Cat’s Cradle: Foil 1 key example

Dr. Felix Hoenikker is the poster boy of technological progress. The Nobel prize-winner singlehandedly invents the atomic bomb and ice-nine, weapons that cause untold amounts of destruction. Dr. Hoenikker—like the other Research Laboratory scientists—has taken control over the natural world to create what Ms. Pefko can only describe as “magic.” But he does so by working within physical constraints. The genius scientist obsesses over the way turtles contract their heads and the different configurations stacked cannonballs can take on. He innovates by breaking the world into its constituent parts.

The San Lorenzan prophet reaches a similar state of “magic,” only through mysticism. Bokonon renounces Dr. Hoenikker’s empirical, painstaking precision and embraces airy fictions instead. He engineers a religion of comforting lies, replete with poems, parables, and invented words. Bokononism rejects the spirit of experimentation that Dr. Hoenikker founds his scientific practice upon. The problem with Bokononism is not a case of logic taken to its extremes, but rather its total absence. Dr. Hoenikker’s form of empirical science diverts reason from morals. By contrast, Bokonon’s brand of religion preaches about the “folly of pretending to discover, to understand.” One understands to the point where it loses touch with humanity, while the other professes to understand nothing at all. Bokonon and Dr. Hoenikker’s divergent approaches guide the world to equally devastating outcomes.