THE FAULT, DEAR BRUTUS...

Scientists sometimes irritate me.

I don't mean scientists in the original sense of the word, people who work to advance knowledge through the use of scientific method...though there is some overlap between that set and the one I'm talking about. The people who irritate me are the ones who Believe, not in a myth or a religion or a moral code, but in Science. They aren't usually even aware that they're doing it, which might be funny under other circumstances. They take the pronouncements of real scientists, and rather than testing them out, they Believe them, set them up as some kind of techno-gospel (which will probably be a new kind of music some day soon). They ignore whichever of Clarke's laws it was that said "When an eminent scientist says that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong." Scientists, to them, are never wrong. Science is never wrong. Science is infallible. Never mind that the progress of science down through the ages has been an ongoing process of making mistakes and learning from them.

And by the same token, to this kind of scientist (sciencian? Sciencite? Whatever), anything that is not science (by their definition) is worthless mumbo-jumbo. Evidence is irrelevant. The testimony of ordinary, sensible, level-headed people is so much babble from the padded cell. To them, we are all ignorant savages trembling before our crude altars. Only they have the secret knowledge. Only they see the Truth.

Astrology. There's a case in point. Sorry, I do beg your pardon, I mean "that astrology nonsense." Of all the things that sciencites love to dump on, this must be one of the biggest, on a par with believing in a deity, or maybe even better. After all, science has so far given us absolutely no reason to discount the possibility that a deity of some sort exists. There's no proof either way. Astrology, however, is easily disproved. All you have to do is assume that the human race is congenitally imbecile, and look at the phenomenon backwards.

Astrologers, you see, and the stupid sheep who believe them, think that great whirling balls of rock and gas are alive, intelligent, and take an interest in whether Mrs Doris Fnord of 123 Wibbling Way, Wibbling Parva, should or should not be careful in dealings involving a friend. They think that there are gigantic animals up in the sky looking down on us and making us stubborn or optimistic or fond of beauty. And the funniest thing is that the animals have moved in the past two thousand years, they're not where the astrologers think they are any more, and the astrologers haven't changed their charts and tables to agree with this movement. So that proves it's all rubbish. Doesn't it?

This is a very old and time-honoured game, and it's called Aunt Sally. Astrologers don't actually claim any of that. They use the signs and the planets and the houses, ascendant and midheaven and aspects, as a shorthand to describe the effects of influences that have been extensively researched and codified over the past two thousand years. That's not so easy to make look silly, though, so you can understand why sciencians prefer to put up the straw men.

I mentioned looking at the phenomenon backwards a while ago. This is because I believe that sciencearians have the origin of astrology exactly reversed. I think what they think happened is this: somewhere back in the dim primitive pre-Science ages, The Priests (a handy all-purpose villain and general bugaboo) decided that the gods were in the sky, and assigned them to various planets and constellations, pretty much at random. Then, having nothing better to do, they devised a complex system by which anyone born when the sun was in front of a particular constellation could be said to be ruled by that constellation's god, who would thereafter govern that person's future. They did this, of course, to bamboozle and dominate the people, keeping from them the light of true science. The fact that (being The Priests) they already had as much power as they could possibly want or need is neither here nor there: after all, everyone wants more power, don't they?

Just one minor point before I offer an alternative hypothesis: how exactly does it occur to anyone to check which pattern of stars is behind the sun at any given point? You can't see it. Short of an eclipse, you can't see any stars at all when the sun's up, and when it's down-you get the idea. To go through all the charting and calculation required to work out the zodiacal position of the sun, I think you have to be looking for something, something a bit more substantial than a way to boost the tithes this month.

Let's try it this way. Ancient scientists (and if you don't know in which sense I'm using the word, you haven't been paying attention) observed that people exhibited a range of different personality traits, not explicable in terms of heredity or environment. They studied, and collated, and sorted out twelve distinct personality types, linked somehow to the time of year at which the subject was born. They gave these types names based on their natures-one is impetuous and belligerent like a ram, one slow and stubborn like a bull, and so on-and found correspondences in their religious myth-cycles, because after all these scientists did not discount the possibility of deity purely because they had not proved it yet. Then, being scientists, they sought after a cause. They discovered the zodiac, the belt of star patterns through which the sun passes, and worked out where the sun was at the time when each personality type was being manifested, and then-and only then-they applied the types to the constellations, perhaps the most far-fetched part of the whole thing. (Have you looked at Taurus? Does that look anything like a bull to you?) Then, having theorised that the position of the sun had some influence, they went on to develop the theory with respect to the other planets, and astrology as we know it was born. A scientific exercise, working from observed effect to possible cause, and adapting the theory to fit the facts. Some people could maybe learn a thing or two.

