"The Sea Beast": Challenging Curiosity
Getting a little bit controversial! Hop along for the ride down the history of colonial ideology and modern scientific method. (Also we are officially over email limit, lads.)
Content warnings:
detailed discussions of colonial ideology, slavery and racism
discussions of environmental crises
discussions of (fictional) war
mention of abuse
Love is an imperfect feeling. It’s a perfect state, but an imperfect feeling; and, at the risk of sounding a bit cliché, “love” might not be a feeling at all.
The way we define “love” is vague enough to account for countless contradicting, mutually exclusive expressions of it. We slap that inarticulate label on whatever shade of “strong attraction” is relevant at the moment, then say it’s love that drives people to do unloving things.
Love is multi-faced, multi-faceted, and confusing. We may “love” a person and we may “love” a thing. We may love different people in different ways, and some of them will look like frustration, even anger: “I love you, why do you not love me? I love you, why do you hurt yourself? I love you, why are you unhappy?”. Sometimes, it’s easy to justify great mistreatment with our supposed great care. “I do these things because I love you” - not “because I do not yet know how to handle my love”.
In my understanding of it, love can barely have any definition; it is ineffably objective, like gravity. Love is, oftentimes, attraction, a pull in the direction of a being, place, thing, and the most important words I’ve ever heard were “I cannot explain why I love you; I just do, because it’s you”.
Love as a feeling is imperfect, because it’s unconscious, undefined, because more often than not, it is a pull. When you are pulled towards something, there are countless varied ways to build the connection you yearn for. Not all of those ways will make the object of yearning feel loved at the end.
The love some of us seek is, ultimately, a paradox. It’s passionate, yet gentle; it yearns, but it leaves space; it comes as the most authentic expression of the lover, inalienable from them, yet it is about the loved, fully and uncompromisedly, always prioritizing the latter’s health, happiness, bliss. That’s what makes love the way we want to understand it, “true” love, mysterious: it is an oxymoron, a selfless desire. Embracing the full incomprehensible non-duality of it within the walls of our simple human hearts grants us relief from the constant grating dualism of our lives.
All of this is just my own musings, of course; but the notion of love has been explored in many of my favorite stories, often side by side with the theme of abuse, and the difference between the two: it’s hard to define love on its own, but it’s important to understand what masquerades as it while betraying the beautiful paradoxical core of it.
Love is a pull, but not every pull is loving - but it’s easy to claim it as such, to convince others, sometimes yourself, that because you’re doing something you really, truly, deeply want to, that means it is the right thing to do.
Loving something means that it feels cosmically right to have it in your life, as if you’ve unlocked an essential bit of your purpose on this earth. The object of your desire, the act of engaging with it echo something deep and authentic within you, and you are not yourself without it. Who would be horrible enough to deny you what you love?
I want to talk to you about passion and compassion, involvement and abstinence, curiosity and limitation.
I want to talk to you about science and expansion. I want to talk to you about entitlement.
I want to talk to you about true love.
And I really want to talk to you about The Sea Beast.
The Sea Beast’s Anti-Colonial Narr-ative
The Sea Beast is a 2022 Netflix-animated feature movie by Chris Williams and Nell Benjamin. It follows the story of a young orphan girl, Maisie Brumble, who stows away on The Inevitable - a legendary ship carrying a crew of Hunters, swash-buckling sailors that battle and kill deadly sea monsters at the order of The Crown. Maisie herself comes from “a long line” of Hunters, with her parents perishing onboard the tragically famous vessel The Monarch.
In the pursuit of the Red Bluster, the most dangerous and feared of the beasts, the crew faces mortal peril. Maisie and Jacob, The Inevitable’s most skilled sailor and Captain Crow’s adoptive son, end up stranded in the unknown, untamed lands teeming with the deadly amphibious megafauna. As they try to survive and return home, they discover something that goes against everything they’ve been told: the Red Bluster (“Red” for short) is not only inclined to let them live, but ready to help them and protect them as she guides them back to the familiar shores.
The movie’s narrative centers around challenging history revisionism and exposing the colonial expansionist underpinning of the good old “Man Vs. Nature” conflict. What I find the most admirable about how The Sea Beast handles that theme is the ease and simplicity with which the narrative fully commits to its central values. The story is definitely unconventional, but it’s not necessarily groundbreaking; it does not pose any new theses and rather just… gracefully addresses the already stated points of social discourse in a single story that is not afraid of being simple and kind. And through that, quite unexpectedly, The Sea Beast does something not every anti-colonial narrative manages to achieve: it challenges the parts of our psyche and mentality that are directly fueled by colonial thinking without being inherently colonialist.
This entire essay is inspired by the tumblr post I linked at the very start, and I give my deep, passionate thanks to the person who made it. It stuck with me, itched at my brain, made me realize that the connection between Western European science and colonialism had never before been made clear to me, and had me researching the nuance of that.
We know well enough that the driving force of colonialism was political and economic exploitation of foreign land and peoples. As tumblr user subsequentibis has succinctly stated, science was oftentimes a tool of colonialism, and occasionally - a “palatable” justification of it. What intrigued me, however, was whether the urge to explore unknown lands and species was inherently colonial as well. Certainly, a narrative is never neutral and needs to account for real-world context and implications; if the movie went with a different ending, we wouldn’t be able to justify it by saying “Maisie is a good person and would conduct her research ethically”, because in real life, this line of thinking could easily be co-opted to validate unethical research or expansion. That’s the same old copaganda mechanism at work.
However, the question of the ethics of curiosity kept nagging at me, making me return to the idea of a genuinely well-meaning, passionate person taken with the unknown who accidentally perpetrates exploitative expansion through their pursuit. Has that ever happened? Would that ever happen?
When it comes to the ethics of science, the problem is often painted to be with the imperfections of life or the faults of societies. It’s a safe, familiar story: a passionate person gets pressured to make unsavoury alliances, or maybe becomes an oblivious puppet for the selfish and powerful. Take, for example, Atlantis: The Lost Empire. In it, the enthusiastic scientist Milo Thatch is The Good Guy, unaware at first that he is being used by people seeking to get rich. We can argue about what motivated him to take a stand against them: was it his passion for the “lost” civilization or his questionable romance, or a combination of both?
Regardless of the answer, “love” came in to save the day, and the implication seems to be that it is fine to let “love” lead you to places that may have never been intended for you - as long as you’re nice about it. How often are we motivated by a feeling and not profit, though?
In real-world history, colonial expansion provided scientists with incredible funding and employment opportunities. Colonialism increased the need for cartography, medicine, sociology, agricultural advancement, it required that more scientists study all the new, unfamiliar environments and develop practical ways to navigate them. Atlantis remains a fun fantasy, and as much as I love the image of a scientist as a person driven by enchantment, as much as I appreciate the truly passionate and conscientious people I myself have met that are dedicated to scientific and scholarly pursuit, the love story is not what we seem to end up with most of them time.
Still, that answer did not satisfy me. As I read about researchers that unenthusiastically tried to cozy up to colonial officers to keep their funding, masters of applied science that seemed to find the most meaning in actively fueling colonial conquest, or revered “experts” on foreign culture that had no qualms about perpetrating systemic violence against the very peoples they were so fascinated with, I kept wondering if this apparent colonial mindset and entitlement would still be a problem when taken out of the explicitly colonial context. If we removed governments and corporations from the equation, if funding wasn’t an issue, if we lived in a world where other countries and lands weren’t historically seen as an economic and political resource - what then? Are scientists, ultimately, good people driven by an honourable pursuit that then gets distorted and trampled when the big bad Government or the dreaded Money come in?
As I dug into the history of colonial science and explored specific subsets of colonial ideology and mentality, I didn’t manage to find a concise and telling parable of a nice-guy scientist losing their sight of love on the path of passion. I did find something else, though: a thin thread running way back into our collective history and the evolution of the Western European and otherwise White mindset; something that is so common and, seemingly, so clear and obvious that it is rarely questioned.
I would love to retrace my steps with you, lay out the historical records and accounts, old philosophical works, and books and papers by people with much more academic credibility than myself, and ask if you notice the same things as I do. We will keep The Sea Beast as our entry point: it provides concise and clear-spoken messaging, powerful symbolism and some very important historical allusions that underline the core of the movie’s narrative.
We’ll pick up the plot re-cap from where we left off: Red unexpectedly befriending our protagonist instead of gobbling them right up and going for a nice nap. The way the plot progresses from that point develops an important theme that will become increasingly relevant to our long and thorough philosophical discussion: it is the theme of doubt and pursuit of truth.
Once the myth of mindless bloodthirsty monsters is proven false, Maisie starts questioning everything she’s been told about the sea beasts and the history of the war. With Jacob’s help, she examines the book on Hunters she’s been reading and re-reading her whole life in an attempt to feel closer to her deceased parents. The characters’ now skeptical approach reveals inaccuracies, exaggerations and obviously false information. Such, Maisie’s questioning of the story her people are told begins.
