Opinion
I’ve always wanted to learn from the most important stories.
When I was young, I read everything I could about King Arthur. I reasoned that this legend must have survived for a reason.
The story has at least three features: the sword in the stone; the round table; and the quest for the holy grail.
I felt I understood the first two. The sword represented technology, knowledge, wisdom – what was then termed magic. The round table, with no one at the head, represented inclusive decision making or democracy. But even after reading The Once and Future King, and Le Morte D’Arthur, I had no idea what a grail was.
Monty Python’s film The Quest for the Holy Grail is one of the greatest comedies ever made, but it doesn’t help much if you want to understand why there is a grail in the Arthurian legend.
Apparently, the grail is either the cup used to collect the blood of Jesus as he suffered on the cross, or the cup he used at the last supper. Why King Arthur would make it a target, while ignoring all the other crockery and cutlery used by Jesus, bewildered me.
No one really uses the word grail in isolation today – when did you last use it? – and why would an English King in around the year 450 have prioritised a quest for this exalted mug?
Odd as it may sound – I have never stopped thinking about this question.
Today the phrase “quest for the holy grail’ is familiar to most people. These words capture any ultimate purpose.
I believe that Purpose, after Community, is a fundamental individual and societal need.
King Arthur realised this and as soon as his regime had secured peace in Camelot, he quickly devised the grail quest to provide an ongoing purpose for his knights.
I worry that 1600 years of not finding the grail may be eroding the collective sense of purpose that Britain once enjoyed. Indeed, the West appears to be losing faith in its purpose, possibly in any purpose.
For me and for many – learning – can serve as a very useful purpose. For me learning science has been important and I hypothesise that making science an official government purpose would benefit society, irrespective of whether any grails or indeed anything is discovered.
This is an important point. Science is useful, not only because of the outputs, but also because of the process itself.
This does not just concern science, it is relevant to other areas of learning too, but the point is clearly illustrated by considering science, and it is my area of training.
Since the Enlightenment, societies that have prioritised science have, I believe, prospered partly due to some sort of harmony that comes from celebrating the quest of scientific learning.
This harmony arises because in science you are always playing the ball and never playing the man.
In scientific writing, this is helped by the fact that the individual is made invisible.
In science, you don’t get to dig in and develop lifelong grudges because there is an external umpire who decides what prevails – that referee is called reality. It is not about using one’s strength of personality or power to argue with the referee. The referee is always right.
So, when experiments have proved me wrong, I have just accepted it and jumped in again in the hope of being right next time.
And happily, there is always a next time because in science there is an inherent belief in progress. Science is a never-ending upward journey towards truth.
Another thing about science is that the stories are mostly good news. If the hypotheses are right and breakthroughs are made, then it is usually reported and celebrated. And often when scientists are right a new widget is created or a disease is cured. Hooray. When hypotheses are wrong, nothing happens except you rethink and have another try.
There is also something intrinsically collaborative about science that crosses boundaries of ethnicity, gender, religion, or class etc. If I need expertise that isn’t available locally, I just reach out to others with that expertise. And they typically engage on the basis of one primary question, whether they consider the study to be scientifically interesting.
Australia has entered an unusual period where no scientific plan or quest has been articulated for a long time. There is no quest for the holy grail. It’s ages since we heard new words like Future Fellowships, Backing Australia’s Ability, the National Innovation and Science Agenda, the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, Medical Research Future Fund, or the Trailblazers, or about research evaluation exercises, like the Excellence in Research for Australia process that used to celebrate achievements and implicitly guide funding to where it can build on strength. Research was covered in the Universities Accord but there appears to have been little serious effort to implement the recommendations around research.
Instead of seeking a holy grail our knights and citizens are left to bicker about minor political ideologies, scoring trivial political points rather than dreaming of any greater purpose.
Science can be a vehicle both for material advancement and for social cohesion, but you need to champion it and to articulate a quest or several.
Perhaps our leaders would do well to reread the old stories, about technology, democracy, and quests. Then they should reread the Accord and launch a quest for a grail.
Professor Merlin Crossley is Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic Quality at UNSW