Myth and the Mechanistic Universe: An Essay in the Comparative Study of Religions 9781935790884, 9781934542286

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James Eric Lane Myth and the Mechanistic Universe: An Essay in the Comparative Study of Religions

Copyright © by James Eric Lane, 2013. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in an information retrieval system, or transcribed, in any form or by any means—electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews without the express written permission of the publisher, and the holder of copyright. Submit all inquiries and requests to the publisher: The Davies Group, Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lane, James Eric, 1946Myth and the mechanistic universe : an essay in the comparative study of religions / James Eric Lane. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-934542-28-6 (alk. paper) 1. Religion and science. I. Title. BL240.3.L365 2012 201’.65--dc23 2012033027

To Kees Bolle

Mathematicians who are merely mathematicians therefore reason soundly as long as everything is explained to them by definitions and principles, otherwise they are unsound and intolerable, because they reason soundly only from clearly defined principles. And intuitive minds which are merely intuitive lack the patience to go right into the first principles of speculative and imaginative matters which they have never seen in practice and are quite outside ordinary experience. Pascal—Pensées

When we want to correct someone usefully and show him he is wrong, we must see from what point of view he is approaching the matter, for it is usually right from that point of view, and we must admit this, but show him the point of view from which it is wrong. This will please him, because he will see that he was not wrong but merely failed to see every aspect of that question. Pascal—Pensées

Contents Preface Introduction Part One: Ancient Symbolic Forms Chapter One: Ancient Symbolic Forms Chapter Two: Myth and “Metaphysics” Chapter Three: The Secret of the State Chapter Four: The Ritual Enactment of the World Chapter Five: The Historiography of Astronomy in Ancient China Chapter Six: Myth and Astronomy in Ancient China Chapter Seven: The Christian Myth and Knowledge

ix xiii 1 3 23 43 67 83 101 115

Part Two: Religious Forms and Physical Science in the Modern World Introduction Chapter Eight: The New Myth of Proportion, Numbers, and Precision Chapter Nine: Galileo’s Science of Local Motion Chapter Ten: The New Myth of Magic and Power Chapter Eleven: The Mechanistic Universe Chapter Twelve: Religious Forms and Physical Science

167 181 205 229

Part Three: Religious Forms and History Chapter Thirteen: Myth and The Technicalist World Chapter Fourteen: From Cosmos to History Chapter Fifteen: Myth and the Mechanistic Universe

249 251 269 283

Epilogue Notes Selected Bibliography

299 305 337

133 135 149

Preface Why did I write this book? I had been working as an historian of religions focusing on the problems of religion and politics during African colonial history. This was at a time when Mircea Eliade was influential in the history of religions, long before the relation of religion to politics was a concern for most historians of religions. In order to bring Eliade’s ideas into the realm of politics, I integrated his work into the philosophies of Edmund Husserl and Wilhelm Dilthy. This worked quite well for interpreting historical materials and Husserl’s technique of “the suspension of judgment,” that is, first patiently describing something before making a judgment on whether it was true or false, real or illusory, (placing it “in brackets” as we like to say) was almost identical to the ethnological method of simply describing what I observed before making a judgment while doing fieldwork. This had been a romantic period in my life as it was in the lives of many people my age at that time, and although I had a good background in science and mathematics, I had suppressed that side of me in my enthusiasm for Africa and the history of religions. Then, while back in America, it began to dawn on me that in my African work I had failed to suspend judgment concerning Western science and technology. I unconsciously assumed it was real and true. I didn’t “place it in brackets.” One day about this time, I was reading for pleasure a biography of Einstein. This was after I had just read philosophical works by the great Buddhist philosopher, Asa ṅga, and the Christian theologian, Nicholas of Cusa. In these works, they made what is “real,” what is “sacred,” as we historians of religions say, available to their readers. Well, as it turned out the biography of Einstein contained a good, succinct, description of his argument on the special theory of relativity, and I noticed that the way he argued was almost identical to the way Asaṅga, and Nicholas of Cusa wrote their philosophical meditations. So it occurred to me that I might be able to use the methods I had learned in the history of religions to understand modern physical

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science. Now, I know that a great deal of sloppy and faddish work has appeared relating religion to science. Nevertheless, I thought that if I had the audacity to think I could understand the people of central Africa, I certainly should be able to understand the inhabitants of the mathematics department. And that is how this book began. I originally thought I would complete this project in about six months. It has now been over thirty years since I first conceived of it. During this time the history of religions lost confidence in its own methods and reason for existence. It now neglects its greatest figures, van der Leeuw, Eliade, and Pettazoni, because it wants to become “scientific.” In the meantime, I found that I could use the proper methods of the history of religions, that I had learned under a strict, exacting, and difficult man, to understand the physical sciences and their relation to religion. This required much more effort than I had first anticipated. The sciences and the humanities are almost “incommensurable,” as the mathematicians say. Despite difficulties, I found it worthwhile and satisfying to correct my one-sided, humanistic views, and to allow my repressed scientific side to come back into a conscious, philosophically disciplined view of the world. It gave me a rounder, more fully balanced, view of both science and religion. I found this liberating and it gave me a much clearer and solid perspective from which to judge traditional cultures such as the peoples of Africa. Perhaps some readers of this book, whether they are inclined to view things from the side of the sciences or from the side of the humanities, will find this also to be true. I have written this book with them in mind, and this is the reason I chose the particular passages by Pascal that I did as an epigraph. I wish to express my gratitude to people who helped me at various times during the years of bringing this project to completion. Michael Kerze was someone with whom I could always discuss my ideas. This was helpful in the early and middle stages of my writing, and he made the early part of the project especially enjoyable. I am indebted to David Himrod for a careful and critical reading of my manuscript in its middle stages. He saved me from some serious errors and offered suggestions that greatly enhanced my argument. He also suggested that I divide the

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work into three parts. This, I believe, greatly improved its structure. Kees Bolle provided a great deal of assistance in the middle stages of the book, and took the pains to revise a substantial part of it himself. For this I am grateful. But more than that, as my teacher, he provided me with a solid grounding in the history of religions as a discipline as well as insight into the importance of neo-orthodox theology. And, by personal example, more than anything else, he instilled in me a sense that what we historians of religions were doing is important. Often he would say, “The world needs the history of religions.” But just as often he would say, “The world isn’t waiting for us.” Both statements are true. J. Eric Lane February 23, 2012 Los Angeles, California

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Introduction In this book I want to challenge the habitual and all too general attitude that makes us imagine a wall separating religion and science. The Ngaju Dayak, a tribal people of South Borneo, tell us how the world began. Long ago, they say, in the beginning of time, everything was still in the jaws of the coiled Watersnake. It was in a time before the people of Batu Nindan Tarong had come into existence and before the people of the village Liang Angkar Bantilong had become famous. No one had yet spoken of the numerous streams or the clan elders. There were no mountains or hills reaching up towards the sky, “and the black clouds were still mixed with the white.” In those early times the only things that existed were the lights of Gold Mountain and the lights of Jewel Mountain rising up to the clouds. There was also a small pool, the size of a drop of water. In this pool the moons, the female Jata, the princesses of Mahatala, bathed and refreshed themselves. Ranyang Mahatala Langit, the hornbill and owner of Gold Mountain, perches on his mountain. It reaches up to the sky. The hawk (the owner of Jewel Mountain and king of the sky) sits on Jewel Mountain, and Jewel Mountain begins to move. Back and forth it moves. Suddenly Gold Mountain and Jewel Mountain clash together, and lightning flashes and changes into the clouds. Gold Mountain and Jewel Mountain clash again and the flashing lightning spreads out to become the heavens and the vault of the sky. Gold Mountain and Jewel Mountain clash repeatedly, and each time something new comes into the world. The flashing lightning creates the mountains and cliffs, the golden round moon, and the jeweled edges of the sun. The flashing lightning changes into the hawk of heaven that then becomes the fish Ila-Ilai Langit. The flashing lightning becomes a creature with golden saliva that brings great fortune. This creature then takes the shape of another creature having eyes of jewels and saliva that is the source of life. Now the flashing lightning changes into the treasure of Ranyang Mahatala Langit. This treasure takes “the form of a golden head-dress moving to and fro in the sky, beautifully ornamented with a high-reaching jewel.”1

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What is this fantastic story with its ringing names of gods, snakes, and birds? Is it science? Most of us would reject the idea at once, and say: This is religion of course! It is a myth of creation. And nevertheless, I insist, there is not only space, but also a need for reflection. The Ngaju Dayak have listened to the official recitation of their myth for many generations. It was always more than “mere literature.” They listened to it at funerals. It gave a meaningful form to their lives and their world. It oriented them. It gave them a certainty that ordinary, unordered existence does not convey. I hope to show that the mechanistic universe of modern science and the myths of peoples such as the Ngaju Dayak are more compatible than they at first might seem. I am far from suggesting that they are identical. Our world of science came about in an altogether different historical setting from that of the Dayak world. There have really been only two revolutions in humankind’s collective history: the first occurred with the discovery of agriculture; the second with modern science and technology. Those who consider this second revolution a wonderful advancement as well as those who consider it a great catastrophe share a sense that we live in a culture that is essentially different from all others.2 Three classic studies of this scientific world are: Edwin Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Alexander Koyré’s From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, and Edward J. Dijksterhuis’s The Mechanization of the World Picture. For Burtt the new world arose in the seventeenth century when people succeeded in analyzing nature with mathematical objectivity. They achieved this at great cost: they lost their central place in a Christian mythical drama of cosmic redemption.3 Koyré characterizes the rise of modern science as a world of “more or less” transitioning to one of “precision.” This occurred when people began to conceive of time and space geometrically, thus transforming the world from an organic cosmos to an infinite universe.4 Galileo was the primary actor in this drama and the change happened rather abruptly. Koyré is the first historian of science to use the concept, “scientific revolution.”5 Finally, Dijksterhuis understands the transition as the gradual and continuous emergence of the mechanical or mechanistic conception of the world. He calls it the most “profound and far-reaching” of the changes in the conception of nature that has occurred in the history of scientific ideas.6

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In seeming contrast to traditional images of the world as a living cosmos, an organic and ordered whole, modern physical science created an image of the world as an infinite machine of particles of dead matter interacting with one another in an abstract and absolute time and space— silently, for all eternity. Pierre Simon Laplace presented this picture in his Theorie Analytique des Probabilités in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is perhaps the most powerful and famous expression of the mechanistic image of the world.7 This image began to emerge during the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and its power has continually grown. By the middle of the nineteenth century this image had come to dominate the imagination of modern peoples. It began to possess an almost religious authority, so that a great chasm appeared between traditional peoples’ experience of the world as a living cosmos and the modern understanding of the natural realm as dead and mechanical. We can see the clearest example of this modern understanding in Descartes’ description of the human body as a machine: I want the reader to have a general notion of the entire machine which it is my task to describe. So I will say here that the heat in the heart is like the great spring or principle responsible for all the movements occurring in the machine. The veins are pipes which conduct the blood from all the parts of the body towards the heart, where it serves to fuel the heat there. The stomach and the intestines are another much larger pipe perforated with many little holes through which the juices from the food ingested run into the veins; these then carry the juices straight to the heart. The arteries are yet another set of pipes through which the blood, which is heated and rarefied in the heart, passes from there into all the other parts of the body, bringing them heat and material to nourish them. Finally, the parts of the blood that are most agitated and lively are carried to the brain by the arteries coming directly from the heart in the straightest line of all[.]8

Because he maintained that the preservation of health was the most fundamental blessing and the basis of all other blessings,9 Descartes hoped that this new mechanical image would provide a new, revolutionary foundation for medicine.10 Today we can see to what a great extent subsequent history has fulfilled Descartes’ hopes. The striking thing,

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after all, is that medical science also “went mechanistic.” Indeed, with the rise of the mechanistic image of the universe, people began to not only experience and think the world differently; they began to experience and think about themselves differently as well. Nevertheless, ripples became visible in this calm lake of satisfied certainty. The great developments of physical science in the twentieth century, relativity theory and quantum mechanics, modified the nineteenth century’s image of the world. Time and space ceased to be absolute and the particles of matter gave way to interwoven fields of energy, so that today the natural world appears much more intricate, subtle, and flexible than that evoked by the idea of an infinite machine. Still, there was no break, no revolution. Modern physics still attempts to describe changes in nature mathematically, in terms of numbers and equations, and to account for these changes in terms of causal (or at least statistically probable) mechanisms. We have not totally abandoned the idea of an infinite machine. Twenty-first century physics has merely transformed it. However, we cannot ignore the ripples. The earliest ones may seem modest, but they were like a first alert: “absolute mechanical precision” might not be all there is to science and to how we explain the world. The modern scientific picture of the world is not frozen in time. We constantly transform it during the course of history, and the pictures of the world that men such as Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Laplace, Einstein, and Bohr have given us differ from each other. They all have their own particularity. On the other hand, I do not deny that all these worlds have common elements that make them “modern” and “scientific.” The study by Dijksterhuis explored extensively the common character of these worlds. He tried to characterize them by their mechanical or mechanistic elements. Something about these worlds eludes our labels, and Dijksterhuis had difficulty choosing a satisfactory term for them. He rejected the word “mechanical” because its connotations of a world that is automatic and thoughtless were too strong. He thought the adjective, “mechanistic,” was good but had reservations because the corresponding noun, “mechanism,” still conveyed too strong a sense of being mindless. In the end, however, he did settle on the adjective “mechanistic” to characterize the world of modern physical science. According to Dijksterhuis, then, modern science arose with the progressive “mechanization of the

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world-picture.”11 In this essay, I will follow Dijksterhuis. I will designate both the infinite machine of classical physics and the new modified picture as “the mechanistic universe.” Neither the infinite machine of the nineteenth century nor today’s new modified pictures describe the results of natural science. For example, until recently, the biological sciences have been more descriptive and qualitative than mathematical and explanatory. The infinite machine and the modified picture are mental images that form the philosophic background for scientific activity. The power that these images have over modern minds guides and orients individuals in their scientific work. Mechanistic images influence almost every aspect of the modern world. They underpin the methods of physical science. These include experimenting to obtain knowledge, the describing of nature by means of mathematics, and guiding research by means of mathematical deduction. The success of the physical sciences was an important element in developing technology and revolutionizing industry—two events that have completely transformed the modern world. The mechanistic conception of the world also penetrated into philosophical thought and therefore gained a profound influence on the self-understanding of modern people. According to Dijksterhuis: [The] mechanization of physical science has become much more than an internal question of method in nature science; it is a matter that affects the history of culture as a whole, and on this account it deserves the attention of students outside the scientific world.12

The rise of the mechanistic universe accounts for our distinguishing between the people of “pre-scientific” societies and ourselves in a way that has all too often turned into cultural arrogance. When the modern world combined this arrogance with the enormous power that modern technology placed at its disposal, it resulted in callously destroying, on a massive scale, of entire peoples. On the other hand, Westerners distinguishing mechanistic and traditional worlds have also sometimes caused them to deeply appreciate and even love traditional cultures, and this has in turn led to in new creations. The development by the history of religions of what are today firmly established theories and models for

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the understanding of traditional myths and symbols is one example of such creativity. Symbolizing is humanity’s attempt to express its most important experiences. At the same time, it is a process of forming a people’s self-image. It is a supreme act of creativity in the most fundamental sense. One or more symbolic images underpins every religious tradition, and I would suggest that it is even possible to characterize a religion as an institution whose primary purpose is to pass a people’s self-image from one generation to the next. The image serves as a model. When members of a community internalize it, the image transforms them, so that one can venture to characterize religion, even more strongly, as an institution whose primary purpose is to reproduce a type of person. Humankind fashions itself by creating, preserving, renewing, and transforming symbols. The history of religions, the attempt to understand the almost infinite variety of religious creations, is the story of what humanity has made of itself in the course of time. We owe the insight into the creativity of the human mind in history to the German idealistic tradition of philosophy that culminated with Hegel. Despite his well-known excesses—the over-emphasis on system, the extreme political conservatism, and the identification of the human and divine minds—Hegel emphasized the autonomy of the human mind and consequently provided the theoretical basis as well as the main challenge for a host of later philosophers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Wilhelm Dilthey, R. G. Collingwood, Edmund Husserl, and Michel Foucault. Perhaps the most well known historians of religion who exhibit this philosophical tendency are van der Leeuw and Eliade. The work of Mircea Eliade provides a foundation for this study. Throughout his life and work, he created an imaginary model (or more precisely, an “ideal type” or “structure”) of the worlds that traditional peoples inhabit. This model is compelling and insightful; it presents the worlds as having an almost haunting, timeless quality, as coming from a realm that is totally different from the strife and chaos that is characteristic of history. According to Eliade, the center of every religious world is an image of a person presented in cosmogonic myths, stories of how the gods formed

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the world at the beginning of time. A person is a microcosm, and each individual has an analogous structure to the cosmos (the world conceived as an ordered whole) so that one can only realize one’s true self when the subtle correspondences between a person and the cosmos guide one’s actions. These correspondences also underpin the relations among individuals so that the social orders of traditional cultures have a structure that is analogous to the structure of the cosmos. The two orders mirror each other. Because of this analogy, the cosmic structure is not merely a set of abstract ideas. Rather, it is something that is lived by the society as a whole. Through the image of a person presented in myth, traditional cultures integrate the individual into a divine social order that reflects the eternal order of the cosmos.13 Because of the analogy between the cosmic and social orders, the peoples of traditional cultures are able to participate in the enactment of the cosmos. Since myths that present an image of a person are narrations of how the gods ordered the world at the beginning of time, they function as liturgical models for the enactment of a world. During ritual, during what Eliade calls “sacred time,” one lives in the presence of the gods and participates in their creative work. The most important aspect of this work is the formation of a fixed center, of what Eliade calls “sacred space.” It is the foundation for the entire world.14 Traditional worlds have a structure that is especially important for an understanding of the relation between myth and the mechanistic universe. It is a connection between the spatial order of the cosmos and time: the ritual enactment of myth both renews time and gives the cosmos the perfection of the beginning.15 This implies an underlying harmony of the spatial and temporal orders, a transhistorical symmetry that is aesthetically appealing. This perfect cosmos is fundamental to Eliade’s model of traditional worlds. According to him, traditional peoples express “the desire to live in a pure and holy cosmos, as it was in the beginning, when it came fresh from the Creator’s hands.”[Eliade’s italics]16 The rise of the mechanistic universe that accompanied the scientific revolution seems foreign to the image of traditional worlds the model of Eliade presents. However, a generation arises spontaneously from the description of our universe as “mechanistic.” Even if with Dijksterhuis we soften its edges, the mechanistic universe remains every bit as

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“unhistorical” as the myth we read of the Ngaju Dayak. In terms of sheer logic, we need an inquiry of the type I’ve just begun. The power of the mechanistic imagery over the modern imagination has not only opened a great divide between the modern world of science and technology and that of traditional cultures; it has also created a fundamental division within modernity itself. It is the chasm separating the scientific and humanistic, literary cultures that C. P. Snow made famous in The Two Cultures.17 We might deny the existence of the “two culture,” but the division is real. In the following passage, the brilliant physicist, Richard Feynman, attempts to account for this division: I would use the words of Jeans, who said that ‘the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician’. To those who do not know mathematics, it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C. P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.18

On another occasion, Feynman speaks of his mathematical understanding of nature as a religious experience setting scientists apart as a separate community.19 Feynman thinks the impossibility of adequately expressing his understanding of nature in words rather than mathematics makes the chasm difficult to bridge. Moreover, he suggests that this has led to fundamentally different orientations between humanists and scientists.20 The classicist, Carl Kerényi, speaking from the humanistic side, is a mirror image of Feynman. Rather than the experience of analyzing nature mathematically, the special experience of understanding myth sets him and other mythologists apart.21 However, the scientific temper of the modern age makes understanding myth difficult.22 Therefore, only the greatest creations of mythology proper could hope to make clear to modern man that here he is face to face with a phenomenon which “in profundity, permanence, and universality is comparable only with Nature herself.”23

So here we have, in the persons of these two great men, their different

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experiences creating a chasm between them, the embodiment of the “two cultures.” The rise of the mechanistic image of the world has given rise to the “two cultures,” because, although the mechanistic imagery is especially powerful as a background for experimental science, the human mind simply does not operate like a machine. A mechanical world has all the parts external to each other. The ancient idea of atoms as inelastic billiard balls colliding is the perfect image of mechanical causality. It is simple, precise, and, at most, two-dimensional. This image easily lends itself to mathematical analysis and functions as a powerful heuristic device. Mental life, however, is interior, and people come to know one another through empathy, by feeling their way into the life of another and becoming one with him or her. This sympathetic understanding is in complete contrast to the external causality of mechanisms. Mental life is flexible; one idea evokes and shades off into another, so that a person constantly weaves together memories, ideas, values, and perceptions in rich and complex patterns defying the easy analysis of physical mechanisms by means of mathematics. The great rationalists, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Spinoza gave formal expression to this rift with their philosophical dualisms between the physical world and mental life. The rift marks a boundary between ancient and modern worlds. It also accounts for the great chasm C. P. Snow so forcefully described that divides the humanities and the exact sciences. A dramatic and well-known example of this division is the skewering of some of the masters of French post-structuralism by the physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their book, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. This book shows in devastating detail the absurdities that resulted when the post-structuralists took precise, technical concepts from the exact sciences and transformed them into literary images and metaphors. What the post-structuralists were doing was an attempt to bridge the chasm between the “two cultures” imperialistically, by expanding the reach of literature into the domain of the exact sciences. Sokal and Bricmont quite rightly criticized them for this.24 Then a curious thing happened. Sokal seemed genuinely interested in a dialogue between the sciences and the humanities, and about ten years after the publication of Fashionable Nonsense Sokal published a second

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work, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture, in which he attempted to bridge the chasm from the side of science. And he made the exact, same kind of error as the literary humanists of whom he had been so critical. He treated religion (which above all is a matter of myths and symbols) as if it were a degenerate kind of science. So his attempt was also a kind of imperialism, expanding the reach of the exact sciences into the domain of the humanities. And the result was equally unsatisfactory.25 Myth is not a degenerate science. Myth is a form of literature. The study and interpretation of the myths of traditional peoples is, quite rightly, part of the humane disciplines. The rift between the “two cultures” is parallel to the rift between modern and traditional peoples. Indeed, almost all modern theories of myth assume a dichotomy between the humanities and the physical sciences.26 There have been some attempts to bridge the chasm by means of the social sciences, but we can accept even the best of these only with criticism. That the chasm separating traditional and modern cultures seems to be parallel to the chasm separating the sciences and the humanities is not a mere coincidence. A historian who views historical significance in terms of long durations, Immanuel Wallerstein, makes a compelling case that the current structure of the modern university arose in the five hundred year duration that began with Columbus and is perhaps now about to come to an end. The university structure reflects the processes of Western world hegemony. So the problem we’re dealing with here is important.27 I believe that, more than anything else, it is this confusion resulting from the chasm separating humanistic and scientific cultures that distorts our understanding of traditional peoples such as the Ngaju Dayak. This study is an attempt to bridge the chasm separating the “two cultures” by interpreting a traditional subject of the humanities, myths and symbols, to a general audience, at the same time that I explain essential themes in the history of physical science. Some in this audience will have more patience for the scientific and mathematical aspects of the study. Others will have more patience for the literary and mythical. However, I believe that only by proceeding in this way, we will be able to solve the problem of the “two cultures” of which both Feynman and Kerényi, each from his own perspective, laments. We will find that the solution is

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much closer than either one might think. Above all, we will see in this endeavor how individuals at the center of the scientific world oriented themselves by images that are perfectly comparable to those found in traditional cultures. I am not trying to gloss over differences. Much separates modern and traditional peoples. Perhaps the most important difference is what we have come to sense as a progressive desacralization of nature since the rise of the modern world. Accordingly, we believe that people no longer experience the world as a “pure and holy cosmos.”28 At the end of his book describing the emergence of the modern world of precision, Alexander Koyré tells us how the rise of the infinite universe came with the destruction of the traditional understanding of the world as a cosmos having the earth as its center. This inevitably led to the loss by humanity of its unique position as the central figure in God’s cosmic drama of creation and redemption. Koyré concludes: At the end of the development [of the mechanistic universe] we find the mute and terrifying world of Pascal’s “libertine,” the senseless world of modern scientific philosophy. At the end we find nihilism and despair.29

The modern scientific revolution could not have occurred until Westerners transformed the medieval cosmos into this modern image. Please note, however, that no one has presented proof that the Western world changed in such a dramatic way. We sense, we feel, we do not know what the supposed change amounts to. The desacralization of the modern world and even the idea of a scientific revolution are scholarly theses or generalizations that I hope to modify in the course of this essay. In my opinion, if one is to compare without distortion the image of the world that modern science presents with those of traditional peoples, it is important that one interpret them within a coherent philosophical framework. We must discover a category of understanding and judgment that is deeper than the differences separating the modern world from others. For this reason, despite the attractiveness of Eliade’s model, a more realistic emphasis on history is an especially important aspect of this study. The broad division of cultures into traditional and modern is only

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a tentative distinction that is useful as a preliminary exercise to real historical understanding. This always deals with particular peoples and communities; it has a concrete and specific quality in whose light we see that the division of peoples by categories such as “traditional” and “scientific” is a scholarly abstraction. Ultimately, the texture of historical reality eludes such schemes. That we must call into question the distinction between modern and traditional worlds does not necessarily mean that one must discard Eliade’s model for the understanding of traditional cultures. The emphasis on the particularity of history should help us to understand how each world that various peoples have formed in the course of history, from the worlds hunters and gatherers inhabit to those of modern scientists, is in some sense different from all others. Nevertheless, they are comparable, and the models the history of religions developed are superb instruments by which we can make such comparisons. It is important that one recognize that religious symbols refer to experiences of something that in some way seems to surpass this world. In the preface to the first volume of his A History of Religious Ideas, Eliade writes: For the historian of religions, every belief or divine figure reflects the experience of the sacred and hence implies the notions of being, of meaning, and of truth.30

Before I proceed any further with the discussion, I should note that many people have found Eliade’s use of the term, “the sacred,” to be somewhat problematic. He seems to use it to refer to a realm beyond this world and to imply that this other realm really exists.31 To avoid any misunderstanding let me state that it is not my intention, here, to either affirm or deny the existence of such a world. My understanding of the term, “the sacred,” is that it is a useful concept that helps us to compare the most significant experiences of various peoples in the course of history. The term, “sacred,” is merely an interpretive tool. Its use is provisional, and it is possible that one can find a more appropriate term. For the time being, however, let me characterize as “sacred” the experiences people have of things that appear in this world but seem to come from beyond it. These experiences orient communities or societies and establish their

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world by providing a fixed center of meaning.32 And what is most important for this discussion, the experiences have a claim to be universally true. In some manner one must come to terms with this claim. This will entail forming some kind of judgment on the truth of traditional symbols. We will see that experiences that are comparable to those that traditional religious symbols express underpin modern physical science. They motivate the scientific enterprise. They orient scientists. This study, then, will attempt to overcome the chasm created by the rise of the mechanistic image of nature through a comparison of the experiences of both scientists and the people of traditional cultures. Such a comparison will allow us to come to terms with the claim of truth of ancient symbolic forms.33 Certainly, modern science and ancient images have laid their claims on human minds. Both deserve equal efforts of understanding. The study, especially the comparative study, of symbolic structures of the type I propose is not new. However, it is work that unintentionally leads to occasional misunderstandings. Hence it is useful to remind ourselves of what symbolic structures are not. They are not easy labels that give us a permit to identify different traditions as if they were one. The notion of “structure” should not leave the impression of something unchanging, timeless, not subject to history. Such a view would amount to a serious distortion. The history of religions is history, and that means that it cannot single out certain ideas that appeal to us as absolute. For this reason alone, we can apply neither a materialist nor an idealist explanation, nor any other-ism. Michel Foucault, perhaps more than anyone else, has made it clear that there are no universal structures. Therefore, with the possible exception of those that constitute one’s own mental life, they cannot be known a priori or through introspection. We can only discover them through historical inquiry.34 We have to face up to history, hence to changes, particularities, and uniqueness. No one can be involved in an intellectual inquiry without owing much to others. Koyré, whom I criticized, was one of the many who stimulated me. Even though I quoted him in order to show the weakness of certain assertions about a reputed total change of the world through science, he has done more than most in focusing our attention on the meaning and impact of the natural sciences. Unintentionally, even in that brief quotation, he revealed how he depended on the world and time

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in which he did his work. He shared his anxiety about nihilism and despair with many in the years following the Second World War. He was far from alone. Is his gloomy prophecy a demonstrable result of science? Of course not. A few decades earlier, the Western world was of a different opinion; it was enthused about a glorious future for all because of science and technology. In addition to Koyré and other historians of science, I owe a great deal to scholars in other fields than history. To many readers, this debt of gratitude will be visible in the course of the discussion. However, I want to name the principal ones here. Their writings have been invaluable to me in establishing my orientation in this study. They all have in common, in spite of their differences that they expressed, directly or indirectly, ideas, theories, exhortations, that had immediate bearing on the problem of history, religion, and science. They include first of all Søren Kierkegaard (“If you start from history, is it possible to arrive at an absolute and universal knowledge?” he asked explicitly in the introduction to his Concluding Unscientific Postscript).35 Second I want to name Emmanuel Levinas, who discovered “the other”—not as an idea, but as an experience with a specific structure. The other continually overflows our ideas of him or her.36 This sums up precisely why I propose not to write off the instance of the Ngaju Dayak with an easy label such as “primitive minds” or “pre-scientific”—for they and many others have far more to reveal to us than our hurried labels imply. The third one I want to name, without elaboration, is Karl Barth, Christian theologian and prolific, thought-provoking thinker, in the twentieth century. My gratitude to these men does not mean perfect agreement on my part, or even sufficient ability to fathom their arguments. I have divided this essay into three parts. The first is a study of some traditional religious forms in the ancient world. Chapters one through seven will constitute this first section. In the first chapter, I will present a cluster of ancient and widespread symbolisms. These include celestial and solar symbolisms, images of the earth as divine mother, and the marriage of the earth and sky as a primordial couple. The myths of many peoples center on these images and tell us how the world and everything in it ensued from the marriage of the earth and the sky.

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In the second chapter I will discuss two terms I use throughout the study—“metaphysics” and “essence.” I will do this as I show how the rise of Greek philosophy transformed the ancient symbolisms we studied in the first chapter into new human imagery. This process was part of the historical epoch that Karl Jaspers designated as the “Axial Age.” In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Western historians first noticed the independent yet parallel cultural developments that occurred in China, India, the Near East, and Greece between 700 and 200 BCE. Confucius and Lao Tze appeared in China; the Buddha and the Upanishads in India; prophets such as Isaiah in the Near East; and philosophy in Greece. Each of these developments was the creation of a human image that functioned as the nucleus of one of the four cultures, Chinese, Indian, Semitic, and Greek, whose combined histories during the subsequent two thousand years constitutes the history of world civilization. Moreover, each development was the result of the destruction of a political order and subsequent quest for a stable foundation upon which to build a new one.37 The third, fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of this work will be a study of the human imagery that appeared in China during the “Axial Age.” The purpose of these chapters will be to understand religious symbols within a historical context. In these chapters, I will interpret some of the most important symbols of ancient China and attempt to understand their historical function. I will interpret one of the Confucian classics, The Shu-ching (The Book of History), by means of Eliade’s model, and I will show how this document functioned in Chinese political history, how it was used it to enact Chinese society, and how it provided the foundation for Chinese astronomy. In the seventh chapter, I will return to the West and discuss important aspects of the medieval world. The second part of the essay deals with religious forms in modern physical science. Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries the mechanistic universe emerged. I will begin the second part of the essay with a general introduction to this development and then, in the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters, I will present major symbolic themes in the rise of the mechanistic universe. In the last chapter of this second part, chapter twelve, I will show that, despite important changes, there is

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continuity between the modern world of science and technology and the ancient mythical worlds of traditional cultures. It is important, however, that one proceed with caution in any attempt to compare these worlds. Many of such attempts have often resulted only in confusion and anachronistic syncretisms. In the preface to Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, Nathan Sivin warns us about the dangers of pushing similarities between ancient Chinese and modern scientific practices too far. He tells us that we cannot understand ancient science merely as something that preceded modern science and somehow survives in it. Similarities between Chinese and modern science are “at best compelling analogies” that break down under scrutiny.38 I have taken Sivin’s warning to heart. The last part of this essay, chapters thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, will relate religious forms to an idea of universal history in a manner that allows meaningful comparison. The critical chapter is chapter fifteen. There I will attempt to interpret modern physics and modern symbolic forms within the same model that I used to interpret the Shu-ching. I will show how modern scientists use religious symbols to enact scientific communities and how these forms provide the foundation of modern natural science. This study is, above all, an attempt to place the myths and symbols of traditional societies on an equal footing with the myths and symbols that underpin modern scientific and technological communities. One should not confuse this study with many of the other books written on the subject of science and religion. This study is not a matter of showing that our world is replacing traditional worlds. That is, it is not a matter of showing that science is replacing myth. Nor is it a matter of showing that because modern science grew out of Christian civilization, Christianity is somehow a superior religion. Nor is it a matter of showing that modern science has a Christian symbolic underpinning. This study is not a matter of showing that religion is compatible with or that one can somehow prove the truth of religion by science. Nor is it a matter of showing that religion is incompatible with or that one can disprove the truth of religion by science. This study is something else altogether. It is a matter of recognizing the claim of truth of the “other.” It is a matter of justice.

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In the preface to Chinese Science mentioned above, Sivin spoke of how the rise of modern science and technology fragmented the world thus creating a crisis for modern people. He also spoke of the importance of the study of science as it appeared in other times and places as a means of coming to terms with the world in which we now find ourselves.39 The last part of this essay will be an attempt to follow Sivin’s suggestion. We will see that the ancient images presented to us in the first section can still speak to us. Moreover, we will find that they have important things to say. If we are able to understand them, they will allow us to see our modern world of science and technology in an entirely different light; they will allow us to deepen our own self-understanding and thereby rediscover who we are.

