Stories are a Science

“I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. 

I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2,000 years ago. 

He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. 

To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. 

To us The Present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. 

In his mind the Present occupies almost the whole field of vision. 

Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called ‘The Olden Days’– a small, comic jungle in which highway men, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour, etc., wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond The Olden Days comes a picture of ‘Primitive Man’. 

He is ‘science’, not ‘history’, and is therefore felt to be much more real than The Old Days. 

In other words, the Prehistoric is much more believed in than the Historic.”

— C.S. Lewis, 

Christian Apologetics 

Now let me ask you a question. 

Why are humans so fascinated by old things? 

DATA: 

Old things? 

SOONG: 

Old buildings, churches, walls, ancient things, antique things, tables, clocks, knick knacks. 

Why? Why, why? 

DATA: 

There are many possible explanations. 

SOONG: 

If you brought a Noophian to Earth, he'd probably look around and say, 

“tear that old village down, it's hanging in rags. 

Build me something new, something efficient.”

But to a human, that old house, that ancient wall, it's a shrine, something to be cherished. 

Again, I ask you, why? 

DATA: 

Perhaps, for humans, old things represent a tie to the past. 

SOONG:

What's so important about the past?

 People got sick, they needed money. 

Why tie yourself to that? 

DATA: 

Humans are mortal. 

They seem to need a sense of continuity. 

SOONG: 

Ah hah!! Why? 

DATA: 

To give their lives meaning. 

A sense of purpose. 

SOONG: 

And this continuity, does it only run one way, backwards, to the past? 

DATA: 

I suppose it is a factor in the human desire to procreate. 

SOONG: 

So you believe that having children gives humans a sense of immortality, do you? 

DATA: 

It is a reasonable explanation to your query, sir.