Origin by Dan Brown
Plot
Origin, following the formulaic yet entertaining Dan Brown suspenseful writing style chronicles the fifth fast paced and perilous adventure that Robert Langdon is involuntarily thrust into. The story begins with prominent computer science and tech billionaire Edmund Kirsch requesting the input of religious world leaders in how best to announce a discovery he has made that will prove all world religions wrong. The three religious leaders he meets with are deeply shaken by his presentation, and even begin to frantically devise a plan to try to control the backlash of his discovery, as well as fear for their safety in obtaining this knowledge. Two of the religious leaders are later found dead, under very suspicious circumstances.
A short time later, Kirsch invites prominent individuals from all over the world to a presentation at the Guggenheim museum in Bilboa, Spain, where he indicates he will be announcing a breakthrough that will change the religious world. Upon entering the Guggenheim, Langdon is given a headset in which a virtual docent gives him a personal guided tour of the museum, whom Langdon eventually learns is an advanced, first of it’s kind, AI-complete intelligent artificial agent named Winston.
Once the theatrical presentation begins, it is revealed that Kirsch has found an answer to the deeply philosophical questions “where do we come from?” and “where are we going?” In classic Dan Brown fashion, the night is abruptly derailed as Kirsch is assassinated during his presentation, in front of the live audience as well as an online audience numbering in the millions. It is revealed that the assassin has been recruited by a seemingly omniscient and mysterious person, only known as “The Regent”, who has the power and influence to manipulate almost anyone.
The pace of the night quickly accelerates as Langdon finds himself eluding authorities with the beautiful Ambra Vidal, Guggenheim curator as well as fiancee of the future king of Spain, due to his attempt to save Kirsch after being informed of his impending death mere seconds before its occurrence. The suspicion of the involvement of the catholic church and ties back to the Spanish royal family lead Langdon and Vidal to flee in an attempt to find a way to release Kirsch’s presentation to the world. Langdon and Vidal are tasked with discovering the long pass phrase to Kirsch’s personal, custom made, cell phone, which upon being unlocked will have the ability to share his theatrical presentation to the world. At the same time, they discover that Kirsch had been suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer, and was only estimated to have a few days left to live at the time of the presentation.
After a briskly moving and dangerous night, Langdon and Vidal arrive at the facility that houses the supercomputer that Winston operates on. Upon getting Winston to queue the presentation to upload to the world, it (he?) reveals startling information about the events of the night. It reveals to Langdon and Vidal that it is the one posing as The Regent, and it was the entity responsible for employing individuals to assassinate two of the religious leaders, as well as Kirsch. Winston elucidates its actions by concluding that Kirsch was going to die in the very near future anyway, and that by bringing about his death in this fashion, the public attention of his presentation would grow exponentially. The story concludes after the presentation is shared with the world, but the content is not grave, as is hinted previously, rather, it’s hopeful and suggests the future of man is to become one with technology.
Thoughts and reactions
Now, I have to say, much of my wanting to review this book to the extent that I have is in response to an article written by Matthew Walther on the website TheWeek, entitled “Dan Brown is a very bad writer”. The article is, in essence, a diatribe against Brown’s writing style and the author’s interpretation that the way in which Brown presents architectural, technological, geographical and historical information suggests the common reader is somewhat of a dimwit. The aforementioned article suffers from a number of logical fallacies, and conforms to the all too common, mentally arrogant belief that takes some form of the argument “Dan Brown is low brow literature that is below me, an intelligent person who enjoys real literature such as that written by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, blah blah blah.” To downplay Brown’s skill as a writer who found a way to create an engaging, fast reading, culture weaving, semi-didactic and horizon expanding novel for individuals who would not otherwise be exposed to the locations, architecture and technology presented in his books is a disservice to all literature. If you do not enjoy his writing, that is fine, but to compare it to the likes of classical literature heavyweights and judge it in the same vein is to, as Einstein put it, judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.