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Part One

Ancient Symbolic Forms

Chapter 1

Ancient Symbolic Forms

We no longer discuss the Greek “miracle.” We are not likely to take seriously the idea that the pre-Socratic philosophers invented something resembling modern physics, thereby putting an end to “primitive thought.” Nevertheless, the idea that we can locate some radical period of revolution or that somewhere a break occurred still exists and has continuing influence. The following pages are not an attempt to revive a “miracle” or establish a definitive period of transition. They are an attempt to point to certain ancient images and show their reasonable character. Even more, I think that in spite of changes there is enough evidence to suggest a continuous history of “premodern” myth and “modern” science. However, even this continuity is not quite of the sort that contemporary theorists—notably Claude Lévi-Strauss—suggest. This chapter is a study of images of the earth as mother and celestial symbolisms that appear in many traditional cultures. Often they appear as complementary aspects of a third image, the totality formed by the marriage of sky and earth—an image that expresses traditional peoples’ experience of the world as a cosmos, a perfectly ordered whole. This imagery has many parallels and variants, some old, others more recent. Here are a few examples: The Dogon are a tribal people living in Mali, Africa. They tell the story of how God created the world at the beginning of time. God, it seems, created the world by taking a lump of clay, squeezing it in his hand and then flinging it away from Him. The clay flew away from God in a horizontal motion. As it did so, it spread out and became the earth. The north is the top of the earth. The earth stretches out towards the south and extends east and west. The earth is a woman’s body lying flat with its face upwards. An anthill is the earth’s sexual organ, and a termite hill is its clitoris. God was lonely. He desired intercourse with the earth and approached her.1

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Another example comes from the texts of classical India. It appears in the Chandogya Upanishad. At the beginning of time the world was non-being. Then it began to develop and non-being turned into an egg. After a year, the egg split open. The eggshell broke into two parts, one part being silver and the other part being gold. The silver part became the earth, and the gold part became the sky. The outer membrane became the mountains; the inner membrane became the cloud and mist. The veins became the rivers, and the fluid became the ocean.2 A third example comes from the Taoist tradition of China. It tells us that in the beginning of time there was only chaos. Pure light came out of this primordial chaos to form the sky. What was left over, heavy dimness, formed the earth. Out of the union of sky and earth came the ten thousand creations. All these have growth and increase. The sky and the earth is also the origin of the male and female principle, Yang and Yin.3 The final example comes from a Polynesian people, the Maori of New Zealand. They tell us that all people are the descendants of the sky above and the earth below. They all have the same ancestors. Not only humans, but also everything in the world sprang from this primordial pair. In the beginning of time, darkness rested on heaven and earth. Heaven and earth both clove together. They had not yet separated.4 Despite differences in ages as well as cultural and geographical settings, all these examples present common images: the sky, the earth, and their unity at the beginning of time. This image appeared in the myth of the Ngaju Dayak that I presented in the introduction. The Hornbill in that passage is a deity the Ngaju Dayak associated with the sky, and the Watersnake is a deity they associated with the underworld. Out of the interaction of the sky and underworld arose the world as a totality.5 Are images such as these merely poetic images? Do they have nothing to do with the “hard” facts of the world? I think I can make a case for those images as being surprisingly close to the scientific reality in which we think we exist. Those images are expressions of real experiences and undeniable observations. I am far from denying obvious differences. Yet another problem than these differences demands attention first—our own, uncritically accepted conditioning by the image of a mechanistic world that modern physical science has created. This uncritical acceptance impairs our

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ability to listen to those many “others,” “strangers.” We run the risk of making them into mere objects and our own moment in cultural history absolute. We reject claims to truth made by those others in their quality as fellow human beings—even if we would deny doing so if someone were to accuse us of it. The ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss concerning myths and symbols are one example of how the prestige of science causes difficulties in how one understands traditional worlds. Lévi-Strauss interprets religious imagery as logical structures for the organization of empirical reality and as attempts to grasp the world in a timeless totality. He interprets symbolic forms as “archaic” science. He maintains that although the people of the New Stone Age were already in possession of a long scientific tradition, an entirely different spirit from that of modern science inspired it. Neolithic peoples employed a scientific strategy adapted to perception, imagination, and sensible intuition. Modern peoples employ a strategy of abstract concepts.6 This accounts for the several thousand years of stagnation between the Neolithic and modern scientific revolutions. Lévi-Strauss clarifies this idea of “archaic” science by use of an analogy. Symbols provide knowledge of the world that is like the knowledge of a room provided by mirrors fixed on opposite walls. The mirrors reflect each other as well as the objects in the intervening space. They are not quite parallel so that a “multitude of images forms” simultaneously, each image providing only partial knowledge of the room. Since the mutual reflection of the mirrors form the images, an examination of each image, one after the other, allows one to grasp invariant properties of the room and thereby form a coherent understanding of it. In the same way, traditional symbols provide partial images of the world. A group of symbols (the earth and celestial images that appear in the passages I just presented, for example) forms a series of mutually reflecting images, and this creates a mental structure that deepens one’s knowledge of the world. Symbols are effective because they are analogous to empirical reality. Lévi-Strauss concludes that we can define the thought of traditional cultures as analogical thought.7 Lévi-Strauss seems to be interpreting myth as traditional peoples’ counterpart to Descartes’ innate ideas. It is these innate ideas of Descartes that give expression to the mechanistic picture of the world in one

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of its extreme forms. Lévi-Strauss presents a picture of an abrupt change from traditional to modern science that one could well imagine as having occurred in the person of either Galileo or Descartes himself. There are two criticisms of this theory that are important for this book. Michel Foucault has most forcefully made the first: although he admits to being a structuralist (of sorts), he makes it clear that these structures are not innate ideas. Structures appear, transform themselves, and disappear in the course of history. These include the structures found in the myths of traditional people. These also include the structures (or models) historians of religion use (such as the one Eliade created and that I am using) as tools for interpreting the myths of traditional peoples. Both kinds of structures appear in specific historical discourses. Above all, Foucault made a convincing argument that one can know these structures only empirically, through the investigation of the specific documents that constitute each particular discourse. One cannot understand these structures apriori.8 Foucault’s criticism is important and necessary. However, there is also a second criticism that is even more important. It is the one I am stressing in this essay. I understand myths to be expressions of intuitions or experiences of something that seems to transcend this world even while it forms a foundation for it. For many modern people, however, the idea of the mechanistic universe contains an almost hidden assumption that nothing exists beyond the empirical world of nature, and Lévi-Strauss appropriates this assumption when he interprets myths as merely logical structures.9 Since they don’t point to anything beyond empirical reality, he fails to come to terms with the claim to truth of traditional images. We have to make an attempt to grasp that claim by holding these images up as a mirror. In this way perhaps our world and the worlds of traditional peoples will mutually illuminate one another. We certainly owe such an attempt to the peoples of traditional cultures. The thesis of this book is that there is always some assumption, presupposition, or intuition that a people have about the world; that this intuition is the starting point for a people’s reasoning about nature; and that myth is an expression of such fundamental intuitions. Although Lévi-Strauss is completely mistaken in his identification of myth with science, there is a relation between the two. Myth is an expression of

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the intuitions that underpin and provide a foundation for the sciences of nature. The central focus of this chapter is a passage from the Greek tradition that presents the imagery of earth, sky, and their union, the same pattern that appears in many traditional societies. The passage is the beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony, that tells us: Chaos was first of all, but next appeared Broad-bosomed Earth, sure standing-place for all The gods who live on snowy Olympus’ peak, . . . And Earth bore starry Heaven, first to be An equal to herself, to cover her All over, and to be a resting-place, Always secure, for all the blessed gods.10 The imagery in this passage of Hesiod will be the focus of this chapter. In it I will interpret ancient solar symbolisms, images of the earth, and images of the union between them.

Ancient Solar Symbolisms When one enters the worlds of traditional peoples, one experiences the vault of the sky, vast and over-arching this world, as “wholly other.” It suggests a symbolic structure—the expression of sheer, majestic power and the experience of God as creator, victor and king.11 Ancient Israel has made such expressions well known; here the vault of the sky, enshrouded by “cloud and mist,” is the throne of the Lord, God. Psalm ninety-seven, for example, proclaims that the Lord is king, and all the earth should be glad. His throne has a foundation of righteousness and justice. Fire goes before Him and destroys His enemies. His lightning-flash lights up the world below Him. The earth trembles in terror and the mountains melt away before His terrible power.12 The psalmist’s imagery of “cloud and mist” is that of a storm. The dark clouds gather, moving swiftly, almost violently, over the sky. The sky becomes turbulent. Suddenly, unexpectedly, lightning flashes. The

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imagery evokes the experience of power that is sudden, unpredictable. The imagery of this completely unanticipated, unpredictable, experience of the lightning flash during a storm expresses the experience of God’s power that reveals itself as real and absolute. The imagery of lightning is also an expression of an experience of power that is the foundation of the world of the Ngaju Dayak. Every time Gold Mountain and Jewel Mountain clash together, lightning flashes, and something new comes into being, until the entire world is created. These experiences can be terrifying. In the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavadgītā, Vishnu (God) reveals His divine form to Arjuna. All the gods and every kind of being including the Creator god, seers, and divine serpents appear within Vishnu. He is without limit and contains everything. He has innumerable mouths and eyes and is the “universal Lord and form of all!” Then the vision changes, and Vishnu appears as a “deluge of brilliant light.” The splendor of immeasurable radiant fires and suns almost blinds Arjuna. Again the vision changes, and the overwhelming reality becomes one to which, as is well known, Arjuna responds in terror.13 However, those aspects of symbolic forms that display a certain order are the ones I want to focus on in this essay: solar symbolism in which light appears as triumph over chaos and the appearance of a world where everything is in its proper place. For example, although the tradition of Israel often emphasizes the complete unpredictability of the Lord, Hebrew texts also relate God’s power to the order of nature. Psalm nineteen tells how the heavens praise God and how the vault of the sky reveals His craftsmanship. One day speaks voicelessly to another day, and one night speaks voicelessly to another night. Their music and words fill the earth. These days and nights are a tent for the sun. He comes out “like a bridegroom from His wedding canopy.” He comes out “rejoicing like a strong man to run His race.” He begins in the east and His course covers the entire world. Nothing remains hidden from Him.14 This particular example reveals the essential structure of a solar symbolism: there is the element of the path of the sun with its heat emanating to all parts of the world; there is also the vision of the harmony of the world expressed in the metaphor of music. Although one is not to

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identify the divine with this world, its harmonious order praises the God who created it. Solar imagery is a manifestation of power that orders the world. In the course of history, a supreme being will often turn into a sun god.15 In this process, such a god will become a demiurge and source of life.16 The light of the sun presents power as pure intelligence. The regularity of the sun as it crosses the sky each day gives the idea of the coordination of time and a calendar.17 Like all symbolisms, solar symbolisms form a totality by joining this ordinary world of our reason and senses with an experience of something transcendent. From a realm surpassing this world, the sun imbues nature with order and meaning. Van der Leeuw writes that there is contempt for “mere” nature. Nature must become the garment of spirit.18 Solar symbolisms have a fundamental ambiguity. The light of heaven is one’s salvation, and one’s life is bound up with the rising sun. On the other hand, one’s death is bound up with its setting.19 In setting, the sun takes people to the underworld. Then it guides them through the underworld and brings them back next day to its light. The sun both murders and initiates.20 Traditional peoples often associate sun gods with cultural elites, and sun gods are supreme in societies that have become powerful and highly organized.21 Since solar cults are for an elite, there is always some kind of selection.22 In many solar myths, the sun or the children of the sun are kings, chiefs, heroes, or philosophers.23 As cakravartin, or universal sovereign, for example, Buddha was early associated with the sun.24 That the sun rises each morning and never seems to die suggests the ancient idea of heroic immortality, of life that transcends the vicissitudes of time.25 Perhaps the clearest example of such a world appears in the Homeric gods of classical Greece. In his study of the world presented in the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Walter Otto has shown how Zeus is the representative of all the Olympic gods. The different gods express moments when one experiences various aspects of nature in such purity and perfection of form that they provide a glimpse into an eternal realm of sheer being.26 The Greek tradition gives us the classical expression of a solar symbolism in the god Apollo. He holds the universe in harmonious

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motion by the tones of his lyre. Just as the light of the sun illuminates the entire world, Apollo’s music permeates nature so that everything attains form: the chaotic takes shape; the turbulent is reduced to time and measure; opposites are wedded in harmony. Apollo is always far from the vicissitudes and turmoil of this world. This distance implies an entirely different one: a world of clarity, a formal world whose elemental, momentary, and individual aspects are canceled. This is the essence of the world presented by solar symbolisms.27 There is a timeless, eternal quality to this world. In the Sacred and Profane, Mircea Eliade introduces his concept of sacred time, the time of liturgy that overcomes the ravages of change, the time when traditional peoples become contemporary with the foundation of the cosmos, through reference to Parmenides of Elea’s vision of a world that is eternal and changeless.28 Solar imagery appearing in this poem is the center of Parmenides’ vision. The formal and harmonious world presented by solar symbolisms is also that aspect of nature that is transparent to reason. The sun is predictable; it does not hide the mysteries of the moon and planets. The fragments of Parmenides that express his experience of the world as divine intelligence have been important to the founding of the Greek philosophical tradition during the fifth century BCE. The heroes of the scientific revolution could not have expressed themselves without reference to the Greek philosophical tradition. In this tradition we have not only the rational statements of Plato and Aristotle—those that are easily accessible to the average freshman—but also a struggle of a mythical type. The fragments of Parmenides could function as a bridge joining traditional and modern worlds. Before I begin my interpretation of the fragments of Parmenides and other pre-Socratic philosophers, however, I must sound a note of caution. The fragments of the pre-Socratics have come down to us as quotations in the works of subsequent ancient authors. These latter begin with Plato in the fourth century BCE and end with Simplicius in the sixth century CE. The most influential ancient writer on the pre-Socratics was the disciple of Aristotle, Theophrastus. He wrote the history of philosophy from Thales to Plato. Unfortunately, Theophrastus seems to have interpreted these earlier philosophers through a preconceived set of ideas—those of his master Aristotle.29

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For this reason, modern historians of Greek philosophy have a wide range of opinions concerning what one can actually know about the pre-Socratics. Harold Cherniss, for example, holds a position of extreme skepticism.30 This issue of what we can really know about the pre-Socratics raises a more fundamental question: “What do we mean by historical ‘coherence’ and ‘objectivity’?” The “coherence” of history is not “out there” waiting for historians to discover it. Rather, coherence is an ideal that guides historical research. It is something the historian creates in his or her imagination, and other historians of Greek philosophy have more confidence about what we can know of the pre-Socratics. These more contemporary historians consider a work such as William Guthrie’s, A History of Greek Philosophy, to provide an accurate account of the pre-Socratic philosophers.31 The statements of Parmenides that have come down to us are fragments of a poem, addressed to his pupil, Zeno, which Parmenides divided into three parts: the Prologue, the Way of Truth, and the Way of Opinion. In the Prologue to Parmenides’ vision, he tells us how exceedingly intelligent mares carried him to the ends of his desire in a chariot driven by goddesses. They set out with him on the highway that takes a person of knowledge through all the cities. They left the Palace of the Night and sped towards the light. When the goddesses, daughters of the sun, hastened their driving, they “pushed back their veils from their heads with their hands,” and two “whirling circles,” the wheels of the chariot, drove the axle round and round, so that it “gave forth a pipe-like sound as it glowed.”32 The journey begins leaving the Palace of Night taking Parmenides along a highway. It is the path of the sun, and the chariot itself seems to be associated with solar imagery. A chariot’s axle would heat up from friction. Parmenides tells us how it glows. The heat of the axle evokes the heat of the sun. The two whirling circles also evoke the idea of the sun. The entire passage is replete with a solar symbolism. This is not “mere” imagery. The passage speaks of knowledge. The image of leaving the Palace of Night is a metaphor evoking the idea of leaving ignorance behind, and Parmenides explicitly tells us the highway he travels is meant for a person of knowledge. However, this knowledge is not ordinary, everyday information. It is more a matter of experience: the

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daughters of the Sun guide Parmenides; they have pushed back the veils from their heads; they have revealed something normally hidden. The journey from night to the sun expresses the idea of conversion from a false way of understanding the world to one that conforms to true insight. As the maidens bring Parmenides to a higher vision, the axle of the chariot gives forth a “pipe-like” sound, and this suggests the idea of music and a harmony transcending ordinary experience and perceptions. In this image, the sky expresses an order and harmony beyond the flux of the world of one’s senses. In a subsequent passage, Parmenides presents a vision of the underlying harmony and order of nature. The goddess Justice, who restrains the world (being) from changing, requires the cosmos to be symmetric and to have the image of a perfect sphere. In this passage, the goddess Justice tells Parmenides that being has a spatial limit on every side. It is like the mass of a perfect sphere. In every direction it is perfectly balanced and perfectly symmetrical. There is nothing exterior to being that could make it either greater or lesser in any direction. Nor is there a not-being that could distort being’s perfect symmetry. Being is a unity that reaches its limits in all directions with perfect equality.33 Despite what our senses tell us, there is no change or becoming. Time is an illusion. There is one, continuous, eternal cosmos. Giorgio de Santillana identifies the being of Parmenides with Euclidean space. He writes: We can best appreciate the originality of Parmenides’ thought if we consider that he made of geometry the core of reality in an entirely different way from his predecessors. Geometric space itself, no longer numbers and rhythms in space, but three-dimensional extension pure and absolute, became the substrate, the Physis, of things.34 Einstein is in a tradition going back to Parmenides. De Santillana’s interpretation of Parmenides suggests a strong connection with Einstein’s attempt to treat both time and space geometrically. Many important figures besides Parmenides were in the rise of Greek philosophy. One such figure is Heraclitus. The fragments of Heraclitus have a prophetic quality and contain a multitude of images. Together,

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these images express different shades and nuances of a different intuition or vision of the world from that of Parmenides.35 Although we best know and most frequently quote the fragments of Heraclitus that speak of time and the endless flux of existence, there are also fragments that present us with an intuition of a divine reality within the multiplicity of time and existence. For example, Heraclitus tells us: This world-order kosmos, the same for all, none of the gods nor of men has made, but it was always and is and shall be: an ever-living fire, which is being kindled in measures and extinguished in measures.36 A flame constantly consumes material so that it is never the same for any two instants; yet it maintains a constant shape. Similarly, although the world constantly changes, the changes themselves lead to an experience of something transcendent that Heraclitus expresses through the image of fire. Although his vision is entirely different from that of Parmenides, it is possible to see in the central imagery of fire a close relation to the previous examples of solar symbolisms. According to Heraclitus, any fire that is pure is alive and divine. Fire is all pervading and is the substance of the sun and the stars so that all heavenly bodies are alive and divine. The divine fire surrounding the cosmos is inextinguishable and invisible in its purity.37 In other words, even more than in Parmenides, in Heraclitus we find the suggestion of an invisible, transcendent reality. This reality is the basis on which true knowledge rests. A third important figure in the rise of Greek philosophy is Pythagoras. He and his followers assumed an underlying unity and harmony to nature that they could discover through numbers, and they considered numbers divine. Like Parmenides and Heraclitus, Pythagoras is associated with solar imagery. A passage from The Life of Pythagoras, written by the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus (c. 250–c. 325 CE), makes clear that people saw in him the divine Apollo. Iamblichus tells us that Pythagoras was pious. He knew that his soul was immortal, and he knew how it came into this present body. He also knew of his former

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lives. One time, when he was crossing the river Nessus, he spoke to the river. He was accompanied by many other people who all heard the river answer, “Hail, Pythagoras!” Iamblichus adds that Pythagoras could be in two places at once. It is said, for example, that he was seen teaching his disciples in Metapontum in Italy and at Tauromenium in Sicily on the same day. Land and sea separates these two cities, and to travel from one to the other takes many days. Finally, Iamblichus tells us that it was common knowledge that Pythagoras had once revealed his golden thigh to Abaris, the priest of the Hyperborean. Abaris had said that Pythagoras resembled the Apollo that his people worshipped. The golden thigh of Pythagoras confirmed that he was indeed the god Apollo.38 Ancient solar symbolisms have many variations. Chinese tradition associates the sun with a political figure, the perfect ruler. In classical India, solar imagery manifests the infinite brahman. As I have shown, Greek tradition associates the Homeric solar deity, Apollo, with perfect knowledge of the world. Solar imagery appears in the fragments of Parmenides as a journey from darkness to light guided by the daughters of the sun. It also appears in the fragments of Heraclitus as an eternal flame, and the Pythagoreans identify their master with a solar deity. Despite the differences in their specific manifestations, they all present a world that is harmonious and with an eternal aspect transcending the flux of time, a world transparent to the human mind. The world of traditional peoples presents us with many other images and religious forms. Lunar symbolisms must balance solar symbolisms lest the latter lead to sterility. A solar hero will always present a dark side.39 I would now like to turn to another ancient imagery that also invites the attention of our modern, “scientific” minds. This imagery appears almost universally but presents us with an entirely different aspect of knowledge—images one associates with the earth and women.

The Earth and Her Powers When one enters the world of traditional peoples and tries to understand it on its own terms, one notices that the environment is not a

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summation of vastly different things. Rather, “reality”—if one enduring mystifying term is permissible—is experienced as a unity: the universal symbolism of the earth shows the experience of nature as the source of all life. As seen in the passage from Hesiod, traditional peoples usually regarded the earth as a woman. Van der Leeuw describes the structure of this symbolic form. The earth presents a world in which events are no longer seen to be the result of the interplay of different powers. They are all different aspects of “one great and mysterious happening: Birth.” All the processes of the world, all its movements and changes, the beginnings and endings of each thing, are seen as arising out of the womb of the earth and then returning to her: The Mother is the all-nourishing earth: life is to be born of Mother-earth, death is to enter into her.40 Earth produces living forms. Eliade tells us that all symbolisms of mother earth have one fundamental idea: “Life, what is, reality, is somewhere concentrated in one cosmic substance from which all living forms proceed, either by direct descent or by symbolic participation.”41 Van der Leeuw tells us all that is on earth is united with everything else, and all make up one great whole. This structure never disappears completely. The mother is form, just barely outlined.42 Water is another image associated with woman and the earth. Rather than being divided into separate objects, the forms of life, including people, seem to emerge out of a fluid background. Water, as pure potentiality, expresses this undifferentiated background. Water precedes every living creation, every form. Eliade tells us: “Principle of what is formless and potential, basis of every cosmic manifestation, container of all seeds, water symbolized the primal substance from which all forms come and to which they will return. . . “Water always has to do with reintegration of forms and creation.43 This image of water is not a theoretical invention to explain change; it is a fundamental experience: contemplating the world, one sees forms appearing out of a fluid background. This experience was at the center of the vision of Heraclitus. The diverse images that appear in his fragments, including the image of

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fire, seem to coalesce around the experience of time and change which permeates the cosmos. The following fragment presents this: The mixed drink (kykeon: mixture of wine, grated cheese and barley-meal) also separates if it is not stirred. Here, the reference is to a drink associated with the Elysian mysteries and the changing of the seasons.44 In the image of the drink being constantly stirred one sees the constant flux of the world. Other fragments also show the continual change of things: “The sun is new each day.” “Those who step into the same river have different waters flowing ever upon them.” “In the same river, we both step and do not step, we are and we are not.” “It is not possible to step twice into the same river.” The world flows on endlessly.45 In another of the fragments of Heraclitus that have come down to us we discover a sense of yet another meaning or intuition of existence: Heraclitus tells us that time is a child playing a game of draughts; the kingship is in the hands of a child.46 This imagery identifying time with a child at play evokes an experience in which chance, impulse or whim, rather than necessity or reason, rule the flux of existence. Heraclitus then tells us that time’s capricious governance extends even into the political realm: War is both king of all and father of all, and it has revealed some as gods, others as men; some it has made slaves, others free.47 The image of earth as woman and mother, then, reaches everywhere. It shows us how traditional peoples experience a world that is living, subject to time and change, death and renewal. The image evokes a water symbolism suggesting an endless potentiality and flux beneath the forms of nature, an experience that appears at the foundation of the Greek philosophical tradition. Seemingly in contrast to the modern scientific universe that presents an image of nature that is mechanical and dead, traditional cultures

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present an image of nature that is living, a nature of sheer power and abundance, a world of becoming that at times leads to a longing for transcendence and stability, the  world presented by solar symbolisms. Despite the opposite essences of the earth and the sun, ancient traditions often join the two to form yet another image of the world. It is to this third image that I shall now turn. The Marriage of Earth and Sky A frequent symbolism in traditional cultures is the marriage of heaven and earth. In Chinese tradition, this image unites the earth and the female aspect of the world, associated with yin, to the sky and the male aspect, associated with yang. Because the sexual union of marriage excludes excesses such as debauchery as well as chastity, it expresses the underlying harmony of the world.48 Similarly, when Hesiod tells us how earth bore heaven to be a partner, he presents us with an example of this symbolism. Here is the image of a total and complete cosmos. In it the earth and celestial symbolisms appear as complementary. However, this complementarity is not wholly or lastingly peaceful. The rest of Hesiod’s Theogony presents the realms of the sky and earth as antagonistic. The realm of pure form and being clashes with the realm of power and change. This leads to strife. On the one hand, the justice of Zeus governs the realm of sky and form. He holds the world in his bonds. On the other hand, Fate governs the realm of the earth and determines the lot of mortals. Ancient Greece created the imagery of an individual caught in the conflict of these two orders.49 Beneath the tension of these two realms, however, is an underlying unity. Fate determines that some individuals must transgress justice; once they do that, the earth sends out the forces of revenge in order to reestablish the justice of the world. In this way, the opposites, justice and fate, appear as complementary aspects of a reality that establishes a coherent world.50 A classic example of this is the story of Prometheus and the theft of fire found in the Theogony. It is especially important for this study,

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because the human imagery it presents tells us much about the technological underpinnings of modern science. From the union of the god Iapetus and the goddess Clymene came Atlas, Menoetius, Prometheus and Epimetheus. Each of these four suffered a different fate at the hands of Zeus. Because of his mad presumption and pride, Zeus struck Menoetius with a thunderbolt and sent him down below the earth, and Zeus constrained Atlas to uphold the heavens. Since Epimetheus, scatter-brained and stupid, brought to man the first woman, Pandora, he was a curse to the world; Prometheus was clever and full of wiles. Zeus bound him in chains, drove a shaft through his middle, and “set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortal liver; but by night the liver grew as much again every way as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day.” Thus Prometheus suffered until Hercules rescued him because he had dared to match wits with Zeus. When the gods and people separated at Mecone, Prometheus cut up a great ox. He set rich portions of flesh and fat before the people but covered them with an ox paunch. Then he set before Zeus white bones and covered them with shining fat. Because of this division, people burn white bones to the gods during sacrifice. When Zeus perceived the trickery of Prometheus, he withheld the power of fire from men until Prometheus stole fire in a hollow fennel stalk. Zeus then created the woman so beautiful that men could not resist her although she would bring great suffering. “So it is not possible to deceive or go beyond the will of Zeus; for not even the son of Iapetus, kindly Prometheus, escaped his heavy anger, but of necessity strong bands confined him, although he knew many a wile.”51 The story of Prometheus expresses the Greek experience of a person caught in the conflict between the powers of the earth and the ordinances of Zeus. The initial deception of Zeus took place when people were separated from the Olympic gods. At that time Prometheus sided with people. Prometheus symbolizes both a human tendency toward magic and the powers of the earth. In the end, however, his protest is futile. Zeus defeats Prometheus and holds him in his bonds. The two brothers that appear in this story, Prometheus and Epimetheus, form a single symbolism, a primordial man. Both Prometheus

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and Epimetheus are Titans, gods that belong to the earth and have a share in both life and death. These gods have an uncanny quality, and their relationship to people is highly ambiguous. In the story, for example, Prometheus and Epimetheus both aid and curse people. This ambiguity is essential to the structure of the primordial man symbolism. The name “Prometheus” means “he who knows in advance.” “Epimetheus” means “he who learns afterward.” Epimetheus marries the first woman, Pandora, who Zeus created as punishment for the theft of fire by Prometheus. Through Pandora, all the ills that afflict humankind come into existence.52 The ambiguity of this symbolism also appears in the figure of Hermes, the Olympic god that tradition most closely associated with the Titans. Hermes is the Olympic counterpart of Prometheus. He leads one to gain often in an unexpected manner. Just as often he leads one astray and his guidance is uncanny. Tradition associated him with death—he leads the dead to the under-world. He protects thieves and highwaymen. He is associated with night and the uncanny aspect things take on in the night.53 When the world takes on this strange aspect, the spirit becomes more perceptive, more acute, and more enterprising.54 Hermes expresses human creativity as well as the uncanny aspect of the world that makes it susceptible to manipulation. Hermes as a guide gives the world a new aspect that is strange but utterly real.55 He reveals a world in which things are the bearers of power instead of just a collection of dead objects. If one can appropriate the power, one can dominate the world. This is the magical attitude, a protest in which one transforms the environment and makes the world one’s own.56 Power, however, is dangerous and one must respect it. Many taboos surround objects of power and violations of these bring about an almost automatic reaction as the divine order of nature avenges itself.57 A magical act requires both human consciousness with its powers of concentration and an order of nature that is strict but not mechanical. The truly magical act takes place in a condition of extreme mental and emotional excitement as one discovers with horror that someone has violated the rule of nature. It is this horror that distinguishes true magic from mere willfulness.58 Eliade has shown “mastery over fire” to be a widespread magico-religious

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symbolism. Because it not only allowed man to accelerate the processes of nature but also allowed him to create entirely new things, it manifests a power that did not belong to this world.59 By transgressing the ordinances of Zeus, the bringing of fire to people by Prometheus was just such a violation of taboo. In his study of ancient images of evil at the origin of Western civilization, Paul Ricoeur found that there were two utterly opposed tendencies. The first revealed the origin of evil prior to human life. In the second the origin was an evil choice that people made. The first group includes tragic myths. They present a hero subject to a fatal destiny. The story of Prometheus is an example of tragic myth. Ricoeur tells us that according to the tragic schema, man falls into fault as he falls into existence; and the god who tempts and misleads him stands for the primordial lack of distinction between good and evil.60 Symbolisms that are similar in structure to the primordial man in the form of the two figures, Prometheus and Epimetheus, occur in many traditions besides that of ancient Greece. They are extremely ancient and widespread.61 The primordial man is always old and timeless and is marked by a dangerous duplicity. Why is this figure so widespread? Why is it so fascinating? Karl Kerényi tells us: Shameless untruthfulness is shown to be a property of the world, thereby revealing its timeless root.62 The symbolism expresses the spirit of disorder, the enemy of boundaries. And disorder belongs to the totality of life.63 This ancient image, the primordial man, is much closer to us than we might at first think. It expresses a structure of the world and human existence that underpins experimental technique. This is a way of manipulating the environment to see how it changes, a way of feeling or probing the world, and the boundary between technology and magic is always fluid. Nietzsche tells us that when one is rowing a boat, it is not the physical activity that moves the boat; rowing is a magical ceremony, and

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this ceremony “compels a daemon to move the boat.” Similarly: [When] a man shoots with a bow, there is still always present an irrational hand and strength . . . man is the rule, nature is irregularity.64 The story of Prometheus, then, presents a symbolism, the primordial man, that expresses an irrational aspect of the world that makes it susceptible to manipulation. It also expresses an aspect of a person that protests and rebels against limits. The symbolism appears in many cultures and places and presents a structure that continues up to the present in our modern “scientific” world. The story of Prometheus, however, also tells us of the limits that one must place on this aspect of the world and human nature. Despite his titanic protest, Prometheus has no choice but to submit to the divine ordinances of Zeus. The great achievement of Homer was not the discovery of magical power; it was the discovery of the being of nature.65 The Olympic gods that defeated the Titans express objective forms of nature. Moreover, insight into them is essential for human life. Knowledge of them immediately becomes resolution and places limits on desire. People are formless and chaotic. However, people can orient themselves by submitting to the transcendent reality of a god.66 The rise of Attic tragedy transformed the story of Prometheus and others with a similar structure into a dramatic ritual. Ricoeur tells us that the Zeus of Prometheus Bound, as the god who tempts and misleads the tragic hero, “has attained the terrifying stature that no thought can sustain.”67 During the dramatic performance, the tragic hero violates justice and sets into motion the forces of revenge, and the hero’s downfall breaks the illusion of human power. During the performance, the audience experiences a purifying catharsis and what previously had been merely a collection of individuals now became a community through common submission to a transcendental law. The place where the curved sky and the earth meet symbolized this transcendent reality. Hesiod calls it Chaos, and when he tells us that Chaos was first, he is saying that it is deeper than the strife of the celestial and maternal realms. It is the world’s foundation.

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Chapter 2

Myth and “Metaphysics”

The example of Parmenides shows that it is impossible to make an absolute distinction between myth and philosophy. The tension is not really between myth and philosophy within Greek religion. Rather, it is between myth and reason within Greek philosophy.1 The foundations of Greek philosophy that were a search for the underlying unity to the world were speculations about the nature of Chaos.2 These speculations transformed the symbolic image to a divine logos that governs both the order of nature and the human mind.

Myth and Philosophy A passage attributed to one of the followers of Pythagoras, Alexander Polyhistor makes especially clear the close relation between myth and the rise of philosophy. Although Polyhistor wrote in the first century BCE, according to modern scholars, the passage summarizes a text that is contemporary with, or earlier than, Plato. It represents one of the earliest examples of the Pythagorean cosmogony. According to the passage, the principle of all things was the One. An “Indefinite Two” came out of the One. The One is cause, and the Two is matter. The One and the Two united and then generated numbers. Numbers, in turn, generated points, and points generated lines. In a similar process, lines generated plane figures, and plane figures generated solid figures. Finally, solid figures generated the sensible bodies. The passage concludes: The elements of these [sensible bodies] are four: fire, water, earth, air; these change and are wholly transformed, and out of them comes to be a cosmos, animate, intelligent, spherical and inhabited round about.3

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The structure of this passage is definitely mythical. There is a principle of unity that is at the foundation of the world that then divides into either an opposing or complementary principle. These two principles unite to generate the entire world.4 The imagery of the passage, the generation of the world from numbers, expresses the fundamental assumption that grounded Pythagorean science: there exists an underlying unity and harmony to nature; one can discover this harmony through numbers. This passage differs from many of the myths of other traditions because it presents a world whose essence is numbers. For this reason it strikes us as more “scientific” than myths that present the polarities of the world in images such as day and night, life and death, male and female. Since the Pythagoreans used numbers as religious symbols, however, one must not confuse their understanding of numbers with the abstractions of modern mathematics. By numbers the Pythagoreans meant the integers, from one to ten. They associated each of these with different qualities and were especially fascinated by the myriad of different yet interrelated meanings presented in the progression of one number to the next. The progression of numbers was the central symbolism of Pythagorean myth. In other words, the progression of numbers expressed an underlying structure of the world. The progression of numbers, then, is paradigmatic; rather than logical abstractions, the progression of numbers, like other symbolisms, reveal what is real. According to the Pythagoreans, numbers are the ultimate elements of the empirical world.5 They are immanent in nature, and each occupies a specific place where they generate geometric structures that in turn order the world of the senses. Numbers, for example, generate material points that one experiences as stars. Similarly, numbers generate regular geometric solids that one experiences as various substances.6 The Pythagorians considered an individual to be a microcosm, who contains everything in the universe. This includes gods, the four elements, animals and plants. A person has reason. This is a divine power that makes one like a god. A person also contains the four elements and “the powers of moving, growing, and reproducing.” This is one’s lower nature that makes one like the animals and plants.7 The divine part of the soul consists of numbers that corresponded to the structure of the world. By contemplating these, a person becomes divine.

