Prometheus Revisited

QUAE SUPRA NOS NIHIL AD NOS

"That which is above is nothing to us."

Alternately, 

"What lies above is none of our business." 

[1]

[2]

[3]

     Alciato's allegory of Prometheus bears the same admonishment echoed by myths and religions for millennia: that man should remain servile and ignorant, with eyes cast toward the ground. It is a warning against Faustian knowledge, and though mankind's technology has surely advanced, the animal himself has changed little. The myth is perpetual. What the snake of Genesis is to Adam and Eve, Science is to contemporary humanity. The atavistic nature of superstition surfaces anew in each generation. It hisses in the ear, sowing seeds of doubt and paranoia: perhaps this will be the year that a terrible threshold is crossed. It maintains a vague sense of impending destruction, always assuring us that the next step we take will be one too far, one we will not be able to pull back from the brink. Details may change, but ever present is the suggestion that our curiosity, our limitless inquiry, is an assault on mystery inviolate. To a certain extent, the suggestion is true. With every advance in understanding, our power increases. The mysterious unknown diminishes. The ability to split atoms, to see across galaxies and peer into molecules, the graduation from genetic memory to silicon history; indeed, our science has begun to make us godlike, in any sense meaningful to our ancestors. Perhaps the crux of Prometheus' warning is not whether "what lies above" is any of our business (for men will always make it their business), but whether or not we will be wise enough to understand it before destroying ourselves in the process. 

REFERENCES

1. Alciato, Andrea. Emblemata. Paris. 1584.

2. Alciato, Andrea. Emblematum Liber. Augsburg. 1531.

3. Alciato, Andrea. Emblematum Libellus. Woodcuts by Mercure Jollat. Paris. 1534.

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