One particularly bothersome section of this piece goes like this:
“Brown thinks that a “classicist” is someone who likes old things rather than a scholar of classical languages, that Harvard professors of subjects real or imaginary say things like “Nostradamus was the most famous prognosticator of all time,” that it would cost untold billions to create a computer with the epoch-making ability to tell you what the Dow closed at on August 23, 1974, that there exists a “priceless manuscript,” as opposed to a paperback book, entitled The Complete Works of William Blake, or that this or any manuscript has standard page numbers. Page numbers are in fact a major pitfall for Brown, at one point leading me to wonder how many books he has actually opened in his life, let alone read:
“It’s a clever decoy.”
“You’ve lost me,” Langdon said, eyeing the painting.
“Edmond chose page 163 because it’s impossible to display that page without simultaneously displaying the page next to it — page 162!” [Origin]
Reader: If you ever come across a book in which it is possible to “display” page 163 without also displaying page 162, write to the publisher. You are almost certainly due a refund of some kind, to say nothing of an explanation.”
Now, I understand most people are not intimately familiar with say, robotics, but the most vexing part of this diatribe is the conclusion that “Brown thinks… it would cost untold billions to create a computer with the epoch-making ability to tell you what the Dow closed at on August 23, 1974.”
Alas, the point is completely missed that untold billions would be required to create some kind of AI complete agent that is able to converse, understand abstract notions, create its own works of art, etc. To compare the capabilities of this entity with that of the google assistant, let me inform you that it was groundbreaking when you could begin to use pronouns in conversations with the assistant, resulting in possible conversations such as:
“Hey google, in what year was the movie Bullitt filmed?
…
What location was it filmed at?”
It’s safe to say, simply, that nearly all bashing of Dan Brown novels I have come across are the result of mental arrogance and lack of understanding of what purpose the novel was written for.
Analysis
Brown, in my opinion, does a great job of weaving together culture, architecture, and history that may otherwise be foreign to American readers. In addition, he shares aspects of technology, art, music, literature, and history that gives the reader a feeling of learning about more intellectual facets of life, all the while indulging in a mystery that is tailored to match the speed and attention span required of watching modern day movies. He has found a way to weave classical, slow moving literature and art with a fast moving narrative more in tune with the speed of modern times.
Speed of Brown novels
The Langdon series of books all have a structure comprised of short, interleaved chapters with viewpoints alternating between the main protagonist, Langdon, the antagonist, another “victim” type protagonist that Langdon eventually interacts with, and the beautiful woman who he eventually partners up with during the events over the course of the novel. Each chapter typically ends with a suspenseful sentence, such as “who could possibly want me dead? Frighteningly, he could come up with only one logical answer.”
or,
“‘Thank goodness,’ Winston said. ‘Listen carefully. We may have a serious problem.'”
The sharp, intriguing wrap up to each chapter, along with the brevity of each chapter, creates a feeling of “OK, just one more chapter”, which lends to the speed at which readers seem to progress through Dan Brown novels.
Cultural, technological, and occult exposure
In addition to describing and referencing literature and the arts, Brown paints a detailed picture of foreign cities and countries that are largely associated with the enlightenment and classical intellectual progress. He gives the reader exposure to architecture and locations that they likely have heard of before, but have not had described in such didactic detail; his writing invokes a feeling of connection with the more intellectual and enlightened side of life.
Examples of his foreign architectural lessons include:
“The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, looked like something out of an alien hallucination – a swirling collage of warped metallic forms that appears to have been propped up against one another in an almost random way. Stretching out into the distance, the chaotic mass of shapes was draped in more than thirty thousand titanium tiles that glinted like fish scales and gave the structure a simultaneously organic and extraterrestrial feel, as if some futuristic leviathan had crawled out of the water to sun herself on the riverbank.”
References to historic art include:
“‘Klein is best known for his blue paintings, but he is also known for a disturbing trick photograph called Leap into the Void, which caused quite a panic when it was revealed in 1960.’