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Speculation about the nature of Chaos is also the link joining the passage from Hesiod with the passage from Parmenides. Parmenides holds that the cosmos is a symmetric sphere, unchanging and held in the bonds of divine justice. This primordial balance is the basis for the principles of logic that determine correct thinking. At the same time, he says, these principles of logic also result from the mind’s submission to the command of the goddess Justice. In the poem the goddess tells him to listen carefully and accept what she is telling him. There is one way of Truth. It is the path that says: “Being is.” This path is the only possible way. But not only is it possible; it actually exists. There is another path that says: “Being is not.” This path does not exist and one cannot explore it. 8 The goddess speaks with authority. She commands Parmenides to judge by means of his reason (logos). Correct intellectual insight is judgment according to the logos. If something is true, it must be logical. Only those thoughts that are coherent and intelligible can be true. The poem also expresses a relation between the logic of the mind and linguistic coherence: if something is intelligible, it is also expressible. Parmenides must choose between the alternatives of the cosmos understood as either sheer being or sheer becoming, between eternal transcendence or time and process. Given these two choices, sheer being and eternal transcendence must be true, because the alternative is neither intelligible nor expressible. The sentences, “Being is not,” and “Becoming is,” are both inner contradictions, incoherent expressions. They are unintelligible and cannot be true. The mind can only think: “Being is.” The goddess tells Parmenides that he “could neither recognize that which is not, nor express it.” He must understand the world as sheer being.9 The vision of Parmenides asserts an analogy between human logical processes and the cosmos. When Parmenides obeys the command of the goddess and chooses being, this orients him. He is able to overcome the flux and multiplicity of individual existence and realize within himself the same order that binds the cosmos. The vision of Parmenides presents a normative human image—an individual as a microcosm. Heraclitus, too, searched for a divine logos. Although no part is the same for two instants, there is an everlasting stability to the world

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because it changes according to invariable measures that maintain the cosmic balance:10 The sun will not overstep his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, servants of Justice, will find him out.11 The measures manifest a law that underpins both the political and natural orders.12 Heraclitus, like the other pre-Socratic philosophers, transforms the image of Chaos, the space in the world where the earth and sky meet, into a pre-existent logos.13 According to Heraclitus, the logos is another aspect of the central image, fire. The Stoics considered the fire of Heraclitus to be “rational, and responsible for the government of the whole world.”14 The ever-living fire is associated with the psyche, the life-principle and the Stoics identified fire with mind and soul in their highest form.15 The Stoics regarded the logos as the object of the highest and universal knowledge. In the same manner that fire symbolizes the coherence of the ever-changing phenomenal world, it also symbolizes the coherence of a person’s ever-changing mental flux; the logos governs both the cosmic process and human thought so that subject and object are seen to be two aspects of a deeper, single reality uniting them. They are united within a single image—fire.16 By piercing through the sensual world and beyond mental processes, one comes to an intuition in which one realizes oneself as a microcosm.17 The image of the marriage of the sky and the earth, then, presents a symbolism that reveals an underlying unity deeper than the strife that the people of ancient Greece experienced between the world of celestial and earth imagery, an underlying unity symbolized by Chaos. The pre-Socratic philosophers transformed this symbolism into an image of an individual as a microcosm where knowledge is made possible when the mind and nature are united within a deeper structural relation. The human mind and nature both become ordered through submission to the logos. Although nature thus becomes transparent to the human mind, the bond uniting reason and nature is deeper than reason and remains a mystery. The tension between myth and reason within Greek philosophy continues up through Plato. For example, when Plato wants to explain why it is

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that some people become philosophers and others do not, he uses the myth of Er to explain the different characters of people. Both the rational and the mythical parts of Plato’s dialogues contributed to Plato’s philosophy.18 In India and China, similar symbolic transformations occur almost simultaneously with the rise of Greek philosophy. The Upanishads, texts that form a significant part of the nucleus of classical Indian tradition, appear at this time. Although they have other themes, the one that seems to be dominant is the identification of the human soul, the atman, with brahman, the eternal, divine ground of the world. In the fifth century BCE, another movement, Buddhism, appears that is in diametric opposition to the central theme of the Upanishads. The foundation of Buddhism is insight into the impermanence of both the self and the world. The coherence of the world arises through the causal linkage of its various elements rather than any divine ground. The Buddhists call the causal interconnection of the world “dependent origination.” According to tradition, the man Gautama became a Buddha the moment he discovered the causal interconnections that underpin a seemingly impermanent world. During this same time period, Confucianism and Taoism make their appearance in China. Both these movements establish ways of life grounded on insight into the tao, a power that at once structures the human personality and shows itself in the patterns of nature. The Upanishads, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, each in their own way, present an image of the individual as a microcosm. In each of the civilizations where they appeared, the various images of a person as a microcosm set in motion the development of theories of nature. This, in turn, led to the development of a new abstract language of theory. 19 One can find an example of this new development in the fragments of Democritus of Abdêra. He was in his prime about 420 BCE and perhaps had come under the influence of Parmenides. In any case, the following fragment makes clear that he distrusted what the senses tell us about the world and developed an abstract causal theory to explain what really held the world together: Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void (alone) exist in reality . . . We know nothing accurately in reality, but (only) as it changes according

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myth and the mechanistic universe to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon (the body) and impinge upon it.20

Twenty-three centuries later, Richard Feynman will forcefully state that if there were a disaster and one could save only one sentence, it should be that all things are made of atoms.21 And Einstein will point to the passage by Democritus as the essence of a physical theory. He writes that in the whole history of science from Greek philosophy to modern physics there have been constant attempts to reduce the apparent complexity of natural phenomena to some simple fundamental ideas and relations.22 This is a good working definition of a physical theory, and the atomism of Democritus exhibits the kind of precise, single valued artificial language that in the modern world separates the “two cultures.” The existence of the speculations of Democritus two thousand years before Galileo shows that the distinction the anthropologist Lévi-Strauss makes between modern and “archaic” science is not quite as absolute as he maintains.23 There are differences, but we will have to be much more careful and precise in the kinds of distinctions we make. Moreover, Democritus was not at all unique. There were many attempts to understand the world one perceives with one’s senses in terms of a set of “simple ideas and relations.” The Pythagorean cosmogonic myth that presented a world generated from numbers set in motion mathematical investigations that attempted to reduce all of nature’s diversity to geometrical forms. The Pythagoreans developed a method, the “application of areas,” of comparing the areas of two geometric surfaces. In the ratio thus formed, they were able to transform two geometric magnitudes into a number. It is clear that the ability to transform magnitudes into numbers was the central concern of the Pythagoreans. They never spoke of the area of one figure as we would; they always spoke of the ratio of two surfaces.24 When they attempted to form similar ratios from lines, the Pythagoreans made a discovery that challenged the foundation of their world: it was impossible to find a common unit of measure that would allow

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them to express both the side and diagonal of a square in terms of whole numbers.25 These lines did not form a ratio. In other words, “no matter how small a unit was chosen as a measure of the sides, the diagonal could not be a ‘progression of multitude’ beginning with this unit.” The two lines are “incommensurable;” they have no common unit of measure.26 The relation between geometry and numbers was central to Pythagorean myth. With this discovery of the “incommensurability,” a rift opened up in that relation.27 Thus began one of the central themes in the history of Greek mathematics, the search for a solution to the problem of incommensurable lines. This is the attempt by Greek mathematicians to relate what they regarded as continuous, lines, to what they regarded as discrete, numbers.28 It was an attempt to realize a unity of opposites that was grounded on an intuition of the underlying harmony of the world. The Pythagoreans considered even partial solutions to the problem, as well as geometry itself, to be a sacred revelation, and one must keep it secret. In the life of Pythagoras by Iamblichus, for example, we are told how a certain Pythagorean, Heppasus, “met the doom of the impious.” The sea drowned him, because he divulged how to form a sphere from twelve pentagons. Although Heppasus obtained renown for the discovery, the Pythagoreans claim that the whole of geometry comes from “that man,” Pythagoras. The Pythagoreans intended to preserve the rule of secrecy—whatever its precise nature—forever. However, tradition relates that when a certain Pythagorean lost his fortune, he sold the secrets of geometry, and thus they became public.29 In contrast to the Pythagoreans who tried to find an underlying harmony to the multiplicity of nature, the disciples of Parmenides tried to explain away the changes and diversity of nature through logical analysis. One of these, Zeno, developed four arguments showing the logical paradoxes in the idea of motion. The celebrated image is that of the race between Achilles and a tortoise. Achilles does not win, cannot win, because he must first run the distance between the beginning and the tortoise half way, then the remainder half way, and so on. The end recedes forever. Although the intention of Zeno was to demonstrate the logical absurdity of motion, because his analysis is quantitative, it strikes one

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as modern. The great achievement of science in the seventeenth century is that it developed the ability to explain the phenomena of motion and variability quantitatively. This requires that one is able to relate what one perceives by one’s senses to numbers; to relate the continuous to the discrete; and overcome the rift that the Pythagoreans discovered between geometrical forms and numbers.30 Although the ideas of Lévi-Strauss concerning myth as well as those concerning physical science are inadequate, he is quite right when he points out the concrete and qualitative nature of “archaic” science and the abstract and quantitative nature of modern science—not in all areas, but especially in regards to understanding change and motion. It might be helpful if one thought of the four paradoxes of Zeno as forming a kind of wall separating traditional and modern sciences. To the Greeks, they presented an impenetrable barrier.31 Because Greek mathematicians could not answer the paradoxes, they gave up the attempt to explain motion and changes in the natural world quantitatively. These phenomena were left to the speculations of Heraclitus or the qualitative physics of Aristotle.32 The early Greek philosophers were not the only ones to develop theories grounded on the image of a person as a microcosm. Many of the speculations in the Upanishads on brahman as the eternal ground of the world are the Indian counterpart of the vision of Parmenides of an unchanging being. Classical yoga, a technique for experiencing the identity of the soul with brahman, developed theories to account for the illusion of change and multiplicity. In contrast to a Greek like Zeno, however, these tended to be psychological rather than logical.33 If the speculations of the Upanishads made the everyday experiences of change and multiplicity problematic, the Buddhist insistence on impermanence had just the opposite effect. Stability was a problem for them, and they developed a theory of atomism to explain this away. The world is not permanent at all. It is a kaleidoscope of impersonal elements in constant motion. The interaction of these elements is the cause of one’s everyday experiences.34 As in the case of Greek philosophy, the Buddhists developed a special language, a “denaturalized discourse,” in their theorizing. It is the language of abhidharma:

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[It] is that analytical activity of the mind which gives its practitioner access to what there really is in the world[.]35 And that goal is well beyond the concepts of our mind. The Chinese lacked a counterpart to Parmenides that the Indians had in the Upanishads, and they completely rejected any concept of cause such as that held by the Buddhists. Instead, an intuition of the world that is almost identical to that of Heraclitus underpins Chinese science. Indeed, we can say (with a certain qualification I will discuss shortly) that until recently the West, following the command of the goddess, Justice, chose the way of being, and that the Chinese, following another command, chose the alternative way—that of becoming. These decisions set two different civilizations in two different directions. José Ortega Y Gasset describes the West’s decision for being as the victory of Parmenides over Heraclitus in a battle between giants, a victory that determined the destiny of the West. He says that we shall find that the entire history of the West constitutes a single unit, which has been what it has been—that is, has had the history it has had—because twenty-seven hundred years ago the Greeks adopted a particular mode of thought. As we shall see, they might have adopted a different one, and then the history of mankind [in the West] would have been very different; but the former way triumphed, and when it did, when the mode of thinking I refer to triumphed, the one to be examined in this lecture, the destiny of twenty-seven hundred years of human history was inexorably and prophetically fixed.36 The way that Ortega Y Gasset is going to expound in the lecture is the way of logical and causal analysis, the way of being. The different mode of thought that Ortega Y Gasset mentions is the way of becoming. Heraclitus expressed this second way through the mythical imagery that identified time, the ruler of the cosmos, with a child playing draughts. The Chinese also chose this way, and that decision determined their destiny to no less an extent than the decision for being determined the West’s. Rather than by means of logical analysis, the Chinese tried to understand the patterns that appeared in the world as one thing mutated, almost without effort,

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into another. The Chinese also had a myth of numbers that led them to attempt to understand the patterns of the mutations in nature mathematically whenever it seemed possible. However, although this myth of numbers was similar to the Pythagoreans, Chinese mathematics has always tended to be algebraic rather than geometric in character. The influence of these fundamental intuitions that set theoretical science in motion continue up to the present. In Identity and Reality, Emile Meyerson undertook a study of the central concepts of physical science through a thorough examination and acute analysis of almost all the scientific literature that has appeared in the West. He divided the ideas that appeared in this literature into two classes. The first was concerned with the “lawfulness” of phenomena. Ideas that help one describe various processes that occur in the physical world belong to this class. An example might be the precise description that analytical geometry allows one to make of the arc of a ball someone has thrown into the air. The second class is concerned with the causes of phenomena. They help one explain the processes after having first described them. An example of this second class of ideas might be the precise causal analysis that the differential calculus and the idea of inertia allows one to make of the flight of the ball after having described it by means of analytical geometry. These two examples demonstrate the continuing influence of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. The intuition of the Pythagoreans underpins the attempt to understand natural phenomena mathematically; the intuition of Heraclitus underpins the attempt to discover the regularity or the “lawfulness” of the changes in nature; and, at least according to Meyerson’s analysis, the intuition of Parmenides underpins the attempt to give causal explanations to these changes.37 The relation of the vision of Parmenides to causal explanations is especially important and needs some elaboration. Meyerson has shown that in order to give a causal explanation to a process in the physical world one first has to assume that something persists unchanged during the process, and then one must try to account for the process in terms of that which remains unchanged.38 In premodern physics one conceived this unchanging something as an object’s substance. This is one example. A second example is the concept of inertia, the idea that had such an important role in modern physics from the time of Galileo up through

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the development of relativity theory. Inertia is the idea that motion is a quality that an object has in the same way that it has color or shape. Inertia transforms motion from a process of change to a state or, even, paradoxically, a kind of substance. The most important example from physics is the great conservation laws, especially the conservation of energy, the cornerstone of the modern picture of the physical world. In the realm of modern history we find that the logic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the logic that Hegel developed (or discovered) and Marx appropriated, is a means of discovering causality within the flux of history and thereby overcoming time. In all of these examples we find that a causal explanation is the search for an underlying identity in a process of change. It is the attempt to deny what our senses tell us, viz. that things change, and to understand the world according to our reason. A causal explanation is the attempt by our minds to overcome time. This is precisely what we have seen in the vision of Parmenides.

Myth and “Metaphysics” The rise of Greek science and philosophy was the transformation of ancient symbolic forms. In that transformation, a new ideal of knowledge and wisdom appeared. In The Revolutions of Wisdom, G. E. R. Lloyd provides us with a balanced discussion of what this new ideal was. It consisted in a shift from understanding the world through myth to understanding it through the logos, a revolt against tradition and a new self-assertion; a new openness and tolerance of uncertainty; a shift in language from metaphor to a precise and technical “scientific” (denaturalized) language; attempts at quantification and measurement of data; and the construction of idealized scientific models. In his study, Lloyd emphasizes that this was a new ideal, not a description of what those who developed the ideal actually practiced. They still relied on myth to understand the world. Although they revolted against tradition, they founded a new tradition in which they themselves became new authoritative figures. Many of their assertions were of a highly speculative and dogmatic character. They all continued to use metaphorical language. Finally, many of their attempts at quan-

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tification and the construction of idealized models were misguided and ended in failure.39 Lloyd’s study makes clear that the rise of philosophy and science in ancient Greece is not a complete break from the old mythical forms to something “miraculously” rational. Walter Burkert writes: That the world is to be understood in terms of a beginning, that there is a process of becoming, physis, which cannot be influenced by man, that the existing world is ultimately order, kosmos, are all postulates which are taken [by the philosophers] from [the mythical] tradition without question, but are made explicit by the new concepts.40 We can observe a shift in the focus of attention in the move from mythos to logos. As the power of the old images faded, they became merely ideas (e.g. “time,” “substance”) to explain the world. At the same time, new imagery appeared in the form of the divine logos to take their places. And in these new images one sees continuity with the old symbolic forms. Thus, according to Eliade, Plato’s theory of ideas is a rediscovery of ancient myth.41 Moreover, later, the Gospel of John and Gnosticism transform the logos once again into myth. One of the reasons that the relation of myth to science causes confusion is that not only are there are many different theories of myth, but there are different ideas about what one means by reason as well. Charles Taylor follows Plato and Aristotle by characterizing reason as a disciplined way of being articulate. Taylor warns us, however, that if these demands are interpreted too broadly, “the best means recognized at the time” will include fundamental assumptions about the world. Since these differ from culture to culture, reason cannot be universal. On the other hand, reason can be reduced to rules of logic and is then trivialized. If reason is to mean anything significant, not only must one conform to the rules of logic, but one must be articulate about something as well.42 Now this clarification of Taylor’s is extremely useful. His idea of reason would include the atomism of Democritus, the Pythagorean attempt to transform magnitudes into numbers, Zeno’s attempt to explain away the changes and diversity of nature through logical analysis,

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the psychological theories classical yoga developed to account for the illusion of change and multiplicity, Buddhist atomism, and Chinese attempts to understand the patterns of change in the mutations of the world. Although based on different fundamental assumptions and using different logical methods, all these are different forms of rationality. If the demands of reason do not include the fundamental assumptions that underpin logic and rules of inference, is it possible to give rational expression to these assumptions? Yes. Aristotle discussed this at length in his work on physics and the books that follow. According to Aristotle, one discovers these assumptions through an intuition that is absolute and certain. The experience of Parmenides of eternal, unchanging being is a perfect example of such an intuition.43 These intuited first principles that ground physics take their name from the books that follow Aristotle’s physics. Today one calls them “metaphysics” which simply means “after physics.”44 Aristotle gave three different names to what we today call metaphysics. He called it “first science,” “wisdom,” and “theology.”45 At times people have characterized metaphysics as the “science of pure being.” This later characterization reflects the profound and continuing influence that Parmenides has had on the West. According to R. G. Collingwood, however, there is no such thing as a “science of pure being.” He designates metaphysics as the “science of absolute presuppositions.” Moreover, since presupposing is an act of human freedom, metaphysics is an historical discipline dealing with the particularity of human existence. Collingwood writes: Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking.46 In this book I will follow Collingwood’s usage. By “metaphysics,” I mean either the absolute presuppositions, axioms, basic assumptions, or fundamental intuitions that underpin any particular human thought or activity or the attempt of historians to discover what these were. Since this is different and more precise than common usage, from now on I will place the word “metaphysics” in quotation marks to remind and alert the reader to the sense in which I intend it.

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Georges Gusdorf has explored the relation between archaic myths and metaphysics, and has shown that one can express the intuitions that form the foundation of reason (and all properly human activity) symbolically.47 That we can discover the presuppositions of a people through the study of religious imagery is no accident. Myth is part of the foundation of language. Paul Ricoeur uses the term “rational symbols” to indicate this. Concepts do not have their own consistency. They always refer back to religious imagery that he calls “analogous”, not because the images lack rigor, but because they have a surplus of meaning. The religious imagery expresses absolute presuppositions and much else besides. It always outlasts and persists beyond the concept. Concepts cannot replace the image. The image both grounds and shows the limits of understanding. Despite all the different meanings the image evokes, ultimately, it remains opaque. 48 Speech and Phenomena, a recent work by Jacques Derrida, is a severe criticism of Western “metaphysics.” Derrida calls his method of criticism, “deconstruction.” This entails discovering and demolishing the “metaphysics” of authors in the Western tradition that Parmenides began with his decision “for being.” This tradition, Derrida maintains, contains a limited set of possibilities for various philosophical positions. Past authors have already explored all of these, and so Western “metaphysics” has run its course, exhausted its possibilities. Derrida is concerned to show the paradoxes and inner contradictions of the presuppositions common to this epoch. Once having destroyed all these conceptions, he will then continue his philosophic meditation along other lines. 49 However, even Derrida cannot completely escape or abandon “metaphysics.” He must ground his “deconstruction project” on something, and it is clear that underpinning a great deal of his work is the analogous image (in Ricouer’s sense) of “my death.” He orients his speech and his life by it.50 But it is also clear that no one can prove that he or she is going to die. “My death” is not seen. It never appears, and we can only know about it because someone has told us. The image or meaning of death is a matter of myth and tradition. There are traditions—Gnosticism and, surprisingly, much of modernity, for instance—that do not assume death to be of any ultimate significance or even real. “My death,” the death of each one of us, is something that we must presuppose. “My death” is, in fact “metaphysics.”

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As an historian, I do not see in Derrida, the end of “metaphysics.” Rather I see a conversion from one “metaphysics” to another. This conversion is a particular event in the history of philosophy and culture. In many ways, Derrida is an example in the contemporary West of the general tendency to convert from a decision for being to a decision for becoming. This conversion is relatively recent, just since the nineteenth century. Prior to this, the West had followed Parmenides. We can think of Parmenides (and the West’s decision for being) and Chinese civilization’s decision for becoming as examples of the particularity of “metaphysics.” And here we come to the important qualification that I mentioned when talking about the fundamental decisions that set these two civilizations on two different paths. We need to guard against overgeneralization: The decision for being did not ground every single act of reason in Western history, nor did the decision for becoming and change ground every single act of reason in Chinese history. However, there was a dominant, general tendency in the West to ground human reason on the absolute presupposition that being is real and a corresponding tendency in Chinese civilization to ground human reason on the opposite presupposition, that becoming is real. The absolute presuppositions of a civilization change over time. For example, after the rise of the Newtonian view of the world, when God seemed to have left the world leaving only absolute time and space, Nietzsche announced the event with the prophet Zarathustra’s proclamation that God is dead. There are many instances in the history of religions of a sky god abandoning the world. Eliade has remarked that with the disappearance of a sky god, other, in some ways, more interesting symbolic forms come to the fore. At the same time that Zarathustra proclaimed the death of an old myth, he became the prophet of a new myth of life and vitality. One of the images that Heraclitus used to express his vision of change and becoming was the imagery of a child playing draughts. This suggested that despite the changes of time seeming lawful, at a more basic level they were actually random, capricious, and due to chance. This randomness precludes any kind of causal explanation as being ultimately real. Nietzsche took this ancient image found in the fragments of Heraclitus,

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the child playing droughts, and transformed it into a new symbolism— the dicethrow. 51 “The game has two moments which are those of a dicethrow—the dice that is thrown and the dice that falls back. Nietzsche presents the dicethrow as taking place on two distinct tables, the earth and the sky. The earth where the dice are thrown and the sky where the dice fall back[.]52 Nietzsche insists on the two tables of life which are also the two moments of the player or the artist; “We temporarily abandon life, in order to then temporarily fix our gaze upon it.” “The dice throw affirms becoming and it affirms the being of becoming.” 53 “The dice which are thrown once are the affirmation of chance, the combination which they form on falling is the affirmation of necessity.”54 Today the being and causality which dominated from Parmenides to Einstein has been replaced by the assumption of becoming, chance and randomness in such fields as physics, biology, economics, probability, chaos or complexity theory, and game theory. 55 Somehow, Heraclitus’s ancient imagery of time as a child playing draughts and thereby ruling the world as well as Nietzsche’s exuberant transformation of that imagery reappears and is influential in these new scientific disciplines.

“Essence” I have been speaking at length of “metaphysics.” Another important term I will be using throughout this study is “essence.” It is a term that, like “metaphysics” has come under criticism by many contemporary scholars. There seems to be almost no sin greater than “essentialist thinking.” This is the practice of taking some element of a phenomenon and making it stand for the whole if it. In this way, the critics say, the search for essences severely and dangerously distorts our understanding. The words “essence” and “being” have the same Latin root, “esse.” If critics have attacked the Western metaphysical tradition that began with Parmenides decision for being, it should not be surprising that they are also critical of the search for essences, the beings of various phenomena.

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Despite what the critics say, the term “essence” is important (essential, even) as a tool for our intellectual work, and I want to clarify my usage of it. When I use the word “essence,” I do not designate by the term something transcendent and beyond the world that appears to us. I do designate that aspect of different examples of a phenomenon that appears in various historical contexts, that aspect that allows us to know we are dealing with the same thing. Alternatively, “essence” can designate that which gives something its continuity within historical flux. In the West until modern times, for example, people searched for the being or substance of things. Today we have come to understand how fundamental randomness rules a world of process and motion. Does it make any sense to speak of the being or “essence” of a world of such utter chance variation? In my sense of the word “essence” it does. Paradoxically as it at first might seem, we can say that the “essence” of the world is its “randomness.” The world is essentially random. Discovering the “essence” of something is a matter of abstraction. It is selecting what is important in the multitude of things that appear to us. We do it every day, sometimes stupidly so that we “miss the mark,” sometimes intelligently, with intuition and insight, so that we are “on target.” From now on in this book I will always be placing the word “essence” in quotation marks, as I do with “metaphysics.” This is to remind readers of my usage of the term—as a process of insightful or intuitive abstraction by which we discover continuity and important similarities among phenomena as they appear to us from within the flux and changes of time and history. There is a famous episode in the life of the Buddha, Gautama. As a prince, he has lived a life of luxury and has no experience of any of the more unpleasant aspects of human existence. Then, when he is about thirty he goes out for a chariot ride on four successive occasions. On the first occasion, his charioteer points out to him a sick man. On the second, he shows the prince an old man. On the third, a dead man. Finally, the charioteer shows the prince a monk. This awakens in the prince a desire for liberation and that night he sets out on his quest for Enlightenment.56 The story is a good illustration of how finding “essences” is a matter of abstraction. The world appears to us in a multitude of forms out of an endless horizon. Traditions select some of these as important and worthy

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of our attention. Others it teaches us to ignore. Here, the charioteer points out four things that Buddhism considers important: a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and a monk. The charioteer thus presents Gautama with four particular, concrete, and unique instances of a single phenomenon, human existence. How do these four sights awaken the desire for liberation? Through a process of abstraction. Each of these sights is unique, particular, but they all have something in common. Gautama abstracts or senses from them what this is. He “sees” that human existence is impermanent, unreliable, and therefore unsatisfactory, suffering, and evil. This is its “essence.” Having fathomed its “essence” through a process of abstraction, Gautama then sets out to seek salvation—a satisfactory existence despite the transience of life. According to the story, evil is something that the charioteer must show to the prince Gautama by directing his attention to the four sights. The prince Gautama, in turn, has the intelligence to abstract the “essence” of human existence from them. In this example, a process of abstraction is so good that its result, insight into the impermanence of existence, becomes the fundamental truth, or “metaphysics,” of a great world religion. The story of Gautama and the four sights expresses and preserves this “metaphysics.” Different traditions point out different things as being significant. They orient people differently. Even in cases where they point out the same or similar things, they often find different “essences” in them. Imagine for a moment that when Gautama had seen the four sights, instead of revealing existence as impermanent, he “saw” that what the four persons had in common was that each had a face, and that each expressed or spoke something—the dead man being most eloquent. Imagine that he then sensed that each expressed something paradoxical because it both revealed and concealed a person. Imagine that he then decided that it is this paradox, not impermanence, that is the “essence” of human existence: that our understanding of other people can never be complete and so we often misjudge them. Finally, imagine that rather than awakening the desire for liberation from impermanence, the four sights awakened in Gautama the desire to understand and thereby be just to the four persons. This would have led to an entirely different tradition and way of life.

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Emmanuel Levinas discovered this second “essence.” He calls the paradox of speech “the idea of infinity,” and he calls the desire for understanding and justice that it awakens, “the desire for infinity,” or “metaphysical desire.” This second “essence” also constitutes “metaphysics.”57 “The desire for infinity” underpins this book—the attempt to understand the symbolic expressions of both traditional and modern “scientific,” peoples.

Conclusions I began chapter one with a summary of the ideas of Lévi-Strauss that identified myth as a kind of “archaic” science. I have shown that, although one should not identify myth with physical science, there does exist a relation between the two. Myth expresses the fundamental orientation that a community of scientists must assume in the world before they begin their scientific work. Myth brings in the figure of Prometheus to structure experiences that underpin the technological foundation of science. Myth also creates a person as a microcosm and this underpins the theoretical aspect of science. There is a striking complementarity between these two images that reflects their common mythical origin. The Pythagoreans compared the entrance of people into this world to a crowd composed of three different kinds of people at a public spectacle. Each kind of individual lived a different life. The first lived a life based on a desire for wealth, the second a life based on the desire for power, domination, and glory, and the third a life based on contemplation. The division of people into three distinct classes is itself a widespread symbolism common to many Indo-European peoples.58 Prometheus is an image of the second kind of individual. Pythagoras as well as the other philosophers provide examples of the third kind. Prometheus gives us the image of the individual of action, the one who forges scientific facts and the hero of Greek tragedy. Pythagoras, on the other hand, gives us the image of the person who contemplates what the individual of action has done. Pythagoras is the spectator of tragedy as well as the viewer of scientific facts. The figures of Prometheus and Pythagoras have never ceased to inspire Western thinkers and scientists. Promethean acts and

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Pythagorean contemplation seem both natural parts of the scientist’s work. It is useful, or sobering, to keep in mind that both figures emerge from and with mythical views.

Chapter 3

The Secret of the State

Myth expresses a people’s fundamental intuitions or absolute presuppositions. It grounds their way of life, and we can understand a religious tradition as a way of passing down those absolute presuppositions. A religion thus preserves a way of life and makes it possible. The myths and symbols a religion passes down form the nucleus of a culture. For this reason they seem to have a “numinous” quality and often tradition surrounds them by taboo.1 The myth by the Ngaju Dayak that I presented in the introduction, for example, is part of a tradition of songs that are set apart as being sacred. In his study of Ngaju Dayak religion, Hans Schärer explains the importance of these songs in the everyday life of these people. He writes: Since the primeval sacred events and the divine revelation determine the organisation and conduct of life among men today, the songs are not only declaimed in rites but are also sung to children at home in the evening, so that life shall be in harmony with the sacred life of the first ancestors.2

Schärer succeeded in uncovering the structure of such songs by means of the phenomenological method. It is no doubt possible to understand much of the foundation of a people’s way of life. As I mentioned in the introduction, however, the phenomenological method often leaves one with a timeless, ahistorical impression. This chapter is an attempt to correct that by relating the history of religions to political history in a way that takes the autonomy and particularity of people into account. This is not an attempt to reduce the human ability to symbolize to political history; it is an attempt to discover a structural relation between a person’s ability to symbolize and his or her activity as a member of a community. I have argued that myth is an expression of

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the intuitions or assumptions that underpin human activity in general. In this chapter I will be more specific: I will show how it underpins political activity and political ideas. This chapter is an interpretation of the central symbolism of one of the Confucian classics, the Shu-ching, or The Book of History. The symbolism appears in a text that is a Chinese counterpart to the myth of the Ngaju Dayak. The text’s opening passage tells how the first Chinese sovereign, Yao, ordered the world at the beginning of Chinese civilization: The Sovereign Yao was a man possessing every virtue. He was reverent, intelligent, accomplished, thoughtful, sincerely courteous, and compliant. These qualities came to him naturally and without compulsion. They were a part of his character whose “bright influence” spread throughout the land and even to heaven. He appointed those with ability and virtue to office. He taught the “nine classes of kindred” to love one another and they became harmonious. He ruled the people of his domain in such a way that they became cultured and “highly intelligent.” He brought unity and harmony to the surrounding states. He thus transformed the people. The result of all this was “universal concord.” Yao “commanded the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho,” to observe the heavens. From these observations they were to gain knowledge of how “the sun, the moon, the stars, and the zodiacal spaces” (lunar mansions) move and change during the course of a year. They were to establish the seasons that regulate the lives of the people. Yao “separately commanded the second brother Hsi” to go to Yu-i, the Bright Valley, and to take up residence there. He was to receive the rising sun as a guest as well as organize the work to be done during the spring. Yao told the second brother Hsi that he was to determine mid-spring by the day of medium length when the star is in the lunar mansion Niao. At this time the people “are dispersed in the fields and birds and beasts breed and copulate.” Yao “further commanded the third brother Hsi” to go to Nan-chiao, the Brilliant Capital, and to take up residence. He was to be responsible for the “transformation of the summer.” At Nan-chiao, the third brother Hsi was to “observe the exact limit of the shadow.” Yao told him that he was to determine mid-summer by the day of longest length when the star is in

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the lunar mansion Huo. At this time the “people are more dispersed; the birds and beasts have their feathers and hair thin and change their coats.” Yao “separately commanded the second brother Ho” to go to the Dark Valley in the west and take up residence. He was to escort the setting sun and manage the harvest labors of autumn. Yao told him that he could determine mid-autumn by the day of medium length with the star in the lunar mansion Hsu. “The people feel at ease, and birds and beast have their coats in good condition.” Yao “further commanded the third brother Ho” to go to the Somber Capital in the northern region where he was to manage the changes of winter. Yao told him that he could determine mid-winter by the shortest day with the star in the lunar mansion Mao. “People keep in their houses, and the coats of birds are downy and thick.” After having thus commissioned the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho to their respective offices, the sovereign said: “Ah! you brothers Hsi and you brothers Ho, a round year consists of three hundred, sixty, and six days. By means of the intercalary month, you are to fix the four seasons and complete the determination of the period of a year. Thereafter, the various officers being regulated in accord with this, all the work of the seasons will be fully performed.”3

The passage presents us with human imagery that has served throughout much of Chinese history as the model of an ideal ruler and is the authoritative standard for the legitimate exercise of political power. The passage is not only important for what it tells us about persons; it is also important for what it tells us about the relation between the history of religions and political history. It is important for our topic to grasp some subtle meanings of this story and the rules that were valid in ancient China. The next four sections will shed light on them. The Confucian Tradition The time from the decline of the Chou dynasty and the rise of the Ch’in was a period of great intellectual ferment as different people attempted to

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find a way to restore the lost political harmony of earlier times. Out of this ferment six major schools of Chinese thought arose: Yin-yang and the five elements school, Mohists, Logicians, Taoists, Legalist, and Confucianists.4 This was the period from around 770 to 221 BCE. Confucius arose during the decline of the Chou dynasty, and wrote the Ch’un-ch’iu (The Spring and Autumn Annals) thus giving the period its name, “Spring and Autumn.” In the course of Chinese history, a corpus of writings, The Five Classics, became associated with Confucius and his efforts to reform Chinese government. They form the nucleus of the Confucian canon. In addition to the Ch’un-ch’iu, they include the I-ching, (The Book of Changes), the Shih-ching (The Book of Songs), the Li-chi (The Book of Rites) and the book that contains the passage about Yao and the brothers Hsi and Ho, the Shu-ching (The Book of History). The I-ching is a manual of divination that is old: the Chou used it for divination under the title, Chou I, (The Changes of the Chou). The Shih-ching is an anthology of poems selected by Confucius. The Li-chi discusses rites of passage, proper social intercourse, and cultivated recreation. The Shu-ching is the standard Confucian account of the succession from the first Chinese dynasty to the Chou. The classical tradition maintains that Confucius formed the Shuching out of thousands of official historical documents that he studied and edited and to which he added prefaces. According to modern scholarship, however, the book contains several strata. About half the contents of the existing book are much later than the time of Confucius. There is some correspondence between the traditional account of Chinese history given in the Shu-ching and the historical reconstructions of modern scholarship. Archaeologists have discovered oracle bones that mention twenty-three of the thirty-one Shang rulers mentioned in the Shu-ching. This correspondence helps one to relate the text to concrete historical circumstances. The world that Yao orders, for example, seems to correspond to the stratified society of the Chou where the central, imperial, domain is a model for the others. There are, however, important differences between the Shu-ching and the historical reconstructions of modern scholarship.5 According to the Shu-ching, the first three dynasties are the Hsia, the Shang, and the Chou, in that order. Modern scholarship, however, maintains that the

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Shang dynasty is China’s first. So far, archaeologists have yet to discover any evidence for the existence of the Hsia dynasty. Moreover, in contrast to one’s understanding of the rise and fall of these dynasties according to historical processes, the Chinese tradition considers the time of the Hsia, the Shang, and the Chou dynasties to be a golden age that set the norms for subsequent Chinese civilization. The Shu-ching contains thirty documents and divides these into various classes. In this study I will be using passages from five of the thirty documents. The five on which I will draw are: The Canon of Yao (The central text of this study is the beginning of this document.); The Canon of Shun; The Great Plan; The Counsels of the Great Yü; and The Counsels of Kao Yao. Although it takes the form of a historical narrative, the intention of the Shu-ching is to present an image of the cosmic order and a people’s place in it. The central figures in the Shu-ching are three sage-kings: Yao, Shun, and Yü. Together they present an ideal model of human behavior, an idealized human imagery. The time of these three rulers precedes the establishment of dynastic succession. According to the Shu-ching, the first dynasty, the Hsia, begins with the death of Yü. Moreover the intention of the account of the succession from Hsia through Shang to Chou is not to narrate history; it is to present a pattern or structure of political transformation that tradition calls ko-ming, the exchange of the “mandate of heaven.” It is important not to mistake the images presented in the Shu-ching for a political blueprint. The text handles religious symbols that operate on a much deeper level. Symbols at once structure and express fundamental experiences that are always prior to mere thought. Basic symbols in ancient China and in the Shu-ching are yin, yang, and the tao. At the least, these three are strong reminders that persons never experience the world as a mere object; rather, the world appears to a person from out of an endless horizon as manifold patterns and structures. Yin, yang, and the tao form one of these many structures. Taken together, these three symbols form the Chinese equivalent to the symbolism of the marriage of earth and sky. I base my understanding of this symbolism on La Pensée Chinoise by Marcel Granet. Scholars have criticized this book because its treatment of Chinese symbols is structural and fails to pay attention to their historical

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development. Specialists have also pointed out that there is a great diversity to Chinese traditions so that it is possible to find exceptions to Granet’s generalizations.6 Despite these qualifications, however, there is general agreement that Granet’s work is fundamentally sound. It is certainly of value for one’s understanding of the Shu-ching.7 In the last chapter, we saw how the goddess Justice authoritatively commanded Parmenides to make a decision for being and to understand the world in terms of logic and causality. In this chapter, we will see how Yao, by means of his authority, commanded the ancient Chinese, to make the opposite decision, the decision for what we perceive with our senses— becoming and change. Becoming and change can only be hinted at, but not actually grasped, by our concepts. I realize that most scholars use the term “nature” as if it were a universal notion. However, biblical Hebrew has no word for “nature” (but does know “creation.”). Ancient China did not have a specific term for “nature,” but had many terms with interrelated meanings, such as tiān, heaven, denoting nature (as the whole of the universe); tiāndì, meaning heaven and earth, and dàkuài, meaning the great expanse. Tiān, nature (as the whole of the universe) was the most frequently used. If one enters the world of ancient China, at first it appears as a diverse and colorful assemblage of places. All is in motion, one place shifting into another. Gradually one sees that these places and the character of their mutations have an aspect evoked by the word “yin.” In the I-ching, the word “yin” evokes the idea of cold weather and raining skies. It is associated with the interior of things and signifies the cold and somber haunts and crevices where there is ice during the summer. Yin signals the shade: a place north of a mountain or south of a river. It is impossible to fix, once and for all, a definition of yin. It is the substance of a place. It is what gives the place its character. But it is also a force allowing the substance to shift or mutate into another place. However in all these instances, the Chinese associate the yin aspect of the world with the characteristics of women. Yin evokes space, the land, and the continual birth and fecundity of the world.8 Many places that are interdependent yet particular make up the Chinese world. Each place is a unique aspect of the universe and has numerous concrete attributes. The eastern quarter of the world, for

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example, is a specific place with its own character—sociability and exemplary kindness. The south is associated with fullness, strength, and maturity. The west is associated with cruelty and is a place where spirits of correction and punishment dwell. The north is associated with death and exhaustion.9 That the world is a conglomeration of such qualitatively different places gives it solidity and concreteness. One of five elements (water, fire, metal, wood, and earth) is in each of these locations. Water is in the north; fire is in the south; metal is in the west; wood is in the east; and earth is in the center. A passage from The Great Plan introduces us to the theory of the five elements. It shows how each element is manifest in a specific quality and activity at each location of the earth. According to the passage, each of the five elements has a particular nature or character. Water soaks and descends, in contrast to fire that blazes and ascends. Wood is crooked and straight, but metal yields and changes. Finally the nature of earth is seen in “seed-sowing” and “in-gathering.” Each of these elements also has a characteristic taste. Water becomes salty; fire becomes bitter, wood becomes sour, metal becomes acrid, and earth becomes sweet.10 The image of the earth is a square divided into four square regions. These four sections touch at a common point. A fifth square is at this central point and represents the center of the world. Although each of these spaces has its own qualities, they are, nevertheless, interdependent. Together they form a hierarchy that represents the order of space.11 So far I have been discussing the aspect of nature evoked by the word “yin.” One can see that nature also manifests a masculine, spiritual aspect that the word “yang” evokes. Yang signifies the sun, the aspect of the world associated with sunshine and warmth. It evokes the idea of springtime, the time when the sun begins to make its full force felt at the end of winter. Yang evokes the idea of youth and the image of a dancer in full movement. Yang is a substance that gives a place its character and signifies the temporal aspect of a place. It signifies a place south of a mountain or north of a river. It is a good place to build a capital. Yang is also a force that causes the mutations of one place into another. Yang is the active, light, energetic aspect of the world.12 The Chinese experience time as cyclical and express it by a circle, an image that comes from the seasons of the year and the processes of

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nature. Each cycle is an era complete in itself, and one cycle must end before a new one can begin. A season of the year and an hour of the day characterize each cycle. Just as there are qualitatively different spaces, there are qualitatively different times. The time of spring, for example, is when nature manifests its kindness. The summer is a time associated with the beginning of the world. Autumn is a time when nature turns harsh. Winter is the time of exhaustion and death.13 In the opening passage of the Shu-ching, Yao establishes these four cycles that together make up a complete year. Each area of the Chinese world has many different qualities that cluster around a deeper “essence.” An emblem that is infinitely rich in symbolic associations together with an associated color designate the “essence” of each location. For example, the emblem for a pregnant woman and the color green designate the east with its virtues of sociability and exemplary kindness and its time of spring. The emblem for a raven and the color red designate the south, associated with fullness, strength, maturity and the time of summer. The emblem for mountains and the color white designate the west, the place of the spirits of correction and punishment, that is, a place associated with cruelty and the time of autumn. The emblem for death and the color black designate the north with its quality of exhaustion and association with winter.14 The circle and the square that respectively designate pure time and pure space together form an emblem that designates a total world. The “essence” of this world is that it is cyclical and shows itself in alternating aspects. This means there is an interconnection between succession and interdependence. When there is a succession of events the Chinese look at alternating aspects and relate them by metaphors. Examples of two such metaphors are “the echo” and “the shadow and light.” When one concrete event or appearance seems to evoke another, then it is said that the two events have a mutual resonance. There are no forces working on the universe from without. Rather one gets a sense for a harmony within.15 The image of a marriage between earth and sky unites the earth, the female aspect of the world associated with yin to the sky, and the male aspect associated with yang. Sexual union, which excludes excesses such as debauchery as well as chastity, expresses the underlying harmony. There is the interplay of darkness and light, shadow and sunshine, fullness of

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life and decrepitude, life and death, purity and impurity, high notes and low notes.16 The interplay of concrete events, then, gives rise to an experience of something that seems to be transcendent and prior to, the world. One calls this “something” the “tao,” a word that has the sense of responsibility and power. The tao is a power that seems to come from beyond this world but shows itself at all levels of existence in unexpected patterns and harmonies. It shows itself in the harmony of space and time, in an ordered society, and in the harmonies of nature and the world of one’s senses. The tao rules the rhythm of things and is the principle of organization of the world. The tao is the central pivot around which the world turns as well as the path through which diverse elements of the world seem almost effortlessly to mutate into each other.17 The Chinese experience the world as a fluid interaction of concrete places and events mutating into one another, an interaction that gives rise to a rhythm in the natural order. If one thinks of the “essences” of places as notes, one can understand the interdependence of the Chinese world as music. Yin and yang are the master symbols. The harmony arises out of the yin and yang aspects of experience that permeate the world.18 I have been interpreting Chinese symbols as expressions of a world that appears from out of an endless horizon. We have now developed some understanding of the experiences that are so fundamental that it is even possible to say that they constitute the Chinese world. Let us now turn to an interpretation of the central passage of the Shu-ching, the story of how Yao ordered this world at the beginning of Chinese civilization.