Maisie and Jacob share a similar past: a beast attack left both of them alone, separated from their parents and awfully vulnerable. Jacob got picked up by Captain Crow’s crew and given a new family; Maisie ended up in a home for “Hunter orphans”, with the history books and tales of courage being the only thing she had to remember her parents by. Jacob has lived the life of a Hunter for about a decade - Maisie is initially impatient to join their ranks. She echoes the motto shared among Hunters with exhilliration: “Live a great life and die a great death”. For both Jacob and Maisie, Hunter history and code are what ties them to their families, chosen and lost.
Having to question whether Hunters are truly the valiant protectors of the innocents, whether the war they’ve been fighting for generations is truly just, means the same thing to both of them: it’s a threat to their most precious values, casting doubt on whether their deceased friends and loved ones actually dedicated their lives to and died for a noble, beneficial cause. The journey of unlearning that is one of reconstructing their whole identities - and as they are mutually present through that process, they become each other’s new, authentic family.
When Red is captured by Captain Crow and brought to the Crown’s very doorstep, Jacob and Maisie are left with a hard choice: betray their new friend and the truth they have uncovered, or risk the only life they’ve known up until recently, by standing up to Captain Crow and the royals themselves.
As Crow is getting ready to kill the most fearsome of the beasts of the Dregmorr Sea before King and Queen’s eyes, Maisie connects the dots and understands a vital piece of information: every book containing falsified accounts of Hunter history bears the royal family crest. Facing the crowd that has gathered to witness the death of the Red Bluster, Maisie demands people’s attention and tells them the truth: the generations-long war waged between the kingdom and the sea beasts, the one that took the lives of many of their loved ones, was not noble, or meant to protect them. The Crown spread lies, created the myth of the dangerous monsters that would threaten the peaceful settlements along the shoreline - all to urge its subjects to fight a deadly battle for their own imperialist ambition.
The central narrative of the movie is a very specific and contained one: it is a quite unique tale of history revisionism and the fate of soldiers dying heroic, yet not honourable, and fully unnecessary deaths for their power-hungry rulers. The plot sticks to it, keeping the story straightforward, but multiple elements of the world building, bits of dialogue, motifs and historical allusions hint at a broader, complex and ethically sound narrative that subtly critiques discovery and expansion.
Historical Coding
A few historical allusions seem to place the events of The Sea Beast in a time period that would be equivalent to Europe at the end of the 16th-start of the 17th century. Let’s explore all the rich narrative implications of that.
By the end of the 16th century, the nautical exploration and expansion (and with it the first wave of colonialism) would be well underway. The entire setting of the movie basically screams "the Age of Sail", and it is especially evident in the portrayal of the royal family.
A prevalent visual motif following The Crown is the compass rose. That is the shape of the artificial island that houses the kingdom.
The rose appears as a part of the nautical map design of the castle's floors.
We do not have to wonder what ambitions the Crown holds when it comes to oceanic exploration: the Queen herself gives a glorified account of the kingdom's history, once small but harbouring the dream of crossing the unknown seas and reaching faraway lands. That is a straightforward summary of the age of discovery, which would conclude in the early 17th century, with the bigger world known and mapped out and ready for colonial conquest and exploitation; following that, the Enlightenment Period would begin and bring significant societal changes.
Consequently, the 17th century is also the time our own version of the sea monsters would begin to disappear: the pictures of mythical beasts that served as a warning of the dangers of the open sea in the Reneissance-era nautical maps would appear less in less post-exploration. See this article written by Hannah Waters for Smithsonian Magazine:
“As technology advanced, as our understanding of the oceans and navigation advanced, more emphasis was placed on human’s ability to master the watery element: to sail on it and conduct trade on it <…>. And thus images of the dangers of the sea, while they certainly did not immediately disappear from maps in the 17th century, became less frequent over time, and images of ships became more common.”
<…> On one map from the early 17th century, vignettes illustrated how to kill and process a whale. “Whales, the largest creatures in the ocean, are no longer monsters but rather natural marine storehouses of commodities to be harvested,” wrote Van Duzer. Some of the mystery is gone as the sea becomes another resource rather than a churning darkness to be feared.”
The symbolism is very potent and poignant here: in the real-life 17th century Europe, expansion meant conquest of the wild and eradication of the “beast” of the unknown, untamed, deadly nature. In the fictional world of The Sea Beast, these symbols of the uncontrollable and ruthless natural force are literal, and The Crown is sending people out to wipe them out, once and for all.
Another interesting historical allusion is The Imperialist: a warship presented by the Crown’s admiral as a tool of further expansion, meant to “push deep into the unknown world and eradicate every sea beast in [their] path“. The ship’s broadside is lined with gun ports housing static canons, which Captain Crow remarks on, claiming they would be useless against the creatures. This points to The Imperialist as a version of the “ship of the line”, designed in the 17th century and meant for a specific war tactic in which opposing fleets would line up in columns and fire from all their canons in the same direction; the more heavily armed ship, not the most well-maneuvered one, would be the winner.
I’d say this was mostly a fun little narrative hint at the specific time period, but there is another subtle element to it. The Hunters and the beasts are engaged in a war fueled by hatred, hurt and thirst for revenge. However, they share their battlefield, they risk their lives equally, they both suffer losses. This is “Man Vs. Nature” in a somewhat Romantic, even if still White Colonial, version of it: demanding that a human becomes a bit more like a beast, driven by anger and bloodlust and need for survival. It’s akin to Lermontov’s Mtsyri fighting a panther in a tight ferocious embrace, recognizing the animal as his brother and equal. The Imperialist offers a colder, almost industrial version of nature conquest: brute force and overpowering through technological advancement. Whether it would actually be useful for the in-world sea beast fighting may be less relevant.
Anyway, back to the 16th-17th century thesis! Establishing this specific period of nautical exploration has great narrative implications, both for the colonial theme and the potential rampant future expansion, and for the prevalent mentality and cultural transformation at that time.
Unlike the late 16th century Europeans, the people of our fictional kingdom are only preparing to finally cross the treacherous Dregmorr Sea and “discover” new lands beyond it. But all the warning signs are there: the continued talk of “the dark” that needs to be pierced and “the unknown world” that needs to be explored, the process of exterminating defensive forces of nature on the way to it. The characters unknowingly teeter at the edge of a fully mapped world, conquered elements, and the subsequent unrestrained imperialism - but they avoid crossing that line when the Crown is exposed and the expansionist agenda is disrupted.
The appearance of The Imperialist specifically seems to be a significant choice: without it, the movie’s setting could potentially be linked to an earlier period of discovery. What’s important about the turn of the 17th century specifically is what is only faintly hinted at in The Sea Beast’s story: the emergence of natural history the way we understand it today.
First, let’s return to the plot’s conclusion, at the very least to celebrate the degree of integrity one cannot always expect from a big-picture production.
At the end of the movie, in contrast to the expansionist determination to “pierce the darkness” and “push into the unknown”, the characters simply stay on their familiar shores and leave the sea beasts to continue their lives in their home, their natural and rightful environment. That is a surprisingly and sweetly tame, humble, peaceful ending when held up against our conventional adventure narratives. We are used to our protagonists braving the unknown and breaking through the constraints of their daily lives in order to see and experience the world - but the characters of The Sea Beast tell us it is okay to stay where you are and let secrets remain secrets.
The person behind the inciting tumblr post reflects on the audience’s reaction and some viewers’ disappointment at the fact that Maisie didn’t become a funky little marine biologist. That is because we are largely unused to the idea that it is okay to embrace our ignorance out of anything but poeticism; it may be okay to let something remain an exciting mystery if that’s what makes it more fun for you, but few of us seem ready to say “Alright, I don’t need to know more about this” out of respect for the object of knowing, or out of ethical concern. The Sea Beast is like a little injection of counter-culture to a small and elusive subset of our mentality that has a long and difficult history of philosophical thought, cultural revolution and - get this - Christian trauma behind it. And that very mentality creates an unsettling interplay of science and colonialism that I am very eager to explore.
For the purpose of keeping things simple, let’s for now dub this subset of our consciousness as mere “curiosity” and move on to exploring whether our sweet special girl Maisie truly possesses this essential to a potential scientist trait.
Maisie’s Character
Having rewatched the movie with the “marine biologist” angle in mind, I can understand why some people would expect a more How To Train Your Dragon-esque ending: the young person who questions the status quo building an alliance with the once-feared beasts by learning about them, understanding their behavioural patterns, diets, anatomy and so on. There is even a specific moment in the movie that almost seems to hint at that as the plot’s direction: the scene in which Maisie and Jacob find themselves in Red’s mouth.