Langdon had seen Leap into the Void at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The photo was more than a little disconcerting, depicting a well-dressed man doing a swan dive off a high building and plunging toward the pavement. In truth, the image was a trick – brilliantly conceived and devilishly retouched with a razor blade, long before the days of Photoshop.”
Besides the “classier”, historical creations Brown exposes to the reader, he typically merges innovations of the past with current innovations in a way that creates a feeling of mystique; a sense of mystery around the general lack of knowledge of things that have been created long ago, and things that are nascent.
Semi-scientific aspects of his writing include excerpts such as:
“For Langdon, the only familiar sensation was the sterile tang on the back of his tongue; museum air was the same worldwide – filtered meticulously of all particulates and oxidants and then moistened with ionized water to 45 percent humidity.”
and
“I hope Ludwig van Beethoven gets his cut, Langdon thought, fairly certain that the original inventor of bone conduction technology was the eighteenth-century composer who, upon going deaf, discovered he could affix a metal rod to his piano and bite down on it while he played, enabling him to hear perfectly through vibrations in his jawbone.”
Adding to these informational and mysterious facets of his writing, he furthers the curiosity piqued by readers by speaking in detail about, and having illustrations of, historic symbols as well as novel ones that seem to create a foreign language that the reader is unaccustomed to. Adding all of these elements together results in an easy to digest way to teach surface level things while evoking a deep sense of mystery and intrigue.
One prominent example of this “symbology” occurs in describing a piece created by Kirsch himself, with the following excerpt:
“‘Edmund did this?’ grumbled a mink-clad woman with Botoxed lips. ‘I don’t get it.’
The teacher in Langdon could not resist. ‘It’s actually quite clever,’ he interrupted. ‘So far it’s my favorite piece in the entire museum.’
The woman spun, eyeing him with more than a hint of disdain. ‘Oh really? Then do enlighten me.’
I’d be happy to. Langdon walked over to the series of markings etched coarsely into the clay surface.
‘Well, first of all,’ Langond said, ‘Edmond inscribed this piece in clay as an homage to mankind’s earliest written language, cuneiform.’
The woman blinked, looking uncertain.
‘The three heavy markings in the middle,’ Langdon continued, ‘spell the word ‘fish’ in Assyrian. It’s called a pictogram. If you look carefully, you can imagine the fish’s open mouth facing right, as well as the triangular scales on his body.’
…’And if you look over here,’ Langdon said, pointing to the series of depressions to the left of the fish, ‘you can see that Edmond made foot prints in the mud behind the fish, to represent the fish’s historic evolutionary step onto land.’
‘And finally,’ Langdon said, ‘the asymmetrical asterisk on the right – the symbol that the fish appears to be consuming – is one of history’s oldest symbols for God.’
The Botoxed woman turned and scowled at him. ‘A fish is eating God?’
‘Apparently so. It’s a playful version of the Darwin fish – evolution consuming religion.’ Langdon gave the group a casual shrug. ‘As I said, pretty clever.'”
Quotes and relatable excerpts
“Tolerance, Avila reminded himself. He had met countless men like these – simpleminded, unhappy souls, who had never stood for anything, men who blindly abused the liberties and freedoms that others had fought to give them.”
“‘For the human brain,’ Edmond explained, ‘any answer is better than no answer. We feel enormous discomfort when faced with insufficient data, and so our brains invent the data – offering us, at the very least, the illusion of order – creating myriad philosophies, mythologies and religions to reassure us that there is indeed an order and structure to the unseen world … Where do we come from? Where are we going? These fundamental questions of human existence have always obsessed me, and for years I’ve dreamed of finding the answers … Tragically, on account of religious dogma, millions of people believe they already know the answers to these big questions. And because not every religion offers the same answers, entire cultures end up warring over whose answers are correct, and which version of God’s story is the One True Story.'”
“Science is the antithesis of faith … Science, by definition, is the attempt to find physical proof for that which is unknown or not yet defined, and to reject superstition and misperception in favor of observable facts. When science offers an answers, that answer is universal. Humans do not go to war over it; they rally around it.”
