Summit meeting: Past, future merge on mountain

Bret Bradigan - publisher - From my view - Eastern Arizona Courier
August 18, 1999
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Views are stunning from Mount Graham's peak. Mid-monsoon greenery
unfolding toward the distant gray serrated ridgelines washes away in waves
of beauty the thin veneer of civilized cares. Lost in the moment, you can
easily forget what century you are in.

That is, of course, until you realize you are surrounded by many millions
of dollars of the world's finest optical and radio equipment, designed to
peer into the very dawn of creation.

The University of Arizona and the Vatican observatories are by no means
invisible, and the site of underconstruction Large Binocular Telescope can
be jarring after the trip up the mountain. But given the nature, and,
pardon the word play, scope of the projects, it is evident that much care
has gone into minimizing the disturbances. It is a testimony to the care
of construction that you can lose yourself in wildness while surrounded by
all this progress.

Such is the visual irony of the Mount Graham Telescope Project- an island
of science, surrounded by a land of harsh and primitive majesty.

My first trip to the project coincided with the Apaches' Sacred Run from
San Carlos to Mount Graham's summit for a ceremony and protest. This
juxtaposition of events exposes my profound division of allegiances. I
want them both to win. I want the Apaches' cultural traditions to be
restored, revived and revered. I want the telescope project to peel back
the layers of our ignorance on a cosmic scale. I want technology and
tradition, science and religion, to find their perfect balance. Amid all
this furor, I even want those benighted squirrels to thrive.

I hate, it when decent, well-meaning people find themselves bitterly
opposed. Most of all, I hate knowing that this happens far too often.

Stephen Jay Gould recently composed an elegant book that tries to bridge
that gulf between faith and empiricism. He believes that science and
religion are separate but equal realms, which he calls Magisterium. One
cannot preclude, nor exclude, the other. What comes from faith speaks to
the mystery of our hearts and souls. What comes from science brings the
mysteries of the universe into our grasp. Without one, our lives would be
devoid of meaning and purpose. Without the other, we would be huddled in
caves, swaddled in furs, and dying from toothaches.

	My worry is that science appears to be losing ground. For every
telescope project that proceeds amid the fury of protest, there is a place
like Kansas, where legislators relegate the teaching of evolution to the
back of the class. It is not my intent to engage in that debate, only to
say that reasonable people of all points of view have been excluded from
the discussion, forced out by fire breathing zealots. This has happened on
all manner of issues around here, from wolf reintroduction to cattle
grazing to rural versus urban growth issues. The middle ground is fast
becoming scorched and barren earth.

Still, I cannot resign myself to a future of endless conflict. Galileo was
imprisoned nearly 400 years ago by the Vatican for the impertinence of
insisting that the earth moved around the sun. Today, at their own
leading-edge telescope, priests of the Holy See are the ones bringing
knowledge back from the frontiers of space. That's the kind of irony that
should give us all hope.