In it, the terrified Maisie looks around and asks Jacob, who’s spent his whole adult life constantly engaging with the sea beasts, what sort of death they can expect. Will the Red Bluster chew them first? Will it swallow them whole and have them slowly digest in its acids?
Despite Maisie expecting Jacob to have a ready answer, some more intimate understanding of the beasts’ anatomy and habits, he replies only: “We kill ‘em, lass. We don’t study them”.
At a first glance, this creates a dichotomy of mindless eradication vs. involved inquiry; this dichotomy is false, of course, and the narrative acknowledges that. The main narrative contribution this dialogue provides is illustrating a specific character trait that Maisie possesses and Jacob (bless his bravado-fueled heart) lacks: a piercing and analytical mind.
In the very next scene, this contrast between them is brought up again - but with a very different angle. Jacob is getting ready to take on the beast the only way he ever knew how to: by trying his hardest to break the thick hide with brute force. “I just do it; I don’t want to overthink this, okay?”, he tells Maisie, who is concerned about his lack of a plan and the mortal danger he’d be putting himself in.
Maisie’s sharp mind offers a new, alternative course of action, and she asks: “Can you kill it from the inside?”. The two are immediately interrupted, and Maisie’s hypothesis does not get a chance to get tested. However, the split moment for which Jacob pauses, processing her suggestion, tells us that were they given a few more minutes, the course of the plot could have been diverted dramatically.
In a tense moment of frantically trying to come up with a way for her and her only remaining protector to survive, Maisie uses her analytical skills to turn their current access to Red’s anatomy against her. Obviously, that alone does not indicate that this young girl would take interest in dissecting living things out of pure curiosity and desire to understand them better. The specific circumstance made her feel like she had to choose between her own survival and Red’s, and she applied her quick thinking to the task of making it out alive.
The entire set-up, however, still subtly and masterfully illustrates how the perceived dichotomy mentioned earlier does not hold up: inquiry and understanding don’t exclude extermination. Even more so, they can and often do facilitate greater destruction by making it far more effective.
It’s vital for us to remember that Maisie’s capacity for looking at things critically, assessing the less-considered aspects of something, asking questions other people would not have thought to ask and seeking confirmation for the things she has been told, is also what allows her to eventually expose the Crown’s lies. She is not skeptical at heart: if anything, she is excited and over-enthusiastic, demanding to know more and more and more, and that demand is what eventually unveils the holes in falsified accounts and the gaps in the common understanding of the subject. She is, indeed, curious, and that curiosity drives her into deeper inquiry. That quality is overwhelmingly positive and beneficial to herself and the people around her.
At the same time, the narrative shows that inquiry isn’t always neutral, that a person’s flawed understanding of their situation, defensive instincts, or societally constructed prejudices may cause them to turn their sharp mind against something that seems to threaten them: another person, another being, nature itself. Which is why what’s more important than Maisie’s intelligence or even curiosity is her open-mindedness, her flexibility, readiness to passively yet earnestly observe, receive information freely given to her by the world instead of forcefully extracting it to her own benefit. And the most important thing is her heart, compassionate and loving, and the bravery she possesses to let it guide her no matter the cost.
It was once argued in Western European thought that the moral quality of the knower was what determined the moral soundness of their inquiry. Of course, that is a loaded statement for a culture in which morality was largely defined by Christian values; and it is those exact values that once deemed curiosity as something from the Devil. But the 17th century brought an important milestone that assisted the cultural “rehabilitation” of curiosity regardless of the morality of the knower, and deemed passive observation ultimately unsatisfactory. That cultural milestone also marks the beginning of the scientific method the way we know it today.
Natural Science and the Baconian Method
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and one of the fairly prominent thinkers of the 17th century. He is cited as the person to have laid the groundwork for the modern scientific method by publishing his work titled “New organon, or true directions concerning the interpretation of nature”. In it, Bacon established the basis of empirical scientific inquiry: not simply observing the facts and deriving generalizations from those random observations, but engaging with the object experimentally and monitoring its reaction to varying circumstances. The modern scientific method has evolved past the guidelines laid down by Bacon, but his work is still considered seminal for the fact that it specifically centered experimental research.
In his Organon, Bacon gave an overview of the four “Idols”: cognitive fallacies that lead humans to make assumptions without properly and critically examining a phenomena. If you find the use of “idols” a bit questionable, the next part should clear things up.
In his work in the realm of “natural philosophy”, Bacon acted from a place of deep religious conviction. His scientific approach was profoundly biblically motivated - which is what played a big part in making the general European population less skeptical of the study of nature.
In his article for Current Science, Dr Sundar Sarukkai gives an overview of the history of Western European understanding of curiosity, and its connection to the contemporary approach to the ethics of science. Exploring the pre-Baconian attitude towards curiosity, Dr Sarukkai notes the religiously motivated distrust of inquiry into the workings of nature: curiosity and pursuit of knowledge beyond what was provided in the Bible were seen as almost diabolical, a variation on the myth of the Fall. Humanity has already pursued understanding beyond simple faith into the word of God, and so to continue questioning the rules of the universe was not considered in line with Christian belief.
As Dr Sarukkai points out, Francis Bacon defended scientific inquiry by claiming it in line with biblical interpretations, and successfully redefined “curiosity” as “charity”. In another work, Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature, Bacon goes to great lengths to establish a specific philosophy of scientific inquiry. He appeals to the lines of the Creation myth that establish an anthropocentric understanding of the nature of the universe: God has made it for man to rule. To Bacon, God bringing animals to Adam for the latter to name and then command establishes the holy and rightful duty of humanity when placed in the natural world: to understand, put name to and eventually subdue natural phenomena to our will and convenience. The pinnacle of research and understanding of the world would be full mastery over nature.
Bacon considered scientific inquiry a truly spiritual endeavor, bringing humanity to the degree of power that was available to Adam before the Fall. It was a service to God, as well, as the natural world was seen as a second “book” to complement the Bible: something to study in order to understand the will and might of the creator. Bacon believed that a core universal truth and design underlined every phenomenon, and that understanding separate expressions of nature was a way of connecting to the basic divinity of everything. Thus, false assumption was an “Idol”, nothing short of a false God, followed by an ignorant, unbaptised mind. Endlessly digging for the absolute truth of the world, on the other hand, became a form of righteous and holy worship.
By the end of the 17th century, the pursuit of knowledge was no longer seen as dangerous or frivolous; instead, it was painted as humanity’s duty. According to Dr Sarukkai, by the 18th century curiosity itself was fully rehabilitated and eventually redefined as simply “love of truth”. Dr Sarukkai claims that this rehabilitation profoundly transformed the European understanding of the ethics of science: that was the point at which the morality of the person conducting research became fully irrelevant. Curiosity was now seen as objectively positive, and so it did not matter who was following the instinct of it or under what circumstance. Acquiring knowledge could only ever be a good thing.
It is generally accepted that “modern scientific method does not follow Bacon's methods in its details, but more in the spirit”. That spirit can be described as methodical, experimental, empirical. Dr Sarukkai personally defines it as seeing the universe as purely the source of raw material for humanity to use and exploit.
There is an important aspect of this that ties Bacon’s conviction to colonial expansion. In his article “The Desire to Know the Secrets of the World”, Edward Peters, much like Dr Sarukkai, studies the changing status of curiosity in the Christian Europe, but focuses on its connection to sea exploration culminating in Columbus’ “discovery”. His voyage predates Bacon’s work, but the connection certainly bears great implications for the latter’s legacy: the gradual rehabilitation of curiosity was never separate from colonial expansion.
What is even more telling, however, is the time period in which Bacon’s philosophy was on a sudden and powerful rise: the Industrial Revolution.
Industrial Revolution and Colonial Belief
Before the mid-18th century, Bacon’s works were generally accepted as a solid defense of scientific inquiry, but there was no reason to believe his core ideological statements: that it was humanity’s destiny to rule nature, and that understanding the natural phenomena will raise man to the original God-given state of power over the material.
In Michael Adas’ fantastic book on colonial history and ideology Machines as the measure of men, the author gives an overview of the fascinating changes in European attitudes towards non-white cultures and peoples. According to Adas’ research into the accounts of early European travelers, at the very start of discovery and exploration they felt little fundamental difference between themselves and the rest of the world. Obviously, Europeans noted the shocking cultural distinctions, the less familiar physiology and so on. However, Adas points out, “whatever aspirtaions <…> Francis Bacon may have had for humans to control their natural environment… [before the mid-18th century, Europeans] suffered from the extremes of heat and cold as much as or a good deal more than most of the peoples they contacted overseas”. At the time of early exploration, the main difference that could not be reconciled in the European mind was the religious one. Artificial hierarchies of foreign peoples were being constructed, but were mostly based on what European travelers considered to be satisfactory material development: impressive architecture, entertaining culture and a digestible-to-them social order.