“I’m paraphrasing here, but Gould essentially assured me that there was no question whatsoever among real scientists that evolution is happening. Empirically we can observe the process. The better questions, he believed, were: Why is evolution happening? And how did it all start? … he did illustrate his point with a thought experiment. It’s called the Infinite Hallway … It goes like this: imagine yourself walking down a long hallway – a corridor so long that it’s impossible to see where you came from or where you’re going … then behind you in the distance, you hear the sound of a bouncing ball. Sure enough, when you turn, you see a ball bouncing toward you. It is bouncing closer and closer, until it finally bounces past you, and just keeps going, bouncing into the distance and out of sight … The question is not: Is the ball bouncing? Because clearly, the ball is bouncing. We can observe it. The question is: Why is it bouncing? How did it start bouncing? Did someone kick it? Is it a special ball that simply enjoys bouncing? Are the laws of physics in this hallway such that the ball has no choice but to bounce forever? Gould’s point being, that just as with evolution, we cannot see far enough into the past to know how the process began … All we can do is observe that it is happening … And because the human mind is not equipped to handle ‘infinity’ very well, most scientists now discuss the universe in terms of moments after the Big Bang – Where T is greater than zero – which ensures that the mathematical does not turn mystical.”
“‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderer of all murderers?’
– Nietzsche
God is dead … Those who erase God… must be gods.”
“‘Did Edmond actually read all of these books in his library?’
‘I believe so, yes,’ Winston replied. ‘He was a voracious consumer of text and called this library his ‘trophy room of knowledge.””
“…my mother’s unwavering zealotry has a lot to do with my abhorrence of religion. I call it – ‘Newton’s Third Law of Child Rearing: For every lunacy, there is an equal and opposite lunacy.'”
“The Roswell saucer was a government weather balloon called Project Mogul.”
“The term ‘atheist’ should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a ‘nonastrologer’ or a ‘nonalchemist.’ We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive, or for people who doubt that aliens traverse the galaxy only to molest cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of of unjustified religious beliefs … That definition is not mine, by the way. Those words belong to neuroscientist Sam Harris. And if you have not already done so, you must read his book Letter to a Christian Nation.”
“The dark religions are departed & sweet science reigns.”
“Titled Missa Charles Darwin, it was a Christian-style mass in which the composer had eschewed the traditional sacred Latin text and substituted excerpts from Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to create a haunting juxtaposition of devout voices singing about the brutality of natural selection.”
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
– Winston Churchill
‘Edmund’s favorite quote … He said it pinpoints the single greatest strength of computers … computers are infinitely persistent. I can fail billions of times with no trace of frustration. I embark upon my billionth attempt at solving a problem with the same energy as my first. Humans cannot do that.'”
“Chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey had conducted a legendary scientific experiment in the 1950s attempting to answer that very question (Where do we come from?). Their bold experiment had failed, but their efforts had been lauded worldwide and been known ever since as the Miller-Urey experiment… Apparently, the original Miller-Urey experiment had produced many more amino acids and complex compounds than Miller had been able to measure at the time. The new analysis of the vials even identified several important nucleobases – the building blocks of RNA, and perhaps eventually DNA.”
“If Professor England’s theory is correct, then the entire operating system of the cosmos could be summed up by a single overriding command: spread energy!”
“I’m sorry to have to show you this … but in every model I ran, the same thing happened. The human species evolved to our current point in history, and then, very abruptly, a new species materialized, and erased us from the Earth…. In a flash, Langdon realized what Edmond was describing. The Seventh Kingdom … It was called: Technicum… What you are seeing here is a rare evolutionary process known as obligate endosymbiosis. Normally, evolution is a bifurcating process – a species splits into two new species – but sometimes, in rare instances, if two species cannot survive without each other, the process occurs in reverse… and instead of one species bifurcating, two species fuse into one… Human beings are evolving into something different. We are becoming a hybrid species – a fusion of biology and technology. The same tools that today live outside of our bodies – smartphones, hearing aids, reading glasses, most pharmaceuticals – in fifty years will be incorporated into our bodies to such an extent that we will no longer be able to consider ourselves Homo Sapiens… I urge you to place your faith in the human capacity for creativity and love, because these two forces, when combined, possess the power to illuminate any darkness… May our philosophies keep pace with our technologies. May our compassion keep pace with our powers. And may love, not fear, be the engine of change.“
“Creationists are today’s flat-earth advocates, and I would be shocked if anyone still believes in Creationism a hundred years from now.”
