The Pursuit of Knowledge - Essay Example

The Pursuit of Knowledge Literature often has a way of exploring difficult topics in a more easily understood way than the scientific approach full of theory and conjecture. Although both can sometimes read as equally out of touch with the modern reality, both scientific writing and fiction are capable of exposing deep truths about the world we live in. This is the case with a fictional novel entitled The Golden Compass written by Philip Pullman. The first in a trilogy, the book introduces the young character of Lyra Belacqua and her daemon Pantalaimon as they discover a deep secret of the elite society – a mysterious substance referred to as Dust (“something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn’t ordinary dust” (19)). As Lyra and her daemon spirit begin their adventures, first in search of her missing friend Roger and then, more completely, with the charming but dangerous Mrs. Coulter, they begin to learn terrible things about the world they live in and the possibility of worlds in existence completely apart from their own. Throughout the book, religion is pitted against knowledge even as knowledge becomes divided by its ultimate purpose. Mrs. Coulter and her General Oblation Board represent the church’s typical reaction to any kind of new scientific knowledge. Rather than attempting to discover the truth about the mysterious Dust and perhaps prove the existence of God in the form of elementary particles, Mrs. Coulter, also Lyra’s natural mother, has set up an experimental station to which she sends children that have been kidnapped out of the cities and attempts to separate them from their daemons, physical manifestations of the individuals’ souls and something that every human in Lyra’s world possesses. Typically, separation from one’s daemon is associated with death, as is illustrated when Iorek slices one of the Turkish guard’s daemons in half and the otherwise untouched person dies. The purpose of Mrs. Coulter’s experiments are to discover a means of keeping the Dust from ‘infecting’ children at about the age of puberty, when it becomes highly attracted for the remainder of the person’s life, to humans. She explains to Lyra that “Dust is something bad, something wrong, something evil and wicked. Grownups and their daemons are infected with Dust so deeply that it’s too late for them … But a quick operation on children means they’re safe from it. Dust just won’t stick to them ever again” (256). Considered the source of original sin, Mrs. Coulter’s intention is to revolutionize the world back into the more perfect beings God placed in the Garden of Eden, producing people like the doctors and nurses at the experimental station who seem to walk around in a sort of half-trance, not really alive in their incurious and half-alert state, and not really dead with only a fleeting connection to the daemon that is supposed to be their life-mate. That the daemon is closely associated with the idea of a soul is made clear as Lyra talks with Iofur about the subject, indicating that the polar bear warrior would never be permitted to be baptized until it could be proven that he had a daemon of his own, much like the world of reality in which only things with souls, expressly humans, are baptized (300). This is contrasted with Lord Asriel’s insatiable search for knowledge of the Dust as he ultimately rejects Mrs. Coulter’s approach to attempt permanent separation from it through permanent separation from the daemon. In discussing Asriel’s pursuits, two scientists at Mrs. Coulter’s party unwittingly give Lyra reason to hope at least one of her natural parents is honorable as they illustrate how the ‘Zoroastrian heresy’ has been proven through Asriel’s work in capturing an image of Dust. This is confirmed for her when the gyptians tell her that her father “had a hatred of priors and monks and nuns” (109) and, against the mandates of the court, pulled her out of the nunnery she’d been placed in and relocated her to Oxford instead. As Asriel explains to Lyra the nature of Dust that had thus far been discovered, he emphasizes his scientific interest in discovering it, but only begins to hint at the true motive for his interest toward the end of their discussion. As he provides this explanation, he illustrates the church’s general reaction to anything that might threaten its long hold on theology. “this discovery of Rusakov’s was so unlikely and strange that the inspector from the Consistorial Court of Discipline [closely associated with the church] suspected Rusakov of diabolic possession” (325). Only after Rusakov was able to successfully pass through a series of brutal tests and trials were his theories accepted by the church and incorporated into their doctrine as Original Sin. While Asriel seems to reject this idea in his redirection of the thought surrounding this concept, his actions later reveal his true intentions in attempting to discover the origins of Dust. Rather than seeking out the truth, Asriel’s purpose remains much the same as Mrs. Coulter’s, to stop the flow of Dust into his world and thus stop the effects of original sin. However, there remains a third possibility neither of the adults were able to understand and that is that the Dust may actually be a good thing. This is first suggested when Lyra talks with the boatman on board ship about the benefits of having one’s daemon settle into a fixed form, such as knowing what sort of person you are. “Take old Belisaria. She’s a seagull, and that means I’m a kind of seagull too. I’m not grand and splendid nor beautiful, but I’m a tough old thing and I can survive anywhere and always find a bit of food and company. That’s worth knowing, that is. And when your daemon settles, you’ll know the sort of person you are” (147). It is also hinted at in the way that the adults who have been severed from their daemons seem to have less life in them than usual, as in the incurious nurses and doctors who seem unsure of themselves and incapable of making a solid decision. The Turks also provide a clue as to the idea that Dust might be good in their practice of actually drilling a hole in their skulls as a means of attempting to attract more Dust to them. Finally, Pantaliamon suggests that anything Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel were against was perhaps not the evil thing Lyra had been informed it was but was instead something wonderful. “We’ve heard them all talk about Dust and they’re so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong … We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn’t?” (349-350). Only after being fully capable of understanding the evil that had been committed by both Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel, was Lyra finally able to begin theorizing for herself and concluding that anything with so much harm involved could not be done for the betterment of humankind. The example of the church in attempting to block all knowledge of Dust among the populace and discover a means of preventing it from ‘infecting’ future generations emerges as an evil practice that has little more than an ambition for power behind it as a driving force. Similarly, the example of Lord Asriel in attempting to discover the source of the Dust and find a means of blocking it is revealed as equally evil and life-threatening and equally blind to the possibilities. Only when she is able to distance herself from both approaches is Lyra able to understand a third possibility, that the Dust might be something good, as she decides to follow her father into the alternate world he has opened and try to prevent him from destroying the source of the Dust before she finds out its true nature. Read More