Later, as the Enlightenment Period (17th-18th century) came around and brought with it the rise of philosophical thought and theory, some European travelers started analyzing the political and social structures of overseas communities. The more educated ones occasionally commented on the level of scholarly and scientific development of other cultures and believed that the main obstacle to a society’s potential flourishing would come from “despotic” ruling. The level of scientific development itself, however, was not being used to extrapolate judgements on the very nature of overseas peoples and their mentality - as it would be soon enough.
The relatively tame early observations and musings are a striking, even shocking contrast to the major shift of consciousness that happened with the boom of the Industrial Revolution. With industrialization came a sense of control, mastery of environment, practice of bending and repurposing the basic principles of creation in order to generate comfort, efficiency and technological advancement. Baconianism came back with new force: Europeans had tangible proof of how discoveries of natural science could be used to transform their material lives.
A bit paradoxically, to the Christian mind, man-made machines became a proof of God. The European consciousness took the lavish technological advancement to be proof of anthropocentric (and specifically White-centric) creationism. Industrialization revealed to them that humanity’s holy right and duty was indeed in reclaiming its place as the master of the world. Moreover, technological advancement allowed for more research as the more powerful and precise scientific tools came around, and perceiving the natural world in fuller detail served as proof of the endless might of the God who created it all. For example, one of the colonial writers quoted by Adas claimed that teaching African kids about astronomy was the quickest way to indoctrinate them into Christian faith. Technological advancement became a herald of Christian conviction - while at the same time being hailed as the way to disperse the “superstitions” of paganism. Europeans felt themselves chosen by God to become the most “evolved” race upon this earth, and that fed into the colonial conviction of objective superiority that is nowadays reflected in the white supremacist movements.
Perhaps the most vibrant representation of the great cognitive shift the European society went through as the result of the scientific revolution and industrialization was their transformed relationship with the very concepts of time and space. That transformation was largely influenced by the capitalist need for urgency. The unprecedented precision of clocks, the equation of time with money, the invention of transport that moved at once unimaginable speeds - that made Europeans feel like they intimately understood and all but freely commanded the very (meta)physical foundations of creation. That bore a great disparity between their mode of perception of the world and the perceptions prevalent in other cultures - and Europeans could only see that as proof of other peoples’ lack of ability to comprehend time beyond just the present moment, their inherent laziness, or a shameful indifference towards the high ideals of truth and precision.
As the Adas’ book’s title succinctly states, machines and technological advancement were seen as the measure of ultimate worth - and not of an individual person but a people as a whole. In the colonial White-favouring mind, the achievements of European inventors gave credit to all their compatriots and contemporaries, because supposedly, all of this advancement was provided for by democratic ruling, support of scholarly research by the state, and the blessing of the Christian God who has “chosen” them to be the “dominant” civilization. Industrialization was nothing short of a destiny uncovered, and the implication almost seemed to be that technological progress was something that was either meant to happen in a people’s history or not, by the will of divine providence.
European expansion and colonization became openly motivated by making use of the natural resource of colonized lands with the purpose of maintaining their industrial control over nature. Applied science that made use of the accumulated Western knowledge was fully recognized for the transformative power it had on the very bases of European civilization, and, predictably, was utilized as a tool for further expansion.
European Knowledge & “Pure” Science
As you can probably see, all this veneration of scientific and technological advancement was distinctly colored with a sense of divine determinism, almost seeming to imply that there was nothing higher for humanity to aim for: the Europeans had already arrived at the final stop of civilization and evolution. The focus on the practical transformation of everyday life meant that science’s place was in increasing the scale and efficiency of humanity’s tools for mastery over nature. “Pure” science fully concerned with theoretical knowledge held little relevance to that advancement, and so its idea of progress and the drive to understand the natural phenomena better did not align with the colonial ambition.
The two core ideologies of colonial expansion stemmed from the assumption that the European civilization had already possessed the core understanding of the natural world (a.k.a. the means of overpowering it). From that quite arrogant assumption of having reached the pinnacle of man’s God-given power, colonial thinkers presented two different reasons as to why violent colonization of overseas peoples was necessary and even holy. The more honest one clearly exposed the true economic and political motivation of colonization, justifying it with gut-churning expressions of “righteous” anger: it claimed that non-white peoples lacked the divine purpose and/or natural predisposition for ruling over the natural world and making use of the rich resource of their land, and so it was only just for the “enlightened” European to take what is due and properly utilize what would otherwise be going to waste. The other approach is what we know to be the “civilizing mission” ideology, in which the knowledgeable Europeans were kindly sharing their epiphany with the rest of the world for the ultimate benefit of the “savages”.
What’s important to us is that in each version of colonial thought, the Western European scientific knowledge was intrinsically taken for an ultimate and objective universal truth. Industrialization had unlocked the divinely intended human potential, and so it was only right to either a) exploit other lands for the sake of its flourishing, or b) share the prophecy with those yet unaware. Further scientific research was undoubtedly being conducted, with industrialization and technological advancement leading to the creation of new, more accurate tools for measurement and observation, and Europeans got downright obsessed with accuracy and detail - but that seemed to be the focus: endlessly adjusting the lens to get a better look at something you already know the objective and fairly accurate outline of, just to further and further perfect your understanding of it. At the core, the European mentality of the time was built on the assumption that the greatest realizations had already been made. The veils of the unknown had long since been lifted, the world was mapped, the foreign cultures assessed, and the path towards stepping into their supposed power already well-trodden. Now, the question was of perfecting the knowledge and properly utilizing it.
This is fascinating to me, because this sort of approach is completely devoid of curiosity - the very thing we are supposedly talking about here. When it came to the mainstream colonial ideology, there seemed to be no fascination with the unknown biomes, uncatalogued species, unique possibilities for astronomical observation and so on. The core justification of colonialism in the era of Industrial Revolution was the entrenched belief that the European held objective and superior knowledge that enabled them to command the entire planet’s natural resource. Just like the sea beast turned dissected whale, the natural world was transformed from a dangerous mystery to a familiar, understood and tamed completely everyday product to use for one’s convenience.
Of course, that does not exhaustively describe every belief held by a colonial-era scientist or amateur science-lover, but these are the voices that were given the stage, conducted the mass discourse and echoed the overall shared sentiment. Still, what about our hypothetical Milo Thatches of the 18th century Europe? How did they fit into this ideological nightmare, and was there a place for them in the colonial expansion?
While digging through the accounts related to colonial science and scientific institutions in search of a story of an individual whose inquiry and curiosity led them to settling a conquered colonized land, the closest I got was the biography of Sir William Jones and the history of the Bogor Botanical Gardens.
The widely understood persona of William Jones appears conveniently historically vague. In our day, he is remembered for his seminal contribution to the field of linguistics; to his contemporaries, he was a well-known “Orientalist”, passionately and prolifically studying Indian culture, language and literature. He was also a key agent of colonial rule in Bengal, appointed a judge to the Supreme Court at the occupied Kolkata in 1783. According to Adas, his position and influence as an East Indes Company official was what granted Jones access to Hindu and Muslim writings that were otherwise jealously guarded. Accounts of Jones diligently studying Sanskrit in order to properly interpret the laws of Hinduism almost paint a picture of noble colonial jurisdiction, thorough and dedicated to doing the people it lorded over justice. Jones demonstrated great passion for the Indian continent overall, too, eagerly collecting botanical specimen and conducting astronomical observations during his time in Bengal.
We do not need to speculate about Jones’ loyalties and whether he was actively compromising an intrinsic value by refusing the very people he was so taken with its freedom and autonomy. Adas quotes Jones on stating the supposedly objective superiority of Europeans in social as well as “useful” sciences, and all his exaltation of Sanskrit’s grammar and passion for Hindu writing did not in Jones’ consciousness negate the belief that compared to Europeans, Indians, just like the rest of peoples of Asia, were “mere children” when it came to scientific thought.
This seems to illustrate a subset of the “civilizing mission” ideology. Through the rise of colonialism, numerous ideological debates were centered around the artificial hierarchy of foreign peoples that was constructed by European colonizers, ranking them from hopelessly undeveloped to once impressive or holding some valuable ancient knowledge yet unable to make use of it or get with the times. Colonial thinkers came out with think pieces on whether a certain “backwards” people could be “saved” by the spread of European civilization or if they were intrinsically, naturally devoid of capacity for scientific thought and therefore did not deserve the resource of their land or own bodies. Jones fits right into this discourse, eager to study and appreciate the ancient cultural treasures of a foreign civilization but approaching the people which inherited it with the same unalienable sense of superiority. The intention was to study an object fully separate from and inferior to him, not learn from an equal that deserves autonomy and respect.