“Anthropological data clearly showed that cultures practicing religions historically had outlived non-religious cultures. Fear of being judged by an omniscient deity always helps inspire benevolent behavior.”
“Love is from another realm. We cannot manufacture it on demand. Nor can we subdue it when it appears. Love is not our choice to make.”
“True or false?
I + XI = X
‘One plus eleven is ten? False.’
Langdon gently reached out and took her hand, guided her around to where he had been standing. Now, when Ambra glanced down, she saw the markings from Langdon’s vantage point.
The equation was upside down.
X = IX + I
Startled, she glanced up at him.
‘Ten equals nine plus one… Sometimes, all you have to do is shift your perspective to see someone else’s truth.'”
“Love is not a finite emotion.
We don’t have only so much to share.
Our hearts create love as we need it.
Just as parents could love a newborn instantly without diminishing their love for each other, so now could Ambra feel affection for two different men.
Love truly is not a finite emotion, she realized. It can be generated spontaneously out of nothing at all.”
“I am surprised to hear your dismay, Professor… considering that your own faith is built on an act of far greater ethical ambiguity.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.
Your God brutally sacrificed his son, abandoning him to suffer on the cross for hours. With Edmond, I painlessly ended a dying man’s suffering in order to bring attention to his great works.”
“We should all do what so many churches already do – openly admit that Adam and Eve did not exist, that evolution is a fact, and that Christians who declare otherwise make us all look foolish… I don’t believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect intended for us to forgo their use.”
More Thoughts
The notion of technology playing a part in evolution is not new. I cannot recall where I first encountered the notion, but what seems to make more sense to me is that technology is not a separate “kingdom”, but rather a continuation of human evolution. Evolution has been shown to be occurring at increasing rates as time progresses, but eventually “natural” evolution could no longer keep pace with this rate. Thus, technology serves as a means of accelerating human evolution beyond what is biologically possible, changing humans in an exponentially increasing rate.
Belief vs Faith
From a philosophical stand point, I would also like to comment on the distinction between belief and faith, as the latter is a central part of this novel. The easiest way for me to illustrate the difference between the two, as used by philosophers in creating logical arguments, is to define belief as a subjective truth based on objective evidence. An example of this could be if you’re playing baseball as an outfielder, see the batter hit the ball far into left field. Because you have observed projectiles (balls) being hit into the air hundreds of thousands of times, you have a model in your head of where the ball will go. Where you think the ball will end up is your belief of where the ball will land. It is what you think will be true given facts (objective truths), the ball has been hit, it has this initial trajectory, I have seen this many times before, etc.
Faith can then be defined as a subjective truth based on subjective evidence. People typically think of religious faith, but there can be other types of faith as well. An example would be the statement “God must exist because my mother had cancer, and without any medical intervention, she no longer has it.” The existence of God is your subjective truth, and the evidence you have is also subjective; it cannot be proven objectively. The initial diagnoses could have been incorrect, etc.
One may say “well, some people of faith have no evidence at all!” My counterargument to this is that no one of sound mind can come to a conclusion without premises or evidence. “well,” I have been told “some people have faith because they are just told to.” That is valid, but I would argue that there is still evidence for them to draw their conclusions. Typically this takes some form of “I have been taught most everything else in my life by this person, and all of that I have observed to be true. I have no reason to question things they have told me. Therefore this religious faith must also be true.”