Creator, Father, Author

Abstract

When the eighteenth-century mathematical astronomer, the Marquis Pierre-Simon de Laplace, presented Napoleon Bonaparte with a copy of his Mechanique Céleste, Napoleon challenged him: ‘You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe.’ Laplace’s nonchalant answer was, ‘Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis.’ This repartee was symptomatic of the Age of Reason in its absolute confidence in the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the world and to improve it. And yet, after nearly three centuries of scientific, technological and material progress, Laplace’s self-sufficiency seems pathetically naive and inadequate as the most brilliant of modern writers, artists, and thinkers deplore the spiritual vacuum such scientific optimism has produced. For Graham Greene, the older ‘hypothesis’ is still indispensable.