I have gone into astrology: not as a career, but in enough depth to conclude that the personality types are there. Not always to the same extent, since the influence of astrology is only one of a hundred other factors working on the developing personality, and seldom in the same way, but everyone manifests to whatever degree some characteristic or tendency attributable to their "star sign." That this influence has anything to do with the actual stars I think has been convincingly disproved by the precession of the equinoxes: but the system continues to work for its practitioners, and until some effort is made to isolate the true cause it will, I think, do.

I am not making any extravagant claims for astrology: while it is an exact science as far as it goes, it can never provide utterly reliable or wholly comprehensive data either about personality or future events, any more than the study of sunspots can tell us exactly what the weather will be tomorrow. I do not believe this is a valid reason for abandoning the study of sunspots. In a world filled with variable factors each impacting on our lives, it is wise to take account of as many of those factors as possible.

As for the rantings of the scienceadelphians, well...as long as they continue to ignore the evidence, impugn the intelligence of their predecessors and spout dogma instead of asking intelligent questions, we will never run the risk of taking them too seriously when they declare anything else to be impossible.

Which is no bad thing.

On The Nature Of Good And Evil, The Existence Of The Soul, And Why Spike Is Cooler Than Angel

Souls have always puzzled me. Not being a member of the Church of the Pauline Heresy, I've never been too clear as to what one is, or whether I have one or not. In fact, I've often suspected that the soul was invented, or adopted, by religious authorities, of whatever stripe, as something that We have and They don't: if you want to exploit, persecute or slaughter someone, well, that's all right, they haven't got souls like real people. This was, I believe, once said of people whose skin was a different colour: it has always been said of elves, faeries, mermaids...and vampires.

In the Buffyverse, of course, this hypothesis is claimed as fact by the Watchers' Council, that body so well-known for openness, honesty and human compassion. They maintain that anyone turned by a vampire loses his or her soul and becomes an empty shell inhabited by a demon. This is one of the core concepts of vampirism as it is perceived by the vampire hunter, and makes the job much less morally dubious. After all, when you stake a vampire, you're not really killing something, well, not a real person like us. Killing demons is all right. They don't have souls. Against this hypothesis, however, we can now set a number of facts picked up from the last five or six seasons of Buffy and Angel, which seem to indicate that the truth (at least within the context of this fictional series) is far otherwise.

Vampires in general, and Angel in particular, have complete continuity of memory, identity and personality from human to vampire (and back again), the only difference being the apparent lack of compassion, love, guilt, self-loathing and other typically human qualities. I say "apparent" when I should say "mythical:" we have seen that vampires are perfectly capable of experiencing love and the rest, while we have seen plenty of human beings who function quite happily without any of the above traits, and one presumes that they have souls.

Demons, as we have seen, come in all shades of good and evil. The "evil" ones, i.e. the ones that hurt humans (this being the only moral yardstick that seems to be applied) usually have some kind of reason for their evildoing: either they got stuck with a really nasty reproductive cycle, or they're exercising their fundamental right to practise their religion, or maybe it's just simple survival. Very few demons seem to want to eviscerate humans just for fun. Humans, of course, do it all the time and with gusto...and one presumes that they have souls.

Vampires have to drink blood to live. Buffy-type vamps have it easier than some, in that they can survive on animal blood, even dead animal blood. You don't see many humans making the moral choice to live on cold cabbage water and nothing else, though, and it's a moot point how necessary the act of killing is to a vampire. Whatever else they do, they have to have access to a liquid whose proper place is inside a living being, so for them to survive something must be hurt, if not die. The same, of course,is true of humans: we just dress it up fancier. And one presumes that we have souls.