The Foundation of the World The opening paragraph of the Shu-ching is a description of the sovereign Yao. It reveals what I have called “the secret of the state.” The title of a Chinese monarch is “Son of Heaven,” so that the association of the political ruler with the celestial imagery is clear.19 Yao embodies something beyond one’s ordinary perceptions and reason; the center of the text shows how the Chinese experience the world as power at an intuitive level.20 Such power appears in a sovereign’s character and the

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passage emphasizes Yao’s natural and effortless virtues of reverence, intelligence, accomplishment, and thoughtfulness. Like the rays of the sun, these virtues radiate throughout the entire world, and a second title of a Chinese sovereign is “Son of the Sun.” In this passage, then, the center of the Chinese world presents itself as a solar symbolism.21 In the third paragraph the Shu-ching introduces a second important image, viz. six brothers. The text presents them as three pairs, one of each pair taking the name Hsi and the other Ho. The text presents the first pair as astronomers who observe the night sky. Then the text tells us that the second brother Hsi resides in the east in the Bright Valley; the third brother Hsi resides in the south in the Brilliant Capital; the second brother Ho resides in the west in the Dark Valley; and the third brother Ho in the north in the Somber Capital. The brothers Hsi and Ho are said to be children of the sun. The image of Yao together with the brothers Hsi and Ho are different aspects of a single solar symbolism that has many levels of meaning. The imagery of the passage is a model for Confucian political culture. The sovereign Yao commands the second brother Hsi to reside in the Bright Valley and respectfully to receive as guest the rising sun. He commands the third brother Hsi to reside in the Brilliant Capital and to adjust and arrange the transformation of summer. He commands the second brother Ho to reside in the Dark Valley and to adjust and arrange the harvest labors of autumn. He commands the third brother Ho to reside in the Somber Capital and to adjust the changes of winter. Submission by the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho to the authority of the sovereign establishes the order of the state. The imagery of the central passage is more than a theory of power. It also presents the structure of the external world. The residences of the brothers Hsi and Ho, for example, are the four cardinal points of the compass and represent the quarters of the world. The Bright Valley is in the east; the Brilliant Capital is in the south; the Dark Valley is in the west; and the Somber Capital is in the north. Yao dwells where these four quarters touch, at the center of the world. The imagery expresses the order of space. The cardinal points of the compass where each of the brothers Hsi and Ho live are also associated with the seasons of the year. The east is associ-

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ated with spring, the south with summer, the west with autumn, and the north with winter. Since each cardinal point of the compass has a time aspect, the spatial imagery of the Shu-ching also orders the division of time.22 The text gives us a vision of the cosmos that coincides with the intuitions of the world expressed by yin, yang, and the tao. The Bright Valley in the east and the Brilliant Capital in the south where the brothers Hsi reside are places of yang. The Dark Valley in the west and the Somber Capital in the north where the brothers Ho reside are places of yin. Yin and yang also characterize the different qualities of times that are associated with each place. Yin corresponds to the destructive energies of winter and a life of retreat and hiding. Yang corresponds to the creative energies of summer and a life of activity. At the spring and fall equinoxes yin and yang balance perfectly. The alternation of yin and yang aspects of time sets up a rhythm that corresponds to the changes in habitat and morphological variations of animals that are described in the passage.23 The patterns in the text, its alternations of yin and yang, are not ideas about the world, but rather, expressions of a transcendent reality—the tao. Eliade has pointed out that this image has a structure that is comparable to the cosmogonic myths of other traditions. He tells us that Chinese scholars considered the organization of the world and founding of human institutions by the first sovereigns to be extremely important acts. They were equivalent to the acts by which the gods of other traditions established the world at the beginning of time. The sovereign “creates” the world when he rids the land of the forces of evil, sets himself up in its center, and then “completes the organization of society.”24 Sarah Allen argues that we can understand the Chinese literate tradition as a symbolic transformation of a preliterate Shang tradition that she attempts to reconstruct. 25 The story of Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho is from the first document of the Shu-ching, the Canon of Yao. The first part in the Canon is the central passage that presents us with a normative image of the Chinese world—Yao and the brothers Hsi and Ho. It also presents us with Yao’s most important act—the establishment of a calendar. The second part expresses the fundamental intention of the Shu-ching by showing that the “essence” of the world presented in the first part is the virtue embodied in a Chinese sovereign. Again, this seems to be the transformation of a much older religious symbolism.26

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In the second part of the Canon of Yao we are told how a disastrous flood threatens Yao’s domain; the floodwaters are completely inundating and destroying the land. They cover hills, even those of great height, and seem to be rising to heaven itself. The people are desperate and are murmuring. The sovereign turns to the Chief of the Four Mountains and asks if he knows of a man with the ability to save them from the impending disaster.27 The Chief then suggests various candidates. But Yao rejects them because they are deficient in some virtue. Although his heir-son is highly intelligent, he is insincere and quarrelsome, and the Minister of Works lacks respect. Yao employs a man named Kun, but Kun is perverse, disobedient, and injurious to his peers. After nine years of labor he fails at controlling the flood. When Yao offers the throne to the Chief of the Four Mountains so that the latter might carry out the work, the Chief declines saying, “I have not the virtue; I should disgrace the imperial seat.” The Chief suggests an unmarried man called Shun of Yü. He tells Yao that Shun is the son of a blind man. He had been living in difficult circumstances. Shun’s father was stubborn and had no principles. His stepmother lacked sincerity and his half brother, Hsiang, was arrogant. Despite these vices surrounding him, Shun himself had been able to live virtuously. Moreover he had been able to reform his relatives by his filial piety. They have abandoned their wickedness and now live together in harmony.28 Here at last is an individual with sufficient virtue to establish an ordered, harmonious world, and Shun becomes the successor of Yao. Because of their common virtue, Shun and Yao are of the same “essence”; both are models of the ideal sovereign. The second document of the Shu-ching, The Canon of Shun, begins with a description of Shun that is almost identical to that of Yao. The text itself underlines the similarity in the history of the two. Shun was profound, wise, accomplished, and intelligent. He was mild, courteous, and truly sincere. The reputation of his “mysterious virtue” spread everywhere. When those in high places learned of his virtue, Shun became the successor to Yao.29 The third great sage-king of the Shu-ching is Yü. He is the son of Kun, the man who failed to control the flood. Shun appoints Yü to be Minister of Works, and he is able to overcome the destructive waters. Because of his great virtue, Yü is of the same “essence” as Yao and Shun;

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he is a model of the ideal ruler. In the third document of the Shu-ching, “The Counsels of the Great Yü”, Shun gives us a description of Yü. It says that the sovereign Shun told Yü that when the floodwaters were causing Shun concern, Yü had shown his superiority to other men, because he accomplished all that he said he would. Shun told Yü that even now he showed his superiority by the tireless and earnest service that he performs on behalf of the country, even when this is at the expense of his own family. No one is equal to Yü in ability or merit. Yet he is modest and unassuming and never brags of his achievements. Then Shun concluded his talk with Yü. He said: I see how great is your virtue, how admirable your vast achievements. The determinate appointment of Heaven rests on your person; you must eventually ascend the throne of the great sovereign.30

The descriptions of Yao, Shun, and Yü, then, present us with human imagery—an ideal ruler whose “essence” is the virtue that enables one to govern the world. The concluding descriptions of Shun and Yü are alike. Of Shun the passage says, “The report of his mysterious virtue was heard on high and he was appointed to occupy the imperial seat.” About Yü the text concludes: “I see how great is your virtue, how admirable your vast achievements. The determinate appointment of Heaven rests on your person; you must eventually ascend the throne of the great sovereign.” Solar cults are for an elite, and there always is a form of selection. Here we see an example of this. It is clear that Shun and Yü are elite according to a two-fold process of selection. There is a first selection by heaven and a second selection by other people. Virtue first mysteriously appears in those whom heaven favors. Then others, especially those who also are in possession of virtue, recognize it in the individual first chosen by heaven. The perfect royal virtue, the virtue of the true sovereign, is the tao. At the time when Shun is still sovereign, before Yü has ascended to the throne, Yi, the Forester of Shun, and Yü, describe the tao’s infinite depth. This discussion takes place in the presence of the sovereign Shun. Yi spoke to Yü and praised his virtue. He said that it was constant and without limit. It was “sagely, spirit-like, awe-inspiring, and adorned with

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all accomplishments.” Yi related how Heaven had looked favorably upon Yü who had become the ruler of the entire land, almost in an instant. To this, Yü replied: “Accordance with right leads to good fortune; following evil to bad: the shadow and the echo.”31

Yü’s response to Yi in this passage, especially in the phrase, “the shadow and the echo,” underscores that the tao never appears to one directly; one must develop a sense for it in the alternation and succession of events. Yü’s response also tells us that an ideal ruler should not govern from without by coercion; he should govern from within by a sense for the interconnectedness of the world. Despite its elusiveness, the tao is that inner quality that appears in a man, brings him to the throne, and by means of which he governs the entire world. According to the Shu-ching, the vicissitudes of Chinese political history are due to the appearance and disappearance of the tao. Yü was the founder of the first dynasty, the Hsia. It continued as long as his successors maintained their virtue. When, however, the tao disappeared, the dynasty collapsed, and a second dynasty, the Shang, rose up to replace them. This process repeated itself. The Shang continued in power until they extinguished their virtue. Then the Chou rose up to replace them. Chinese tradition calls this process by which one dynasty replaces another, “the exchange of the mandate of heaven.” Yin, yang, and the tao present a structure of the external world. It is possible to interpret these same symbols from a second perspective. Chinese tradition claims that the earth and sky come into contact through a true sovereign such as Yao. He is a symbol that manifests the tao.32 Tradition also claims that the brothers Hsi and Ho invented yin and yang.33 The symbols that give structure to the world also present human imagery. Just as the external world is not an object, neither is a person. Just as manifold patterns and structures constitute the external world, so do they constitute human subjectivity. Yin, yang, and the tao express one of those structures. In The Counsels of Kao Yao, Kao Yao, Shun’s minister of Justice and Yü carry on a dialogue about virtue. Kao Yao states that there are nine virtues and that one can discern them in the behavior of someone.

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Someone has a particular virtue if he acts in a particular way. When Yü asked what these nine virtues were, Kao Yao replied: “Affability combined with dignity, mildness with firmness, bluntness with respectfulness, aptness for government with reverence, docility with boldness, straightforwardness with gentleness, an easy negligence with discrimination, boldness with sincerity, and valor with righteousness.”

Kao Yao held that the continuous display of these qualities is the mark of a good officer.34 This passage has the same structure as that presented by yin, yang, and the tao. It presents a world where the “essences” of things show themselves in alternating aspects. In this passage, the underlying “essences” are nine virtues that a person should possess. It is impossible to directly perceive these virtues. Pairs of complementary, although seemingly contradictory, actions represent each of the nine virtues. Each member of a pair balances the other, and if its partner does not balance it, any one of these actions is a vice. The person who behaves in such a manner would be one-sided and perverse. Taken together, however, each pair reveals alternating aspects of a single underlying virtue. A second passage that shows how inner virtues have outer manifestations is part of the document called, “The Great Plan”. Here Yü speaks about the instruments of good government. The second of the instruments of government are “the five personal matters” viz. bodily demeanor, speech, seeing, hearing, and thinking. Each of these personal matters has a specific virtue: The virtue of bodily appearance is respectfulness; of speech, accord with reason; of seeing, clearness; of hearing, distinctness; of thinking, perception. Respectfulness becomes manifest in gravity; accord with reason, in orderliness; clearness, in wisdom; distinctness, in deliberation; and perception, in sageness.35

Thus each typical human appearance or activity is expected to project itself perfectly into the world. The virtue of bodily demeanor, respectfulness, is manifest in gravity. The virtue of speech, accord with reason,

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is manifest in orderliness. The virtue of seeing, clearness, is manifest in wisdom. The virtue of hearing, distinctness, is manifest in deliberation. Finally, the virtue of thinking, perception, is manifest in sageness. I find this last passage to be especially fascinating. It presents us with a series of structures in which one of an individual’s physical, perceptual, or mental faculties is combined with a virtue to form a component of the personality. For example, the perceptual faculty, seeing, when perfected by the virtue, clearness, appears as an aspect of personality, wisdom. A person is more than an object; rather, each person is an integrated complex of psychophysical structures. When virtue perfects these, the result is an ideal personality possessing gravity, orderliness, wisdom, deliberation, and sageness. The Shu-ching presents human imagery with a multitude of variations yet with a special concern for social and political life. Almost every page of the Shu-ching describes different aspects of the ideal ruler. Ultimately they are all manifestations of a single inner “essence”—the royal virtue, the tao. As one passage after another presents image after image of a Chinese sovereign, one continually deepens one’s understanding of the tao; although one really does understand the texts, one’s understanding never becomes final. The tao eludes one’s grasp. The images never allow one to make a person into an object. The “essence” of a person remains a secret.

The “Essence” of the Chinese World So far, I have shown how Chinese symbols present a structure of the world as well as a human structure. An exploration of the relation between the two structures will complete the picture. The ancient Chinese concern for relationships may surprise or even puzzle us, but it is the central subject of a text such as the Shu-ching. It is less interested in identifying and defining things than in exhorting us to live in relationships and variations. When the text tells us that the brothers Hsi and Ho are commanded to receive as guest the sun when it goes on its travels through the world, is it referring to the sun or the “Son of the Sun?” It is impossible to make a finale decision even concerning even such a simple question of identity.

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There is a passage in “The Great Plan” that clarifies the concern for relationships: “Eighth, [of the instruments of government are] the various verifications. They are rain, sunshine, heat, cold, wind, and seasonableness. When the five come all complete, and each in its proper order, even the various plants will be richly luxuriant. Should any one of them be either excessively abundant or excessively deficient, there will be evil.

This paragraph presents us with an image of the world. Changes in the weather are good if they are timely and have an orderly alternation. When one recalls how each location of the empirical world is the manifestation of a deeper “essence,” it is clear that the image of this paragraph is the outward manifestation of an underlying, harmonious structure. On the other hand, according to the passage, climatic excesses indicate that something has destroyed the structure. The text goes on to tell us of favorable verifications, and of an emblem that corresponds with each. The first favorable verification is ceremony; its emblem is seasonable rain. The second favorable verification is orderliness; its emblem is seasonable sunshine. The third favorable verification is wisdom; its emblem is seasonable cold; finally, the fourth favorable verification is sageness; its emblem is seasonable wind. The second paragraph of the passage presents subtle correspondences between the structure of the world and the structure of person. According to this paragraph, a single emblem expresses both a human virtue and a favorable manifestation of nature. Ceremony and seasonable rain; orderliness and seasonable sunshine; wisdom and seasonable cold; and, finally, sageness and seasonable wind, all have common emblems. The passage also speaks of unfavorable verifications. Like the favorable verifications, each of these is associated with an emblem. The first of the unfavorable verifications is recklessness; it has the emblem, constant rain. The second unfavorable verification is indolence; it has the emblem, constant heat. The third unfavorable verification is hastiness; it has the emblem, constant cold. Finally, the last unfavorable verification is stupidity. It has the emblem, constant wind.36 This final part of the passage shows us how vices correspond to the destructive excesses of nature. A single emblem expresses both a human

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vice and an unfavorable manifestation of nature: recklessness and constant rain, arrogance and constant sunshine, indolence and constant heat, hastiness and constant cold, and finally, stupidity and constant wind. Recall how an emblem expresses the “essence” of each location and how a personality consists of several structures cum virtues, which are integrated into a harmonious whole. According to this passage, the boundary between the components that make up the structure of the world or nature and those that make up the structure of a person is fluid. In any event, human virtue corresponds to the harmony of nature. On the other hand, distortions in the personality correspond to harsh and extreme natural conditions. By establishing the correspondence between the human personality and the natural world, the Shu-ching presents us with a complete image of an individual as a microcosm. How is one to understand this correspondence? Is it merely another example of a “pre-scientific mode of thought?” I have come to a critical juncture in my interpretation of Chinese tradition, and it is important to remember the reasonable demand stated at the beginning of this essay: one should be able to take ancients and moderns equally seriously, with equal patience, with equal suspense of one’s judgment, even when one’s inclinations and fashions try to stir it up. In my opinion, it is necessary to clarify what the technique of epochē means when describing the physical world. The philosophical meditations of the philosopher Edmund Husserl will help in this clarification. I am not trying to “convert” anyone to the philosophy that Husserl called “phenomenological.” I am, however, eager to show that our own time has been concerned with problems too close to those of ancient China to overlook. The great, indeed, crucial object of philosophy is “all reality,” or “everything there is,” and the philosopher’s task is to solve the problems that arise in our efforts to understand this gigantic object. Husserl proposes two distinct steps. First, one should concentrate on suspending one’s certainty concerning the reality of the world surrounding the self. With this reduction, one merely describes the “life-world,” the world as it appears to one’s own empirical self: nature exists for the person. This is Husserl’s first reduction. With this reduction the self is “absolutized” and expands to such an extent that it encompasses the entire world; nature is absorbed into the self. The world is, as it were, “lost” into the self. In his second step, Husserl

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suspends affirming the reality of the self. Now the world is “absolutized,” and a person is merely a part of it: the person exists for nature. With this reduction, nature expands and absorbs the self. The self is “lost” into the world. The term “steps” I used is merely a metaphor. It is not as if two procedures, one following the other, would magically result in adequate understanding. In his meditations, Husserl emphasizes repeatedly that both philosophical reductions must occur simultaneously. When one does this, both the world and the self appear in flux—fluid and plastic— but connected in their plasticity. In this simultaneous reduction, one sees the self and the world as united. The relationship is fluid but not chaotic. There are flexible structures underlying and transcending the two. This simultaneous reduction is the theoretical attitude of the phenomenological epochē,37 i.e. the postponing of our final judgment. Each reduction emphasizes a different aspect of human knowledge concerning the world. The first reduction corresponds to the philosophical position of subjective idealism. This position emphasizes the part that the human mind plays in the creation of all knowledge, including knowledge of nature. The second reduction corresponds to the philosophical position of critical realism. This position emphasizes the reality of what presents itself to a person’s theoretical gaze. Husserl’s emphasis on simultaneous reductions is necessary, because the two aspects are complementary; one must understand knowledge of the world from each position. Although I find Husserl’s method of reductions useful, Derrida has subjected it to severe criticism. He showed that the concepts and language that Husserl was using were creating the structures he thought he was so patiently trying to describe. The structures Husserl thought he had discovered were not universal but historically determined by language.38 When Husserl described the structures that appeared within the phenomenological epochē, he used concepts from the Western philosophical tradition with its dominant tendency determined by a decision “for being.” The Chinese, with their decision “for becoming,” describe entirely different structures and in an entirely different manner. Derrida showed that the language we use to describe the structures that appear within the phenomenological epochē is important, and we

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should keep this in mind here and in other instances where I refer to Husserl and the method of phenomenological reductions. With this clarification of the phenomenological epochē and Derrida’s criticism in mind, let me review my interpretation of Chinese symbols. As we make our review of them, we will find our patience to be well rewarded. The center of the world presented by the Shu-ching will finally come into view. During the first interpretation of symbols, I paid attention to the external world that appeared to us as a manifold of patterns and structures rather than as a fixed object. (These patterns and structures would include climatic conditions.) At this time one forgot about human subjectivity; in a sense the self was “lost” into the world. On the other hand, during my second interpretation, I paid attention to persons. Again, I dealt with a manifold of structures rather than a fixed object. (These patterns and structures would include traits of character.) Now one forgot about the world. In a sense, it was “lost” into human subjectivity. We must now hold both interpretations together in our minds. We must keep in mind that a structured world appears to a structured subject. When we do this, both the world and self appear in flux—fluid and plastic—but connected in their plasticity. In this simultaneous reduction, one sees a person and the world as united. The relationship is fluid but not chaotic. There are flexible structures underlying and transcending the two. I would suggest that Chinese tradition expresses these structures through their emblems. When they are emphasizing the external world, they speak of “essences.” When they are emphasizing the human subject, they speak of virtues. These structures are deeper than ideas. They give form to one’s fundamental perceptions of the world, so that distortions in the subject will have corresponding distortions in the structure of the world in which the subject finds itself. Again, I would suggest that this accounts for the correspondences that one finds in the Shu-ching between human virtues and vices to states of nature. Each of my interpretations of Chinese symbols emphasized a different aspect of human experience of the world. The first interpretation emphasized the reality of what presents itself to a person’s theoretical gaze. The second emphasized the part that the human mind plays. My emphasis on simultaneous interpretations is necessary because, as also

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Husserl saw in his method of philosophical reductions, the two aspects of experience are complementary. Husserl has also shown that a fundamental reorientation or conversion occurs in this interplay of reductions. Again, I would suggest that this corresponds to something that occurs in the interplay between our two interpretations of the Chinese texts. In fact it is this correspondence that gives the texts their sacred and “numinous” quality—descriptive terms that neither Husserl nor most of our contemporary philosophers would use. The appearance of the subtle structures, the essences and virtues, is the appearance of something that at once transcends and is the foundation of both self and world. That power gives a harmonious structure to both a person and the world. A perfect sovereign orders the world by means of that power. That power shows itself in alternating aspects, even in the alternation of the human subject and the external world. That power is what we have been searching for all along—the tao.

Human Imagery and Political History The model of a person that Yao, Shun, and Yü present in the Shuching is similar to that discovered by the pre-Socratic philosophers. It is the imagery of the individual as a microcosm. The external world is not an object. It presents itself as a manifold of patterns that, like a sageking’s personality, are the outer manifestation of an underlying, indubitable reality. In China the “essence” of nature is the tao, the structure of the external world that mirrors the human structure. The Confucian tradition articulated this human imagery during a time of social and political turmoil. The social and political orders had collapsed, and it had become apparent that they were not, and never could be, the foundation that grounds human life. The real foundation had to be something that transcended the vicissitudes of political history. For Confucians, it was the human imagery. Although the image seemed to transcend the flux of history, one should remember that it was important mainly because of its political function within the flux of time. The image formed the nucleus of the Confucian educational system whose sole purpose was to create a class

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of people who would be fit to govern the Chinese empire. The intention of the Confucian tradition was to create a type of person. This ideal was particular and universal at the same time. One can only understand how the model functioned in history by studying the lives of each individual Confucian. One example, the life of a man who Chinese history considers one of the greatest political leaders of Asia, will suffice. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai (1189-1243 CE) served under Chingis Khan and the latter’s successor, Ögödei. He initiated important administrative reforms and continually tried to make the harsh Mongol rule over the Chinese more humane. His motive was compassion for the people of North China.39 As Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was embarking on his career in government service, the Mongols were beginning their invasion of Chin (the ruling imperial house.) He was stationed in Peking when the Mongols captured it at the end of May, 1215. In the month that followed, they looted the city, burned much of it down, and killed thousands of people. The suffering in this massive destruction was overwhelming, and caused Yeh-lü-Ch’uts’ai to have a severe mental crisis.40 In the aftermath of shattering events, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai began to rebuild has inner life. He had acquired a superficial understanding of Buddhism prior to the siege of Peking. Now he began to study Buddhism in earnest as a lay disciple under the Buddhist master, Wan-sung. After three years, he achieved enlightenment.41 During this time, Yeh-lü Ch’uts’ai never abandoned his Confucian ideals of public service. Instead, he synthesized the two traditions. Buddhism would give inner strength as well as compassion. Confucianism would provide him with the means of putting that strength and compassion into practice. In 1216, even while he was undergoing training as a Buddhist, he wrote: Now, the reason why a superior man pursues his study is not a selfish one. His aim is: “My prince should be a prince like Yao and Shun; my people should be like the people of Yao and Shun.” And, even if there were only one man or woman who did not enjoy the benefits of Yao and Shun, would not the superior man feel ashamed? Therefore, is it not a delight for him to be in power and have sufficient standing to practice the Way of the Sages, and sufficient means to confer extensive benefits upon the people?42

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A few years latter, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was given the opportunity for which he had been waiting. On April 12, 1218, Chingis Khan summoned him to Mongolia. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was Khitan (a nomadic Mongolic people, originally from Mongolia and Manchuria) and this united him to the Mongols both by race and a common hatred for the Jurchen. (The Jurchens were a Tungusic people who inhabited the region of Manchuria. The form Jurchen dates back to at least the beginning of the tenth century CE, when the Khitans destroyed the Balhae kingdom.) So when he met Cinggis for the first time, the Mongolian emperor told him: Liao [the Khitan imperial house] and Chin [the Jurchen imperial house] have been enemies for generations; I have taken revenge for you.

Then Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai replied: My father and grandfather have both served it [i.e., Chin] respectfully. How can I, as a subject and a son, be so insincere at heart as to consider my sovereign and my father as enemies?43

The Mongol emperor was pleased with Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai’s frank reply. In any case, shortly after this meeting Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai took up service with the Mongols. This exchange between the two men has become famous in Chinese history. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was not called a traitor as we might have expected. The Chinese narrative is important because it shows how an authoritative mythical structure, the one presented in the Shu-ching, determined Yehlü Ch’u-ts’ai’s understanding of the horrible events of the past few years, events that were instigated by the  man that Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was then meeting face to face. When Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was serving under Chin, he did so because Chin claimed to be in possession of the Mandate of Heaven. As a Confucian his allegiance to the imperial house was even more important than that to his own people, the Khitans. The success of Chingis Khan in his destruction of the Chin, however, could not have occurred without the help of heaven. Thus the Mandate of Heaven had shifted from Chin to the Mongols. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai was no longer bound to Chin. He was free, perhaps even obligated, to serve under Chingis Khan.44

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Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai realized that the new government would require more than political legitimacy if it were to govern humanely and effectively once the period of destruction and transition was over. He considered it his duty to make the emperor adopt the Confucian principles of government.45 In his attempt to lead Chingis Khan to the Way of the Sages, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai shows the essential concern of Confucian public officials—governance through education and inner transformation of those in power.46 Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai is a typical example of how Confucians functioned in Chinese political history. They never attempted to seize power. But once a ruler who had firmly established his dominance had arisen, the Confucians would attempt to consolidate and humanize the regime. This practice was both idealistic and cautious. It was idealistic because it attempted to govern by transforming a ruler rather than by dethroning him. It was cautious because such a practice rarely created mortal enemies. Confucians had a great ability to survive the vicissitudes of politics.47 The authority of the Shu-ching presented the Confucians with a vision of history whose truth went without saying. They simply assumed that its symbolic structure corresponded to the structure of the world and each tried to live out his life in accordance with that structure. In so doing they did much to humanize and civilize Chinese politics. With this understanding of Chinese political history as well as the Confucian image of human nature, it is possible to understand the structural relation between symbolization and political history. The Shuching expresses this central truth in its depiction of early Chinese history as “the exchange of the mandate of heaven.” When the tao appears in a man, he becomes qualified to govern. It not only gives structure to a person and the world; it opens up a fixed center of meaning transcending both. The tao provides a person with a stable foundation as well as a sense for the proper order of things. It provides a person with authority. One exercises power; one establishes the political, social, and economic orders by virtue of the tao. Symbolization is not only a process of human self-creation; it is also the ground and foundation for all political activity. The secret of each person is the secret of the state.

Chapter 4

The Ritual Enactment of the World

The opening passage of the Shu-ching showed us principally a world of images and ideas. Any “static” impression this may have left us with requires the complement of a dynamic and a world activity that is in fact inseparable from the imagery. We have entered a world of history, of social conflict, a world of people and mutual engagements. The act that we refer to as “ritual” is not outside the human hustle and bustle. It is part of it. The purpose of this chapter is to modify Eliade’s model of ritual as an altogether different matter, as if in isolation, by integrating it within a sociological framework and then to use this modified model of ritual to interpret the passage from the Shu-ching. I would like to begin by making a distinction between one’s existence as an individual and one’s existence as a member of a larger group. This distinction is fundamental to Emile Durkheim’s classic study, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. In the introduction to that book, he even goes so far as to assert that a person is really two distinct beings. On the one hand, he or she is an individual with a biological foundation with limited activities and possibilities. On the other hand, a person is a social being. As such, a person is a representative of a much higher intellectual and moral order—the social order.1 Durkheim considered the social order to be autonomous. It functioned according to its own laws that were irreducible to anything else. It is not necessary to examine all of Durkheim’s theories concerning society. A number of his ideas don’t hold up to scrutiny and would require a great deal of qualification. Nevertheless, Durkheim did establish important insights concerning individuals and societies. One of these is that one transcends one’s self as one integrates oneself into a social network. The Confucian tradition is a good example in support of Durkheim’s insight. The tradition seldom considered a person simply as an individual. Rather, it saw each person as he or she functioned in ever-larger groups.

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First there was the family, then the local community. This continued through larger and larger social units until it ended in the country, empire or even the entire human world.2 Moreover, this social network was conceived of as an organism, “a whole, with parts that functionally” interrelated to achieve an aim or purpose.3 Durkheim also showed how a society integrates individuals into a larger community through ritual. For many traditional peoples, this process of transformation occurs during the ritual enactment of the world. At this time a divine cosmic unity is realized at the moment that a social unity is achieved. Thus, a relation exists between the order of society and a people’s cosmogonic myth. Hans Schärer writes concerning ritual among the Ngaju Dayak: The sacred service is the re-enactment and dramatization of the primeval sacred events. At its centre stands the fruit-laden Tree of Life. The birds fly to it and settle on its branches. The battle breaks out between them. The Tree of Life is annihilated. The whole cosmos is created. All of this is now repeated in the sacred service. The two ritual groups approach. In their differentiation they form totality.4

This insight has been the basis for many of the subsequent anthropological studies on non-literate and small-scale societies. The work by Victor Turner, for example, studies ritual and the processes of socialization. Although he offers new insights into the process, Turner owes the fundamental insight into the socializing function of ritual to Durkheim.5 Now this function is not limited to small-scale tribal peoples. Durkheim himself was thoroughly aware of this. His insight is extraordinarily helpful in the study of the opening passage of the Shu-ching. I have emphasized the autonomy of myths and symbols, but this does not mean that they are irrelevant to the social order. On the contrary. Although we cannot reduce myths and symbols to society, they do have a social function. They are the means by which individuals integrate themselves into a social order. They underpin the social order. Myths and symbols, as expressions of “metaphysics,” absolute presuppositions, underpin human social behavior. I have divided this chapter into three main sections. The first is a study of the Confucian conception of the social and cosmic orders. The second is concerned with how ritual renews both these orders simultaneously.

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The third shows how a vision of unity experienced in ritual has functioned in Chinese history.