A telling overview of the history of Bogor (at the time - Buitenzorg) Botanical Gardens, established in Indonesia under Dutch occupation, is given in Andrew Goss’ article “Decent Colonialism? Pure Science and Colonial Ideology in Netherlands East Indes”. In it, Goss compiles and analyzes various historical accounts, mostly relating to one of the Gardens’ directors, J.C. Koningsberg, and paints a detailed picture of Koningsberg’s attempts to carve out a place for “pure” scientific research, to both be allowed to stay out of colonial government’s operation and have the value of his work recognized by it. In an appeal to colonial officials that dictated the Gardens’ fate, Koningsberg claimed with what Goss sees as genuine conviction that “every contribution that further adds to the knowledge of this land’s nature… can only contribute to increasing the inviolability of our bill of ownership”.
Goss states that Koningsberg held political administration ideologically secondary to science. The entire article delves deeper into his complicated history with the contemporary colonial administration, the reluctant engagement of his colleagues in “PR” campaigns and semi-practical application of natural knowledge, and the eventual claim that the colonial officials laid onto the Buitenzorg Botanical Gardens as an ultimate justification of Dutch colonial rule: their supposed support of “pure” sciences served as evidence of a truly noble, selfless, dispassionate cause the Dutch were serving in a foreign land. This claim came about with the decline of the “civilizing mission” ideology, and the administration readily exploited the faulty ethics around “pure” scientific inquiry to parade their violent rule as an objectively selfless act of servitude to humanity overall.
So, there we have it: the passionate “pure” scientist that holds their research above political ambition, conquest and “utilizing” the natural resource; someone who only engages with the policy makers out of a lack of choice, but would otherwise stay out of the agenda altogether. What do we make of that? Obviously, Koningsberg was not opposed to colonial ideology, and was benefiting from the Dutch rule.
This is what makes a narrative of “neutral” or “positive” explorative expansion impossible: it would simply look like insensitive history revisionism. For a story that is deeply anti-colonial at its core, like The Sea Beast is, a take along the lines of “And then they did go overseas, but it’s fine because now they did it in a nice way!” would be a betrayal to the subtle yet earnest historical commentary that makes it what it is.
Still, there seems to be space left for a “what if” or two. “What if” the Crown is fully done for? “What if” the society is fully transformed? “What if” the vibrant multi-cultural population of the fictional kingdom brings about all sorts of varied philosophies that provide for a better relationship with the natural world? “What if” they find Red again and politely ask for permission?
All of these questions would most likely come from our deeply ingrained assumption that knowing is, at worst, neutral, and at best, objectively and unfailingly positive. The aforementioned and amazing Dr Sarukkai comments extensively on the belief shared between many modern scientists who are convinced that any ethical inquiry must only come into play when the practical applications of “pure” knowledge are being discussed. Hold governments and corporations accountable for what they do with the ultimately neutral and objective facts of the world; leave the scientific pursuit out of it, though. Dr Sarukkai quotes Paul Kurtz, a scientific skeptic, on the following statement: “[In the area] of knowledge and truth, <…> scientists ought, on utilitarian grounds, to be allowed to inquire as they see fit”.
Note the following words: “knowledge and truth”. They highlight what Dr Sarukkai repeatedly points out: the objective quality of scientific knowledge as perceived by Europeans. Scientific discovery is perfectly neutral because it shows what is already there, the material and natural workings of the world, and to try to censor that is to deny people the holy truths that are clearly within reach.
That is the endpoint of the transformation Dr Sarukkai describes: from the relevance of the knower’s “moral” character to the universal objective moral soundness of inquiring. To uncover “the truth” is an act of servitude; you can choose if you’re serving God’s plan, humanity’s prosperity or the faceless entity of scientific knowledge.
Another striking transformation from a subjective experience to an objective fact was the linguistic journey of the very word “curiosity” itself. Once exclusively used to describe the faculty of the mind, a person’s urge to know, “curiosity” eventually became a label to put on the object that inspired it. That unsettling projection of desire onto another as their objective, inherent quality almost looks like an unexpected form of victim-blaming directed at the natural world itself: if this thing didn’t want to be dissected and taxidermied, maybe it shouldn’t have been so damn curious.
Continuing his exploration, Dr Sarukkai calls attention to the ethical constraints on curiosity in every other aspect of our shared existence. The intimate details of another person’s life are just as much of an objective truth, and one that could potentially tell us a lot about our society - but it is not seen proper to intrude on that. However, nature can be interrogated at any point and in any form, under the blanket justification of objectivity and universality: a subjective personal experience has little to contribute to our understanding of the world overall, but the basic principles of it are relevant to every single one of us, and hold the potential of transforming it; so who would have the right to deny a scientist this meeting with the universe?
The natural world is both lesser than another person, its rights unprotected as it is not a citizen of any country - and simultaneously much more valuable than any single human life, due to the pure potential and resource of it. The post-industrial attitude towards it seems to dominate the discussion around the ethics of science: it is great, it is even holy, to get to closer know God’s divine creation; but that creation deserves no respect, holds no boundary. It has submit to the might of the machine, and now it must lie there, docile, and let the scientist dig as deep into it as they might desire to, let itself be slashed open, unravel before the prying eyes, every tiny secret of its body open for reaping, because why would we ever want to know less? The beast is slain. The coast is clear. Our ships and microscopes and scalpels will reach as far and deep as they wish, and there is nothing anyone can say to justify diverting them. “Nature is clearly set against man, no longer a legendary dragon, but as a storehouse that should be discovered and can be exploited; the peaceful conquest of the riches of nature is bound to begin”. Praise to Bacon’s great legacy: the universe is, indeed, nothing but the provider of raw material, and it will not hold out on us.
Greatest scandals around the ethics of science come about when the natural value and the legal citizenship clash and intersect, when a scientist sees the potential of a specific human body and decides it outweighs the rights of the human person. The conversations around those scandals are riddled with complex, conflicted feelings: the means of acquiring this knowledge were unethical at best, inhumane at worst, but what should we do with it now that it’s here? Should we ignore the truth already uncovered out of our respect for the people hurt? That is so counter-intuitive to us, to pretend to not know; to give up a truth, to forget. And what do we do if the practical application of an ethical wrong is actively serving living people?
It seems hard enough to make scientific curiosity get along with the limitations of citizenship and human rights. It is the easiest choice, then, to give up the very notion of ethics altogether when it is the non-human natural world that is being interrogated, invaded, sourced for “pure” truths.
Dr Sarukkai challenges that comfort. Every interrogation is worth regulation; we do not currently possess a model for such regulation, because for the longest time, we have been growing into the notion that it is always good to know, and worse not to. The supposed objective virtue of inquiry left no space for the question of “Should we?”, as long as the answer to “Can we?” is “Just watch!”.
It doesn’t feel enough to deconstruct any ethical failing on a case-by-case basis, to say “This is where the individual person went wrong, and these specific steps should generally be avoided”. That simply brings us back to the core notion of an objective truth, a “pure” fact as the genuine pursuit of science, in a claim that the inquiry itself is an unfailingly noble cause. But there seems to be something missing at the very core of the Western European and White American mindset, something that is closely intertwined with the spirit of the modern scientific method, because, remember: that spirit follows in the philosophical footsteps of Francis Bacon, and it was his Christian conviction of man’s mastery over the natural world that inspired the empirical tools of knowing; and it was that exact conviction that flourished in the Industrial era, hand in hand with the ideology of colonialism. These threads come together, intricate and almost invisible, and run through the fabric of our mass consciousness, defining our degrees of comfort and convincing us our sense of it is objective, not defined by centuries of history and cultural development. That will become obvious if you use your search engine of choice to look up two loaded words: “decolonizing science”.
Oops, We Re-Colonized It
“Decolonizing science” was the very first step of my little research. Every article I could find was remarkably like the previous one, each rightfully criticizing the “parachute” model of research (please be sure to read about it!) and occasionally giving an overview of applied science’s role in colonial expansion. The article titled “Science Still Bears the Fingerprints of Colonialism” published in Smithsonian Magazine seemed insightful - until “pure” scientific knowledge came up.
The title itself now seems disappointingly misleading to me. A fingerprint grazes the surface and may be wiped off. That barely represents the tight ideological interconnectedness of colonial and scientific heritage. The real kicker, however, comes with the subheading “Science Must Fall?”. The author, Rohan Deb Roy embeds a video gone viral in 2016, of a few students from the University of Cape Town demanding a thorough deconstruction of the modern body of scientific knowledge with the purpose of decolonizing their immediate communities.
To me, it did not feel like Deb Roy gave this perspective the space it deserved. The author promptly moved on to explaining how science denial can and will be exploited by populist propaganda and self-serving decision makers - which is a fair, important point. The argument of the Cape Town “fallists”, however, was commodified as no more than a jumping point to the argument as to why “pure” science didn’t need reform - the problem was with keeping the applications ethical and research inclusive.
