The Gosse Argument. Column in KompyuterraOnline #31
The Gosse argument is logically impeccable. Its only flaw is that it is useless for adapting to the world in which we actually live.
Philip Henry Gosse (1810–1888) was a good — a very good — man. Gosse not only coined the word "aquarium" but also established London's first public marine aquaria (several small ones from 1850, and a truly substantial one in 1853).
Of course, Gosse was not the first to keep fish in artificial vessels. That distinction belongs to the ancient Romans. They adorned their banquet tables with containers holding live red mullet, which were killed before the guests' eyes with special tongs. As it dies, the red mullet changes colour in a most striking way. The refined souls of aesthetes were equally delighted by watching criminals thrown into pools of starving moray eels. Compare that motivation with Gosse's: he simply loved to admire the creatures of the water!
Gosse was, then, a kind man with a keen interest in the natural sciences. It was precisely during his lifetime that a rift opened between science (regarded as the source of knowledge) and faith (regarded as the source of morality). That rift grieved Gosse, and he set out to close it.
I should note at once that we remember Gosse's ideas largely because they were cited by the English mathematician, philosopher, and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), and Russell's ideas were retold by the great Argentine avant-garde writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). Borges was not only a writer and a library director but also an attentive reader who took pleasure in unearthing half-forgotten stories. In Borges's treatment (presented in the essay "The Creation and P.H. Gosse") the problem was framed thus: "How can one reconcile the Lord with fossil reptiles, and Sir Charles Lyell with Moses?" Geologists and palaeontologists spoke of the vast extent of Earth's history, while proponents of a literal reading of the Bible insisted that the age of the Earth was measured in a few thousand years.
Let us attempt to classify the possible solutions to the conflict between the dogmas of faith and the results of scientific inquiry.