The Cosmic and Social Orders A sovereign, as the embodiment of the tao, is a model of what a person should be. “The Great Plan” tells us of the inner perfection of the sovereign and its importance as an instrument of government. It tells us that the fifth instrument of government is royal perfection. The sovereign must establish in himself “the highest degree and pattern of excellence.” He concentrates “the five sources of happiness” within himself, and these emanate from him to the people.6 The sovereign’s virtue is not only the authority by which he governs; the human imagery that he embodies is the reason for the state’s existence. In the process of governing, the perfect ruler is to effect an inner transformation in his subjects. They too are to embody the tao. Yü, for example, subdues the barbarian chieftain Miao by means of virtue rather than physical force.7 The passage of “The Great Plan” that presents the sovereign as model concludes by telling us that this “amplification of the royal perfection contains” an unchanging rule. God, in fact, ordains it. When all the people carry this rule into practice, they will become like the Son of Heaven and participate in his glory.8 The second paragraph of the opening passage of the Shu-ching tells us how Yao “distinguished the able and the virtuous” and then proceeded to harmonize the social order. The sovereign is to set an example for his ministers, and many passages in the Shu-ching remind the sovereign of this.9 An exemplary ruler will attract good people who recognize his inner virtue, and he may appoint them to office.10 These good ministers will offer him good counsel,11 and the inner resonance between a sovereign and his ministers unites them into a harmonious whole. They begin to act as one, and the affairs of state go well. A sovereign’s ministers are his legs, arms, ears, and eyes. If he wishes to help his people, ministers allow a sovereign to put his wishes into action.12 The Confucian image of society is one of several groups or clusters of individuals that are bonded together by various virtues. People living at

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different parts of the world have different virtues or essences. They constitute groups that, taken together, form a social order.13 The imagery of the opening passage of the Shu-ching presents this order. The Shu-ching presents detailed norms for meaningful relations among the individuals that constitute these groups. It classifies all relations into one of five categories. These are the relationship between husband and wife, father and son, sovereign and subject, older and younger brothers, and between friends. Each of these relationships, like each of the groups, has its own virtue.14 The five social classes and the five relationships constitute a social norm. The Canon of Shun tells how Shun, as General Regulator, carefully set forth the beauty of the five cardinal duties.15 Then, as sovereign, he appointed Hsieh as minister of Instruction. The sovereign told Hsieh that the people were lacking in affection for one another. They were neglecting to follow the five orders of relationship. He then told Hsieh that it was his duty as Minister of Instruction to gently instruct the people in the five relationships.16 Shun also established the statutory punishments. These are: branding on the forehead, cutting off the nose, cutting off the feet, castration, and death inflicted in various ways.17 Before we shudder at such penalties, we should remember first that we have no precise data on the actual performance. Secondly, in the world’s history of law, Roman law was not too pleasant either in its punishments. The punishments referred to in China were specifically for violations of the social norms. The Counsels of Kao Yao tell us that Heaven distinguishes the virtuous from the guilty. There are the five ceremonial robes to honor the virtuous. There are the five punishments to punish the guilty.18 The “essence” of the Chinese world, the tao, never appears to one directly; it always shows itself in alternating aspects that the Chinese designate as “yin,” and “yang.” The political order has this same structure. In “The Great Plan,” Yü speaks of three virtues as three kinds of government. The three virtues are: first, the one that encompasses at the same time correctness and straightforwardness; second, strong rule; and, third, mild rule. Correctness and straightforwardness is for times of peace; strong rule is for times of violence and disorder; and mild rule is for times of harmony. Strong rule should serve as a stimulus for the reserved and retiring. Mild rule should serve as a restraint for the

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high-minded and distinguished.19 Although there is an underlying virtue that underpins the political order, it never appears directly; justice is meted out in a manner that is fluid, hence in harmony with the world’s reality as it was perceived. This passage does not tell us of an immutable rule of law but of balance in all circumstances. Balance should guide the ruler’s action. Peaceful times require a mild exercise of power; harsh, turbulent times require a use that is more severe. The subjects being ruled also balance each virtue. Some subjects require strong rule; others mild. Without such balance, the rule of a sovereign is the manifestation of a vice. When the action is balanced by the circumstance, however, both action and circumstance present alternating aspects of a deeper virtue—the tao. The same symbolic structure appears in a pattern of reciprocal relations between a ruler and his people. One is nothing without the other. The ruler is the foremost of those to be loved just as the people are foremost of those to be feared. Without their sovereign the people have no one to sustain on high. Without the people, the sovereign has no country to guard.20 Another passage makes the reciprocity between rulers and subjects even stronger. It tells us that heaven has its counterpart with the people and that the king should fear both. Heaven hears and sees just as the people. Heaven approves or displays its terrors just as the people approve or disapprove. This is the connection between heaven and the people. The nobles should take note and be reverent.21 Once again, the reciprocal relations of ruler and subject are alternating aspects of something deeper that bonds them together—the tao. The social order, then, is not merely a collection of individuals. The sovereign has authority because he embodies the paramount human ideal. He should attempt to transform each of his subjects into that image; like the sun, the person of Yao radiates the surrounding world; the state itself is to embody the solar symbolism. This transforms the people into a community. Although it has many different parts, the ideal state has an organic unity; it manifests an underlying structure. It is the living embodiment of the tao. The images presented in the Shu-ching function as an authoritative model for the creation of society. The passage, however, makes a much

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stronger claim. It also claims to be an authoritative model for the creation of the world. How is one to understand this second claim? To answer this question let us turn to the sociology of knowledge. In The Social Construction of Reality, Berger and Luckmann argue that “reality,” that is, the world each person experiences, is socially constructed and that it is the task of the sociology of knowledge to analyze how this comes about. The key terms here are “reality” and “knowledge.” Not only do people use them in everyday speech; they have a long history of philosophical inquiry as well.22 According to Berger and Luckmann, the world and one’s knowledge of it is mediated through society. There is a decidedly Marxist tendency to Berger and Luckmann’s work, and economic aspects of human existence have a prominent place in the sociology of knowledge. If one maintains one’s insistence on the autonomy of myths and symbols, however, it is possible to agree with the Marxists’ insistence on the importance of the economic and material aspects of human existence but without reducing all of human life to economic necessities. This opens up a relation between the study of myths and symbols using the phenomenological method and the social sciences, even when the latter uses quantitative methods. Phenomenological understanding of myths precedes sociological analysis. If one understands this logical relation between the two disciplines, then the phenomenological understanding of myths and symbols can provide a solid foundation for sociological analysis. More to the point, relating the phenomenology of religion to the sociology of knowledge in this way should place us in a position where we can take the claims of the passage from the Shu-ching quite seriously. The passage is a model for the creation of the social order. The social order, in turn, “constructs” reality and mediates one’s knowledge of the world. According to the Shu-ching, the order of the cosmos has a similar structure to the social order. Both manifest the tao. A chair made of light reeds and covered by a canopy forms another image that expresses this correspondence. The round canopy symbolizes the sky, and the square seat supporting the occupant symbolizes the earth. Pillars called the “pillars of the sky” support the canopy. There are eight such pillars corresponding to eight directions, eight mountains, eight windows to let in the

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rain, and eight winds. The seat of the chair has four sides corresponding to the points of the compass. The chair carries the sovereign, the Son of Heaven. It is also said that such a chair carries the sun in the sky.23 The central symbolism of the text presents an important structural relation between the social and cosmic orders. The imagery is an expression of the tao, something that shows itself as an underlying unity to alternating aspects of the world. These include the alternation of ruler and subject within the social order or the alternation of space and time within the cosmic order. These alternations also include those between the social and cosmic orders. The social and cosmic orders are different aspects of the tao. A passage from the Canon of Shun is a good example of the fluid relation between the social and cosmic orders. It tells us how Shun, the successor to Yao, ascends the throne and then immediately begins the task of ordering both society and the world. The passage is parallel to the opening passage of Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho. In this passage, however, the sun is not the one that tours time and space. Rather, it is the sovereign. The sovereign Yao spoke to Shun and told him that during the past three years he had consulted with Shun on all important matters. Yao had seen that the advice of Shun was good. Yao then told Shun that he should be the next sovereign. Although Shun wanted to decline in order that Yao might appoint someone more worthy, on the first day of the first month Yao retired, and Shun assumed the imperial duties. He examined “the pearl-adorned turning sphere” and used it to reduce the “Seven Directors” to a harmonious system. In the second month of the year Shun began to tour the land. He went eastward until he reached Mount Tai. He presented a burnt offering to Heaven, sacrificed to the hills and rivers, and met with the princes of that region. He established the seasons, months, and days for the region. He set up uniform standards of measurement, and “regulated the five classes of ceremonies.” In the fifth month, Shun made a similar tour to the mountain of the south and repeated there the ceremonies that he had performed in the east. In the eighth month, he traveled to the mountain of the west and performed ceremonies similar to those he performed in the east. In the eleventh month, he went to the mountain of the north where he again

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repeated the ceremonies. Finally, he returned to the capital. Upon his return to the capital, he went into the temple and sacrificed a bull. The passage concludes by informing us that every five years there was one such tour of inspection. In addition, there were four appearances of the nobles at court.24 The parallelism between this passage and the image of the world presented by Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho tells us that there is an underlying unity to the cosmic and social orders and that any separation of the natural and the social is artificial. These two orders are different aspects of the tao. In the context of Chinese myth, divination is a ritual whereby one tries to sense the tao as it reveals itself in the alternating aspects of something. An understanding of it would be helpful for understanding the structural relation between the social and cosmic orders presented by the text. The oldest Chinese texts are manuals of divination where one often finds aphorisms of the following form: One yin, one yang, that is the tao.25 The aphorism leaves the relations between the yin aspects and the yang aspects of the world open to various interpretations. The ambiguity of the aphorism, for example, allows one to interpret it either spatially or temporally. One can understand it as an expression of how the character of spaces change from yin to yang as one circulates the cosmos, or one can understand it as an expression of the Chinese experience of time as the alternation of yin and yang aspects of the world. This ambiguity allows the aphorism to express the fluid relation between the spatial and temporal orders.26 One can also understand yin and yang as substances. Then they denote a particular place. Many such places joined together make up the world. Each place is a unique part of the total cosmos. The world is in constant motion because one place is continually mutating into another. One can also understand yin and yang as the forces causing mutations. Then they denote the potentiality of a place. Each place has a specific potential that a person with wisdom knows how to exploit.27

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Previously I have clarified for you the idea of the phenomenological epochē. Patience and the suspension of judgment allow one to grasp the underlying structures connecting the subject and the world. These structures are deeper than ideas, and there are levels to these structures. Some are deeper than others. I do not mean by this that some are more profound or deeper in a psychological sense. I mean that some of a person’s experiences are logically or structurally more important than others and that these are often the basis or the foundation for other experiences that are less fundamental. One’s experiences of other people, for example, are prior to, and more fundamental than, one’s experiences of the natural world. For this reason I would say that structures that determine one’s social relations are deeper than those that determine one’s perceptions of the empirical world. Although the various structures that constitute one’s existence are always operative, one can only perceive them when one assumes the theoretical gaze of the suspension of judgment. One grasps them by means of theoretical “intuition.” Symbols are a culture’s means of giving concrete expression to the structures that form its world. Ultimately, one can only understand them, too, through some form of intuition. Both for us and for the ancient Chinese, understanding the tao is a matter of experience or intuition. For us it is through the phenomenological epochē. For the Chinese it is through divination. In divination, one meditates on the aphorism. Because the ambiguity of the aphorism prohibits our concepts from containing it, the meditation takes the mind to underlying structures uniting the human mind and the world. An intuition of these structures is an experience of the tao. Since real human action is always in accordance with an intuition of the tao, the individual’s or the community’s experiences during this ritual provides it with a foundation and orientation. According to tradition, “The Great Plan” was revealed to Yü during the course of his great labors. He was resting on a riverbank when a tortoise came to the surface of the water, and “The Great Plan” appeared on its shell. The tortoise shell was important for purposes of divination. The imagery of this story expresses how both the cosmic and social orders reveal themselves simultaneously during ritual.28 The passage of how Shun ritually enacted the world, together with its parallel version, the passage of Yao and the brothers Hsi and the

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brothers Ho, have functioned in Chinese history as a model for a ritual that simultaneously orders society and renews the world. Let us now attempt to understand this.

The Ritual Enactment of the World A Lord must found his capital city in a place that, by climate, confluence of rivers, and the stars is the center of the world. There, he lays out a cross that represents the four points of the compass. It is said that a marvelous tree will grow out of this central place, and its roots will go down to the underworld and its branches extend up to heaven.29 At this central place, all the surrounding attributes of space are integrated and interrelated. The sovereign remains in the central square and enacts the world. Vassals dwell in the other squares and their prestige depends on how often the sovereign calls them to the capital. The movements of the vassals to and from the capital set up a rhythm that creates the spatial order.30 Similarly, the temporal order begins with the foundation of a capital. A ceremony establishing a calendar inaugurates each reign. Each cycle of time, like the reign of each sovereign, is an era, complete in itself. Before one can establish a new order, one must first abolish the old one.31 Each historical epoch combines the cycle of time with a distinct liturgical order. Every five years the sovereign leaves the capital and tours his domain. As he tours the domain, he is said to tour time and space in imitation of the sun. In each part of his territory, he unlocks its potentiality by performing a ritual with the people living there that transforms the area and makes it a world.32 The liturgical choir consists of two groups that represent opposing aspects of the world. They represent opposing aspects of space: the south and the north; the east and the west. At the same time, they represent opposing aspects of time: the spring and autumn, the summer and winter. Each part of a Lord’s domain becomes a world when the community enacts its particular time and space.33 A student of humanity whose work will help us to understand this ritual enactment of the world is Kees Bolle. His emphasis on history

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rather than on cosmos as a basis for the understanding of traditional worlds is one of the important differences that separate his work from that of Eliade. In his study of cosmogonic myths, The Freedom of Man in Myth, Bolle emphasized that they are something that a human community performs and that the power of myth is that it is something recited, chanted, or enacted: In the recitation of myth, something happens. The imagery is made manifest. It presents itself, not as a concept but rather as an action which man performs or to which he submits; he becomes oriented.34

According to Bolle, this action by an historical community, this recitation of myth, is the foundation of all other human activities. The image to which the community submits is symbolic: it manifests something that seems to come from a realm that surpasses one’s ordinary senses and mental confinements. In the process of narration, myth makes a new beginning of all human life possible by its power to liberate a person “from the exhausting and deadening order of things in his common experience.” By destroying the “oppressive finiteness” of a person’s existence, myth calls forth life.35 During a ritual, individuals form a community through a common shared experience of something that, although it appears in this world, seems to come from beyond it. This “something” also changes their experience of the world as subtle connections among what were previously diverse elements appear. As in divination, an intuition of these connections is an experience of the tao. During ritual the community and the world become a harmonious whole. In one passage from the Shu-ching, a certain minister, K’uei, tells us that during a ceremony, when the musical stone is struck and the lutes begin to accompany the singing, then the ancestors of the sovereign come to the service. The “guest of Yü” arrives, and all the princes defer to one another. In the court below flutes and hand-drums begin to play. When they stop, organs and bells take their place. Then animals begin to dance, and “the male and female phoenix come with their measured gambolings into the court.” The passage concludes with the minister K’uei proclaiming:

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As the sovereign tours his territory and ritually transforms one place after another into a world, he is like the sun. He lights up one part of the earth after another as he passes. Although each world has its own unique characteristics, the royal virtue, the tao, unites it with all the others. The tao is the royal road, the road of virtue, the foundation of the world. A passage from “The Great Plan” admonishes one to pursue the royal path of righteousness without deflection or unevenness. Pursue it without partiality or any selfish inclinations. The royal path is level and easy. It is without perversity or one-sidedness. It is balanced, right, and straight. When one sees the perfect excellence of the royal path, one should turn to it.37 The passage of Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho, then, is important for what it tells us about the relation between the ritual ordering of society to knowledge. During ritual, individuals form a community. At the same time their perceptions of the world change. An underlying structure to the world appears. As a sovereign ritually enacts society according to the model presented in this passage, he simultaneously transforms the fragmented and broken elements of existence into a cosmos. The Chinese religious imagery we have studied is only one example of an almost universal structure: in the worlds of traditional peoples, both nature and human life are contingent on something transcendent to both. One orients oneself in this world through submission to an image that points to something beyond this world. During this process, the world is made cosmic and time begins again. This is the time of liturgy, Eliade’s sacred time, when a people participate in the creation of the world.

The Cosmic Order and Political History I have stressed the particularity of history, and I have stressed the unity of the cosmic and social orders. To complete our understanding of the ritual enactment of the world, it will be helpful to look at an example

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of how the vision presented in ritual functions in the political history of China. Therefore, I would like to return to the great Confucian public official, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai. When Ögödei succeeded Chingis Khan to the imperial throne, the situation in North China confronted him with two important tasks. The first was to complete the destruction of the old imperial house, Chin. The second was to establish firmly a new regime in the newly conquered territory. Ögödei’s generals could easily manage the task of destruction. The creation of a new order, however, was much more difficult.38 At first the nomadic Mongols subjected their newly acquired territories to their own customs and laws. The new rulers seized large tracts of land for grazing and gave many of the subjugated people to their victorious generals and nobles as slaves. The result was chaos. Many people lost their homes. Others, fearing a similar fate began fleeing the territories under Mongol control. Refugees flooded into the monasteries.39 The situation was becoming ever more desperate in the conquered territories. Some of the Mongol leadership wanted to annihilate the entire Chinese population and turn all of North China into pasture. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai opposed this and convinced the Mongols that they had more to gain from a more rational exploitation of the country. In 1229 he was given responsibility to administer the taxation of North China. His first step was to obtain from Ögödei a general amnesty from crimes committed by Chinese against the unfamiliar laws of the new regime prior to the first month of 1229. He then began the task of restoring order and establishing a strong central government.40 Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai’s reputation as a political leader rests on his attempts to establish a Confucian state under Mongol rule. Since the Mongols had no interest in changing their traditional laws and customs, Yeh-lü Ch’uts’ai was faced with an almost insurmountable task. He adopted a strategy of appealing to the Mongol’s greed. When he argued that Ögödei should spare the people of Honan, he pointed out that Ögödei could use them as a source of troops and revenue. In addition, he prevented the Mongols from destroying the people of Pien-liang when he pointed out that many of them were skilled artisans. Their wholesale destruction would have meant a great material loss to the new rulers. Finally, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai convinced Ögödei to reinstate the civil service examination. He argued

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that Confucian officials could be useful in promoting the material interests of the Mongols.41 Although Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai appealed to the Mongols’ cupidity, it is clear that something entirely different motivated him. It was the vision of the cosmic and social orders presented in the Shu-ching. Remember his words at the time he was studying Buddhism: My prince should be a prince like Yao and Shun; my people should be like the people of Yao and Shun.

This vision at once sustained him in difficult times and provided a norm that allowed him to evaluate the actions of others. A single aim directed all his diplomacy—the realization of a social order that embodied the tao. If he could only partially realize it, the vision nevertheless had an important influence on the concrete and often brutal reality of Chinese political history under the Mongols.

Conclusions The Chinese enact the world through ritual, and the image of the Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho presents a human ideal. The passage presenting this human imagery also presents a model of the social order. The human image and the image of society mirror each other. In the ideal image of society, individuals form an interconnected whole, an organic unity that embodies the tao. The cosmic order has a similar structure to the human imagery and the order of society. It too is an interconnected whole whose different aspects such as time and space manifest an underlying unity, the tao. The central symbolism of the text, then, unites these different aspects of human existence into a vision of the whole that is coherent and meaningful. The text tells us that the ordering of society is an act of cosmic renewal. This study has been an attempt to come to terms with that claim. The text is a model for the ritual enactment of the world. During ritual individuals form a community through a common experience of the tao. At the same time, their perceptions of the world change. They see it as a

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living world, an organic whole. With this understanding one sees how the passage about Yao and the brothers Hsi and Ho is true. At the moment that they form a community, the fragments of existence come together to form a cosmos. I have presented some of the central elements that Eliade has used to construct a model of the worlds of traditional cultures. These include the idea of sacred space that forms the fixed center of a world; the idea of sacred time, the time of the beginning when the world comes into being; and the idea of sanctified life, the idea that the social order as well as each member of the community is a reflection of an eternal cosmic order. In this model, Eliade stresses the importance of cosmogonic myths. Sacred time and space, together, form the foundation of every coherent world, and an important pattern found in cosmogonic myths shows an underlying harmony between the spatial and temporal orders. Through these myths, traditional communities ritually enact the world so that cosmogonic myths function as models for meaningful human behavior. They present a human ideal. The idea of an eternal, divine cosmos underpinned Eliade’s model, and this caused it to distort our understanding of religious symbols. To correct this distortion I found it necessary to place his model within an historical framework. Rather than the foundation of a divine cosmos, myth became the foundation of a community situated within the flux of time and the vicissitudes of political history.

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Chapter 5

The Historiography of Astronomy in Ancient China

Science does not develop in isolation. The same passage of Yao and the brothers Hsi and Ho that is so important in Chinese political history is equally important in the history of Chinese astronomy. The same four paragraphs that present religious images for the ritual enactment of the world also contain elements that one immediately recognizes as empirical and scientific. After commanding the brothers Hsi and Ho to their various residences, Yao tells them how to determine the four seasons and the year by means of precise observations. The day of medium length and the star (Hsing, corresponding to α (Alphard) Hydrae, and small stars near it, in Western stellar nomenclature) in the lunar mansion Niao determines mid-spring. The day of longest length and the star (β, δ in Scorpio) in the lunar mansion Huo determines mid-summer. The night of medium length and the star (β Aquarii) in the lunar mansion Hsu determines mid-fall. The day of the shortest length and the star (Pleiades) in the lunar mansion Mao determines mid-winter. These elements of the text strike one as “scientific” because, in contrast to symbols that always have several layers of meaning, they contain precise, single-valued measurements—the length of days and nights and the position of stars. Ancient astronomers obtained such measurements by observing the length of the sun’s shadow during the day and the culmination of the stars at night. Astronomers made observations of the lengths of the sun’s shadow with a gnomon, a post stuck vertically in the ground. They used it to measure the sun’s shadow and position at midday. Astronomers observed the culmination of the stars at the times when the circumpolar constellations reached their highest points in the sky. These two sets of observations transform the sensuous, empirical world of random views and intuitions. The chaotic world of experience becomes a world of intelligible, measurable facts. Experimental technique, a way of manipulating the environment to see how it changes, grounds

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physical science, and such techniques are akin to magic. Here, we see how the heart of ancient Chinese astronomy is the establishment of techniques that intervene between people and nature and that transform nature into something intelligible.

Joseph Needham and the History of Science Any study of the natural sciences in China must rely heavily on Joseph Needham’s monumental work, Science and Civilization in China. Nowhere else can one find such a vast amount of material. However, Needham had some firmly held ideas about both general history and the history of science, and these ideas underpin his interpretation of the Chinese materials. It is imperative that we begin a study of Chinese astronomy with a critical examination of Needham’s ideas concerning history. The need for a critical use of Needham’s work is not new. A collection of essays, Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, has shown this need convincingly even among Needham’s admirers. The essays were written in honor of Joseph Needham, and they evaluated his work from various angles. In the second of the essays, “Joseph Needham, Organic Philosopher,” Shigeru Nakayama provides us with a good introduction to Needham’s view of the world.1 According to Nakayama, there were three important influences on Needham’s early intellectual formation. These were a rather idealistic and humanistic form of Marxism, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, and Needham’s professional training and career as a biologist. No doubt, these “influences” by themselves are not enough to explain Needham’s energy, intellect, and creativity. Suffice it to say for our purposes that a strong dislike of the mechanistic view of the world characterizes his work. So does a strong commitment to an evolutionary view of the world that included both nature and society, a commitment to the dialectical materialism of Marx, and an inclination to synthesis over analysis.2 Needham saw nature as evolving from simple atoms up to organisms. Similarly, he saw humanity as evolving from the individual to higher and more complex forms of social organization. First there was the family,

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then the tribe, then the primitive state, then the city state, and then the modern nation. According to Needham the entire process would culminate in the communist society.3 Throughout this process, Needham used Marx’s dialectical materialism as a synthesis between mechanical materialism and idealism. In his view, religion (and this includes the myths and symbols that are the object of this essay) is not to be discarded by materialism; it is to be absorbed by it.4 Needham writes: Religion begins with fear, is stabilized by priests as an instrument of subjugation, and is transformed by prophets into ever higher forms of the sense of the holy. . . . [The] Communist has a more highly developed sense of the holy than any of the traditional religions.5

This passage makes clear how Needham’s Marxist and evolutionary ideas determine his understanding of religion. Keep in mind that Needham’s thought is highly nuanced and his positions do change. What I have presented is merely a brief summary of Nakayama’s understanding of Needham. It is highly selective. My purpose is not to make a definitive presentation of Needham as a philosopher but to become aware of some of the ideas that influenced his understanding of the history of science. Needham’s personal, and, indeed, humanistic Marxist persuasion explains his attention to the technical foundations of both Chinese and Western science, integrating the topics of sheer mechanics with the involvement of people. As a result, Science and Civilization includes a great deal of material from artisans and technicians.6 Needham also thought that modern science had to evolve through a stage of mechanism to a new kind of organicism.7 Nakayama makes the following rather plausible conjecture about Needham: [Needham would] like to define “modern science” as a synthesis between Chinese organicism and Western mechanism. According to him, modern science is neither Western nor Eastern, but universal. Mechanistic physical science as it was born in Europe could not be called modern science. It could mature into modern science only once it became able to accept contributions from other cultures too.

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I don’t particularly agree with this assessment, but here I want only to emphasize that because of his evolutionary view of the history of science, Needham emphasized the scientific value of some Chinese concepts that others, including Nakayama, have considered to be useless, even detrimental, to the development of modern scientific understanding.8 The second volume of Science and Civilization in China deals with the history of Chinese scientific ideas. When it was published, Needham’s interpretation of this history evoked some rather harsh criticism. One such criticism came from the historian of Western science, Charles Gillispie. He is well known for his book, The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. It is an account of the development of scientific ideas from Galileo to Einstein. Gillispie was familiar with Marxist interpretations of Western science. In his judgment, the Marxist attempt to reduce human thought to economic forces always involves a distortion. At the end of his book, Gillispie asserted that people make history. It is not the product of impersonal forces.9 Apparently, Gillispie never noticed Needham’s pronounced interest in the part of people in history. Gillispie had little knowledge of Chinese science, but he dismissed Needham’s work out of hand because of the latter’s Marxism.10 More criticism came from specialists in Chinese cultural history. Arthur Wright was highly critical of two of Needham’s absolute presuppositions concerning the ultimate goal of history. The first is that one is to understand the entire history of science as a process leading up to, and culminating in, modern Western science. The second, similar to Gillispie’s, is that this process is Marxist in character, as its ultimate aim and purpose is assumed to be the realization of a socialist state.11 Because these two assumptions underpinned Needham’s sense of history, the only progressive elements he could find in Chinese history were ideas and techniques that anticipated modern European ideas. For this reason, Needham thought Taoism to be forward looking. On the other hand, Confucianism and Buddhism inhibited progress towards modernity.12 Wright considered Needham’s understanding of Chinese culture to be completely distorted.13 Gillispie’s and Wright’s conflicts with Needham in the history of science are strikingly similar to those between Eliade and more

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materialistically oriented scholars in the history of religions. At issue are the autonomy of the human mind and a person’s existence as a physical and social being. In his differences of opinion with Eliade, Lévi-Strauss would certainly insist on the autonomy of human mental structures. In this repect, his work is surprisingly close to Gillispie’s. In the same paragraph where Gillispie told us that people make history, he also explained what he wanted to accomplish in his own study: [Its] purpose is to set out in narrative form what I take to be the structure in the history of classical [modern] science. This I find in the route which the advancing edge of objectivity has in fact taken through the study of nature from one science to another.14

Gillispie understood this task as a structural history of thought. According to him, there are two characteristics of such a history. It recognizes a fundamental distinction between the logical order and the historical order. Nevertheless, it seeks to discover a structure within the historical order. This structure is inherent in the relations among such diverse elements as “philosophy, technicality, personality, and circumstance.”15 In other words, Gillispie prefers to speak of set patterns of development rather than leave an opening for random turns or unexpected creativity in history. Now if Gillispie’s idea of structural history sounds familiar, it is because he is attempting to discover in the history of modern science what Lévi-Strauss attempted to find in the history of myth—an invariant structure transcending the particularity of history. Gillispie’s “edge of objectivity” is a modern counterpart to Lévi-Strauss’s “science of the concrete.” Since the relations between the natural sciences and religion are our central concern, let me spell out what is at stake here. Although there is a close relation between myth and scientific ideas, myth is not a form of science. It is an expression of “metaphysics.” Myth forms the foundation for scientific activity. This interrelation between the history of religions and the history of science means that one’s understanding of the history of science must have the same foundation as one’s understanding of the history of religions. Just as one must understand Chinese symbols as the expression of particular individuals, so should one understand

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Chinese science in its particularities. One should understand it on its own terms, with its own intention, and not merely as something anticipating modern science. Still, even stressing the autonomy and particularity of Chinese science is not enough to comprehend it fully. Just as one must understand Chinese symbols as they functioned in political history, one must also relate Chinese science to social and political history. Perhaps it is helpful at this time to bring into the discussion Thomas Kuhn’s wellknown model of scientific revolutions. This model makes an important distinction between normal science and revolutionary science. Normal science works within an established framework. Revolutionary science tries to destroy an old framework and establish a new one. I would suggest that the most revolutionary of revolutionary science entails the establishment of a new “metaphysics,” a new myth. Examples of revolutionary science might include the rise of the various philosophical schools in both ancient Greece and China. From our study of the Shuching and its relation to political history, it should not be surprising that scientific and political revolutions have similar dynamics. In many ways, scientific revolutions are political revolutions. Although many of his readers fail to understand this, Kuhn’s central idea was that scientific revolutions had the same structure as political revolutions. People raised in the old paradigm had vested, institutional interests in it. It would take the next generation, committed to the new paradigm, to replace the old one simply by outliving it.16 My interpretation of religious imagery and its relation to science in ancient and modern settings may not be in tune with what one generally does in present day scholarship. There are even those who deny that the Chinese were in possession of a coherent body of knowledge about nature, a science with its own aims, a science one is to understand on its own terms. In the opinion of one student of Chinese culture, for example, Chinese science and technology was a chaotic mass of facts about the natural world. It had absolutely no center around which one could organize these disparate facts.17 It seems that we are, almost unconsciously, inclined to retain a special place for modern science and modern scientists. We have to remind ourselves once again, however, that we should be able to take ancients and moderns equally seriously.

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The natural sciences are cultural creations that give us information about nature. We know that nature presents itself in a multitude of forms and structures, and that there are many ways to know nature. A single science can only provide insight into a few aspects of an infinitely varied and rich world. Each culture will create a body of knowledge of the natural world that corresponds to its own interests, so that the way a people chooses to organize its knowledge of this world tells us as much about them as it does about nature. It should not be surprising if the people of ancient China developed its own cluster of individual sciences and that many of these don’t correspond to any of ours. If Chinese natural science appears as “an unorganized mass of fragmentary empirical knowledge lacking a nucleus,” perhaps the fault lies with us. Perhaps Chinese science simply does not fit into our own preconceived categories. Let us exercise patience and suspend our judgment. Chinese science does have a center. It will come into view. As a preliminary step towards discovering this center, let us look at the fields of natural science that the Chinese developed. Nathan Sivin has drawn up a tentative list of eight major fields of natural science in China. The first five fields are qualitative studies. They include medicine, alchemy, astrology, geomancy (“the science of ‘wind and water,’ which determines the auspicious placement of houses and tombs with respect to features of the landscape,”), and physical studies (the explanation of physical, chemical, biological, and psychological phenomena by means of general fundamental concepts). The last three fields are mathematical in character. They include mathematics, mathematical harmonics, and mathematical astronomy. None of these fields has a sealed boundary, and most of them overlap with two or three others. Further study might yield a set of fields that conforms better to the original sources or reveals deeper inter-relations amongst the various sciences. The list is tentative and subject to revision. Nevertheless, it does provide us with a fair idea of how the Chinese organized their study of nature.18 Although each of these fields deals with its own set of facts, each makes use of a common set of underlying principles as explanatory tools. These are the yin-yang and five element theories that we have previously encountered. Each positive science also assumes that a person

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is a microcosm and that there exists a close correspondence between a person’s self-knowledge and knowledge of the universe. This set of common principles at once distinguishes Chinese sciences from modern ones and provides them with an underlying cohesion.19 However, one must not lose sight of the great diversity to Chinese culture. Its imagery of an individual as a microcosm, for example, has many variations and nuances. Each variation is the expression of a different experience of nature. Each is also the expression of a different approach towards nature. These approaches make up a whole spectrum that includes indifference, exploitation, ethical consideration, analysis, and complete absorption. Chinese culture, then, has a place for many different types of people and many different experiences of nature.20 Members of specific classes cultivated many of these experiences that often formed the foundation for specific social groupings. Thus Confucian scholars, Buddhist monks, peasants, and artisans all had characteristic variations of the image of a person as a microcosm. Since these experiences were also the foundation for specific sciences, different classes had their own specific scientific practices. There was a general division of the sciences into two groups. The first was orthodox and Confucian. The second was heterodox. Its practitioners were more on the fringes of society. In the course of Chinese history, the classes that practiced a science might change, so it might also change from being orthodox to heterodox or vice versa. Astronomers, however, were always members of the imperial bureaucracy.21 Despite the diversity of the sciences, Needham thinks that by around 1200 CE, a common method of inquiry had developed that many of them shared. According to Needham, the first step of this method was the selection of specific aspects of the phenomena to be studied. The second step was observation to see how the phenomena changed with changing conditions. This second step corresponds to experimentation and involved quantification whenever it was possible. The third step was the formulation of rather simple hypotheses such as the yin-yang or five element theories to account for the changes. The final step was to continue observation and experimentation but without paying too much attention to the hypothesis developed from the third step. Chinese science, then, was empirical. It allowed for the

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accumulation of an immense amount of practical knowledge. It was, however, weak in theory and not systematic. It required technical skill that could only be handed down from one generation to the next through personal contact.22 Despite the great diversity and eclectic nature of the various Chinese sciences, a common search for the underlying pattern of natural phenomena united them. One neo-Confucian passage that is said to have originated around 1200 CE tells us that when one truly understands the things of this world one will find that each has a reason why it is as it is. Moreover, each thing has a principle of co-existence with other things. Pattern means the reason for existence and the principle of co-existence.23 The neo-Confucians expressed the process that we might call induction in the following sentence: “The extension of knowledge consists in the investigation of things.” It was a sudden illumination into the natures and relations of things. This illumination occurred as the diverse elements being investigated were suddenly seen as components of a meaningful pattern or whole. Knowledge was a sudden intuition of the interrelatedness of things. A text that originated around 1100 CE discourses on this process. It begins by posing the question: “Is it necessary to investigate all things, or can the innumerable patterns be known simply by the investigation of a single thing?” The answer is that the investigation of one thing only would make it impossible to understand the inter-relation of things. One must patiently study one thing after another. After a long time, when one has thus acquired knowledge of many separate things, their interrelatedness will suddenly reveal itself. Another text from the same period tells us that it is not necessary to study all the things of the world in order to comprehend fully all its patterns. On the other hand, one won’t achieve one’s goal if one only understands a single pattern. It is necessary to understand a large number of things. Then the patterns will spontaneously reveal themselves.24 We have seen, then, that there were many sciences in China, that many different experiences of nature underpinned them, that many different kinds of people practiced them, and that they produced a body of knowledge that was immense but not well organized. What was the unifying center of Chinese science? According to neo-Confucian

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philosophy, it was the common search for the underlying or intrinsic patterns of natural phenomena. The neo-Confucian philosophers designated this by the word “li.” An understanding of li will do much to help us understand the character of Chinese science. In the early Confucian tradition, li referred to the ceremonies, customs, and traditions whose cultivation led to social harmony and the good society. But these were more than merely social conventions; since the Chinese never separated the ethical and cosmic orders, li also referred to those customs that conformed to the structure of the universe.25 According to Needham, the Chinese never developed the conception of an external lawgiver. There does seem to be something that transcends both the human and cosmic orders. Confucian tradition expresses it rather vaguely as “heaven,” or “the will of heaven.” When the emperor does not follow li and loses his virtue, heaven shows its displeasure by sending omens such as solar and lunar eclipses.26 In general, however, one was not to coerce the order of society from without; one was to evoke it from within by ceremonial and custom. Similarly, the heavens as well as each individual were to be ordered by their own internal principles. The harmonies of these three realms (the social, the will of heaven, and the individual) arose spontaneously. Moreover, since these three realms mirrored one another, discord in one evoked an echoing discord in the others.27 Needham’s insistence that the Chinese had little conception of a world that is externally ordered by means of laws imposed from without shows how his scheme of history influences his interpretive efforts. In the sections on li, Needham is trying to account for the reason that the Chinese never had the kind of scientific “revolution” that occurred with the rise of Newtonian physics. He thinks that the conceptions of a world ordered by an external lawgiver is essential for the rise of the mechanistic, Newtonian universe, and presents a great quantity of material to demonstrate this. It is extremely difficult to prove the absence of something. Although in most of the texts that he presents, li is the term that designates the ordering principle of the world, other texts use terms that one can understand as law. Needham spends a great deal of effort and ingenuity to explain these away. Although I don’t share Needham’s view of history, I am concerned with achieving an accurate and balanced view of Chinese science and .

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culture. It seems to me that although the term “law” does appear in some Chinese texts, the term li occurs much more frequently and is usually much more central to the texts. On both statistical and structural grounds, then, it is possible to conclude that the term li is much more important than the term “law” in the Chinese understanding of the world. It should be no surprise that li is closely related to tao. According to the neo-Confucian, Chhen Shun, the two words are close in meaning. The difference is that tao refers more to the social order and li refers more to the order of nature. Tao is rather flexible, and many different social configurations can embody it. In contrast, li is constant. The order of nature is fixed. When Chhen Shun wishes to express the precision of the process that structures either the social or the natural orders, he uses the term “li.” He tells us that although li is formless and not perceivable, it is “a natural and unescapable law of affairs and things.” That is, because of li, human affairs and natural things “are made just exactly to fit into place.” This occurs “without the slightest excess or deficiency.”28 Originally, one used the word “li” to designate the patterns of things, or, as we observed before, the ceremonies one should follow. One also used it as a verb and meant, “to cut things according to their natural grain or divisions.” Although it was later defined as “principle,” it never completely lost its original meaning. This becomes clear in the following passage from the neo-Confucian philosopher, Chu Hsi: Li is like a piece of thread with its strands, or like this bamboo basket. Pointing to its rows of bamboo strips, the philosopher said, One strip goes this way; and pointing to another strip; Another strip goes that way. It is also like the grain in the bamboo—on the straight it is of one kind, and on the transverse it is of another kind. So also the mind possesses numerous principles (li).

Needham uses this passage to justify a Whiteheadian interpretation of li. He understands li as “dynamic pattern as embodied in all living things, and in human relationships and in the highest human values.”29 Though not a blatant distortion, this interpretation bend’s li into a direction that jibes with Needham’s own view of history and the world. Although I am sympathetic to Whitehead’s process philosophy and find much in it that is admirable, my ultimate commitment is not

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to processes of the universe but to the particularity of the individual in history as presented in the texts. Therefore, I must reject Needham’s interpretation of the passage. It would seem to me that a more fitting interpretation would be closer to Husserl’s phenomenology than to Whitehead’s process thought. I suggest that there is a real possibility that, just for a moment, our world and that of the Chinese might come together. One’s understanding of the passage can become immediate, almost as an experience. Then one may gain some real understanding of the essential center of the Chinese sciences. Within Husserl’s phenomenological epochē, subtle structures of the world appear to the individual subject. I would suggest that Chu Hsi is using li in this passage to designate his experience of just such structures.

