Father Sky

When I’m not out stargazing or reading about various culture’s relationship with the sky, I like to follow tennis. If you follow tennis at all you probably saw that Roger Federer won the French Open tennis tournament a few weeks ago which put him in a rather unique group. He is now one of only 6 men to have won each of the 4 major championships and has tied Pete Sampras’ record of most championships won.

If you are not a tennis fan, or even if you are, you are probably wondering what all this has to do with a Cultural Astronomy blog? On it’s own, nothing. But what pushed me to write are the accolades coming out after the achievement. Many noteworthy writers are now calling Roger, “… the greatest ever”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/8088191.stm

Ever? Really? What is this obsession with our current age, that we have to be the smartest, fastest, strongest, most talented people who ever lived?

It makes me think of the response Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola received when he discovered cave paintings dated to approximately 45,000-20,000 years ago. (see my blog post, “Skepticism” for the story). Early humans just couldn’t be that sophisticated. After all, aren’t we in the age of scientific discovery? Isn’t our understanding of the universe greater than ever in human history?

Maybe. But lets not leap to the assumption that those that came before us were incapable of a rather sophisticated view of the world. The builders of Chankillo or Stonehenge probably did have an impressive understanding of celestial motion. In fact, scientists often have to learn new ways of thinking, (or more correctly… to re-learn traditional ways of thinking) to understand all of what is going on with some of these monuments/structures. And yet many of these mysteries remain unsolved. I’d like to think there are specially gifted people throughout history (and pre-history). Putting them in some sort of rank order misses the point. Humans have survived and thrived because special people have always rose to the occasion to help us through, beat the odds and somehow make life better. As soon as we label someone the greatest ever we’ve trivialized all wonderful people who came before.

Before I close I should say that in no way am I trying to diminish Roger’s accomplishment. He certainly deserves to be honored as one of the elite. I should hope that would be enough.