fun and interesting. Every time new
series of Robert Langdon comes, I am more looking forward to new codes and
countries he takes us.
BUT......
Let’s talk about 'but' now.
A
very famous scientist Edmond Kirsch is about to make a world-changing announcement
of Where do we come from? and Where are we going?
The
announcement is assisted by soon to be Queen of Spain, Ambra Vidal (but she is completely
unaware about the content of his announcement). I guess it is about time that I
should announce Edmond Kirsch is so genius that he has programmed a
virtual artificial assistant, Winston. He is programmed to behave like human
and understand their emotions. As a matter of fact, Winston knows everything
about Kirsch apart from the discovery itself and a password that can access to the
discovery Kirsch made.
On
the night of the discovery, while Kirsch was about to announce his discovery,
he gets killed. Now the whole world watching and more curious about his
discovery, Robert Langdon and Ambra Vidal with the assistance of Winston has to
track down the password of Edmond Kirsch's discovery so that they can make it
public. It’s a huge suspense but you know what I guessed the ending miles away
(I guess I am reading too much of Robert Langdon).
Take home message?
For
me, so many things didn't make sense.
1. Winston declared that he killed his own creator Edmond Kirsch in public to
enhance the public interest of his discovery. Winston thought that it was for
his own good but you know what? It totally didn't make sense. Winston killed
Kirsch before the discovery was announced and without Langdon to
track down the codes to find his password, there was no way discovery was
getting public. The discovery would have been lost if Langdon was not
there.
2.
I don't understand the role of Ambra Vidal and her connection with Edmond
Kirsch. The world renowned genius scientist Kirsch secretly creates Winston
using supercomputer and keeps it secret from everyone and even programmes it in a way that it permanently shuts down the day after he dies. He makes this world-changing discovery that he doesn’t tell anyone and is very sceptical about.
Still, he tells Ambra how to unlock his home's door and that the password to his
discovery is the 47 characters line of one of the poems of his favourite poet, which happened to be in his home library.
This doesn't make sense.
3.
I still didn't get who killed Saed al-Fadl and Rabi Yehuda Köves. Was it again Winston? But Why?
4.
At the end, it shows Bishop Valdespino and the king of Spain are gay couple.
This totally doesn’t fit into the story and Love is a private thing. The
world doesn't need to know every detail.
As
I said, the concept is good. Dan Brown talks about the AI,
the recent control of human life by new technology and how fake news are
weighing as much as real news in today's generation but I strongly feel that
Robert Langdon didn't come that powerful this season because in previous
seasons, I was so used to Langdon being the main focus in everywhere. He solving
all the mysteries and it was like, without him nothing else happened. There were
no loopholes and loose ends. The funny thing is, you know I was like damn! he
forgot to mention his Mickey Mouse watch this time. I was like noooooo..... but
it was there towards the end. While I am thinking about that, I realised
the role of Ambra Vidal is even more dreadful. She didn't come across as smart
and active as other females in previous series. You know what I am going to change
my score back to 3 stars.
Oh
well, The Da Vinci Code, and Angels and Demons are still my
favourite Robert Langdon series.