Chinese Astronomy The preceding pages have shed some light on the general character of the sciences in China. Let us now turn to the Chinese concern for mathematics in an area where it is most evident, astronomy. The advantage of Chinese astronomy is precisely that its mathematical character is comparable with modern science. Chinese astronomy consists of two parts. The first is technical. The second is theoretical and conceptual. I will begin with a description of some of its technical elements. The oldest astronomical instrument in China was the gnomon. It was a simple vertical pole that one could use to measure the length of the sun’s shadow during the day and thus determine solstices. At night one could use it to measure the transits of stars and thus “observe the revolution” of the sidereal year. In modern terms, a sidereal year is the time required for the earth to complete one revolution around the sun, measured with relation to the fixed stars. Today it is calculated to be about 365.31163 days. The word for gnomon is pei which means a post or pillar. A second word is piao, which means indicator. Most gnomons were eight, or multiples of eight, feet in length, because this length made calculations using the Pythagorean theorem easy.30 A second astronomical instrument was the gnomon shadow template or standard jade tablet (thu kuei), which was used to determine the

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solstices. One places the template at the base of the gnomon in a direction of due north for several days when the solstice is approaching. The exact day of the solstice is that when the shadow at noon matches the length of the template. Tribesmen in Borneo still use this method to determine solstices. Needham suggests that the template anticipates the standard platinum meter of the modern world.31 Although one cannot be certain of the exact date, sometime around the fourth century BCE Chinese astronomers developed the sundial. They attached a gnomon to a base plate set on the equatorial plane with the gnomon pointed at the imperial pole of the heavens (the direction of the north star.)32 When this was done one could use the direction (rather than the length) of the gnomon’s shadow to determine time. The term kuei piao refers to the sundial. Kuei combines the sun radical with chiu which contains the divination symbol pu meaning fault or blame. People must have originally used it for the detection of auspicious and inauspicious times.33 Another early astronomical instrument was the sighting tube. The astronomers took a long, straight tube and hollowed it out to make a narrow cylinder. Because it cuts out extraneous light, one can use it to view feint stars that would ordinarily be invisible. The oldest reference to sighting tubes is the Shun Tien chapter of the Shu-ching. The date of the text is perhaps the sixth century BCE.34 The final instrument was the armillary sphere. The most primitive form was a simple ring that could be set up in either the meridian or equatorial plane. The Chinese developed a coordinate system composed of lines that radiated from the North Pole to the horizon. Measurement in the meridian gave the distance along one of these lines from the North Pole, and measurement in the equatorial plane determined where a particular line intersected the horizon.35 Although these instruments were rather simple by modern standards, they had an identical function to those we use. They transformed the world that one experiences with one’s senses into a world of scientific, measurable facts. Thus, they provided the technological foundation of the natural sciences. In the history of Chinese science there was a drive for ever greater accuracy and precision of measurement. One of the most interesting of these developments was the construction of extremely large instruments.

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About fifty miles southeast of Loyang, the center of the world, there was an observation tower, the Tower of Chou Kung, which had a forty-foot gnomon.36 The search for ever greater accuracy in the measurement of time led to the development of the water-clock, which told time by the flow of water out of, or into, a vessel.37 Finally, Chinese astronomers developed pendulum clocks.38 The history of Chinese astronomy also shows a concern for data that are not only accurate, but also reliable. This concern led to the practice of comparing observations of the same event that different astronomers made independently. During the northern Sung (11th century), for example, both the Astronomical Department of the Hanlin Academy and the Directorate of Astronomy and Calendar (Ssu Thien Chien) had each its own observatory. Each had equipment similar to the other, and they were to make independent observation. There were times of decline, however, when they simply copied each other’s data. When Phêng Chhêng became Astronomer-Royal around 1070 BCE, he found this to be the case.39 Science is not only a matter of observation and measurement; it is not only the creation of scientific facts; it is also a matter of interpreting those facts. This is where the need for a theoretical and conceptual framework comes in, i.e. the second part of Chinese astronomy. During the first millennium BCE, the Chinese built up a system of spatial coordinates using “hour circles.” These were equally spaced circles drawn through the celestial pole and through a celestial body. They passed through the equator and continued until they met the horizon creating twenty-eight equal segments. Each segment was called a hsiu or “lunar mansion” and was named by the constellation that provided the stars used for fixing its hour circle boundaries. They used the system of lunar mansions to designate the position of a star around the pole and measured degrees to designate the position of the star above the horizon. Thus they determined the exact position of any star. The astronomers extended the spatial coordinates from observable to non-observable portions of the sky by keying the system of lunar mansions to the culminations of the circumpolar stars. Once they had determined a star’s position in the system, they could determine its exact location, even when it was invisible below the horizon, by simply observing the meridian passages of the circumpolar stars keyed to its lunar mansion.40

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The culminations and lower transits of the circumpolar stars also fixed the position of every point on the celestial equator. By assuming that the sun lay opposite the full moon, measurements made of the sun’s position in the day could be coordinated with measurements of the positions of the stars made at night. Solar and stellar coordinates could be married together. This second, theoretical aspect of science appears in the third paragraph of the opening passage of the Shu-ching, the paragraph that first introduces the brothers Hsi and Ho. Yao “commanded the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho,” to observe the heavens. From these observations they were to gain knowledge of how “the sun, the moon, the stars, and the zodiacal spaces” (lunar mansions) move and change during the course of a year. They were thus to establish the seasons that regulate the lives of the people. This paragraph gives religious sanction to the practice by Chinese astronomers of dividing up the vault of the heavens by the use of “lunar mansions.” In the following paragraphs, the text fixes the seasons of the year by reference to lunar mansions with the respective circumpolar stars “Niao,” “Huo,” “Hsu,” and “Mao.” The second, conceptual part of Chinese astronomy also included various cosmological theories and ideas. One such theory, the Kai Thien, pictured the world as a bowl turned upside down. The outer and inner surfaces of the bowl make two concentric domes with a distance of 80,000 li (a unit of length) between them. The inner dome is the earth, and the outer is the dome of the sky. There were later modifications of the theory that tried to account for the inclination of the polar axis and the changes due to the seasons.41 A second theory, the Hun Thien, considered the sky to be a sphere that was centered on the earth.42 A third theory was the Hsüan Yeh. This theory considered the cosmos to be infinite empty space in which the heavens float freely.43 In addition to these cosmological speculations, astronomers also developed various theories to account for eclipses.44 Chinese astronomy’s two components that I have described, its technical foundation and its conceptual framework, were interdependent. The empirical world grounded the conceptual system. At the same time, the conceptual system allowed the astronomers to make the various measurements intelligible. Together, the two components formed an

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instrument by which Chinese astronomers transformed the movements of the heavens from the sensuous world of perception into a precise world of numerical relations. The passage from the Shu-ching, provides us with one important example of this process. It tells us how, on the winter solstice, the lunar mansion, Mao, culminates at 6 p.m. On the following spring equinox, the sun would stand at noon in that same lunar mansion. This means that every three months, the day advances six hours. Since three months is one-quarter year and six hours is one-quarter day, this observation establishes an underlying numerical relation between two different cycles, the year and the day. Such a relation is the manifestation of li.45 The elements that I have just described are concerned with the technical problems encountered in the making of an accurate calendar. The history of astronomy as a science was, above all, the quest for an accurate calendar. A calendar is a device for combining days into distinct periods of months and years that are suitable for organizing a people’s civil and religious life. The most important difficulty that calendar makers have had to overcome is the reconciliation of two such cycles that are not synchronous—the synodic or lunar month and the tropical or solar year. The length of the lunar month is the time between successive new moons. Now one calculates it to be 29.5305879 days. A lunar year is a period of twelve lunar months, or 354.36705 days. Calendars based on this period account for months but make the seasons unpredictable. A solar year is the interval between one vernal equinox and the next. Its length is 365.24219 days. Calendars based on this period account for the seasons but cannot predict full moons.46 Recall how the text from the opening of the Shu-ching ends with final instructions given to the brothers Hsi and Ho: Ah! you brothers Hsi and you brothers Ho, a round year consists of three hundred and sixty, and six days. By means of the intercalary month, you are to fix the four seasons and complete the determination of the period of a year. Thereafter, the various officers being regulated in accord with this, all the work of the seasons will be fully performed.

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The difference between a solar year and a lunar year is about 10.87514 days. The “intercalary month” mentioned in the above passage is one attempt to reconcile the two cycles. The history of astronomy as a science, then, includes the development of astronomical instruments and the recording of observations, the development of coordinate systems, and the formulation of cosmological theories. It was the attempt by the ancient astronomers to transform the world of one’s senses into a coherent pattern of unified mathematical relations. Its ultimate aim was to create a calendar grounded in a single structure that astronomers hoped to discover within the flux of time.47

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Chapter 6

Myth and Astronomy in Ancient China

The time has come to ask the question bluntly: how does science relate to myth? The best-known and most influential attempts to face the question, in spite of their excellence, have left something to be desired. They may even have helped old biases to linger on rather than remove them. We have mentioned the great Emile Durkheim before. A sociologist and philosopher, he was the first to lay out clearly the relation between religious phenomena and vital structures in human social life. The force and subtlety of his work have invigorated many historical as well as sociological researches and continue to do so. However, one great problem that our subject does not permit us to ignore is his basic positivistic stance. With regard to the topic of “religion and science,” Durkheim holds that the former, religion, can and should be understood through its social function. As to the latter, science, no such method could be applied in his opinion. Science was objective. It offered knowledge independent of social conditioning. This elevated, sovereign, notion of science, may be viewed as a typical product of Durkheim’s time, around 1900, but it would not be confirmed by the majority of historians of science today. Still, this mistaken idea of “objectivity” as typical of science, wholly unaffected by the world in which it is generated, keeps echoing elsewhere. More recently than Durkheim, also the work of Needham rests in part on a certain absolutization of science. Whereas we have tried to show the opening passage of the Shu-ching in its relationship to ritual as well as to the empirically proven and scientifically understandable world, Needham writes of that same passage: “The legend must have derived quite naturally from fears which primitive minds might well entertain that winter might go on indefinitely getting colder, and summer might intensify to lethal heat.”1 According to Needham, the images are a mere substitute for scientific knowledge.

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Yet we know that the mythical and scientific elements of the opening passage of the Shu-ching originated in two different texts, one religious and one scientific, that an editor purposely synthesized. What was that purpose? In what follows, I hope to assess as concretely as possible the integrity in ancient China of two sides that in our contemporary discussions still show the appearance of two separated parts: the part of religion and society, and the part of science.

Chinese Astronomy as an Institution The mythical part of the passage, the commission by Yao of the brothers Hsi and Ho, is the authoritative underpinning of an important Chinese institution that was at once scientific, political, and religious. That institution was astronomy. Needham characterizes it as the “secret science of priest-kings” and tells us how an astronomical observatory (ling thai) was always part of an emperor’s temple (Ming Thang).2 Astronomy existed for nearly two thousand years as a special government department. The Chou-li provides us with an idealized model of this important institution. The Director or President of the imperial observatory was the Thai Shih Ling (Astronomer Royal). Below him was the Fêng Hsian Shih (Imperial Astronomer). His duties were to examine the heavens during the night. A third official was the Pao Chhang Shih (Imperial Astrologer). Both the offices of Imperial Astronomer and Imperial Astrologer were hereditary, and both employed a considerable staff. A fourth official, the Shih Chin, observed meteorological events and, possibly, eclipses. Finally, there was the Chieh Hu Shih, the official in charge of the water clocks (clepsydras).3 Astronomy ordered time. The passage about Yao and the brothers Hsi and Ho, as well as many other passages from the Shu-ching, make clear that good government depends on paying attention to the different qualities of times and regulating human activity accordingly.4 One of the central documents of the Shu-ching, “The Great Plan,” for example, includes the regulating of time as one of the essential instruments of a model government:

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The fourth of the instruments of government are the five dividers of time. They are the year or the planet Jupiter; the moon; the sun; the stars, planets, and the zodiacal spaces or lunar mansions; and finally, the calculations for the calendar.5

The last of these, calculations for making a calendar, was vital to China’s agricultural economy. Because it was so dependent on artificial irrigation, “it was necessary to be forewarned of the melting of the snows and the consequent rise and fall of the rivers and their derivative canals, as well as of the beginning and end of the rainy monsoon season.”6 One of the most important acts of a sovereign was the establishment of an accurate calendar. In one way, the creation of a calendar was similar to the minting of coins in the West. It was a ruler’s claim to authority, and all who acknowledged allegiance to him accepted his calendar.7 It was also said that rebellions were due to inaccurate calendars.8 Since the establishment of a calendar established state authority, any regime viewed independent astronomical work with alarm. Moreover, it wanted to keep its knowledge secret.9

The “Metaphysics” of Chinese Astronomy We have learned something of Chinese astronomy as an institution and as a scientific instrument. Fundamental intuitions, “metaphysics,” underpin all scientific work. Moreover, one always assumes (even if unconsciously), never proves, these intuitions, and these intuitions and assumptions are implicit in the myths and symbols of a culture. One of the most important functions of religion is the preserving of these intuitions through the passing down of myths and symbols. Chinese astronomy confirms these views. Let us turn to the opening passage of the Chou Pei Suan Ching (The Arithmetical Classic of the Gnomon and the Circular Paths of Heaven). This book, concerned primarily with astronomical calculations, is the oldest Chinese mathematical and astronomical treatise; Needham dates it as no later than the third century BCE.10 It begins with a discussion between one of the most important figures from Confucian tradition, the Duke of

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Chou, with one of his ministers on the properties of right triangles and techniques of measuring the earth. One can divide it into two sections. The first section demonstrates the Pythagorean theorem and its practical importance. Long ago Chou Kung asked the Grand Prefect, Shang Kao, if he knew how Fu-Hsi, in times past, had been able to measure the celestial sphere. Shang Kao replied that measuring the earth depends on the properties of two geometric figures, the circle and the square. The origin of the circle is the square; the origin of the square is the T-square or carpenter’s square; and the origin of the carpenter’s square is the properties of numbers. Shang Kao then gave a demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem. He concluded by telling Chou Kung that Yü the Great governed the world based on these numbers. The second section is concerned with the properties of the right-angled triangle or T-square. After hearing the discourse on the Pythagorean theorem, Chou Kung asked Shang Kao to tell him about the “Tao of the use” of the carpenter’s square. Shang Kao began by telling Chou Kung of various ways to use the instrument. When one places it on the ground one can use it to “lay out (works)”. When set upright one can use it for measuring heights. Similarly, one can use it to fathom depths or determine distances. Shang Kao then told how one can use the carpenter’s square to generate a circle by using it as a compass. One can also form squares and oblongs by uniting two carpenter’s squares. The circle and the square have cosmological significance. The circle corresponds to heaven and the square to the earth. Because of this correspondence, it is possible to measure the earth and from these measurements deduce those of heaven. Shang Kao then presented the Kai Thien theory of the world. Here one can see especially well the relation of scientific reason and religion. This theory is, in fact, an excellent example the religious imagery of a person as a microcosm. “Heaven is like a conical sun-hat.” Its proportions are the celestial numbers, and its colors are blue and black. The colors of the earth, on the other hand, are yellow and red. The world is like a circular plate turned upside down. Heaven is like the outer surface of the plate. The earth is like the inner surface. Heaven is like an outer garment that is blue and black. Earth is like an inner garment that is yellow and red.

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Shang Kao then told Chou Kung that understanding the earth makes one wise and that understanding the heavens makes one a sage. He then explained how one could obtain such knowledge. The origin of knowledge is observation of the gnomon’s shadow; and the origin of the shadow is the carpenter’s square (the vertical pole of the gnomon). He concluded the discussion by stating that the “combination of the right angle with numbers is what guides and rules the ten thousand things.”11 The two parts of the passage point to the importance of a mythical background to scientific practice. The first half of the passage shows that authoritative human ideals ground the technical aspects of science. The authority of Yü, the sage-king who completed the ordering of the world, underpins Chinese mathematics as a practical art. The second half of the passage relates scientific technique to religious imagery in a slightly different way. The use of the carpenter’s square has its own virtue or path. One can use this path to generate an image of the world. It presents the elements of astronomy in the form of a cosmogonic myth in which technical manipulations generate the world. Moreover, understanding this image makes one wise, like the sage-king Yü, fit to order and govern the world. We must take this passage seriously. Chinese astronomy would not have been possible without its religious underpinning. I have stressed the experimental and technical foundation of all scientific knowledge, including Chinese astronomy. Even this most essential and concrete foundation requires religious underpinning. Consider, for example, the use of the gnomon to measure the length of the sun’s shadow in order to determine solstices. That technical act transforms temporal events, the time of solstices, into spatial events that can be measured—lengths of shadows. Although it seems simple and basic, that technical operation of transforming time into length required an intuition or assumption of an underlying harmony of time and space. How else would it be possible to transform time into length? Ancient China experienced the world as an assembly of concrete locations, each location with its own specific time aspect and its own specific space aspect. The underlying harmony (tao) of these two aspects made possible the transformation of one aspect into the other. Finally, these fundamental intuitions were expressed in the aphorism found in manuals of divination, “One yin, one yang, that is

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the tao.” The intuitions that make the technical operation of measuring solstices by use of a gnomon possible are religious and expressed through religious imagery. Another reason that Chinese astronomy required a religious underpinning is that the creation of a scientific fact is not only a matter of technical precision; one must make all scientific measurements with regard to some fixed point of reference. This fixed point, like the intuition of the underlying harmony of space and time, is always religious, not scientific, in nature. In ancient China, the religious imagery of the center often provided this reference point. Yang-chhêng, for example, had the giant gnomon and observation tower because it was the center of the world. It was the place where the official astronomers made their solstice measurements. At the summer solstice the sun casts no shadow beyond the “heavy truncated pyramidal base” of the tower.12 According to a passage from the Chou-li, a high official, the Ta Ssu Thu, uses the gnomon shadow template to measure the distance of the earth from the sun and the exact length of the sun’s shadow. From these he finds the center of the earth. It is that place where the sun’s shadow is 1 ft. 5 in. long at the summer solstice. According to the Chou-li, the shadow length increases 1 inch for every thousand li (a unit of measurement) north of the ‘earth’s center’ and decreases 1 inch for every thousand li south of the earth’s center. This was useful in fixing the boundaries of provinces. Later, although still in classical times, observations corrected this figure to about 3.56 inches.13 We know that in the second century BCE the Chinese applied the properties of similar right triangles to celestial measurements. The symbolism of the center appears in a text that cannot be said to indulge in religious speculations at all, but is completely empirical. If one knows the properties of similar right triangles, it is possible to determine the distance from the center of earth to the sun. One must first set up two tenfoot gnomons on a line running north to south. The gnomons should be exactly 1000 li apart, and one must measure the lengths of their shadows on the same day. One will find that if the northern gnomon has a shadow that is 2 feet in length, the southern one will have one that is 1 and 9/10 feet in length. One will also find that each time one moves southwards a thousand li, the shadow becomes an inch shorter. At a place 20,000 li

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to the south, there is no shadow at all. This place is directly underneath the sun. One begins with a shadow of 2 ft. and a gnomon of 10 ft. The ratio of the height of the gnomon to the length of the shadow is five to one. After moving 20,000 li to the south, there is no shadow, and one is directly below the sun. If one multiplies the distance one has moved, 20,000 li, by the ratio of the height of the gnomon to the length of its shadow, that is, by five, one gets 100,000 li. This is the distance of the sun from the earth.14 The religious imagery of the center was also essential to the coordinate system of lunar mansions because it, too, required grounding to a fixed point of reference in the empirical world. For Chinese astronomers, this was the North Pole. It was the pivot around which the world turns. Speculations on the significance of two ritual instruments, the tshun and the pi, suggest how people might have oriented themselves by means of the North Pole. These instruments are made of jade and come from the period of the Shang and Chou dynasties. The tshun might have been used as a sighting tube, and some of the pi have markings that correspond to the circumpolar constellations. If one aligned the markings of the pi with the chief circumpolar constellations, then the true pole would occupy its center.15 We can see another close relation between mythical imagery to empirical science in the construction of theories that try to give a coherent explanation to the observed facts. The debates that Chinese astronomers had concerning theories of eclipses give us a striking example of this. What we would consider the correct theory of eclipses appears as early as 120 CE. In the Ling Hsien, Chang Hêng tells us that the sun is like fire because it produces light. The moon and the planets, on the other hand, have the nature of water because they reflect light. From this it follows that the light of the moon as well as that of the planets is a reflection of the radiance of the sun. When something obscures the light from the sun, the moon and planets become dark. Sometimes the earth itself is an obstruction that prevents the light from the sun from reaching the moon. This is called “an hsü.” It is a lunar eclipse. When something similar happens with a planet, one calls it an “occultation.” If the moon comes between the earth and the sun so that it prevents the light of the sun from reaching the earth, there is a solar eclipse.16

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Chang Hêng’s essentially mechanistic view was foreign to Chinese intuitions of the world and faced a great deal of opposition. In the work of Wan Chhun, for example, we find an articulate and well-reasoned objection to mechanistic theories of eclipses. This is around 80 CE, about forty years before the time of Chang Hêng, so it does not specifically attack the thought of Chang Hêng. However, it does attack similar kinds of mechanistic explanations. Wan Chhun based his criticism on the yin-yang symbolism that was so central to Chinese thought. He argues that if the moon, which is yin, was the cause of an eclipse of the sun, which is yang, the situation would be extremely abnormal: the sun would have to be weak and the moon strong. This is contrary to what happens on earth where yang subdues yin. The true explanation is that eclipses are due to the natural rhythms of the tao. A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon fades of itself. Similarly, a solar eclipse occurs when the light of the sun simply fades of itself. Eclipses are simply a normal part of the rhythm of the yin and yang.17 Another theory in opposition to that of Chang Hêng appears in the writings of Liu Chih about 274 CE. It too reflects a fundamental Chinese intuition of the mutual interdependence of the world. It is especially interesting because it has elements that are strikingly similar to the conception of the field that is central to modern physics. According to Liu Chih, yin and yang respond to and communicate with each other, even over vast distances, with no need of any intermediary. It is like the ripples that spread forth one after another when a stone is thrown into the water. Between yin and yang there is such a mutual echoing and receptivity that every part of the world influences every other part. Nothing can sever this mutual interdependence. The sun and the moon are two parts of the world in mutual resonance. The moon is yin and the purest substance. It receives the light of the sun, which is yang. Because of their mutual resonance, when the sun flourishes, the moon must decay, and there is a lunar eclipse. Similarly, when the moon flourishes, the sun decays, and there is a solar eclipse. Liu Chih asserts that if the relation between the sun and the moon were merely mechanical, if there were only a reflection of light between them, then the respective lights of the sun and the moon should rise and fall together. Solar and lunar eclipses should occur during the same periods. But this never happens.18

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The clash between these ancient Chinese theories of eclipses brings us back to our discussion of reason and myth. All of these ancient theories are perfectly rational attempts to understand empirically observable events— eclipses. The clash between dominant theories of Chinese tradition and the mechanistic alternatives does not occur because one type is rational and the other type is not. It occurs because underpinning the reasoning of both kinds of theories are different fundamental intuitions of the world. Religious symbols give concrete expression to these fundamental intuitions. In the clash between dominant theories of Chinese tradition and the mechanistic alternatives, one can see especially well the relation between reason and myth. A final example of the relation between the elements of empirical science and religious imagery is seen in the mathematical patterns that Chinese astronomers attempted to discover in their observation of the heavens. The ideographic etymology for ‘calculation’ has the meaning “to play with something.” A second, later meaning is “to show, demonstrate, inform, reveal, as in a numinous manifestation of the divine.”19 For the Chinese, mathematics was not merely abstract logical relations. They were also a means of divination. Often someone who became famous for mathematical ability would also gain a reputation for the ability to foresee what would happen to people.20 Here again the nucleus of Chinese science comes into view: the mathematical operations used in Chinese astronomy and calendar making revealed li, the underlying pattern of the world. Myth and science, then, are and remain closely related in ancient Chinese discussion. Why is such mythical underpinning necessary to natural science? One good answer is that nature is not necessarily intelligible. Therefore, a community of scientists must find a way of orienting itself in the world so that nature appears understandable. The movements of the same heavenly body, for example, can appear either simple or complex depending on the frame of reference that a scientist chooses for his or her description. The decision by Chinese astronomers to ground their coordinate system on the North Pole allowed them to describe the motions of the pole star simply. It was, at least to the naked eye, stationary. On the other hand, the motions of the moon were complex. Using the moon as a fixed point of reference would have reversed

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everything. The moon would appear stationary. Everything else, however, would be sheer chaos. Thus the apparent stability of the North Pole suggested itself to the religious imagination as the center of the world. Although not quite the same as li, the desire by Western astronomers for elegance and simplicity in their descriptions of nature led to the Copernican revolution. This was perhaps the greatest achievement in the history of astronomy, because it changed the fixed point of reference for Western astronomers from the earth to the sun. A few centuries later, however, the same desire of elegance and simplicity led to the general theory of relativity. It denied the existence of any fixed physical center of the universe. In so doing, it set all reference frames on an equal footing. It was opportunistic. A community could choose the one that best suited its purposes for any given particular task. (I usually place myself at the center of the universe. It greatly simplifies calculations. I find this helpful, especially when I’m walking or driving a car.)

The Intention of Chinese Astronomy All communities, not just scientific ones, must situate themselves in the world. They must ground their activities on certain absolute presuppositions. In this sense, they must all live out “metaphysics.” This will differ from community to community. The “metaphysics” of hunters and gathers, merchants, farmers, cannibals, and warriors will all be different.21 “Metaphysics” will change within the same community during the course of time and even within the same person from activity to activity. The passage about Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho, presents the absolute presuppositions that underpin the Confucian state. It defines a world. According to this passage, the founding of astronomy was one of Yao’s most important acts of governance. This tells us that the same assumptions that make astronomy possible also provide the foundation on which a sovereign exercises state power. Chinese tradition assumed there is an underlying unity to two realms, the ethical and the natural, that we tend to keep far apart. Although one can recognize mathematical astronomy as a science, one

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usually thinks of divination as superstition, not science. However, divination becomes intelligible when we become aware that in ancient Chinese “metaphysics,” natural and social events had an underlying pattern. In our study of li it was shown how the world has a pattern that Chu Hsi likened to the grains of bamboo. Divination is more a matter of looking along the lines of the pattern and seeing where events are likely to lead. Divination is not a matter of predicting the future. It is a matter of foreseeing the future. It is closer to prophecy than to magic jugglery. Our understanding of li can also help us to understand the importance of another art that we usually dismiss as superstitious—astrology. Li was not a fixed and rigid system; it was a flexible structure. Anomalies could appear from outside the structure. Heaven could send omens if it was displeased with the conduct of an emperor. But these omens could only be seen against a background of normal events, the regular movements of the heavens. Astronomy attempted to discover the underlying pattern of the heavens. Astrology tried to discover omens. Astronomy created the background for astrology. Although the underlying unity to the ethical and natural orders seems to be foreign to us, it went without saying in the Chinese world. Moreover, this assumption was never a matter of mere speculation. It had a direct influence on the perception and conduct of the concrete events of political history. Once again, an example from the life of the statesman, Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai will illustrate this. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai served as astrologer-astronomer to Cinggis Qan on some of the emperor’s military campaigns. During this time, he is said to have foreseen several important events. These included at least one of Cinggis Qan’s important military victories as well as the deaths of important political leaders. It is because of Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai’s reputation as a skilled astrologer, that he became influential with the Mongol rulers. There is one story about Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai ability to interpret omens that is an especially good illustration of how symbolic structures have an important function in political events. It is found on Yeh-lü Ch’uts’ai’s funerary inscription. One time, when Cinggis was on a military expedition, an extraordinary animal called a chüeh-tuan appeared to

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his bodyguard. It was green, “with a deer’s body, a horse’s tail, and a single horn.” It could travel immense distances in a single day. It could also speak all languages. When this magnificent creature appeared to the bodyguard, it told him: “Your Lord should return home immediately.” When this was reported to Cinggis Qan, he turned to Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai for advice. Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai explained that the chüeh-tuan symbolizes a hatred for bloodshed. Its appearance was a warning from heaven against further killing. On that day the emperor ended his military campaign.22 This story makes sense once one understands the “metaphysics” of the Chinese world—the assumption of the underlying unity to the ethico-political and natural orders. Because the Mongol emperor was not acting in accordance with li, the structure of the universe, heaven sent him a warning. Something beyond that structure appeared within it as an omen. In our world there appears to be a strict separation between the laws of nature and the laws of the state. In the Chinese world, the natural and social orders rise and fall together. I began this chapter with the question, “What was the reason that an editor constructed the opening passage of the Shu-ching out of two texts, one mythical and the other scientific?” We are now in a position to an­swer that question. The mythical foundations of astronomy in China were the same as those for the Confucian politi­cal order. The supreme principle in both was identical: the tao, the power or virtue by means of which a sovereign ruled. By splicing together the two different texts, the editor was realizing one of the many practical possibilities this identity opened up—that astronomy would become an instrument of governance. Chinese astronomers understood the world of numerical relations discovered by their astronomy as a manifestation of the tao, the underlying reality of the world. This reality should govern the rhythm of both human and animal life. To achieve this harmony, every Chinese sovereign began his reign by establishing a ritual calendar.23 The same four paragraphs that present the world as numerical relations, express the normative character of Chinese tradition. The human, natural, and sacred realms are to achieve harmony and balance. During the spring the “people are dispersed in the fields and birds and beasts breed and copulate.” In summer the “people are more dispersed;

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the birds and beasts have their feathers and hair thin and change their coats.” During autumn the “people feel at ease, and birds and beasts have their coats in good condition.” Finally, during winter the “people keep in their houses, and the coats of birds are downy and thick.” The text, then, presents a coherent symbolism, beginning with the sovereign Yao and the brothers Hsi and Ho, and has several different levels of meaning. It expresses a reality beyond superficial sensual perception. It presents a pattern of human behavior that takes on meaning in ordering the world. It presents a model for the empirical observation of nature. Finally, it presents a conceptual framework by which one can relate various empirical observations within an integrated system. By bringing different levels together within a central symbolism, the text expresses a vision of the whole that makes the Chinese world coherent and meaningful. There is indeed little to defend the common modern idea that characterizes myth as a kind of “primitive” science. I chose the opening passage of the Shu-ching to exemplify to an unbiased understanding that in the ancient world of China elements that were “mythical” as well as those that were “scientific” occurred together. Both the mythical and scientific elements of the passage are concerned with the order of the world. So, although we should not identify myth with science, nevertheless there is definitely some relation between the two. I believe that through our study of the Shu-ching and ancient Chinese astronomy, we are now in a position to have a clear view of that relation. Although myth is not science, it does provide the metaphysical foundation on which a science rests. Chinese astronomers combined two distinct elements, instruments of observation and a conceptual framework, to construct an instrument that transformed the world one perceives with one’s senses into a world of numerical relations. Although the instrument was completely scientific in nature, it required a proper foundation. We now know there is no physical center to the world to provide that foundation. The only orienting center had to be cultural, and this center and foundation had to be enacted by the community through myth and ritual. It has been said that myth and the ritual enactment of the world sets the stage for all human activity. We have long known this to be true

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for human social and political activity. The positivist in us, however, would like to make an exception for the precise sciences. Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho object to this. They remind us that myth sets the stage for all human activity, even the scientific study of nature.

Chapter 7

The Christian Myth and Knowledge

Having come this far in our journey, we cannot fail to notice how different the world of science and religion looks. We may not even have been sufficiently aware of our mental custom by which we place “religion” in one compartment and “science” in another. We will gain much in our understanding if we abandon that custom. We have seen the encouraging results by reexamining the views of a tribal culture, which until recently we would have virtually dismissed from our screen by calling it “primitive.” Ancient China and Greece made even clearer that our approach is fruitful. Human life, wherever its culture becomes manifest, does not permit an apriori bifurcation. We are not suggesting a new “speculation,” but a clearer vision of the historical evidence. We now turn to the West. There, the appearance of modern mathematical physics required not only the development of a new method of enquiry but of an entirely new image of the world as well. This new image in some ways revolted against the dominant symbols of medieval Christianity, and in some ways it transformed them. This chapter examines some important aspects of Christianity and its relationship to knowledge from which the modern world emerged. We will begin with the great Catholic saint, Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine and the Christian Myth Myths that situate the origin of evil in a human decision are opposed to myths like the story of Prometheus that situate the origin of evil in an external event before people appeared on the scene. The biblical story of Adam’s Fall belongs to the first category. Paul Ricoeur maintains that this

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myth and the mechanistic universe alone is the anthropological myth proper. . . . The myth recounts the arising of this evil constitution in an irrational event that unexpectedly takes place in a good creation. It compresses the origin of evil into a symbolic instant that is the end of innocence and the beginning of malediction. Through the chronicle of the first man is unveiled the meaning of the history of every man.1

After the Fall and the expulsion from paradise, there is the first murder when Cain slays Abel. This is the beginning of society and history as we know it. With the Fall we have gone from a world created good, to a world where there is a great deal of evil. Salvation is the history of deliverance from this evil. The Hebrew tradition has a central image of the sky as the throne of God. In Him resides all power, and He has complete domination over creation which seems to shrink to nothing before Him. Nevertheless, the tradition never asserts that the world is illusory or unreal; it is always the locus of the Lord’s deeds. The Lord is power manifest in His will. His actions occur within the continual flux of history. Israel saw in the vicissitudes of her history God’s continual creation. The Hebrews likened God to a potter who was continually shaping a person, His creature.2 The Christian tradition that grew out of the religion of Israel transformed this central imagery. God appeared in this world in the person of a concrete individual, Jesus Christ, whose suffering, death, and finally, resurrection, was God’s supreme and complete act of salvation. The salvation was not only for the Jews; it was for all peoples. According to Paul, all were in need of salvation, for, after Adam’s Fall, all had come under the power of sin. God condemned the Jews for failing to obey the Law of Moses, but how could He also condemn the gentiles? How could they know of God and His laws? Paul answers that God had made Himself known to them through the creation.3 Therefore, the gentiles have no excuse for failing to fulfill the commandments of God. Augustine began a tradition integrating biblical revelation and Greek natural philosophy on this foundation stone. In this tradition Christians began thinking of nature as a book that revealed God. Since God wrote both the Bible and the Book of Nature, they should reveal

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the same truth.4 Attempts to reconcile the truths of the two books led to a long and creative tension within Christianity. When Christianity entered the Greco-Roman world it encountered Greek philosophy, and Christian intellectuals attempted to unify the two traditions. One result of these attempts was the synthesis of the image of Christ as savior with the Greek image of a person as a microcosm. Jesus Christ was the incarnation of the divine Logos that structured both the cosmos and the human soul. This image appears in a text with a decidedly mythical character, the opening passage to The Gospel According to John.5 The encounter of Greek and Hebrew cultures in the life and work of Augustine resulted in a highly creative tension. In his Confessions, for example, Augustine compares the Platonist works with the Gospel. In those works, he finds the doctrine of the Logos but not that of the Incarnation.6 In one of the central passages of the Confessions, Augustine tells of receiving a special gift from a loving God. This gift is a vision of God: I entered, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays over the same eye of my soul, over my mind: . . . It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it. All who know the truth know this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity. It is the Light that charity knows. Your light shone upon me in its brilliance, and I thrilled with love and dread alike. I realized that I was far away from you. It was as though I were in a land where all is different from your own and I heard your voice calling from on high [.] I asked myself “Is truth then nothing at all, simply because it has no extension in space, with or without limits?” And, far off, I heard your voice saying I am the God who IS. I heard your voice, as we hear voices that speak to our hearts, and at once I had no cause to doubt. I might more easily have doubted that I was alive than that Truth had being. For we catch sight of the Truth, as he is known through his creation.7

This passage, with its imagery of light, evokes the ancient solar symbolism that we have seen in ancient Greek texts such as the vision of Parmenides.

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The vision expressed in the passage reoriented Augustine. In the light of it, Augustine reinterprets the first lines of Genesis.8 As he does so, he gives form to a fundamental intuition of the world. Augustine begins by noting that some people have raised the question, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” In response, Augustine explores the nature of time.9 Through an acute analysis, he shows that although the present exists, the past and the future do not. The present, however, has a structure that includes what we usually refer to as the past and the future. There exists a “present of past things, a present of present things, and a present of future things.” Moreover, this structure of the present is not objectively real. It is a creation of the mind. The present of past things is the memory; the present of present things is direct perception; and the present of future things is expectation.10

It is only in this sense, as a mental structure, that one can speak of the existence of three times, past, present, and future. A person exists in an eternal present simultaneously turning into the future and the past.11 According to Augustine, everything that one perceives leaves an impression on one’s mind. The impression remains after the direct perception has disappeared into the past. One measures time, therefore, not by any direct perception. Rather, one measures time by the impressions the succession of direct perceptions have left on one’s mind. One measures it by an act of memory.12 What was God doing before he created heaven and earth? The question implies that time exists co-eternally with God. This is not the case. People, the creatures of God, structure time by their minds. Before God created the world, before He created us, there was no time.13 Since God exists eternally, His way of knowing differs from ours. Augustine imagines the most powerful mind possible: If there were a mind endowed with such great power of knowing and foreknowing that all the past and all the future were known to it as clearly as I know a familiar psalm, that mind would be wonderful beyond belief. We should hold back from it in awe at the thought that nothing in all the history of the past and nothing in all the ages yet to come was hidden from it.