I would ask you to watch the video and try to empathize with the pain of generations that had their cultural belief and practice violently, viciously attacked by the hypocritical European colonizer, seeing their technological advancement as proof of the might of Christian God and simultaneously parading it as the ultimate end of non-Christian faith and the “slow gods of paganism” that couldn’t possibly keep up with their magnificent railroads. As you watch it, also remember that this argument isn’t being made for you - unless you yourself share the “fallists’” culture and community.
Smithsonian Mag’s Rohan Deb Roy heard warning bells of populism and climate denial in the demand to build a new, culturally specific body of knowledge - because we cannot possibly comprehend an existence of two or more different, separate sciences. Because science the way we know it today is, supposedly, the pure and final universal truth. Deb Roy warns us against refusing to listen to the voice of reason supposedly personified in scientific knowledge, lest we enable ignorant decision-makers.
What that sentiment fails to account for is the very thing the “fallist” speaker is trying desperately to communicate to others: Western European and White American science is totalist, it seeks to be universal, it claims to bear the seeds of absolute truth and generously disperse them across the rest of the world. That is what needs to be challenged: the very foundation of modern scientific knowledge and method, and the specifically European and Christian ideology it grew out of. The speaker’s message isn’t meant for us: it is meant for the descendants of people that were colonized and enslaved and indoctrinated into believing their colonizers’ message about the exclusive objectivity of Western European knowledge and worldview. The fact that we are supposed to feel intimidated by a local group of activists advocating for a decolonized perception of science, for revival of their native approach to the natural world and the growth of a unique scientific method that knows how to respect and account for their cultural experience - that is an expression of our deeply internalized globalization consciousness, which exists because the European West successfully enforced its mentality onto the rest of the world in its colonial conquest.
The very idea that scientific knowledge is a) objectively and exclusively true and therefore superior to personal or cultural knowledge and belief, b) objectively and undeniably good and should be sourced and shared as much as physically possible, is, at its core, a colonial mindset. Modern science and scientific method are eurocentric. The way scientific research is being conducted can be traced through the works of multiple dead Europeans, one of whom became the venerated hero of industrial colonialism for his claim that (the Christian) man belonged at the helm of the natural world, free to exploit it to his heart content. To reject the very thought of someone questioning the body of knowledge acquired through this set of deeply European values, to sound an alarm at the idea of them calling for a different culture of inquiry and to claim that such a request would harm the global good of humanity, is to accidentally re-colonize science all over again.
Rohan Deb Roy acknowledges the importance of conversations around the Western European and White American science’s failure to include cross-cultural experiences - but does so briefly, by criticizing the “racist and ignorant” comments left under the original video. This approach, still, seems to only echo the discouragement of unethical practices within the profoundly noble field of “pure” research: “Well, we shouldn’t be indecent about it, but the problem is not with science itself”.
However, ample historical evidence seems to suggest that the problems of racism, colonial mindset and prejudice, exploitation of nature and our understanding of ethics of curiosity and scientific inquiry all developed together and mutually shaped each other, and, like most things in life, cannot be considered fully separate from the complex context of their origin, influences and contemporary events. We cannot clear off the shuck of colonial history and reach the “pure” and untainted core of scientific knowledge the way it is “supposed” to be, and then delight in preserving it as untouchable and beyond any criticism. Science never formed as fully separate from our society, mentality, culture and history. An honest and productive discussion will require that we look for more than fingerprints and start questioning the very blueprints instead.
So what ties them all together: the praise of empiricism, the belief into the neutral quality of inquiry, the centering of “truth” and material accuracy above anything else, the “righteous” quest for the otherwise “wasted” resource, and the violent abuse of natural environments and foreign peoples? Let’s return to Adas’ extensive collection of first-hand accounts of colonial mindset and ideology, and talk about the spirit shared between the most vocal defenders of colonization.
Precision, Efficiency, Entitlement
Tell me if you see the same things I do here:
In the first half of the 18th century, Jean-Baptiste Labat, a Dominican friar, criticized African people’s neglect of the rich resource of gold and blamed it on both their inherent “laziness” and dependence on the permission of local officials, meaning they could only work the mines “sporadically”. In his assessment, their lack of tools left them able to only “scratch the surface” of a vein of ore, then abandon it without digging deeper and reaping the full potential.
In the late 18th century, Louis Le Comte shared his largely critical observations of Chinese culture and learning and claimed that this people lacked the precision and “penetration” of his own countrymen, the quality that, in his understanding, was essential to the study of nature.
At the start of the 19th century, French naturalist and anthropologist Julian Joseph Virey reflected on pre-industrial societies that, according to him, were indifferent to investigating the “sources of life” and the “treasures of the earth”- a quality that marked them as docile, “mere cattle of the prairie”. Alongside that, he claimed that the people that had mastered the elements possessed the natural right to control the untapped resource of foreign lands and dominate the rest of humanity.
According to Adas, starting from the 17th century (!) the focus on empiricism led to a stricter standard of measurement and observation, creating a demand for enhanced, more accurate tools and records. Two centuries later, numerous writers (among them - John Barrow, Samuel W. Williams, James Mill) ridiculed non-Western people’s “feeble” understanding of geography, their “poor” map-making and “nonsensical” navigation tools. Gustave Le Bon noted Indians’ supposed “disregard for precision”, their lack of instruments for accurate empirical inquiry. All of that, in Le Bon’s understanding, went hand in hand with the Indian people’s absence of “critical spirit” and their inability to “see things as they are”.
In the second half of the 19th century, Frederic W. Farrar wrote of the “primitive” colonized peoples: “Among them generation hands on no torch to generation, but each century sees them in the same condition as the last, learning nothing, inventing nothing, improving nothing, living on in the same squalid misery and brutal ignorance; neither wiser nor better than their forefathers of immemorial epochs back, mechanically carrying on only a few rude mechanical operations as the bee continues to build her waxen hexagon, and the spider to spin his concentric web”.
In the late 1870s, W. A. Rogers wrote: “Railways are opening the eyes of the people who are within reach of them in a variety of ways. They teach them that time is worth money, and induce them to economize that which they had been in the habit of slighting and wasting; they teach them that speed attained is time, and therefore money, saved or made.”
At the start of the 20th century, French writer Charles Regimansent wrote about the way African people built roads: twisting around trees instead of cutting through the forest. He claimed that habit illustrated their undeveloped understanding of time and space and their ignorance of the time lost. Englishmen Goldsworthy Dickenson and Joseph Chailley-Bert reflected on Asian peoples’ attitudes towards nature compared with the European approach, the former noting how Hindu art depicted “the inexhaustible fertility, the ruthlessness, the irrationality of nature, never <…> her adaptability to human needs”; the latter observed expressions of that “subservience to nature” in Asian peasants’ refusal to drive birds from their crops, kill disease-spreading rats or poisonous scorpions.
What I see here is the same thread running through all of the statements: a frustration with another’s indifference to what the speaker holds above all else. The European mind transformed this mere disagreement in values into a matter in which one is either in the right or in oblivion. A foreign culture’s disregard for efficiency, speed, utilization became a mark of a thoroughly passive existence: why not do more, know more, work more, get more? The only root for other peoples’ alternative mindsets that colonial thinkers could come up with were laziness, docility, childishness, and an inherent lack of a precise mind. In the Western European mentality many of us still likely share these days, there is never any good, conscious and informed reason to choose “less” over “more”.
The frustration expressed in the colonial thinkers’ writing is entirely self-serving, too: it becomes the ultimate evidence of superiority, and a justification of any possible action taken to “right” the crime of indifference. It is almost an affront to Christian God and humanity itself to let one’s land and mind go to waste; if you’re not contributing to man’s great rise to power, if you are not squeezing every last bit of knowledge and resource out of the earth beneath your feet, at least move aside and let those aware of the noble pursuit of civilization make use of what is rightfully theirs. If your people cannot contribute a great thinker or a valuable discovery, they should at least be exploited for their bodies, their service, their physical labor - because the purpose of a human being is to further the strictly European agenda of expansion and domination.
The fixation on the supposed objective absolute permeates the colonial ideology, and it makes no difference between measuring time, making a scientific inquiry or exploiting every final bit of available resource - all of those are seen as equally universal values that may not be ignored for any other reason than an undeveloped mind incapable of grasping the missed potential. The European colonial mindset carries the flag of Baconian belief and sees the world as an oyster to devour fully, with no reason to hold back. It seems clear that the modern omnipresence of growth economy and its devastating effect on the environment and the most vulnerable communities worldwide is a natural extension of that sentiment.
This was the discovery that revolutionized my personal understanding of scientific inquiry. My original intent was to try to find a pattern of faulty ethics originating in scientific curiosity; instead, I came across evidence that challenges our modern attitude towards intellectual pursuit and scientific knowledge itself. It truly seems that we cannot separate the very heart of the modern scientific method from this perception of an absolute, this idea that because science uncovers a supposed universal truth, there may be nothing lording above it. This projection of one single subset of our lives into an objective virtue that cannot be disrespected by anyone who isn’t short-sighted or malicious continues the tradition of hailing an ultimately self-serving pursuit as the noble and impersonal mission for the sake of the entire humanity.
