蜜芽传媒

The dying words of the human replicant Roy in Ridley Scott鈥檚 classic film Blade Runner have now become a part of cinema history.

鈥淚've seen things you people wouldn't believe鈥� he says, rain pouring down his face, 鈥淎ttack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannh盲user Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.鈥�

Throughout Bladerunner the audience is challenged with the idea that a synthetic human like Roy, who has been put together in a laboratory, might end up looking and sounding a lot more human than the real thing. And this, of course, poses that age-old question about what it is to be human. For in this famous dying scene, Roy exhibits a capacity for wonder that we generally imagine to be the preserve of human beings.

The Christian writer G K Chesterton developed an entire theology around this notion of wonder. Wonder, he argued, is just a few clicks away from a reverential attitude towards existence, and this, in turn, is getting on towards something Christians call worship 鈥� or, at least, one might say, existential gratitude which can come pretty close to worship.

In his quirky little essay 鈥渢he ethics of Elfland鈥� Chesterton proposes that fairy tales often capture a greater reality than the grim rationalism of more grown up ways of thinking. And this is precisely because they articulate a sense of being astonished at the nature of things. Fantasy literature captures the wow factor at the very existence of existence itself. On the other hand, says Chesterton, scientific rationalism treats the universe as if it were some piece of dead clockwork, and so it lies about its nature.

Now I share Chesterton鈥檚 belief that fantasy literature can often speak more clearly about reality. But where we part company is with his understanding of science.

On Saturday I went up to Leeds to see my daughter who has just started university there, studying physics. We went to see the new Bladerunner film, she showed me her department and we talked about her new course. And there was an excitement in what she was telling me, an excitement that had more in common with Roy and his C-beams off the Tanhauser gate than physics as some cold-blooded accountancy about the nature of stuff.

And I hope she never looses this thrill. Because Chesterton is absolutely right that the worst sort of education can squeeze out the wonder of the child and replace it with a sort of grim academic ennui created by the dead weight of too many exams and too much instrumentalised learning.

What I鈥檓 really hoping is that, when her three years of physics are over, she will be able to come to me and say, with a Roy-like sparkle in her eyes: 鈥淒ad, I have seen things you wouldn鈥檛 believe.鈥� Because there鈥檚 no debate between science and religion when it comes to wonder. Wonder is common to both.

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