What if scientists in Western Europe had taken different paths? A cinematic exercise in historical imagination unfolds into dazzling scenarios and enchanting futures. 

A young woman, surrounded by darkness, breathes deeply in and out. In the background, there are indistinct growls and panting from unseen wild creatures. Are they monsters? The camera zooms in and out, films from above and below, exploring the black-and-white scene from different angles, evoking a sense of disorientation. Half dreaming and half awake, the young woman talks to an older man about the role of the inquisitive human. 'By dissecting beasts, which some call monsters, we cannot prevent the production of others,' she observes. 'Perhaps then, some places are best left beyond human hands,' the man replies thoughtfully. 

I lie comfortably on two large beanbags at the Allard Pierson Museum; on a big screen, the film As Messengers by filmmakers Matthew C. Wilson and Emilia Tapprest plays in an endlessly repeating half-hour loop. The film is part of the exhibition The Call of the O’o: Nature Under Pressure. 'This exhibition revolves around the question of how Western Europeans relate to nature, how this can be explained through history, and how we might approach the future with new insights,' the brochure notes. 

While it is somewhat regrettable that the exhibition focuses exclusively on Western Europeans, it is understandable. The collection held by the Allard Pierson Artis Library, which largely forms the basis of the exhibition, is a product of the Western European mindset (or perhaps more accurately: the affluent, white Western European man). Moreover, the relationship of this demographic with nature has had profound and lasting effects, making it a crucial area of study. Notably, the exhibition blends historical documents and artifacts with works by contemporary artists, including the impressive film As Messengers. The title references a quote by John Berger, who wrote in his essay Why Look at Animals (1977): ‘To suppose that animals first entered the human imagination as meat or leather or horn is to project a 19th-century attitude backwards across the millennia. Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises.’  

Tapprest and Wilson created this film as part of a joint residency at the Allard Pierson Museum and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Amsterdam. The influence of complexity thinking, a major focus for many IAS researchers, is evident throughout the film. For instance, scenes depicting collective behaviour in nature—such as schools of fish and flocks of birds—gradually transform into something resembling water bubbles or a cloud of computer-generated data points, depending on the viewer's interpretation. 

The concept behind the film itself is also rooted in an idea from complexity science: bifurcations. In everyday language, a bifurcation is understood as a branching or splitting, such as in the evolutionary classification of species. However, in complexity science, it typically refers to a concept from the study of dynamic systems, where a small change can suddenly result in significant qualitative shifts. 

Wilson and Tapprest applied the concept of bifurcation to history as so-called ‘historical forks,’ dividing the periods of Western natural science into five broad eras, starting with the early Renaissance and ending in the near future. For each era, they identify a specific turning point in Western European thinking about nature—decisions that had profound consequences. This idea prompted them to explore what might have happened if a different path had been chosen. In this way, they create a vignette for each period, visually depicting this cognitive experiment. We travel back in time and see how an alternate future might have unfolded. These are, in essence, future projections from the past, where alternative ‘Umwelts’ emerge. 

In their conversation about monsters, the two scientists find themselves at a crossroads, poised to take a different turn. What if imagination had remained an integral part of the natural sciences? What if monsters had sometimes been allowed to remain monsters, without humans feeling the need to dissect and understand them? What if scientists—or rather, inquisitive Western thinkers—had decided that certain areas of nature were best left untouched by human hands? 

Another vignette covers the period from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century and poses the question of what the world might look like if cooperation were central instead of competition. A group of people monitors a heathland landscape using advanced equipment. Through continuous coordination, every small shift in the ecosystem is detected and addressed. The group of researchers themselves becomes part of the ecosystem, developing a form of collective intelligence in which the system is directly adjusted. Although collaboration is emphasised, the need for control, inherited from an earlier era, remains present. 

 
The vignette that takes a different turn during the time of Alexander von Humboldt explores a world in which space is made for physical, subjective methods of fieldwork. Two female researchers want to understand why animals are fleeing from an area. For their study, they once again make use of alternative technology and various forms of non-verbal communication. They wear white bands on their fingers, which allow them to pick up sensory information from the environment. 

 
Emeritus Professor of Information and History at Stanford, Paul N. Edwards, recently organised a meeting at the IAS on time and technology. How do human perspectives on time shape our future? And what role do technology and information gathering play in this? In his introductory talk, Edwards highlights the high energy consumption of the ‘technosphere’. For instance, the process of photosynthesis converts ninety terawatts of biochemical energy from the sun into energy every year. The human-developed technosphere consumes around 27 terawatts of this energy annually. 

However, Edwards proposes that we should not only think in terms of energy but also in terms of time. This approach might help us understand the unimaginable geological timescales that are now being compressed into increasingly shorter periods. For example, the fossil energy available on Earth, such as coal, is a product of coal that formed over a period of sixty million years during the Carboniferous period, 359-299 million years ago. If we think in terms of time, between 1800 and 2020, we have burned approximately a million years’ worth of coal. 

One of the speakers at Edwards’ lecture is Andreas Weber is affiliated with the University of Twente, where he investigates the relationship between science, technology and society. He emphasises how things have ‘gone terribly wrong as a result of the uncoupling of human and natural history’. Weber researched the digitisation of museum collections and noted how natural history museums tell a story about natural history while leaving human history untouched. For example, stories about human exploitation, such as those concerning colonial history, remain hidden in natural history museums. These stories need to be more closely connected. This is precisely what the exhibition at the Allard Pierson Museum attempts to do. 

While the ideas about time and good stewardship are not new, it is interesting that, by using imagination to look at those crucial turning points from the past, alternative and appealing future scenarios can emerge. 

After several hours of high-level discussion, during which the work of renowned scholar X and the literature of famous scholar Y are debated, someone at the IAS meeting raises a point about the responsibility of the scientists themselves. 'Our responsibility as scientists is limited, and we remain reluctant to question the core assumptions of this economic system. Are we being too modest? Shouldn’t we take a hard look at ourselves?' 

In the vignette by Wilson and Tapprest set in the near future, the scientists are again in the dark, in what seems like an extraterrestrial biobank. The biodiversity of the world above has been reduced to DNA in test tubes. The scientists talk about how wonderful it would be to one day see the animals in real life again. Fortunately, they still have the DNA... However, a short circuit reveals that the test tubes have not been properly preserved. One of the scientists goes through the test tubes one by one. With each one, he names the organism: Sumatran elephant, Hainan gibbon, green sea turtle. He drops each test tube on the floor with tears in his eyes. These are all the species that have been lost. 

Is there still a final chance of survival? Perhaps they can expose the test tubes to the real outside air? Maybe not everything is lost. Perhaps scientists today can still push for a different path? 

Author: Sanne Bloemink 

Published in De Groene Amsterdammer on November 11, 2024. Translated by the Institute for Advanced Study.