In a society sharply divided by politics, culture and religion, there's ample hostility - on both the disaffected right and disaffected left - toward what many perceive as the dogmatic pronouncements of a scientific elite. In the case of archaeology, these movements have channeled that hostility into alternative visions of the human past that engage surprisingly large sectors of the public. Although both creationism and alternative archaeology have adopted some scientific trappings, they seek ultimate answers to the riddles of human existence on the spiritual or supernatural plane, where scientists cannot and should not venture.

"If you examine the methodologies of pseudoarchaeology and creationism - the way they construct their arguments - you'll find that they're almost identical," says Garrett Fagan, a professor of classics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State who has devoted much of his career to battling alternative archaeology. "These are essentially not intellectual arguments; they are political arguments. It looks like science, but it's not. They blame science and evolution for any number of social ills, and they regard undermining and destroying science as a primary goal."

I'm tempted to argue that such an approach is not really "left." But the truth is, quite a few people who are very liberal-minded and tolerant on socially and political issues are also attracted to various forms of anti-scientific ideas common in New Age/esoteric thinking.

Isaac Newton is one of history's major bogeymen in the New Age narrative which I have encountered the most. In this version, Newton promoted the idea of the universe as "mechanistic." Albert Einstein, on the other hand, demonstrated that Newton was completely wrong and that we create our own reality.

One can easily see why such ideas might be attractive to Bush Republicans. In the "reality-based" world, though, Newton's ideas still work. The legendary apple still falls from the tree to the ground. The broken leg I suffered in a fall earlier this year provided me a dramatic confirmation of the Newtonian theory of gravity. (Ironically, Newton expected to be remembered mainly for his extensive writing devoted to expounding conservative Protestant theology.)

Newton's theories work fine within the solar system (although a scientific-minded friend tells me that something about the wobble on one of the outer planets doesn't quite fit it). What Einstein was able to do was describe a wider set of the laws of physics, in which the set of laws Newton described still function.

And, no, Einstein never claimed that "we create our own reality." At least not in anything resembling the way New Agers or Republicans use the idea.

O'Hehir expresses a soft spot for the New Age version, referring to his particular topic of crackpot archaeology:

Critiques like these have done little to squelch the popularity of mythic speculation, which is precisely what alternative archaeology has to offer. Some scholars even wonder whether such speculation, unfounded and reckless as it may often be, should be understood as an unruly cousin of the profession, rather than its direct competitor. Accepting myths and legends as at least potentially accurate enabled Heinrich Schliemann to find the ruins of Troy, and enabled Helge Ingstad to find L'Anse aux Meadows, the Newfoundland site that authenticated the idea that the Norse had visited America 500 years before Columbus. Given the intensity of archaeological activity over the last century, it's not very likely anything similar will happen again. But as spiritual or imaginative inquiry into the past and the nature of humanity, alternative archaeology may be said to possess its own kind of legitimacy.

I don't know to what extent ignorance of science and mathematics contributed to the decline of ancient Athens, but I know that the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It's perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion,
tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can't manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data "highways," abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food addditives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer.

How can we affect national policy - or even make intelligent decisions in our own lives - if we don't grasp the underlying issues?