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Although this mind is powerful, almost beyond imagination, it still exists in time and its knowledge exists in time. Compared to God its knowledge is nothing. He exists and knows eternally, and He would be the creator of this most powerful of created minds.14 Augustine ends by reasserting that the foundation of the world is the eternal God.15 According to Augustine, then, the opening lines of Genesis reveal the foundation of the world at the limits of human thought by presenting a structure of time as something created in the human mind. That is not all. They also assert that this structure is real. A person, as the creature of God, really does experience the flux and vicissitudes of time. Augustine now begins to interpret the line in Genesis that tells us that in the beginning the world was without form. This draws his attention to the problem of change in the world around us. He has assumed the doctrine of form from Greek philosophy. The being of things is their form. We know from our study of Parmenides that our reason tells us that change is not real. However, our senses tell us that things do in fact change form. Augustine addresses this contradiction by asking: what is the status of something when it is between forms? Is it deprived of all existence? His answer is no: there is something that underlies all the changes of forms. This “something” Augustine designates by the term, “mutability.” It is extremely difficult to conceptualize. Augustine tells us: If it did not sound nonsensical, I should say that it was nothing and yet something, or that it was and yet was not.16

Here we see how Augustine confronts the dilemma of reason and change that began with Parmenides. In the triumph of Parmenides over Heraclitus the Greeks decided for being over becoming. Augustine’s solution is different. He contends that change is real and underlies all things. Chinese culture saw mutability as a manifestation of the tao, the virtue of things, the underlying harmony of the world. Augustine, on the other hand, asserts that God created mutability, and thus change.17 Augustine creates a hierarchical picture of the creation. That which changes least has most being and is closest to God. That which is pure

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mutability is least like God. Nevertheless even pure mutability derives its being from Him. In contrast to China where the underlying harmony of the world’s changes reveal the tao, something working from within the world, Augustine’s picture of the world assumes that change reveals God acting on the world in eternity by divine command. Here we have touched something with a numinous quality—one of a culture’s absolute presuppositions.18 This important one differentiates Christian and Greek cultures. Catholicism expresses it in the doctrine of creation from nothing. When he was exploring the structure of the soul, Augustine suspends his judgment concerning its reality and merely describes what appears. Here his genius is unsurpassed. Augustine was aware that the human subject might not be real and so the time it creates might be illusory. Similarly, when he describes the external world as it appears to him, Augustine also suspends judgment concerning its reality. His senses tell him the world is in flux because its rational parts change from form to form, but he is also aware that the forms he describes might not exist apart from his mind. Finally, Augustine also sees that because time and change of form are two aspects of a single structure, it is impossible to have one without the other. Change of form cannot be real unless time is also real.19 The doctrine of creation from nothing expresses a judgment that both time and the changes of the world are real. If the soul, as a creature of God is real, so is the memory it creates. The doctrine also expresses the judgment that there is one unified world that is both intelligible and in the process of change. The entire creation is a world of flux and change. Nevertheless, because it derives its being from the actions of God, it is real, not illusory.20 Augustine describes the structure of a world. He makes a judgment about it in the doctrine of creation from nothing. Time and change of form are real because both are part of the creation. The created soul structures time through memory. The created world has a corresponding structure characterized by change of form. Both time and change of form are real because both the soul and world are creatures—real, dependent, yet distinct from an eternal God. This is Augustine’s understanding of the first lines of Genesis.

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Because it provides a foundation of a cultural world, Augustine’s interpretation functions as myth. Augustine cannot prove that the foundation of this world is real. He must intuitively sense its “metaphysical” foundations. Augustine writes: Within me I hear the loud Voice of Truth telling me that since the Creator is truly eternal, his substance is utterly unchanged in time and his will is not something separate from his substance.21

Like Parmenides who obeys the command of the goddess Justice, or Chinese tradition that obeys the command of the Sovereign Yao, Augustine obeys the Voice of Truth. Like Parmenides and Chinese tradition, Augustine, in his obedience to a religious intuition, makes a fundamental decision that becomes the foundation for a third civilization—medieval Christianity.

Christianity in Conflict with Alternative Intuitions In every historical context, there are always people with competing intuitions and different ways of situating themselves in the world. Hermeticism and Arianism are two examples of such alternatives to Augustine’s vision. Hermeticism takes its name from a mythical founder, Hermes Trimegister or Thrice Great Hermes. His followers esteemed his teachings for their presumed age; they, like many other peoples, were convinced that what was most ancient was closest to the gods and least corrupt. Although the Hermetic writings were in fact a mixture of various schools of Greek thought, people considered them much older. Augustine, for example, considered Hermes to have lived after the time of Moses but before the time of the Greeks. Such views, though misconceptions, show the “romantic” appeal of Hermes. Those attracted to Hermeticism also held things such as Indian ascetic techniques, Persian Magic, and Chaldean astrology in high esteem because they were foreign and exotic. They considered the Hermetic writings to be from Egypt, and this gave additional authority to his teachings.22

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Though derived from Hermes, the Greek god, Hermeticism is a form of Gnosticism, a religious movement that had its origins in late antiquity. As the movement arose, it appropriated and then transformed Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy. The movement was syncretic, having Christian and Jewish elements as well as Greek. It flourished from the second to the fourth centuries of the Common Era and had its adherents throughout the Roman Empire and into India and China.23 It emphasized salvation through a divine knowledge (gnosis) that transformed a person into God. This same knowledge is the core characteristic of Hermeticism. The Christian vision of an historical drama of real human actions in a real world clashed with the Gnostic vision where the particularities of this world are illusions. Certain Hebrew and Christian forms of gnosis transformed the god of the Hebrew Bible into an evil demiurge creating an equally evil world. The real god is above this evil creator god.24 The Gnostics asked: whence comes evil? In what does this power of misleading, inherent in gnosis, consist? For the Gnostic, evil is outside. It [evil] is a quasi-physical reality that invests man from the exterior.25

Astrology was an integral element of Gnosticism. Since the harmony of the stars was divine, it corresponded to the divinity of the human mind, and one could transcend the vicissitudes of earthly existence through astrological cults of celestial gods. This was in direct conflict with the Bibilical imagery of the absolute freedom and unpredictability of the actions of the Lord. Christian varieties of Gnosticism transformed the cross of atonement, the symbol of God’s most important, yet least predictable act, into a cross of magical illusion: they held that the resurrection of Jesus occurred before the crucifixion when Christ realized his mind to be divine and his body to be magical illusion. From the second to the fourth centuries Christianity hammered out doctrines in a sustained battle against Gnosticism and other heresies. The battle culminated with Augustine. In contrast to Gnosticism that held nature to be evil, he affirmed repeatedly that the creation was good. In contrast to Gnosticism that asserted no world existed independent of the

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divine human mind, Augustine asserted that there was such a world and that both people and nature were dependent on God.26 In The City of God, Augustine condemned astrology and transformed the celestial gods into demons. In so doing, Augustine was not denying the possibility of astrology. Rather, he was reevaluating the practice in the light of faith. Augustine considered astrology to be a real and powerful activity. God determined the future. Salvation was certain. The demons knew what God was going to do, and through astrology, one could acquire such knowledge from them. Because such a desire was to demonstrate lack of faith in God’s goodness and His providential concern for the world, the light of faith condemned astrology as demonic.27 Though Christianity opposed and refuted astrology, it could not uproot it. People never give up the assumption that there is some underlying order to human affairs. Moreover, it is not easy to single out, for it is attaches itself to something else. It is integrated in the central symbolisms of the cultures in which it occurs. The different ways that Augustine, the Confucians, and the Gnostics evaluated astrology sheds a great deal of light on their respective traditions. For Augustine, astrology clashes with faith in God’s goodness. In contrast, Confucius did not see astrology as an opponent but integrated it into its understanding of political history through the “Exchange of the Mandate of Heaven.” The world remains orderly until a sovereign loses his virtue. Then heaven sends an omen. Astrology remained important as a means of discerning such warnings. Although Augustine and the Confucians evaluated astrology quite differently, the former negatively, the latter positively, both assumed there was a kind of providence that made the vicissitudes of history and the irregularities of nature meaningful. In contrast Gnosticism interprets these irregularities as a kind of magical illusion. In Gnosticism, order and regularity eclipse history. In The Shape of the Liturgy Gregory Dix has shown how the confrontation with Gnosticism and other heresies transformed Christian ritual. The later part of the second century saw the elaboration of creeds recited during the liturgy in an effort to counteract the influence of Gnosticism. The creedal affirmation that “God the Father” is the “Maker of heaven and earth” was an expression that the creation was the act of a God that was not only all-powerful and unpredictable; but also good. The

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relation of God’s power to His goodness is a complex issue that received a great deal of attention by medieval theologians, but always they affirmed that the creation was in itself essentially good. The creedal affirmations stressed that Jesus Christ was, “His only Son” and “our Lord;” that he was born of a human mother, the Virgin Mary; that he really “suffered” at a particular moment in history; and that he really “died” and was really “buried.” These affirmations aimed at countering the Gnostic claim that the individual Jesus Christ was a magical illusion. Finally, the creedal affirmation that the “the Holy Spirit” is “in the Holy Church” was an attack on esoteric Gnostic groups that considered themselves an elite and met outside the official Church. Gnosticism emphasized salvation through knowledge. A second heresy, Arianism, stressed salvation through conformity to God’s will. The Arians asserted that all creatures were completely dependent on God, and that God’s only method of relating to the creation was through His will. This meant that the Jesus of history as well as the preexistent “Son” could not be an extension of God’s nature. They were the creation of God’s will.28 This led to a different understanding of salvation from that of orthodox Christianity. Christians like Augustine held that God the Father relates to His creation through the Incarnation, and makes salvation possible by the Son’s identity with Him. In contrast, Arians held that salvation is possible because of the Son’s identity with other creatures. God’s creatures, including Christ, unite themselves to the divine through conformity to God’s will. 29 The relation of Christ to the Father is the same as that of all creatures to God. It is not a relation of identity. It is a covenant relation, one of command and obedience.30 Christ served as a model for participation in God through obedience.31 One obtains and sustains salvation or “sonship” because of merit. This Arian idea of salvation was incomprehensible to orthodox Christians who obtained salvation by means of adoption by the Father. They could not attribute adoption and the goal of Christian living to God’s own Son.32 Although Arian Christology protected the unity, singularity, and transcendence of God,33 Arianism emphasized, above all, God’s complete sovereignty.34 God foreknew that Jesus would be good and therefore gave

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Christ glory in advance of the deeds that would merit it. Jesus was also Christ, the creator.35 As the creator of the cosmos Christ is also the perfect creature, Jesus.36 The Son depends on the Father for training.37 Christ could acquire expertise in creation, and the creative activity of Christ is analogous to the work of Moses who acted under divine command. The act of creating has less to do with eternal forms than with the willed actions of a supreme God. Existence is not a stable state of being; it is a dynamic series of events.38 Orthodox Christians criticized Arian “metaphysics” as failing to guarantee the stability of the world. The orthodox developed a “metaphysics” that assumed the stability of a world grounded on the Incarnation.39 In 325 CE, the Council of Nicea introduced a new creed, the “Nicene Creed,” into the liturgy. Earlier Christians had used creeds to distinguish a pagan or a Jew from a Christian. When the Council found that many within the Church, bishops and clergy as well as ordinary Christians, had become followers of Arius who taught that Jesus was not God, that he was only the best of created beings, it developed the “Nicene Creed” to distinguish an Arian from an orthodox Christian. The basis of the creed was an old baptismal creed from Jerusalem used to distinguish a Jew from a Christian. To the section dealing with the Lord Jesus Christ, the Council added the formula that declared him to be: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of the being of the Father, of one substance with the Father.” No Arian would be able to recite such a formula conscientiously.40 The history of Christianity and heretics, then, was the clash of ideal human images, a clash of myths. Christian ritual, especially in the creedal affirmations, defined a world. It had a similar function as ritual in the Shu-ching. Both Christian liturgy and Confucian ceremonial were for the “construction of reality.” The creedal affirmations were recited during a ritual that was the celebration and imitation of God’s saving act. This ritual was similar to the ritual enactment of the world presented in the passage of Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho. During that ritual, the participants formed a community as they experienced the transformation of the world. Similarly, the creeds Christians recited during the Christian liturgy affirmed that the grace made available was not just for individual Christians; nor was it for the Christian community; it was

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not even just for all of humanity; it was for the salvation of the entire universe. The Church’s clash with heretics resulted in the doctrine of the Trinity. This affirmed one God and three divine persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity expressed absolute presuppositions about the world. The Father expressed the assumption of one real nature contingent on God; the Son (as Logos) expressed the assumption that this nature had forms the human mind could understand; and the Holy Spirit expressed the assumptions that nature was a dynamic and changing world independent of the human mind.41 In the Confessions Augustine attempted to synthesize the opening passage of Genesis with the doctrine of the Trinity.42 When the angels and humanity fell through pride the entire spiritual creation would have been engulfed in darkness except for God’s command, “Let there be light.” God’s will keeps obedient spirits at rest in the Holy Spirit. Augustine writes: When spirits fall, their darkness is revealed, for they are stripped of the garment of your light. By the misery and restlessness which they then suffer you make clear to us how noble a being is your rational creation, for nothing less than yourself suffices to give it rest and happiness. This means that it cannot find them in itself. For you, our God, will shine on the darkness about us. From you proceeds our garment of light, and our dusk shall be noonday.43

The instability and movement of the creation is a restlessness and longing for God. The world has no happiness in itself. It depends on God for its happiness. Once again we see a solar symbolism appear in this passage in the imagery of light. It expresses the order and stability of a world that rests in God as opposed to the darkness. Darkness represents the disorder and instability of a disobedient world that has separated from God, but has no being or stability of its own. God’s spirit acts on a person’s will and brings him to his rightful place in the world, at rest in God. Here a person finds true peace.44 Similarly the spirit uses grace to bring reason, order, and stability to the creation.45 There is no dichotomy between the laws of nature and the human mind. Both are a matter of a will that the Holy Spirit moves to obedience.

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Augustine ends by contemplating the Trinity. It is a vision of an eternal unity from whence the creation began and to which it will return.46 In Jesus Through The Centuries Jaroslav Pelikan reminds us that each individual is unique. All the metaphysical constructs in the doctrine of the Trinity were not merely abstract ideas. The historical figure of Jesus and his crucifixion and death on the cross underpins them. Many philosophers who had never heard of Jesus of Nazareth could have proclaimed the opening phrase of the fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word.” The picture of Christ as the divine Logos that the Gospel of John presents, however, is exceptional because of its declaration that the Logos had become flesh in the man Jesus. Even more striking is that in the man, Jesus, the divine Word had suffered and died on the cross.47 After reminding us of the particularity of Jesus and his sacrificial death, Pelikan also reminds us that the individual always claims universal significance. The entire cosmos was the object of the love that had come through Him. After presenting the doctrine of the incarnate Logos, the Gospel of John affirmed God’s love for the world in its best-known verse: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Pelikan points out that although we can understand “whoever” as each individual, one should not forget that the Greek word for world used in the passage was cosmos.48 The sacrificial death of Jesus saved not only people, but the universe as a whole.

Anselm’s “Proof ” of the Existence of God. Another important figure for this study is the eleventh century theologian, Anslem. There is perhaps no better example the relation of absolute presuppositions to reason than Anselm’s “proof of the existence of God.” Anselm begins the fist part of his “proof” with a prayer that God will help him in his effort.49 The prayer is from a person, Anselm, to another person, God. Since true prayer only occurs when one believes in the existence of the God to whom one prays, Anselm begins by presupposing what he is to “prove”—the existence of God.50

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What kind of proof can this be? Anselm answers this by asserting that God gives knowledge to faith, and by requesting that God allow him to know that He exists and is, as he (Ansem) believes. In the act of prayer, Anselm assumes that God exists. His “proof” is a means of acquiring knowledge and understanding grounded on that assumption. It is a means of transforming belief in God into understanding.51 In his prayer we see immediately how Anselm, as in the examples of Parmenides or Chinese tradition, grounds knowledge on an absolute presupposition, in this case, that God exists. Anselm continues in his prayer: But we believe: Thou art “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived”.52

The phrase, “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived,” is not merely a rational proposition. It is a Name of God. Anselm had prayed for a long time that God would reveal a Name to him, and after Anselm had almost given up, God revealed the Name.53 Anselm understood this new Name that God revealed to him as a divine command that demands submission and sets limits on the human mind. It is impossible to imagine anything greater than God. If we can imagine something as being greater than God, then we are not (or perhaps no longer) really thinking of God.54 Anselm wants to know if anything exists that corresponds to this Name or if it is just a Name. 55 Along side of Anselm who submits to the authority God, there is the fool, the unbeliever, who refuses. Anselm’s “proof” is dialectical. He makes an assertion, “God exists,” but the fool makes a counter assertion, “God does not exist.” The fool puts the believer’s existence into question. Ironically, because the unbeliever’s refusal to believe in God stimulates him to prove that God exists and thereby derive understanding, Anselm is indebted to the unbeliever. Anselm then goes on to show in a rigorously logical fashion that, through the intellectual willingness to submit to the Name of God, “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived”, it is possible to understand what he now only believes—that God exists.56 In the second part of his “proof,” Anselm shows that God has a unique existence. In contrast to everything else, we can only conceive

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of God as existing. God does not exist as one thing along side others (although greater). God exists on a plane above all other things. 57 The believer and the unbeliever stand together on the same plane below the infinite. The difference between them is the believer submits his intellect to the Name of God and the unbeliever does not. When the believer recognizes the limits of what one can reason or imagine, he becomes oriented. He understands how he depends on the Creator.58 This is the foundation for knowledge: after submitting to God, Anselm demonstrates with almost mathematical rigor that God alone has true and absolute existence. 59 Since God is infinite and His creatures are finite, they fail to comprehend Him. However, when they submit to his Name, they understand how they fail. More than that, they understand how they must necessarily fail.60 The third part of Anselm’s “proof ” is the possibility for denying the existence of God. One can deny the existence of God, simply because one does not believe in Him, and so one does not make the absolute presupposition with which Anselm begins his “proof.” Because believing in God is an act of redemption that only the grace of God makes possible, dialectical solidarity unites the believer and the unbeliever. The believer cannot be certain that he will never become an unbeliever, and he cannot be certain that the unbeliever will never become a believer. Whether or not either of these two events happens is completely dependent on the will of God.61 Most importantly, if the unbeliever did not deny the existence of God, he would never have stimulated the believer (in this case Anselm himself) to “prove” that God exists and thereby transform belief into understanding. Anselm’s “proof ” was no idle luxury. In his “proof,” Anselm makes one see how God is not merely one object along side other objects so that one can compare Him to them. Rather, God encompasses the knowing subject as well as the object to be known. That is, God is the source of light and understanding by which one can compare and judge all other objects. Thus He is beyond comparison. Anselm’s “proof ” establishes the transcendental foundation of all understanding.62 This sets the stage for entirely new ways to understand Christian scripture and articles of faith.63

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myth and the mechanistic universe At the end of his prayer or “proof” Anselm concludes: I thank thee, good Lord, I thank thee, that what I at first believed because of thy gift, I now know because of thine illumining in such a way that even if I did not want to believe thine Existence, yet I could but know it.64

A new Name of God, “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived,” grounded Anselm’s “proof.” The “proof” opened up new possibilities to renew and transform the Christian tradition.

The Medieval Cosmos Grounded on the theology of Christians such as Augustine and Anselm and under the influence of Hellenistic speculation, medieval Christianity created an image of the cosmos that was structured hierarchically, from the heavens to the earth. Because the heavens were closest to God and incorruptible, the fixed stars moved eternally in fixed orbits. The earth, on the other hand, was subject to constant flux. From the heavens, the infinite flowed down into the finite; from the earth, the finite returned to the infinite. The whole process was the incarnation of God, and humanity was the center of this drama of redemption.65 Like the Chinese cosmos, the image expresses a human ideal: a person who at once lives a story that makes life meaningful and has the ability to act on the world. Like its Chinese counterpart, the medieval image, presents a “metaphysics,” a foundation for scientific activity. In contrast to the Chinese “metaphysics” of a central pivot around which the world turns, the “metaphysics” of this image stressed hierarchy. The Middle Ages divided the cosmos into hierarchical regions and qualitatively different places. Because the realm of the fixed stars was orderly, one could describe it mathematically. The sub lunar realm was too chaotic for such descriptions. The celestial realm, with its mathematical uniformity, was sacred; in contrast, the sub lunar region, with its turbulence and irregularity, was profane.

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This division is similar to how the Chinese distinguished the heavens, which they characterized by yang, from the earth, which they characterized by yin. However, the Chinese considered these two realms as complementary rather than as part of a hierarchical order. Kuhn has given us a good description of the medieval cosmos and its relation to astronomy. Because of the different natures of the heavens and the earth, one had to study them differently. One could understand quantitatively how the heavens moved, but one had to be content with understanding qualitatively, in terms of a five-element theory, changes in the earth.66 It is helpful to think back once again of the Ngaju Dayak who expressed their presuppositions in the traditions of sacred songs passed down from generation to generation. The Chinese expressed and preserved “metaphysics” in the Confucian classics. Christian civilization expressed and preserved its “metaphysics” through biblical revelation. Since central biblical imagery was subject to different interpretations, the Church constructed creedal formulations that would separate interpretations that expressed the “orthodox” “metaphysics” from those that were “heretical.” By preserving specific absolute presuppositions, each religion, in its own way, defines and preserves the nucleus of a civilization. There is no universal, unchanging, fixed human character. Each civilization defines a specific human nature through its religion. No culture has ever succeeded in doing this perfectly, definitively. Alternative visions that pose a challenge to “reality” as defined by the voices of authority, such as Hermeticism and Arianism in the case of Christianity, always exist within a civilization. Because of this, there is always an element of coercion in the “construction of reality.” The Inquisition, under which two important figures in the rise of modernity, Giordano Bruno and Galileo, suffered, was one manifestation of this. It was the attempt to defend one world from a rival by the use of force. Force alone cannot preserve a civilization. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Christian myth of sin and redemption seemed to be fading, and a new myth of human self-assertion was taking its place. This new myth would define a new world and a new human nature.

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Part Two

Religious Forms and Physical Science in the Modern World

Introduction

By the end of the fourteenth century there were four major civilization areas in the land mass formed by Europe and Asia: China, India, Islam, and the civilization of the West. Each of these had a “metaphysics” that it expressed through its own religious imagery. The four areas of civilization had been in contact with each other for the past two thousand years. Although there were variations among the four, they all developed within common economic limits—those set by the Neolithic revolution. The rate of change within each of these civilizations was slow by modern standards. No one area of civilization could advance beyond the others in economic or political power for any length of time before the others would catch up. At about the beginning of the fifteenth century, this situation began to change. The West began to expand its horizons during the age of the great explorations. At the same time, the West also began to transform itself internally. New financial institutions began to emerge that would form the basis of capitalism. In the seventeenth century, modern science arose. The Enlightenment of the eighteen century followed, and soon the democratic revolutions took place. Finally, in the nineteenth century the industrial revolution took place. This included new ways to organize society as well as new methods to produce goods. At this time engineers combined technology with the sciences of nature. The modern technological world emerged with these developments. All areas of society and culture discarded tradition in favor of new, more efficient, ways of doing things. People placed ever-greater emphasis on improving technical operations, and this, in turn, led them to specialize in all realms of life with ever-greater intensity and energy. The pace of change quickened. An ever-widening chasm between traditional societies and the modern world began to make its appearance.1 The modern world of science and technology produced a new human type. The heroes of the modern world are Galileo and Newton. Each could combine in his person both scientific theory and experimental technique. Each also did much to transform the image of nature, and by the end of Newton’s life, the mechanistic universe had emerged, a universe whose

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changes we can understand with mathematical precision. This ability marks the transition that, according to Lévi-Strauss, separates myth from science. These developments, however, did not lead to the end of myth. Rather, they destroyed an old myth and created a new one. In The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Hans Blumenberg has argued that late scholastic nominalism transformed the Christian vision, especially as Augustine expressed it, into an abstraction that at best was meaningless and at worst something evoking more terror than hope. The response to this was modernism. Blumenberg considers the sixteenth century to be the boundary between medieval and modern worlds. Although Nicholas of Cusa is within the Augustinian tradition, his attempt to renew it marks the beginning of the epochal transition to modernism. Giordano Bruno on the other hand, totally rejects the medieval vision and this completes the transition.2 I don’t think Blumenberg is entirely correct. Cusanus and Bruno represent two tendencies that continue into modernity. Cusanus created a new vision of the world by working out the implications on the limits of thought and imagination that were implicit in Anselm’s “proof” of the existence of God. Cusanus represents a tendency for new creative thought within the limits the authority of tradition imposes. In contrast, Bruno represents a tendency to transgress boundaries in the manner of Prometheus. These two tendencies are in tension throughout the modern era. Although the tendency Cusanus’s exemplifies is important, the tendency Bruno embodies dominates to such an extent that, ultimately, despite my reservation, I would be inclined to agree with Blumenberg— Bruno alone, more than any other figure, characterizes modernity.

The Cause of the Scientific Revolution Why did the scientific and technological “revolutions” occur in the West? There have been many attempts to answer this question. This is what Lévi-Strauss tries to do in The Savage Mind. Other scholars, including specialists in Western, Islamic, and Chinese civilization, have asked this question as well.

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One of the most balanced and sustained discussion of this question comes from a historian of Chinese civilization, Derk Bodde. In Chinese Thought, Society, and Science, he systematically examines many aspects of Chinese civilization. These include literature and writing, the structure of time and space, the role of religion, government and social organization, morals and values, and the relation of people to nature. For each of these areas, Bodde asks, “How did this aspect of Chinese culture promote or inhibit tendencies that might have led to the rise of modern science and technology?”3 At the end of his study, Bodde suggested that the Chinese retention of the old “organicist” understanding of nature was one of the more important retarding influences. He readily acknowledges that the Chinese had deep insights into the nature of the universe. Not only did these make an immense aesthetic contribution to Chinese culture, but also they are remarkably close to the insights of modern physics and biology. However, Bodde is not certain that modern science could have developed directly from these insights. Perhaps the Chinese conception of the universe lacked such things as the concept of “laws of nature” that were essential to Newtonian and Galilean science. Bodde recognizes that such questions are highly speculative. Nevertheless, he thinks it is highly probable that the predominance of an organicist conception of nature in China and its rarity in the West had an important influence on the different ways science developed in these two civilizations.4 Needham has maintained that there is a difference between Chinese and Western conceptions of the order of nature. The Chinese imagine that the order arises spontaneously through the inner resonance of the various parts of the world, so that one was not to coerce the order of society and the universe from without; one was to evoke it from within by ceremonial and custom. In contrast, the West imagined there is an external, omnipotent, lawgiver that orders both society and nature by divine command. Needham then asserts that this difference does much to account for the rise of modern science in the West and its absence in China.5 Several others besides Needham have pointed to a relation between the rise of modern science and the idea of an omnipotent lawgiver. These would include R. Hooykaas who wrote Natural Law and Divine Miracle:

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The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology and Theology 6 and Michael Foster, who wrote “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science.”7 The results of all these explanatory attempts, as Bodde acknowledges, must remain tenuous. In a civilization as vast and long-lived as pre-modern China, there is bound to be almost every conceivable idea concerning nature. Bodde produces many examples to counter Needham’s claim that the Chinese lacked the conception of an external lawgiver. Similarly, there is great variety in Western civilization, and Bodde points out that the Stoic conception of the cosmic order is close to the Confucian.8 Although there are differences in the dominant tendencies of the two cultures, there is, nevertheless, considerable overlap. Absolute differences are almost impossible to maintain. Let us suppose that Needham is right. Then one must ask, “If the presence or absence of an external God who commanded the order of nature was so decisive in the promotion of modern science, why didn’t it occur in Islamic civilization?” After all, the theology of Newton’s Principia is in some ways closer to the Koran than to that of the New Testament. Recently, H. Floris Cohen attempted to answer this. He asked, “Could a Galileo have appeared and prevailed in either Chinese or Islamic civilizations?” His answer is that because of the similarity of Islam to Christianity, a Galileo could have appeared and prevailed in the Islamic world. However, a Galileo could not have arisen in ancient China.9 If modern science could have arisen in the Islamic world, why didn’t it? In a recent study, Toby Huff provides an answer along sociological lines. He argues that although both Christianity and Islam share the image of God as an external lawgiver, nevertheless, they developed different concepts of law. Islamic tradition tried to eliminate human reason as a source of law. In contrast, European and Western law used reason as a foundation for legal reform. The West assumed that the universe as well as a person had a rational order. Plato expressed this in the Timaeus. The Christian concept of synderesis or conscience expressed the same thing.10 Just as we find the underpinning of the tradition of the two books, the Book of Nature and the Book of God, in the Pauline myth of sin and redemption, so do we find the underpinning of Western law. Its foundation is the following passage from the Letter of Paul to the Romans:

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When Gentiles who do not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then, although they have no law, they are their own law, for they display the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts.11

This passage underpinned legal reforms in the Middle Ages that restructured society. An essential aspect of this restructuring was the emergence of a new legal principle—treating a group of people as a single entity. This was the concept of the corporation. According to Huff this was an idea that had no counterpart in either China or Islam. I am not so sure that Islam had no counter-part. Islam did have, and in fact affirmed, customary law in each community it converted. However, for the sake of argument let us assume Huff is correct. Corporate autonomy led to the independence of the university, and existence of this independent institution was a precondition for the development of modern science. From 1200 to around 1650 the works of Aristotle provided the core of philosophical study that fostered attitudes of “disinterestedness and organized skepticism . . .” It was the cultivation of these values that laid the foundation for the rise of modern science. According to Huff, there was no such standard curriculum in the madrasas of the Islamic world.12 I have reservations about this assertion as well. Islam certainly knew Aristotle and his works and Islamic scholars were first to translate him. However, let us, with certain reservations, accept Huff’s thesis. If we do that, we find there are plausible answers to the question of why modern science arose only in the West. A. C. Graham, however, questions the appropriateness of the question. He points out that although there is less conflict between traditional culture and modern science in the West than elsewhere, this does not mean that there is an especially strong intrinsic compatibility between Western civilization and the new world of science and technology. Rather, there is less conflict because the civilization in which science and technology first arises will only have to adapt to that development. All others will have to adapt not only to the new view of the world, but to the alien culture that brings it to them as well. This new culture will be fundamentally different from any previous “agrarian civilization.” This includes pre-modern Europe. 13

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Although he is concerned more with technology than science, I feel that Marshall Hodgeson’s answer to the question, “What caused the scientific and technological revolution?” is one of the most convincing. In my discussion of Prometheus I stressed that all knowledge has an active, experimental foundation, and Hodgeson’s answer places the emphasis on technical preconditions rather than culture. In The Venture of Islam, he argues that the rise of a new technological civilization required a certain concentration of technological elements to come together. When this “critical mass” formed, a new technological civilization would take off. To the question, “Why did this happen in the West?” he replies that if it was going to happen at all, it had to happen somewhere, and the relative backwardness of the West created space in which a new civilization could emerge. It could have happened in Islam. Then, however, the institutional basis of the new civilization would have been contract law rather than corporate law.14 Speaking of material preconditions rather than cultural causes allows us to avoid the temptation, especially considering current Western political and economic world hegemony, to evaluate a civilization in terms of whether or not it promoted the advancement of modern science. Because such a procedure must assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that the modern world is an absolute standard, it does not allow one to take the “metaphysical” underpinnings of other cultures seriously. Christian apologists are especially guilty of misusing the history of science in this way. One can see this domineering, imperialistic tendency especially well in the natural theology of some Catholic theologians as well as some scientists. For example, in The Road of Science and the Ways to God, Stanley L. Jaki, uses the triumph and prestige of modern science apologetically as proof of the superiority of Christianity.15 Science leads to God and the success of modern science vindicates Christianity.16 It also shows the weaknesses of non-Christian cultures.17 This allows Jaki to dismiss the central symbolism of ancient China—yin, yang, and the tao. The symbolic patterns in the Shu-ching are in fact the cause of China’s backwardness.18 Because such approaches as Jaki’s must assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that the modern world is an absolute standard, it does not allow

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one to take the “metaphysical” underpinnings of other cultures seriously. As in the case with Lévi-Strauss, such a procedure prematurely denies the claim to truth of myths and symbols. It also ignores the obvious fact that our own world is always in the process of becoming something else. The approach I am advocating is one in which the encounter between traditional and modern symbols is a battle whose outcome is not a foregone conclusion, and the truth is up for grabs. Jaki dismisses symbols expressing ancient China’s decision for becoming, process, and change as “logic-defying aphorisms.” For over two thousand years, the West, under the influence of Parmenides, made a decision for being and rationality. Although the West’s decision gave rise to clarity and logical rigor, China’s decision was truer and more profound. Indeed, in the past two hundred years, in many cultural realms including natural science, the West has been in the process of converting from the way of being to the path China originally chose, to the way of process, becoming and change.

