The Reenchantment of the World (48 page)

 

 

16. Oskar Kokoschka,
My Life
, trans. David Britt (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1974), p. 198.

 

 

17. Bertolt Brecht,
Galileo
, trans. Charles Laughton and ed. Eric
Bentley (New York: Grove Press, 1966, from the English edition of 1952),
p. 63. Reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press.

 

 

18. Actually, one wonders. Rochefoueauld related an incident that
occurred in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in which a
Norfolk clergyman, being examined for his doctorate at Cambridge,
was asked whether the sun went around the earth or the earth around the
sun. "Not knowing what to say, and wanting to make some reply, he assumed
an emphatic air and boldly exclaimed: 'Sometimes the one, sometimes the
other.'" Amazingly enough, he was awarded the degree. See G.E. Mingay,
English Landed Society in the Eighteenth Century
(London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 137.

 

 

19. The date of publication of the
Principia
is commonly given as
1687, but H.S. Thayer, in
Newton's Philosophy of Nature
(New York:
Hafner, 1953), p. 9n, cites 1686 as the correct year of publication of
the first edition,

 

 

20. Quoted in Thayer, p. 54; reprinted by permission of the Macmillan
Publishing Co., Inc.

 

 

21. Ibid., p. 45; reprinted by permission of the Macmillan Publishing
Co., Inc.

 

 

22. Positivism probably received its earliest formulation in the work
of Marin Mersenne (see below, Chapter 3). A fully modern statement of
it is contained in Roger Cotes's Preface to the second edition of the
Principia
, reprinted in Thayer, pp. 116-34, esp. p. 126.

 

 

23. Alfred North Whitehead,
Science and the Modern World
(New York:
Mentor Books, 1948; orig. publ. 1925), p. 55.

 

 

24. N. O. Brown,
Love's Body
(New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 139.

 

 

25. Peter Berger, "Towards a Sociological Understanding of
Psychoanalysis,"
Social Research
32 (Spring 1965), 32. The classic
statement of the sociology of knowledge is Karl Mannheim,
Ideology and
Utopia
, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harvest Books,
reprint of 1936 edition).

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2. Consciousness and Society in Early Modern Europe

 

 

1. Ernest Gellner,
Thought and Change
(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1964), p. 72.

 

 

2. Cf. Carlo M. Cipolla,
Before the Industrial Revolution
(New York:
Norton, 1976), pp. 117-18.

 

 

3. I shall discuss the problem of the sociology of knowledge and radical
relativism briefly at the conclusion of this chapter, and in detail in
Chapter 5. As for the issue of causality, the reader should be aware
that much of the literature in the history of science revolves around a
debate over the role of "external" factors in the rise of modern science
versus the role of "internal" factors (i.e., factors arising from
social influence as opposed to those that are rooted in the material
of scientific development itself). Not surprisingly, the debate has
never been resolved, for it depends entirely on the artificial mind-body
dichotomy of the modern era. As discussed in Chapter 3, this split was
not experienced by pre-modern society. Once the dichotomy is recognized
for what it is, the "externalist-internalist" argument evaporates.

 

 

For some of the more classic essays on the subject, consult the following
anthologies: Hugh E Kearney, ed.,
Origins of the Scientific Revolution
(London: Longmans, Green, 1964); George Basalla, ed.,
The Rise of Modern
Science
(Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1968); Leonard M. Marsak, ed.,
The Rise of Science in Relation to Society
(New York: Macmillan, 1964).

 

 

4. E.A. Burtt,
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science
, 2d
ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1932).

 

 

5. John Donne, "An Anatomie of the World: The First Anniversary,"
in
Donne
, ed. Richard Wilbur (New York: Dell, 1962), pp. 112-13
(reprinted with the permission of Oxford University Press). Pascal is
quoted in the original ("Les silences des espaces éternels m'effrayent")
in W.P.D. Wightman,
Science in a Renaissance Society
(London: Hutchinson
University Library, 1972), p. 174.

 

 

6. As might be expected, the literature on feudalism, the Commercial
Revolution, and the transition to capitalism is so vast as to defy any
attempt at bibliography. For descriptions of these processes I have
used the following works: Fernand Braudel,
The Mediterranean and the
Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
, vol. 2, trans. Siân Reynolds
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Pierre Jeannin,
Merchants of the 16th
Century
, trans. Paul Fittingoff (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Carlo
M. Cipolla,
Before the Industrial Revolution
; Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Modern World-System
(New York: Academic Press, 1975); and J. U. Nef,
Industry and Government in France and England
, 1540-1640 (Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society, 1940).

 

 

7. Alfred von Martin,
Sociology of the Renaissance
(New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1963; orig. German edition 1932), pp. 14, 21; these and
subsequent excerpts reprinted with permission of the publisher. The
transition from sacred to secular number (cabala to bookkeeping, for
example) was part of this general process, and is discussed briefly in
Chapter 3.

 

 

8. Ibid., p. 40.

 

 

9. Mircea Eliade,
The Myth of the Eternal Return; or, Cosmos and
History
, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1971; orig. French edition 1949), and von Martin,
Sociology of the
Renaissance
, p. 16.

 

 

The reader should note that linear time was experientially alien,
but not officially alien, to the medieval mind. Official Christian
time of the Middle Ages was linear, in that it was believed that
there was a particular point at which the world had been created and
that it was now moving toward the Second Coming (which was, however, a
re-creation). Similarly, each individual was moving from his own birth
to his death and (ideally) salvation. To the extent that Christian
culture adopted the framework of Jewish eschatology, then, it did
think in terms of linear time. However, Eliade and von Martin are not
referring to biblical or official conceptions of time, but to time as
it was experienced in the daily fare of life. What was
felt
was
indeed cyclical: the sun rises and sets, seasons follow each other year
in and out, planting is followed by harvest, and even church holidays can be
counted on to recur faithfully each year. There are probably several
strands of thinking about time in the Middle Ages, but I believe Eliade
and von Martin have captured the dominant mode of consciousness.

