The Coronavirus and a “Coup d’état” of the Brain

“Today, we are witnessing the medical equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Moon Mission.”

The great Peloponnesian War began in 431 B.C., when Spartan armies invaded the Attic peninsula. The agrarian population fled to the great city of Athens, whose population soon tripled. In 430 B.C., plague broke out in Athens. Chaos and death followed. Thucydides speculated that the plague came from somewhere south of Egypt, but ancient Greeks knew nothing of the biological nature of the invisible force that was killing them:

“No other human art was of any avail; and as to supplications in temples, and inquiries of oracles, and the like, they were all useless; and at last men were overpowered by the calamity and gave them all up.”

The plague raged within the city for four years and debilitated Athens far more than the fearsome Spartan warriors outside its walls. Eventually, as much as half of Athens’ bloated population would perish before the plague disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived.

Parts and Wholes

Our current response to the Coronavirus pandemic could not be more different than that of ancient Athens’. Modern science does not deal with problems by means of “supplications in temples” nor with “inquiries of oracles.” Science attends to reality in a way quite different than religion and, in turn, generates its own kind of knowledge.  Science deals with “facts,” as revealed by scientific methodologies.

Today’s pandemic is precisely the kind of problem modern science is best equipped to deal with. Modern science offers detailed and specific knowledge, and it prescribes a range of specific remedies and behaviors. Today, we are witnessing the medical equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Moon Mission. The analytic powers of science have been summoned, and armies of researchers and health workers—as disciplined as a hoplite phalanx—wage war upon a microscopic enemy.