And that is not meant to bash scientific inquiry altogether, or to enable genuine science denial as a tool of right-wing propaganda. I believe knowledge can be a form of true love. Some of the most fulfilling periods of my life that gifted me a sense of connection with the rest of the world were defined by learning more about it. But when it comes to love, things are quick to get murky, complicated, muddied, and the lack of definition to it can lead us far astray; and if we are to have an honest, thorough conversation about the blueprints of Western European colonial thinking laid into the very foundation of the modern empirical scientific method, we cannot hold onto any supposed absolute other than the right of each one of us and the natural world to exist at peace, autonomous, flourishing and entitled to being left perfectly alone.
Scientific inquiry has, no doubt, been repeatedly villainized by religious dogma, and perhaps many modern scientists’ passionate defense of any and all research and endeavor is affected by the history of unnecessary and deliberate constraint of liberating knowledge; but the history of Western European philosophy reveals that the absolute status of scientific knowledge was imparted to it by a strictly Christian, euro- and anthropocentric ideology. The modern status of science exists not in spite of religious fundamentalism - it is directly enabled by the latter, by interpreting specific biblical text as a universal prophecy of humanity’s place in the world. The totalitarian approach we tend to hold towards factual scientific knowledge is worship recast. While an averse reaction to someone questioning the methods and foundations of science is a fair reaction in the face of political and religious push-back conscientious scientists undoubtedly face, it is also ingenuine to unequivocally place science as fundamentally opposed to politics and religion as an impartial and objective counter-balance to skewed personal agenda: historically, both of these forces defined science on the deepest, genetic level.
Curiosity and Doubt
Gustave Le Bon’s statement about the Indian people’s supposed inability to see things “as they are” is curiously juxtaposed by Dr Sarukkai’s note on the concepts of “curiosity” and “doubt”. He points out that, while “curiosity” existed in the Western European consciousness for a long time and before its “rehabilitation” was a prominent subject of cautionary tales, that is not something he observed in Indian culture and literature. In fact, the idea of “curiosity” is barely present in early Indian mentality at all - but the concept of “doubt” is prevalent and defining. Doubt allows to question the metaphysical nature of things despite their physical appearance; in Hiduism, it is a tool of spiritual awakening in the face of maya, the convincing illusion of material existence.
This is especially interesting, because another major contribution to the modern scientific method is Cartesian doubt: the process of eliminating false information until you identify a seed of truth that can no longer be questioned. Fascinating how in the European consciousness, even doubt is ultimately just a path towards proven factual certainty.
Let’s return to The Sea Beast’s narrative and our intrepid little knower, Maisie Brumble. Is she curious? Is she doubtful? Her passionate spirit certainly inspires her to know more, more, more, to ask questions, to observe the world closely, to get involved with it; and once the truth becomes apparent to her, she will not rest until she shouts it from the rooftops, until the unjust rulers are exposed for all to see. It’s crucial how she never tries to rally the people - only dispel the lies they were told. Maisie fits the bill of a venerated hero of science, someone who, borrowing the words of Rohan Deb Roy, “[demonstrates] remarkable courage, critical thinking and dissent in the face of established beliefs and conservative traditions”.
…But there is so much more to her than a discerning mind - and that completely transforms whatever messaging could otherwise be derived from Maisie’s pursuit of truth. Because at the end of the day, she cares less about knowing the exact detail of something than she does about doing the right thing. As the myth of ferocious beasts starts falling apart, Maisie and Jacob discover that the history books cannot be trusted - but struggle to piece together the true cause of the war that has been going on for generations. And at the end, Maisie is not that fixated on learning the full story: as she tells Jacob, “Maybe it doesn’t matter how the war started; maybe what matters is how it ends”. To her, the truth is not the end goal. Instead, it is a means towards making an honest, weighted, loving decision. Knowing what happened becomes secondary; the priority is living, and living a truly great life, a long, happy, noble one, free of cruel lies and grounded in kindness and respect.
Maisie is curious - but not in the insatiable way of empirical scientific inquiry. She outgrows the false tales told to her and develops a sense of doubt - but never skepticism, never the same need to test and push every single button until she arrives at undoubtedly solid ground and can from there claim intellectual and moral superiority. And neither of those things are what define her at the end. What truly moves her is love, the purest and universally inclusive form of it; and what helps her love flourish is her observing open-mindedness. That open-mindedness allows Maisie to approach the world without the firm conditioning that would make her ignore the suffering of another living being or accept an unfair, treacherous order of things. That open-mindedness is also what seems to be missing from the conversations about modern science, and what causes some to refuse the idea of our generally accepted values not being entirely objective or apolitical.
The open mind that is focused on observation and ready to be guided and transformed is also a trademark quality of a child - and, incidentally, “a child” is something a scientist is compared to quite a lot in conversations around scientific ethics. When in colonial era, “subpar” observations of non-White peoples were consistently dismissed as “childish”, these days “childishness” is being rehabilitated as a redeeming quality of scientific inquiry. A curious researcher is as passionate and innocent as a toddler, and, like the kid in the story of the king’s new dress, speaks the words of pure truth, unobscured by fear or preconception. Because of that, they are supposedly free of the logical fallacies of a layman, and reside beyond any ethical criticism. If we phrase the question as “Why would anyone want to keep the truth hidden?”, the answer would obviously paint any challenge to scientific inquiry as an attempt to exploit populist sentiments for personal gain.
Is that a fair and honest wording of the question at hand, however? At the end of the day, the ethical quandary lies not in the value of factual truth, but in the means of obtaining it, the way we process and internalize it, and how it interacts with our personal biases, societal structures, and how our long and complicated history has shaped our understanding of which knowledge holds value and which may be dismissed.
Maisie’s character offers us a subtle double subversion of the ingenuine and lackluster ideology of modern science. She is a challenger to the conservative ruler, and she is a passionate, curious child - but her characterization and values counteract the absolutist scientific drive by being focused on the communal and world-wide well-being instead. Maisie is a child - which means she is not only learning about the world, but also being taught what it means to live in it, how to co-exist with every other breathing, feeling being, and what a truly great life might look like, to her and her fellow people. This exposes a fatal flaw in the “scientist as a child” line of thinking: it disregards a vital aspect of what it means, to look at the world with a fresh eye and to explore one’s place within it.
Observation vs. Interrogation
Something I have tried to emphasize throughout this essay is the difference between passive reception and active inquiry - and it is a crucial part of Maisie’s characterization. Her talent is in mindful observation of the world around her. Not once does she poke a beast to see what it will do, not once does she try to test the boundaries of Red’s good intentions towards her human charges. Maisie simply meets what is already in front of her with an open, clear mind and an honest heart - and that allows her to see much more than any other character we meet. The radical messaging of The Sea Beast is that it is not only enough to take in what is already available - no, sometimes doing that without any preconceived notion of how things are leads you to truly revolutionary realizations. You may learn much more about the nature of the world by simply sitting down and listening to what it has to say - instead of tearing into it, hungry for more, and making it your enemy.
That is fully incompatible with the spirit of empirical and experimental inquiry that imbues the modern scientific method. Philosophically, metaphysically, that spirit may almost come across as insecurity: constant doubt in an anxious search of the undoubtable, because it is too intimidating, or too embarrassing, to put faith into one’s informal observation, to have trust in what the world is willing to tell you plainly. There is no way our senses, logical fallacies, the appearances of nature itself wouldn’t lie to us; so we will test and prod and experiment, we will push until we unearth the core of an objective truth that we will never have to doubt again - supposedly. Empiricism is a great methodical expression of ultimate existential distrust - and it has its place. But when we let it define it our very mode of engagement with the world, we seem to lose more than what we gain.
The following quote contains discussions of trauma and depicts a case of animal abuse. If that is within your resource at this moment, I would ask that you test your comfort and read it through fully, especially if you are yet to take a strong and informed stance for animal rights and liberation.
If you read Bessel Van Der Kolk’s famous book The Body Keeps the Score, you will find the following paragraphs in Chapter 2:
“…I heard a presentation by Steven Maier of the University of Colorado, who had collaborated with Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. His topic was learned helplessness in animals. Maier and Seligman had repeatedly administered painful electric shocks to dogs who were trapped in locked cages. They called this condition ‘inescapable shock’. Being a dog lover, I realized that I could never have done such research myself, but I was curious about how this cruelty would affect the animals.