So: if a soul is not identity, memory or personality, what is it? Well, when the gypsies made their all-time winning bid for Most Ineptly Designed Curse and Angelus supposedly got his soul back, he suddenly became very very guilt-ridden. The soul, therefore, would seem to consist mostly of conscience, or superego. What effect did this sudden inrush of guilt have on Angel? Answer: It completely messed him up and stopped him doing anything (except, apparently, biting rats, who (not having souls) don't count) for most of fifty years. Only Whistler's intervention on behalf of the Powers That Be, who had presumably run out of patience, gave him the notion that he might actually be able to do some good. That, of course, and the burgeoning charms of a certain young Slayer in the rough.

Let's now turn to Spike. Seemingly an unregenerate, unrepentant vampire, he showed no change in his nature after the Initiative's implant stopped him harming humans. Under the influence of his love for Buffy, however, he has of late turned into a considerable force for good despite having (as Doc pointed out) no trace of a soul anywhere. Compassion he has shown, self-loathing he has expressed, and he has repeatedly put himself in the way of a considerable degree of harm for people who wouldn't spit on him if he were on fire. Okay, he still does bad things, but it should be obvious by now that (a) a soul is not necessary to make a being "good," (b) vampires are not all predestined for evil, and (c) Spike's efforts at self-transformation are worth about a hundred of Angel's self-obsessed guilt trips.

Update: at the end of season six of Buffy, Spike went off to Africa or somewhere similar and apparently "got his soul back." How he managed to conceive and carry through this operation without having the soul in the first place is left unexamined: once he gets over his brief bout of insanity, though, there seems very little difference between the Spike of season seven and the Spike of season six. The reason being, of course, that there is no difference: the whole Africa thing simply fulfilled his expectations of what getting a soul would be like. And that's the key: vampires think of themselves as soulless because they're told that they are. It makes the evildoing maybe a bit easier: nothing to lose, and all that. There are some problems with this: the scene with Anya in the bar (in "Beneath You"), for instance; but the evidence for is so much more persuasive than the evidence against. Oh, and when D'Hoffryn casually speaks of "the life and soul of a vengeance demon" (in "Selfless") it kind of blows the whole human/demon dichotomy out of the window.

It will also be seen that wishing a soul on Angel was about as worthwhile as wishing an emotion chip on Data: a quick and dirty fix to contrive something that didn't need contriving. (Is there anyone, apart from the Next Gen production team, who didn't see that Data had emotions from day one? They're a natural consequence of a mind's interactions with the real world, for pete's sake.) For in Spike's achievement is the key to Angel's true redemption. Yes, he could atone for his past deeds: but only as Angelus, as the being who did the deeds. Not by agonising, not by tormenting himself, and not by doing the Powers That Be's dirty work for them, but by abandoning the makeshift "soul" he has been lumbered with and then wilfully turning his back on the darkness. Perhaps, if Angelus had truly loved Buffy the way Spike does, he might have managed it before now.

(The bulk of this article was written many years ago. Since then, we have seen Angel flirt with darkness, make love with Darla without experiencing any change, and become a beast worse than he has ever been in Pylea. Nevertheless, he remains a vampire with a "soul" tacked on, and the point, I think, stands.)

Whether the points I have raised have been considered by Messrs Whedon, Greenwalt, Noxon et al I do not know. Maybe Spike will revert to type and have to be killed. Maybe he will emulate Darla (and do we really believe she sacrificed herself because she had a baby's soul inside her?) and destroy himself for love. Maybe Angel will never go willingly all the way into the darkness so as to find his own true way to the light. Or maybe Buffy and her friends will explode the myth, and force the Watchers' Council to recognise that the beings they seek to exterminate are sentient, intelligent creatures just as they are, with their own paths to walk, their own quests to pursue, and the same goals as all living things: redemption, and transcendence.

May we all find them.

Update: well, Spike did destroy himself for love, or try to. The Watchers' Council got exploded, though rather more literally than I had in mind. Angel advanced no further along his own path, and indeed ended rather with a whimper than any kind of bang. And the myth stood, at the end of both series, even more undermined than when I started this article, but uncontradicted. I remain less than satisfied, and still confused as to whether the writers knew what they were covertly saying, or whether in some yet-to-be-made movie or series the question will ever be readdressed. I certainly hope so.