Michael Crichton

From Philosopedia

Crichton, (John) Michael (23 Oct 1942 - 4 November 2008)

A physician, author, and film director, Crichton received a 1996 Emmy Best Dramatic Series Award for E, a popular television show about emergency room personnel. He was co-screenwriter of Jurassic Park (1993) and Twister (1996).

As Jeffrey Hudson, he wrote A Case of Need (1968), and as John Lange Odds On (1966). The Andromeda Strain (1969) brought him much notoriety, and interviewers marvel that he, a mere writer, is also an expert on medicine. Over 150,000,000 copies of his books have been sold, works that feature technology and action.

Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois, to John Henderson Crichton and Zula Miller Crichton. He was raised in Roslyn, Long Island, New York, graduating from its high school. He has two sisters, Kimberly, and a younger brother, Douglas.

A member of the Phi Beta Kappa Socity, he attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude in 1964. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, obtaining an M.D. in 1969, and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. In 1988, he was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In his 1993 autobiography, Travels, Crichton tells of his fascination with Buddhism when, as he was told, it was a religion that doesn’t believe in God. “I found it interesting,” he observed, “that I liked this religion, because for many years I had been vociferously atheistic and anti-religion.”

Crichton, married five times, was divorced four times. He was married to Suzanna Childs (m. 1981, div); Joan Rodam (m. 1965, div. 1970), Kathy St. Johns (m. 1978, div. 1980), and Anne-Marie Martin (m. 1987, div 2002), the mother of his only child, daughter Taylor Anne. At the time of his death, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander (m. 2005).

In Los Angeles at the age of 66, he died from cancer. His homepage cited that he had died "after a courageous and private battle against cancer."

Dr. Crichton's mother, Mrs. Georges Brigham, lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, where his siblings went to the public schools.

On Religion

In "Aliens Cause Global Warming," a 2003 lecture he gave at Caltech, he expressed his views of the danger of "consensus science" — especially with regard to what he regards as popular but disputed theories such as nuclear winter, the dangers of second-hand smoke, and the global warming controversy.

Crichton was critical of widespread belief in ETs and UFOs, for which there is no conclusive proof of their existence despite their publicity. "The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion." Crichton commented that belief in purported scientific theories without a factual basis is more akin to faith than science.

In a related speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California, he discussed "Environmentalism as a Religion," describing what he saw as similarities between the structure of various religious views (particularly Judeo-Christian beliefs) and the beliefs of many modern urban atheists who he asserted have romantic ideas about Nature and our past, who he suggested believe in the initial "paradise," the human "sins," and the "judgment day." He also articulated his belief that it is the tendency of modern environmentalists to cling stubbornly to elements of their faith in spite of evidence to the contrary. Crichton cited misconceptions about DDT, passive smoking, and global warming as examples.

Books

The Andromeda Strain (1969, novel)

Five Patients (1970, nonfiction)

The Terminal Man (1972, novel)

The Great Train Robbery (1975, novel)

Eaters of the Dead (1976, novel)

Jasper Johns (1977, biography)

Congo (1980, novel)

Electronic Life (1983, nonfiction)

Sphere (1987, novel)

Travels (1988, essays)

Jurassic Park (1990, novel)

Rising Sun (1992, novel)

Disclosure (1994, novel)

The Lost World (1995, novel)

Airframe (1996, novel)

Timeline (1999, novel)

Prey (2002, novel)

State of Fear (2004, novel)

Next (2006, novel)

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