“After administering several courses of electric shock, the researchers opened the doors of the cages and then shocked the dogs again. A group of control dogs who had never been shocked before immediately ran away, but the dogs who had earlier been subjected to inescapable shock made no attempt to flee, even when the door was wide open - they just lay there, whimpering and defecating. The mere opportunity to escape does not necessarily make traumatized animals, or people, take the road to freedom. Like Maier and Seligman’s dogs, many traumatized people simply give up. Rather than risk experimenting with new options they stay stuck in the fear they know.”
What is the purpose of this excerpt? Obviously, it is to provide a specific and evocative metaphor for the workings of a traumatized brain; it is offered anecdotally with the hope that the reader will internalize it as a strong and telling illustration of PTSD. The modern body of scientific knowledge is riddled with just that: a concise and witty report at the end of methodical experimentation, aimed to convince us its findings are the absolute truth unearthed, perfected, purified for our enjoyment and future reference; a convenient short-cut to the very gist of life.
In that, science has effectively re-invented the folk fables depicting archetypal animals going about their lives. Except what’s being mythologized is real, tangible suffering that took place in our world, was knowingly, purposefully inflicted by human hand on a feeling body with the goal to squeeze absolute knowledge out of it. Formulating the notion of “learned helplessness” is not enough: what we need is methodically extracted data that involves actively adding to the number of traumatized beings on this already suffering earth.
We will never outgrow our need for the world’s wisdom - but somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting ourselves enough to receive what is given willingly. We do not want to be guided and taught - we want to study, test and verify. We will not be passive observers, at home in nature. We will dig and cut and saw and dilute and drill, we will burrow into the very marrow of life, pierce through to the most intimate corners of it - and we will violate as many natural freedoms as we must on our way. Because nothing is ever enough. We need to go deeper; we need to go further. We need to know; and we need to grow. Expand endlessly, because we have not reached our true destiny until there is a tangible measure of our worth. More precision. More knowledge. More land. More invention. More progress. More product. More capital.
The core of insatiability - because it was never mere “curiosity” - is shared. Science and knowledge can be loving - but love means complexity, love means heart, love means non-duality and other-centeredness.
Dr Sarukkai quotes E. Baumgarten, who suggests: “Curiosity bears a close relationship to <…> care and concern. Curiosity is rooted linguistically in the other-regarding activities of “care” and “cure” <…>. In human interactions, this element of care makes curiosity not a morbid one but one which is an important part of friendship. Moreover, curiosity is necessary for deepening one’s friendship.”
Considering that in the context of natural study and inquiry, Dr Sarukkai argues: “The ambiguity present in any positive rendering of curiosity is but a natural consequence of the ambiguity present in the concept of curiosity. <…> If curiosity towards nature is a fundamental impulse for science, then how is this curiosity related to the notion of care towards nature? On the contrary, curiosity in science often manifests itself in the most extreme forms of exploitation of nature.”
From the philosophical standpoint, “curiosity” appears to be as vague of a label as “love”-the feeling is - and so it cannot be the ultimate motivation of any inquiry. Our desire to know demands examination. It is not enough to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge; and it is not enough to claim that “pure” science is fundamentally neutral and should not be hindered. Every single aspect of our lives is defined by the dizzyingly nuanced human condition; if we are searching for something that would do a disservice to humanity’s place on earth, the obvious choice seems to be anything that tries to simplify the complex web of ethics, consequences and responsibilities our every major choice exists within.
Man vs. Nature
Returning to the specific moment in history we find the characters of The Sea Beast in, let’s do a quick overview of everything implied in the historical allusions.
Time period: late 16th-early 17th century Europe. The rehabilitation of curiosity is underway, but not yet complete. The human civilization is teetering at the edge of rapid expansion. The Imperialist is an omen of future conquest, as well as a metaphor for the soon-to-be-transformed relationship with nature: no longer a dangerous and unknown opponent but a force that may be subdued with advanced machinery.
The Red Bluster’s execution would be the turning point of human history, an ultimate victory of civilization over the dangerous, unconquered mystery of the wild. It’s vital to note the color symbolism obvious in the movie: Red’s hide matching the sails of The Inevitable, which the crew uses to attract a beast’s attention and lure it away from a more vulnerable, weaker vessel. That implies a specific role Red plays in the beast vs. human war: just like The Inevitable, she is the most feared warrior, and just like it, she may protect her weaker comrades by getting the attacker focused on her. She is basically the patron and protector of the ocean, and is the last beast that needs to be slain before the Crown’s ships may travel beyond the Dregmorr sea.
The plot’s resolution prevents colonial expansion and rapid exploitation of the natural resource. That is done through diverting the ultimate conquest of the dangers of nature. The Sea Beast subtly and masterfully exposes the connection between the two: how positioning civilization as opposed to nature implies that one most dominate the other; how domination implies entitlement, that a warrior must bring home spoils earned in battle; how crowning a specific civilization the masters of the natural world creates a hierarchical mentality that can and will justify further exploitation of foreign lands, cultures, peoples. De-colonial pursuit cannot be separate from re-conceptualizing our relationship with the world around us and challenging our sense of entitlement to its resource - be it the raw resource of the earth or the knowledge hidden in an animal’s body.
The narrative of the movie paints the Hunters as ultimately sympathetic - despite the acts of violence they have committed against nature. The current generation of them is caught in a war they didn’t start; the previous generations were lied to, manipulated into dying for a cause that didn’t truly serve them. And at the end of the day, even when they engage with nature violently, they still do it on equal terms with their opponent.
The ultimate capture of the Red Bluster happens when Captain Crow is fully consumed by his need for vengeance and seeks the service of Gwen Batterbie - a fascinating mix of a witch and an inventor archetype. He is warned against that, against the too high of a price he’ll have to pay - and against breaking the Hunter’s Code, betraying the true ways of his predecessors. Still, he goes through with it - and obtains a poison, and a way to deliver it.
When Crow asks Gwen Batterbie about what he will have to give her in return, she replies: “I take everything”. That seems to me another dark omen of what is to come, on the scale of the entire planet. Crow is consumed by his pursuit for the sake of pursuit: driven by the insatiability of grief, he will not give up his hunt for Red and is ready to sacrifice everything just to come out triumphant. A weapon is forged: advanced, poisonous, deadly; and man is ready to use it, at any cost, if that will leave him the victor of the existential war. The poison will destroy nature’s last line of defense; it will seep into the ocean water. And it will not stop. The war will be won; everything else will be lost.
The Hunters are given the benefit of empathy, their loss and existential fear natural enough when contrasted with the Crown’s methodical, cold, manipulative expansion at the price of human lives and the natural world. However, the ultimate resolution comes when the “Man vs. Nature” narrative is broken for good, and the peaceful co-existence that needs no losses at either side is embraced.
There is a condition to that peace, though: leaving the beasts alone. No longer venturing into the waters that are their rightful home. Instead, choosing to respect every living being’s right to their land, life and privacy, as an ultimate challenge to the prevalent anthropo- and eurocentric entitlement.
The world was not made for humans; the world was made for everything that inhabits it, without exception. No one person, no one people, no one species is entitled to more than what is already there: the free and willing gifts of the natural world, and a chance to make the most of the life given to them.
As we build and enhance our cultures and societies, we explore infinite possibilities of what that life may look like. We do not need to be restrictive; we do not need to invent one sole image of it and claim it the perfect truth of our purpose. As we explore and play, experiment and understand, what seems crucial is that we remember that we are at home here. There is no use to our ambitious search if at the end of it we cannot come home and feel that we belong “in the family of things”. There is a safe, familiar shore for us - and it is humble, but not docile, to build a happy life upon it, and to let the unfamiliar shores house countless other lives that do not need our interference.
The world is good at setting its boundaries; modern post-industrial civilization is just awful at respecting them. Wherever there is resistance, defensive action of a foreign people or a non-human animal, it is so easy for us to disregard it as irrelevant or ignorant, unaware of the gifts we bear and they dare refuse.
It is good to stop and let go. Kind, respectful, passive observation is not only gentle - it is profoundly existentially fruitful. In an attempt to possess everything, we might very well end up with nothing. By recognizing what is given to us, generously, every day, we gain something greater, something invaluable: a chance to truly live in a world that is ours.
A beast slain is a symbol that permeates our consciousness: an old expression of a great, incomprehensible danger overpowered by heroic might. Today, more and more stories reclaim and subvert it, reflecting our shared yearning for everything that was lost in humanity’s fight against the world.
The Sea Beast is a vital wake-up call, reminding us: it will never be enough to “pierce the darkness” with the intent of kind friendship. Preservation of the world means the end of our entitlement to its secrets. It will require that we measure our every step and its consequence for everything we’re used to disregarding: animal life and suffering, plant life and its right to inconvenience us, the land itself, not always useful to us, yet always vital to our world’s very existence. Understanding cannot be the end goal; it must, always, be a tool for compassion. And for that, the pursuit of it must not violate the foundation of compassion.
To live a great life, we must learn how to exist in a state of great love; and a great love is not always about us.