CROSSROADS OF CONTINENTS 



Remote Alaska & the Russian Far East 



Above the Arctic Circle 



July 20 -30, 1994 



The remote islands of the 

 Bering Sea lead like stepping 

 stones from Alaska to the vast 

 frontier of the Russian Arctic. 

 This summer, a team of Ameri- 

 can Museum and guest lecturers 

 will lead an exciting voyage of 

 exploration in this rarely-vis- 

 ited area of the world. 



Aboard the World Discov- 

 erer, we will follow comfort- 

 ably in the pathways of famed 

 18th- and 19th-century Arctic 

 explorers. We will cross the 

 Bering Strait, which long ago 

 formed the land bridge that pre- 

 cipitated the migration of Asians 

 to the Americas, visiting along 

 the way such extraordinary 

 places as the Arakamchechen 

 Archipelago. We will also cross 

 the Arctic Circle in search of 

 polar bears traveling on the drift- 

 ing pack ice. 



Our journey will allow us 

 to meet with people from both 

 continents who are historically 

 and ethnically related and enjoy 

 the spectacular Arctic land- 

 scapes. These nutrient-rich wa- 

 ters and remote rocky islands 

 support some of the largest colo- 

 nies of seabirds in the Western 

 Hemisphere, as well as marine 

 mammals, sea lions and seals. 

 Join us for the voyage of a life- 

 time. 



American 

 Museum of 

 Natural 

 History 



Discovery Cruises 



Central Park West at 79th St. 



New York, NY 10024-5192 



Toll-free (800) 462-8687 or 



(212) 769-5700 in NYS 



density of networks in human contact. But 

 to think of Draper, taking the first degree 

 just inches from Huxley and Wilberforce, 

 can only be viewed as God's gift to an es- 

 sayist who traffics in connections.) 



This essay has discussed a double myth 

 in the annals of our bad habits in false cat- 

 egorization: (I) the flat earth legend as 

 support for a biased ordering of Western 

 history as a story in redemption from clas- 

 sical to dark to medieval to Renaissance; 

 and (2) the invention of the flat earth myth 

 to support a false dichotomization of 

 Western history as another story of 

 progress, a war of victorious science over 

 religion. 



I would not be agitated by these errors if 

 they led only to an inadequate view of the 

 past without practical consequence for our 

 modem world. But the myth of a war be- 

 tween science and religion remains all too 

 current and continues to impede a proper 

 bonding and conciliation between these 

 two utterly different and powerfully im- 

 portant institutions of human life. How 

 can a war exist between two vital subjects 

 with such different appropriate turfs — sci- 

 ence as an enterprise dedicated to discov- 

 ering and explaining the factual basis of 

 the empirical world, and religion as an ex- 

 amination of ethics and values? 



I do understand, of course, that this ter- 

 ritorial separation is a modem decision — 

 and that differing past divisions did entail 

 conflict in subsequent adjustment of 

 boundaries. After all, when science was 

 weak to nonexistent, religion's umbreUa 

 did cover regions now properly viewed as 

 domains of natural knowledge. But shall 

 we blame religion for these overexten- 

 sions? As thinking beings, we have no op- 

 tion not to ponder the great issues of 

 human origins and our relationship with 

 die earth and oflier creatures. If science 

 once had no clue about these subjects, 

 then they fell, albeit uncomfortably and in- 

 appropriately, into the domain of reUgion 

 by default. No one gives up turf voluntar- 

 ily, and the later expansion of science into 

 rightful territory temporarily occupied by 

 religion did evoke some lively skirmishes 

 and portentous battles. These tensions 

 were also exacerbated by particular cir- 

 cumstances of contingent history — in- 

 cluding the resolute and courageous mate- 

 rialism of Darwin's personal theory and 

 the occupation (at the same time) of the 

 Holy See by one of the most fascinating 

 and enigmatic figures of the nineteenth 

 century, the strong, embittered, and in- 

 creasingly conservative pope Pio Nono 

 (Pius K). 



18 Natural History 3/94 