 

 

10. Lynn White, Jr.,
Medieval Technology and Social Change
(London:
Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 125.

 

 

11. For literature on the scholar and the craftsman, see note 3 to this
chapter. Especially relevant are the articles by A.R. Hall and E. Zilsel
in Kearney,
Origins of the Scientific Revolution
, pp. 67-99, and Paolo
Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early Modern Era
,
trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970).

 

 

The discussion below generally applies to the middle-class artisan, or
master craftsman, rather than the lowest level of artisan. The former,
like the military engineer, had some nonvocational education, while
the latter usually did not. By 1600, there were already class divisions
between apprentices, journeymen, and master craftsmen.

 

 

12. A phrase that was becoming popular in the late sixteenth century.
William Gilbert paraphrased it in the Preface to his book
De Magnete
(On the Magnet) of 1600.

 

 

13. Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology and the Arts
, pp. 30-31.

 

 

14. Ibid., p. 42.

 

 

15. Ibid., p. 112. The sketch of Galileo, Tartaglia, and the
scholar-craftsman merger given below is based on the following sources:
Ludovico Geymonat,
Galileo Galilei
, trans. Stillman Drake (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1965);
Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning Two New
Sciences
, trans. Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio (New York: Macmillan,
1914); Gerald Holton and Duane Roller,
Foundations of Modern Physical
Science
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1958); Stillman Drake and
James MacLachlan, "Galileo's Discovery of the Parabolic Trajectory,"
Scientific American
232 (March 1975), 102-10; Edgar Zilsel, "The
Sociological Roots of Science," in Kearney,
Origins of the Scientific
Revolution
, pp. 86-99; Stillman Drake and I.E. Drabkin, trans. and
eds.,
Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy
(Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1969); A.R. Hall,
Ballistics in the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952); Stillman Drake, "Galileo
and the First Mechanical Computing Device,"
Scientific American
234
(April 1976), 104-13.

 

 

16. Galileo Galilei,
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
, p. 1,
reprinted with permission of Dover Publications, Inc.

 

 

17. This was Imre Lakatos' evaluation of T.S. Kuhn's view of scientific
revolutions. See Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds.,
Criticism and
the Growth of Knowledge
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),
p. 178.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3. The Disenchantment of the World (1)

 

 

1. A number of scholars, including T.S. Kuhn, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel
Foucault, Roland Barthes, and members of the Frankfurt School (see the
Introduction, note 6) have recognized the fallacy of this progress theory
of intellectual history, but the epistemological framework(s) that they
represent has hardly made a dent in most thinking on the subject. The
"asymptotic" view of scientific knowledge is still the common one, and
it permeates the media, the universities, and all other institutions o[
Western culture. This view was perhaps apotheosized by C.P. Snow in his
novel,
The Search
(New York: Scribners, 1958).

 

 

2. The study of nonrabbinical Judaism has been the work of Gershom
Scholem (
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its
Symbolism
). The gnosticism of Judaism in antiquity has been explored by
Erwin Goodenough,
Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period
, vols. 7-8,
Pagan Symbols in Judaism
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1958), and by
Michael E. Stone, "Judaism at the Time of Christ,"
Scientific American
228 (January 1973), 80-87.

 

 

3. Owen Barfield,
Saving the Appearances
(New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1965), esp. chap. 16.

 

 

4. Julian Jaynes,
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), bk. 1, chap. 3,
and bk. 2, chap. 5; and Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Birth of Tragedy
,
trans. Francis Golffing (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1956),
esp. pp. 84, 107-8. Bennett Simon has an excellent discussion of the
Homeric and post-Homeric mentalities in his book
Mind and Madness in
Ancient Greece
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978).

 

 

5. The following discussion of Greek consciousness is taken from
E. A. Havelock,
Preface to Plato
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
Balknap Press, 1963), pp. 25-27, 45-47, 150-58, 190, 199-207, 219,
238-39, 261. John H. Finley, Jr., develops the same line of reasoning
in his lovely essay,
Four Stages of Greek Thought
(Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1966). Cf. also Simon,
Mind and Madness in Ancient
Greece
.

 

 

6. Although his analysis of Greek intellectual history can be faulted at
several points, Robert Pirsig, with no apparent awareness of Nietzsche's
discovery of the reality of participating conscionsness, rediscovered
it for himself in his autobiographical study of Greek philosophy and,
like Nietzsche, went insane as a result (
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance
[New York: William Morrow, 1974]). The identical theme is
repeated in Doris Lessing's story of one Charles Watkins, a classics
professor, in her brilliant novel
Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
(New York: Knopf, 1971), in which Watkins goes mad from his insight and is
(like Pirsig) jolted back into nonparticipating consciousness by means
of electroshock therapy.

 

 

Plato's psychological ideal is perhaps best described in the
Republic
,
Book IV, paragraphs 440-443; see especially 443e. This ideal is
equivalent, for Plato, to that of the just man, and also (see paragraph
444) to the healthy one.

 

 

7. Owen Barfield,
Saving the Appearances
, pp. 79-80; Robert Ornstein,
The Psychology of Consciousness
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975),
pp. 138, 183.

 

 

8. The discussion below follows that given by Michel Foucauit in
The
Order of Things
(New York: Vintage Books, 1973; orig. French edition
1966), chap. 2.

 

 

9. The first book of Agrippa's work has been translated into English
as