A Comparison A great deal of the difficulty in these discussions is due to a common tendency to think of historical causality as analogous to causality in the natural sciences. Such a conception of causality requires that one first delineate differences between the modern West and another civilization and then show how these differences account for differences in the development of the two cultures. The second part of the argument, in the case of the present study, of showing that the differences discovered between cultures can account for the development of modern science and technology in one and its failure in the other, is tenuous, speculative and usually ends in circularity. What was the difference between modern and Chinese science? It was X. What is the reason why science arose in the West and failed to do so in China? That also is X. I am not trying to dismiss the question. I am arguing that many of those trying to answer it misunderstand historical causality. The tendency to think of historical causality as something like causality in the natural sciences is a tendency that many of us in the West have inherited from Parmenides and his decision for being. This tendency does not take

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into consideration that the most recent chapter of physical science has abandoned this decision and considers chance to be prior to causality. So it is possible to learn something from ancient China. Civilizations do not have underlying substances transcending historical flux. They are historical entities that exist only within their development in time. Unlike objects of nature, the objects of historical study are people. Because people are also subjects, an historical event or action is the outward manifestation of a person’s inner experiences or ideas. To know the “essence” of an historical event is to understand the ideas or experiences that motivated that action. History is autonomous and so is the human mind. We cannot reduce either to a law of nature. Since the ideas or experiences are both the “essence” and cause of an action, to know what happened is also to know why it happened.19 When one has answered the question, “What happened in the rise of modern science?” one also knows why it arose. The question, “Why didn’t modern science arise in China?” is not a legitimate question. It is merely a rhetorical device to underscore the differences between two civilizations. However, if one realizes that the correct form of the question should be, “What is the difference between the Chinese and modern worlds?” a study like Bodde’s can be extremely useful. It becomes an examination of how various aspects of Chinese civilization differed from the world created by modern science. Rather than a speculation on causes, Bodde’s work can become a study in comparison, a study in which the Chinese and modern worlds mutually illuminate one another. Because Bodde’s study is thorough, it would be impossible to review all the differences. How is one to choose which differences to look at? Historians have some understanding of the process that transformed the medieval cosmos into the mechanistic universe. This understanding helps to highlight essential differences between these medieval and modern worlds. If one assumes that these same differences are important between modern and traditional worlds in general, one will have a reasonably good way to chose important differences between Chinese and modern worlds for comparative work. One will simply concentrate on those differences between the Chinese and modern worlds that correspond to the differences that arose in the process of transformation from the medieval to the modern world.20

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Historians of science have produced many studies of the transition from the medieval to the modern world. I mentioned in the beginning of this essay that one of the most stimulating of these is Edwin Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. In it he attempts to discover the new absolute presuppositions that underpin the ideal of “objective” knowledge that arises in early modern science and culminates in the physics of Newton. Burtt’s study points out that to the extent that physical science succeeds in reducing people to the laws of physiology, autonomous individual existence vanishes.21 A second author whom I mentioned, Alexander Koyré, developed the historiographical concept, “the scientific revolution,” to designate the change in outlook that occurred with the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century. He also sees the rise of early modern science as the consequence of “metaphysical” transformations that occurred in the transition from the medieval to the modern worlds. The hierarchical cosmos collapsed and became an infinite universe with homogeneous, quantifiable, time and space. Although this process initially deified the universe, it quickly led to scientific materialism.22 The early attention historians such Koyré gave to Galileo as the key-figure exaggerated his importance. Herbert Butterfield made wider and more realistic views popular, and subsequent generations of historians of science have continued to broaden the transition period. It has expanded from the person of Galileo to include the period from Copernicus to Newton.23 One of the most recent works to explore the transition from the medieval to the modern worlds is Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. In this work, Amos Funkenstein shows how many of the most important ideas of the scientific revolution grew out of medieval concerns with the attributes of God. In the transition to the modern world, God’s omnipresence, omnipotence, and providence undergo a process of secularization. God’s omnipresence becomes the infinite universe. His omnipotence becomes the assumption that nature is lawful so that we can describe it by the idealizations of modern physics. Finally, His providence becomes the idea of the autonomy of history.24 Funkenstein also argues that with the rise of the modern world, a new ideal of knowledge appears in such diverse fields as physical science,

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political science, and history. It is the ideal of knowledge by construction. One knows things by making them. The order of society and government are human constructions. History is a human construction. The mechanistic universe itself is a human construction. This new ideal expresses a tendency completely opposed to the one that Edwin Burtt had discovered. Rather than reducing a person to the laws of physiology, in the ideal of knowledge as construction there is the tendency to deify humanity.25 Although the work of Burtt, Koyré, and Butterfield has had a profound influence on subsequent scholarship on early modern science, in recent years there have been significant new developments in the history of science. The picture that is now emerging of the rise of early modern science is one of even much greater diversity. Cultural historians are attempting to discover the relationship between the rise of science and other forms of learning, and social historians are beginning to study the rise of modern science as a social and political construction. Historians have increasingly specialized and discovered many new insights into the interrelations between different areas of cultural. They have shown us we can no longer see the “scientific revolution” as a unique event separating the modern world from all others. Rather, “scientific revolution” is a metaphor of heuristic value for the reconstruction of a particular period of history, a period constituted by a myriad of unique and particular events. Nevertheless, it is still possible to generalize about the differences between modern and medieval worlds. In The Idea of Nature, R. G. Collingwood examined the rise of the modern scientific world. He points out new dualisms that appear with the mechanistic universe, viz between mind and dead matter, between life and dead matter, and between the laws of nature and those of society.26 In Collingwood’s opinion, the early Greeks experienced the world as a vast organism that was alive. Its material body spread out and constituted space. The body was alive and permeated with movements in time. The world had an intellect that directed the body’s movements, which were thus vital and purposeful. The world had an organic unity. All the parts participated in the one life and mind. Yet all the parts were distinct. They were made of different substances, each with its own specific quality and activity.27

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With the rise of the mechanistic universe, all this changed. According to Collingwood, the two problems, which so profoundly perplex the modern mind, are the relation between dead matter and life, and the relation of matter to mind. These did not exist for the early Greeks. They saw no fundamental difference between the seasonal changes of the heavens and the seasonal changes of the plant and animal worlds. It never occurred to them that a planet might move according to one kind of law and that an animal might move according to one that was entirely different. Similarly, the early Greeks saw no problem between the relation between matter and mind. They saw no difference between the way a citizen understands and submits to the laws of his city-state and the way a material object understands and submits to the laws of nature.28 More invites comparison. As we have emphasized, in the West the transition from the medieval to the modern world involved dualisms between matter and life, matter and society, and matter and mind. This fact helps us see the importance of the difference between our way of dividing up the world and the underlying unity of the Chinese world expressed in the term “li.” Needham gives a summary of the difference between the Chinese world and the mechanistic universe that is almost identical to the one provided by Collingwood. He says that when people began to recognize motion as being the same everywhere in the universe, a fundamental change in outlook had occurred. The substitution of abstract, mathematical space for the concrete and qualitatively differentiated space of pre-Galilean physics and astronomy destroyed the organic and living cosmos. People no longer experienced the world as a finite and hierarchically ordered whole. Now the world was an indefinite or even an infinite universe. Simple laws that were universal in their applicability held the material world together. Once Newton had formulated the law of gravitation, for example, there was no place in the universe that it was not applicable.29 Perhaps the most important recent study of the transition from the medieval to the modern worlds, at least from the perspective of this essay, is Louis Dupré’s Passage to Modernity. According to Dupré, modernity is the cultural explosion that occurred when the humanist idea of human creativity combined with nominalist theology. This mixture was

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powerful but highly unstable. When it exploded, it shattered the organic unity of medieval Christianity. The medieval picture of the world was a synthesis of the Greek cosmos and the Christian God of Creation. Although God was outside the world, He continued to be present through His wisdom and grace. The nominalist theology of the late Middle Ages, however, had the effect of banishing God from creation. It desacralized the world. One no longer experienced it as being sacred. The withdrawal of God from the world meant that one could no longer presuppose that the structure of the world was meaningful. Now it was the human mind, not God, that had to provide the world with meaning. The world split into two spheres, human subjectivity and an objective nature. The first sphere was the source of all meaning, value, and intelligibility. The second sphere was merely the passive receptacle of those qualities projected on it by the first.30 In the Middle Ages prior to nominalism, most theologians taught that in the act of creating the world, God imparts forms that reside in Him for all eternity to the creation. Nature partakes in the divine and obeys the rules set for it. According to Dupré, the same passage from Paul that underpinned law in our nations and societies, also expressed the moral and religious authority of nature.31 The Stoics of ancient Greece held the same views. Accordingly, the law governing nature, symbolized by fire, and the laws governing the mind and human speech were interconnected. The divine logos referred to the order of nature, the order of the mind, and the order of society. The divine provided a fundamental unity to nature, society, and the mind. Only the modern mind, as Collingwood also points out, begins to think of dichotomies instead of unities. When the logos lost its sacred character, it became something that existed only in the human subject, and the rest of the world lost all meaning. This, according to Dupré, was the cause of modernity.32 With this understanding of the transition from medieval to modern worlds, let us return for a moment to ancient China. The European transition from pre-modern to modern is similar to what China suggested to us. In both China and the West, we see change from the qualitative cosmos composed of various quasi-divine substances to the infinite universe of homogeneous, mathematical, time and space. There

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is, however, a cardinal difference. The West began with a cosmos with a hierarchical order. China began with an organic cosmos composed of places with differing quasi-divine “essences.” The steps from there to modernity would seem easier to take. The cultural, scientific, and religious developments in Europe and China are far from identical. In both worlds, however, we see a complex, living, and essentially mythical pattern change into what we more generally—but none too articulately—call “modern thought.” In a penetrating study, The Individual and the Cosmos, Ernst Cassirer shows how the Renaissance created new human imagery by transforming a series of symbols.33 This has an immediate bearing to the theme of this essay, the relation of myth and the mechanistic universe. Central to Eliade’s model for the understanding of traditional myths are ideal images of human existence. The rise of the mechanistic universe is not so much the abandonment of ancient religious forms as it is their transformation.

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Chapter 8



The New Myth of Proportion, Numbers, and Precision

The destruction of the medieval synthesis begins with William of Ockham (ca. 1290-1349/50). He saw how the new philosophy, stressing the individual and the particular, that had come into prominence was inconsistent with the Greek principles of knowledge going back through Plato and Aristotle to Parmenides. Ockham abandons the assumption of harmony between the human mind and nature, because such an assumption subjects God’s ways of acting in the world to human norms of reason. In particular, he abandons the assumption that in the act of knowing, a universal form unites the mind that knows and the object known.1 Although Ockham recognizes the need for universals in human understanding, he denies that these have an existence independent of the human mind. One achieves contact with nature by means of an intuition that comes through the senses, and in this process the object known does not transfer any form to the knowing mind. Hypothetically, it is even possible for God to create within a person’s mind an intuition of an object independent of any sense impression.2 At the same time that nominalism began to deny that nature was rational, it also began to assert that God had withdrawn from the world. Before that, Christian theologians had maintained that forms united both the mind and nature to the divine. But if form was merely something the mind fabricated, it could no longer do this.3 This desacralization of form liberated and prepared it for an entirely new and creative use. In humanism and the Renaissance, form came to express exuberantly and uninhibitedly the human spirit. Nominalism also prepared the way for the rise of modern science. Detaching form from its reference to nature, freed people to develop it into flexible and self-consistent systems. These would become tools for a new empirical

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analysis of nature.4 These developments did not happen all at once. Only in the later Renaissance did form become completely independent.5 Perhaps the last cultural sphere in which it became evident was that of the rise of modern science. Although Galileo is the founder of modern mathematical dynamics, the transformation from the medieval cosmos to the mechanistic universe had begun two centuries earlier with Nicholas of Cusa. The following passage from his book, Learned Ignorance, is worth considering at length: [Every religion] believes that He whom it worships as one is all in one, and that He whom it worships as inaccessible light is not light as is corporeal light, to which darkness is opposed, but is infinite and most simple Light, in which darkness is Infinite Light; and [it believes] that Infinite Light always shines within the darkness of our ignorance but [that] the darkness cannot comprehend it. And so, the theology of negation is so necessary for the theology of affirmation that without it God would not be worshiped as the Infinite God but, rather, as a creature. And such worship is idolatry; it ascribes to the image that which befits only the reality itself.6

In this passage Cusanus is meditating on the verses from the beginning of the Gospel of John, where it says: All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it.7

However, Cusanus is not merely passively contemplating the old verses. In his meditations, we can see the active, creative power of his imagination at work as he transforms the imagery of light and darkness that appears in the original verses into something new. What is the relationship between the imagery of this passage by Cusanus and the rise of the modern mathematical analysis of nature? To answer this, I will show how Cusanus responded to the nominalist destruction of the world with a new fundamental intuition of the world—a new absolute presupposition. Then I will show how Galileo’s defense of Copernicanism expressed an almost identical intuition. The aim of this

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 151 chapter, then, is to show that the writings of both Cusanus and Galileo express a new myth—a myth of proportion, numbers, and precision.

Nicholas of Cusa Although he created a new image of the world, Cusanus remained within the tradition of both Augustine and Anselm. Cusanus submitted to the limits and constraints that the Name of God, “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived,” imposed on reason and imagination. Cusanus’s vision was an attempt to work out the implications of Anselm’s “proof” of the existence of God. The center of Cusanus’s vision was an ideal human image of a person who God created lower than the angels but higher than all the other works of God. Human nature includes and even exceeds intellectual and sensible nature. It contains all things. For this reason, the ancients called it a microcosm.8 Although he continued to ground his vision on Christian doctrine and authority, Cusanus destroyed the hierarchical cosmos and created a new one that he understood as a reflection of God. It was unlimited but still finite; and all of its parts were equidistant from Him. Because the world was the reflected image of God, if one could attain to union with Him, one would be the perfection of everything in the world; one would include every perfection of every created thing.9 Jesus Christ is the example of such perfection. He is both God and man. He is the intellect that is so great that there cannot be one greater. Therefore, Jesus is “the limit of the potentiality of every intellectual [nature]. In Jesus, the intellectual nature exists in “complete actuality.” This nature is also God, “who is all in all.”10 Cusanus integrates the Pythagorean fascination with mathematics into this human imagery. In so doing he shows how one solves the problem that so perplexed the Greeks—that of incommensurability. One solves the problem at the limits of human reason, at the boundary of the finite and the infinite where opposites coincide. Cusanus illustrates the coincidence of God and a person in the man, Jesus Christ, by comparing it to the coincidence of a polygon and a circle. He tells us to picture a

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circle that inscribes a polygon. The polygon represents human nature, and the circle represents the divine. If the polygon were such that there could not be a polygon with a greater number of sides, it would coincide with the circle. It would no longer have its own shape; it would have one that was inseparable from the circular and eternal shape.11 Cusanus designates a polygon that can’t have a greater number of sides as a maximum polygon. As one increases the number of sides of a polygon, it will approach the circle that inscribes it to greater and greater degrees. This process can go on indefinitely. The maximum polygon will coincide with this circle. Cusanus’s vision stressed that the human mind operates by means of comparison so that proportion and mathematical ratios represent ideals of knowledge. According to him, the basic power of the human mind is in measuring, weighing, and counting. All knowledge is a matter of comparing, of relating one thing to another. Since there is nothing one can compare with the infinite, one cannot know it. Comparing involves finding similarities and differences, and therefore involves numbers. Numbers are not only present in quantity; they are present in all things one can compare. Cusanus reasons that this is perhaps why Pythagoras taught that numbers constitute all things, and therefore one must understand everything through numbers.12 Cusanus asserts that precise truth is incomprehensible. Human knowledge approaches a limit in its knowledge, and there can be no comparative relation between the infinite and the finite. That is, one cannot arrive at the infinite through comparison. If something is not the infinite, one can always find something greater. One cannot find two things that are so similar that one could not make them even closer to being equal. Moreover, one could continue the process of measuring ad infinitum. No matter how equal the measure is to that which it is measuring, they will always remain different. Then Cusanus again uses the example of how a polygon inscribed in a circle approaches the circle as its number of sides increases to illustrate how finite intelligence approaches the truth.13 Cusanus creates a human image that grounds ordinary, profane knowledge in an intuition of the infinite. The ratios and terms of comparison of our ordinary mental processes coincide in a vision of God that unites the finite and the infinite. This vision at once perfects ordinary

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 153 comparative knowledge and shows its limits. He writes that the “precise combinations” in physical objects as well as exact measurement are beyond human reason. For this reason Socrates claimed to know only that he did not know. Since human desire for knowledge is not in vain, it must be that one desires to know that one does not know. One desires to acquire learned ignorance. This is the perfection of knowledge. The more a person “knows that he is unknowing, the more learned he will be.”14 One cannot obtain such a vision by one’s own efforts; it is granted through the grace of God.15 Cusanus expresses this vision through the imagery of light. In the central passage of this chapter Cusanus tells us: [Every religion worships] infinite and most simple Light, in which darkness is Infinite Light; and [it believes] that Infinite Light always shines within the darkness of our ignorance but [that] the darkness cannot comprehend it.

Cusanus is at the boundary that separates the ancient cosmos and the modern mechanistic universe, and there are many examples of human imagery from traditional cultures that also invite comparison with those of Cusanus.16 In The Two and the One, Mircea Eliade studied the many symbolisms with a similar structure to that found in Cusanus’s human imagery. The images in the Shu-ching, are an example. Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho present an image in which opposites that make up the world, yin and yang, coincide in the tao. Similarly, Cusanus presents an image in which one realizes oneself as a microcosm as one unites within oneself the opposites of finite and infinite. On the other hand, there are important differences. Cusanus does not look at the alternating aspects of the world; nor is their much emphasis on the qualities and “essences,” the concreteness of the world. Instead, Cusanus stresses comparison and proportionality in one’s knowledge of the world. He also emphasizes that one’s knowledge reaches a limit in the infinite. It is especially in his emphasis that knowledge is always approximate that we see something new. In medieval science there was an ideal of complete exactness. The ideal was a consequence of the Greek doctrine that forms were eternal and quasi-divine. Although it stimulated advances in the precision of Ptolemaic astronomy, it inhibited attempts to analyze

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the sub-lunar realm mathematically. The novelty that comes with Cusanus is a drive for ever-greater accuracy and precision in a knowledge that must always remain approximate. We did notice the Chinese quest for an accurate calendar and the construction of giant instruments. However, only we moderns find it striking—and we do so, only because, for us, approximating has become so “natural.” After the nominalist criticism of the forms of Plato and Aristotle, after the desacralization of the world, Cusanus responded by making the drive for precision and accuracy in probable and approximate knowledge a human characteristic and a normative principle. For this reason, the twentieth century mathematician, Hermann Weyl considers modern mathematics to be a continuation of the quest inaugurated by Cusanus. One does not seek the exactness of mathematics merely for its own sake or as a tool for science; rather, one seeks it for a more profound conception of an infinite God. Weyl even goes so far as to define mathematics as the science of the infinite.17 Cusanus’s vision of the world did much to prepare the way for the rise of modern physical science. In the light of “learned ignorance,” one “saw” that there could be no absolutely highest or lowest place in the physical world. Cusanus also asserted that our understanding of motion was also a matter of comparison. One can never experience motion directly. One can only detect the motion of an object by comparing it with something fixed. Cusanus’s vision led to the discovery of a principle of the relativity of all motion. He writes: [If] someone did not know that a body of water was flowing and did not see the shore while he has on a ship in the middle of the water, how would he recognize that the ship was being moved? And because of the fact that it would always seem to each person (whether he were on the earth, the sun, or another star) that he was at the “immovable” center, so to speak, and that all other things were moved: assuredly, it would always be the case that if he were on the sun, he would fix a set of poles in relation to himself; if on the earth, another set; on the moon, another; on Mars, another; and so on. Hence, the world-machine will have its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, so to speak; for God, who is everywhere and nowhere, is its circumference and center.18

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 155 In Cusanus’s new, desacralized world, one could extend the idea of mathematical uniformity to the sub-lunar realm in order to study local motion according to mathematical forms. Two centuries after Cusanus, Galileo began asking, “How do bodies fall?” rather than “Why do bodies fall?” By describing motion in terms of mathematically definable rules, he became the founder of quantitative, terrestrial dynamics.19

Galileo’s Dialogue The period between Cusanus and Galileo witnessed a myriad of events as one historical epoch ended and another began. In the history of science it is now common to express the transitional process metaphorically as “the Copernican revolution.” Historians have written much about the Copernican revolution stressing how important it was in the shift from the medieval to the modern view of the world. What, in fact, was the nature of this “event?” According to Pierre Duhem, Copernicus was working, or at least his contemporaries were interpreting him, within a long tradition that went back to Plato. In this tradition, the mathematical constructions of astronomers were merely useful fictions to account for the changes in observed phenomena. They were merely “to save the phenomena” and had no claim to being real.20 Great scientific advances, however, usually entail changes in absolute presuppositions. Long before Copernicus, the Hellenistic astronomer, Aristarchus developed an elegant heliocentric theory of the solar system. Other astronomers of that period rejected it, however, because it contradicted the absolute presuppositions of Aristotle.21 There is some evidence that a similar rupture between “metaphysical” assumptions and scientific practice occurred in the history of Chinese astronomy. As a result, Chinese astronomy lost its vitality by around 1300 CE.22 Even the work of Copernicus would have remained an obscure theory if men like Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo had not tried to convince people that it conformed to the “real” world. Many important scientific advances require fundamental changes in the orientation of a community. The absence of such changes aborts them.

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For two different interpretations in the change in orientation during the rise of modern science, see Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution and Koyré, Metaphysics and Measurement. In The Copernican Revolution, Kuhn developed the well known phrase “paradigm shift” to designate the transition from the medieval to the early modern view of the world. However, he uses the term in many different ways. Often it seems that he is using it to designate a psychological change. In this study I am interested in changes in absolute presuppositions. Rather than Kuhn’s idea that we should understand the transition to the modern world as a paradigm shift (with several meanings), I prefer Alexander Koyré’s idea that the transition to the modern world was a change in absolute presuppositions. Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is an attempt to show that the Copernican system describes the actual world. A heliocentric system is impossible according to Aristotelian absolute presuppositions, so Galileo must criticize the old Aristotelian image of the world at the same time that he establishes a new set of absolute presuppositions. Louis Dupré has argued that when the nominalist thought of late scholasticism exploded the medieval synthesis of Christian and Hellenistic cultures, it resulted in modernity. Galileo’s Dialogue provides us with an example of this process. Its purpose was to tear down an old world and establish a new one in its place. In his dedication to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Galileo places himself in the tradition of the two books, the Book of Nature and the Book of Revelation, going back through Augustine to Paul’s myth of sin and redemption. Galileo says that the best way to elevate ourselves is to study the “great book of nature.” Since the omnipotent Craftsman has written that book, each page is very well proportioned. Nevertheless, one can see most readily His divine craftsmanship in the constitution of the universe.23 Galileo declares himself closer to the followers of Plato than to those of Aristotle. He knows that the Pythagoreans had a high regard for mathematics and that Plato considered the human mind to partake of divinity through an understanding of numbers. Although Galileo sees himself as being close to Plato, his is anew kind of Platonism. He rejects the Pythagorean number symbolism. For Galileo, geometry is an analytic system that one can use to discover how God proportioned the universe.24

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 157 In contrast to Galileo’s emphasis on proportion, his Aristotelian opponents assert that God created nature with two completely different substances. These are the celestial and the elemental. The celestial is eternal and never varies. The elemental is subject to time and destruction.25 Fundamental to the Aristotelians, then, is the distinction between the heavens, the realm of pure being, and the earth, the realm of becoming. Because of this assumption, the Aristotelians reject the Copernican or heliocentric view of the world. Galileo begins the Dialogue with a criticism of Aristotelian absolute presuppositions. He argues that Aristotle derived his fundamental distinction, that between the heavens and the earth, from observations of the empirical world. After having made these assumptions, however, Aristotle leaves the world of sensible observation and enters an ideal world of reflection. According to Aristotle, since nature is the principle of motion, natural bodies should possess the principle of local motion. There are three kinds of local motion. They are circular, straight, and a combination of circular and straight. Aristotle defines the simple motions. Circular motion is that made around the center. Straight motion is either upward or downward. It is upward if it is motion away from the center. It is downward if it is motion toward the center. Thus all simple motions are defined in relation to the center of the world. They are either toward the center, away from the center, or around the center. Aristotle makes a distinction between natural bodies that are simple and those that are compound. Simple bodies have a natural principle of motion. These would include fire, which has the principle of motion away from the center. Another simple body is earth. It has a principle of motion towards the center of the earth. Compound bodies have compound motions. However, they tend to take the motion of the element that predominates in their composition.26 The world that Aristotle presents to us, then, is one of concrete qualities. There is the fundamental distinction between the heavens and the earth, and there is a center to this world, the stationary earth, that structures space. Thus the regions of the world all have their own special qualities. It is the living world of our sensuous experience. Even today, many would be hesitant, or lack the modicum of cultural anthropological

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knowledge to make the obvious observation: it is clear as daylight that Aristotle’s cosmos is quite similar to the divine cosmos of myth expressed in the symbolism of the marriage of earth and sky. Galileo wants to destroy this archaic world and construct a new one where the earth travels around the sun. In so doing, Galileo is not merely trying to prove the Copernican theory. Rather, he is trying to reorient a community of natural philosophers. He is trying to teach them to see nature in a new way.27 Galileo employs dialectic to destroy the Aristotelian distinction between the eternal celestial realm and the earthly world of change. Galileo argues that the substances that the Aristotelians attribute to these two realms have no physical reality. The substance of the eternal heavens and the substance of the corruptible earth are both merely ideas. Moreover, each of these ideas can be defined only in relation to the other. Galileo’s argument is as follows: If celestial bodies can be neither generated nor corrupted, there must also exist their opposites, bodies that can be both generated and corrupted; however, wherever “there is contrariety, there are also generation and corruption [;]” therefore, celestial bodies can be both generated and corrupted.28 One should not jump to the conclusion that with Galileo we have left the structure of myth. Not only is Galileo’s argument something one would expect from Cusanus, not only is it is precisely the kind of argument that the great Buddhist dialectician and empiricist, Nāgārjuna, makes, it also has a structure that appears in many cosmogonic myths. In Hesiod we are told that Chaos is prior the opposites of earth and starry sky. Thus Hesiod tells us that what is real, the foundation of the world, lies beyond one’s ordinary mental confinements. Galileo’s criticism shows us that Aristotelian concepts are provisional and not to be held as dogma. When they become transparent, one can see the world with new eyes. If Aristotle had access to new discoveries such as sunspots, he would have altered his assumptions.29 The seemingly spherical perfection of the heavens, for example, is not due to their being incorruptible; it is due to their longer duration.30 By itself, this passage by Galileo may not seem mythical, but it does have a mythical function in that it makes a new beginning possible; he presents an account of the foundation of our world.

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 159 In many ways, Galileo’s vision of the world is similar to Cusanus’s. Galileo retains a distinction between God, who is infinite, and the world, which is finite.31 He argues, for example, that the power to move the universe, no matter how great, is always finite. In comparison to the infinite, a little more or less is insignificant.32 Because of this distinction, all merely human knowledge is a matter of proportion and relation. He will use this idea of knowledge to argue that the Copernican system gives a true description of the world.33 One of the most compelling arguments that the Aristotelians used against the Copernican system appeals to the senses. If the earth is traveling around the sun, why can’t one experience the motion? Galileo’s fundamental ideas concerning the world are abstractions that appeal to our reason even when they seem to go against common sense. To answer the Aristotelian objection to the Copernican system, Galileo introduces an abstract idea, a principle of relativity. According to this principle, one cannot experience absolute motion. Rather, one’s understanding of motion is always a matter of comparison. In this context, Galileo’s argument against his detractors is strikingly close to the one we read before in Cusanus, Galileo tells us: The earth may have been carrying us forever without our ever having been able to devise any experiment with it at rest. I know that you, Simplicio, have gone from Padua by boat many times, and, if you will admit the truth of the matter, you have never felt within yourself your participation in that motion except when the boat has been stopped by running aground or by striking some obstacle, when you and the other passengers, taken by surprise, have stumbled perilously. The terrestrial globe would have only to encounter some obstacle which would arrest it, and I assure you that you would become aware of the impetus which resides in you when you were thrown by it toward the stars.34

Another objection that the Aristotelians raised against the Copernicans is: if the earth is really moving around the sun in a circle, why doesn’t one notice changes in the elevations of the stars from day to day? Galileo answers that if one is traveling on a large circular path, one would have to travel a great distance for a star to noticeably change its position.

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The larger the circular path, the greater the distance one would have to travel. If the path were a straight line, the distance one would have to travel would be greater than that on any circular path, no matter how large.35 Galileo’s response shows that for him, knowledge is a matter of proportion and comparison. Overall, there seems to be no place for the absolute distinctions of Aristotle according to Galileo. The same reasoning rejects Aristotle’s distinction between straight and circular motion. As in Nicholas of Cusa, the distinctions vanish in relation to the infinite. In the above discussion, Galileo concludes with an assertion that could have come straight from Cusanus: [Ultimately] the circumference of an infinite circle and a straight line are the same thing.36

By the time that Galileo begins his criticism of the Aristotelian world, then, he has already left that world and has begun to live in a new one that is akin to the one the writings of Nicholas of Cusa presented. It is a world that one is to understand in terms of ratios, proportions, and comparisons. In comparison to the infinite, nothing can be absolute.

Galileo’s “Metaphysics” Towards the end of the first part of the Dialogue, Galileo presents a method of understanding. This is the foundation stone of the new world he is establishing. At first glance, it again seems similar to that presented by Cusanus. Galileo’s acquisition of knowledge of the world has also taught him a kind of “learned ignorance.” Galileo says that learning one thing well makes one realize how little of other things one knows. He writes: For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.37

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 161 This passage by Galileo marks the beginning of the “two cultures” that we spoke about in the introduction. Let me quote Richard Feynman again: I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.38

The experiences of Galileo and Feynman are almost identical. Although both Galileo and Cusanus are aware of the limits of human understanding, Galileo conceives of these limits in an entirely different way from Cusanus. Cusanus’s “learned ignorance” is derived from an intuitive experience that transcends reason and makes reason’s limits felt. Galileo’s is derived from a few instances of perfect mathematical reason that shows the limits of other kinds of knowledge. For Cusanus, ignorance was relevant to the quality of all knowledge In contrast, Galileo seemed fascinated principally by quantitative proportions in collections of knowledge or at least he went in that direction.39 Although Burtt and Koyré consider Galileo a Platonist, he is hardly a mere repetition of Plato. He makes use of the Platonic doctrine of knowledge as remembrance, but transforms it. For Galileo knowledge is not a matter of the soul remembering the knowledge it possessed before birth. It is a matter of transforming remembered sense perceptions into rational knowledge through questioning. Galileo is trying to persuade people to cultivate a new kind of knowledge that one acquires when the geometrically trained mind makes good analytical judgments in understanding motion. Thus, one acquires knowledge when one makes good judgments in fitting geometric models to motion in the natural world. By the art of questioning Galileo is trying to teach his readers to make such judgments and thereby change opinion into real knowledge, to change mere sense perception into rational understanding.40 Even if Galileo may have lacked the profundity of Cusanus, he did discover a new way of looking at the relation between subject and object. Our own human subject can achieve almost absolute certainty in the mathematical sciences. The image in the background is the ancient one of a person as a microcosm. When the Divine Mind created the structure of nature, it did so according to the rules of mathematical reasoning.

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Therefore, as the human mind begins to understand mathematical necessity, it also begins to penetrate the structures of the world. Gary Hatfield has offered an alternative interpretation of Galileo. He argues that Galileo can be read in the sense that any understanding of nature must be in mathematical terms instead of in the sense that the structure of nature is mathematical. While it is possible to interpret some key passages this way, Hatfield omits from his argument a number of others that cannot.41 Therefore, here we come, once again, to an absolute presupposition, the foundation of a world with all its numinous qualities: it is possible to know, because the divine mind, nature and the human mind meet in mathematical certainty. In the mathematical sciences, that is, geometry and arithmetic, Galileo writes that the Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions, since it knows all. But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty, for here it succeeds in understanding necessity, beyond which there can be no greater sureness.42

This passage, with its claim to objective certainty, even if only in a few matters, was to condemn Galileo in the eyes of the Catholic Church.43 Despite Galileo’s claim to objective certainty, he nevertheless maintained there is always an infinite difference between the Divine Mind and human understanding. Our understanding takes place in time and through a great deal of labor. It is always partial. In contrast, God’s understanding takes place in eternity and is perfect and complete. Ours takes place gradually through analytical reasoning. God’s takes place through immediate intuition.44 Everything is always present to the Divine Mind.45 Galileo’s qualitative distinction between human and Divine understanding echoes that made by Augustine. Galileo has appropriated the absolute presuppositions of the Trinity. There is one unified nature, a world of movement that is separate from, but intelligible to, the human mind. It is the reduction of all intelligible forms to mathematical ones and the insistence on precision and the certainty of mathematical necessity that is decisive and new. When Galileo tells us that the Divine Mind has a perfect and eternal intuition of the mathematical structures of nature,

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 163 he is saying, “I am assuming that there is a unified mathematical structure to nature that can be discovered in time through human analysis.” It is this presupposition that is the starting point for Galileo’s scientific work. In contrast to Augustine’s experience of a mind brought to rest in God by the Holy Spirit, Galileo’s mind is brought to rest in mathematical necessity through rational analysis. According to Giorgio de Santillana, this presupposition of Galileo’s is the underpinning of modern science. It is also what differentiates the modern scientific temperament from classical Christian culture. Scientific culture (at least until quite recently) presupposes a lawful order to the world that is absolute. This comes into conflict with the classical Christian assertion of God’s complete and absolute freedom. Santillana writes that when the crisis between Galileo and the Catholic Church came, the bewildered attitude of intelligent lay opinion is well expressed by the Florentine Ambassador, Niccolini, as he stood there in front of the Pope and tried to exculpate Galileo. “I made free to remark to His Beatitude,” he reports, “that since God could have made the world in infinitely many ways, it could not be denied that this might be one of those ways, as il Signor Galileo thought he had discovered.” At which the Pope, red in the face and pounding the padded armrest of his pontifical chair, shouted that “We must not necessitate the Lord Almighty.” Niccolini goes on lightly in his report: “As I saw his temper rising high, I passed on to another subject, for I did not care to run perchance into some heresy, and I wanted to stay clear of the Holy Of fice.”46

Galileo maintained that God created both biblical revelation and the Book of Nature. Although the Bible presents imagery that differs from the mathematical forms presented by nature, both revelation and nature represent the same spiritual sense and there should be no fundamental opposition between them. However, if there is disagreement, the Book of Nature takes precedence over revelation. Galileo writes: [The] interpretation which we impose upon passages of Scripture would be false whenever it disagreed with demonstrated truths. And therefore we should seek the incontrovertible sense of the Bible with the assistance of demonstrated truth, and not in any way try to

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Here we again see a shift in fundamental orientation that divides the modern and medieval worlds. Galileo has transferred the real force of authority from biblical revelation to the Book of Nature, from revelation to reason.48 Ultimately, this will make the truth of the central events of the Christian myth of sin and redemption, that is, the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, extremely problematic. By undercutting the authority of revelation, Galileo sets the stage for a process that leads to the complete destruction of Biblical religious imagery through the progressive mathematical analysis of nature.49 Nevertheless, it is not the end of ancient religious forms. What Galileo says about the center of his new world, its light and order, hardly sounds “secular:” [If] we consider the nobility of the sun, and the fact that it is the font of light which (as I shall conclusively prove) illuminates not only the moon and the earth but all the other planets, which are inherently dark, then I believe that it will not be entirely unphilosophical to say that the sun, as the chief minister of Nature and in a certain sense the heart and soul of the universe, infuses by its own rotation not only light but also motion into other bodies which surround it.50

Galileo’s Dialogue at once tore down the old Aristotelian world and replaced it with a new one grounded on an intuition of the infinite. In relation to the infinite, nothing could be absolute, and so he based the new understanding of the world on rules of proportion and comparison. In so doing Galileo brought the philosophy of nature “in line with what had already been established aesthetically, philosophically, and in part religiously” in early modern Europe.51 His Dialogue was mythical in the sense that it expressed the absolute presuppositions of a new age.52 Since the legitimacy of any political regime rests on its claim that truth is its foundation, Galileo’s Dialogue was also an attack on the authority of the Catholic Church. The subversive nature of the Dialogue was

the new myth of proportion, numbers, and precision 165 not lost on the Church, and it placed Galileo under house arrest for having published the book. He was not executed, as was Giordano Bruno, but he remained under house arrest until the end of his life. The trial of Galileo powerfully illustrates the relation between myth and political history. In showing the connection between Nicholas of Cusa and Galileo, I am following the work of Koyré and Cassirer. Both these men place Cusanus at the beginning of the process of transformation from which the modern world emerges. Although this is a valuable and necessary approach to the history of science, one of Galileo’s biographers, Stillman Drake, warns us that it overlooks the important influence that Galileo’s own scientific personality had in the history of science. Drake’s criticism reminds us that behind Galileo’s Dialogue is a unique individual. The book is not only a discussion about the nature of the universe. It is also an expression of Galileo’s self-image.53 Galileo is working within a tradition going back to the pre-Socratics, and he expresses his innovations by stretching and reworking traditional forms. Like the pre-Socratics who were in competition with one another, Galileo is assertive and competitive. For Galileo, like the pre-Socratics, science is open.54 It is a matter of convincing a public that you have a superior understanding of nature. For Galileo, this superior understanding is mathematical and analytical. In almost complete contrast to Galileo, the Confucians were always aware that their most important duty was to advise powerful political figures. They were always aware of their function within a hierarchical political structure where harmony, not competition, was valued above all else. The Confucian is cautious and tactful. He is non-competitive and avoids any appearance of self-promotion. The Confucian approach to nature is moralistic. A person’s virtue has an effect on nature. Moreover, in China, astronomy and astrology are secret, not public.55 Nevertheless, China was not monolithic. Chinese civilization had room for many types of people besides the Confucian. In his study, Bodde describes a type that is much closer to Galileo than the Confucian. This type embodies a naturalistic and analytical approach to nature. By this Bodde means an approach that is “rational” and sympathetic, yet detached and questioning. The supreme example of this type in China was Wan Ch’ung (A.D. 27-ca. 96). He maintained that

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although people had superior knowledge, they were essentially like other animals and rather insignificant.56 He continually challenged the idea that the actions of people have a direct influence on how the cosmos functions.57 It is also important to remember that although one can place Galileo within the Western philosophical tradition, one cannot reduce him to it. He stretched that tradition to accommodate new ideas. Before Galileo, physics was one thing. After Galileo, it was another. His personality lent much to the rise of physics. Galileo combines in his person technical ability and interest, mathematical analysis, and enthusiasm to promote new ideas.58 He is a unique individual with a unique place in history. History reveals living contexts to us and thereby deepens our understanding of people. In some ways, however, the great innovators in science, as elsewhere, are always more than, and go beyond, our best analysis. In both Chinese astronomy and modern physics, as Cusanus made us understand, there are definite limits to our understanding. Ultimately, the unique individual remains a mystery.

Chapter 9

Galileo’s Science of Local Motion

In this chapter we will examine the relation of the modern “metaphysics” of proportion, numbers, and precision that we just studied to Galileo’s science of dynamics. In 1638, with the publication of Two New Sciences, Galileo grounded modern mathematical physics on inertia, the abstract idea that either a body at rest or a body in motion will remain in that state unless some foreign force acts upon it. The scientific tradition of Aristotle understood motion qualitatively, in terms of what our senses tell us. In contrast, modern mathematical physics, grounded on the idea of inertia, understands motion quantitatively, in abstract mathematical terms our reason can understand. The ability to analyze local movement mathematically was an extremely important development in the emergence of the modern view of the world. The difference between modern and “archaic” science is that we moderns have learned to think of the world as bodies moving in space and time in a way that we can understand mathematically. One can make an even stronger statement and say that this is the essential foundation of modern science. It marks the cardinal difference, according to LéviStrauss, between “archaic” and modern science.1 Contrary to glib generalizations today, the birth of “modern science” nowhere causes or implies a break with the world of religion. The appearance of Galilean science does not mean that myth is a thing of the past. Ironically, the founder of mathematical physics, Galileo himself, has become a mythical figure with a powerful hold over our modern “scientific” minds. No one less than Einstein took pains to narrate how it was Galileo who first taught us that ideas about nature that we derive from immediate observations are not necessarily true and can be misleading and how Galileo’s discovery of scientific reasoning was one of humanity’s greatest achievements.2

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Eliade has often spoken of the mythical theme of the prestige of origins. By going back to the beginning of the world or to the time when a cultural hero introduced a new technique, one can learn to understand the world or master the technique. Historians have no problems understanding this. Whether in China or Europe, we must examine the foundation of a science if we are to grasp its character. Fortunately, it is possible for us to locate the origins of modern physics precisely. It occurs in the paragraph where Galileo introduces the science of local motions. He says explicitly that he is bringing forth a completely new science about a very old subject—motion. He explains that although philosophers have written numerous volumes on the subject, they have not even hinted at many essentials, and sorely lack any rigorous, mathematical proof. It was common knowledge that in “natural motion,” the motion of objects that are falling toward the earth, there is continuous acceleration, but Galileo claims to be the first to have analyzed this motion mathematically. Similarly, although many people have observed that the flight of projectiles is curved, he is the first to have discovered that the curve is a parabola. Galileo concludes his introduction by stating that while he will demonstrate many things about motion, he is really doing something much more important. He hopes that he has opened a gateway to a vast science and that he has discovered a road leading to regions where minds more powerful than his will penetrate ever deeper.3 If the natural sciences could claim prophets, Galileo would come to mind first. Three and a half centuries after Galileo wrote these words we are aware of to what an astonishing extent history has fulfilled his hopes. Our return to the origins of this new form of knowledge will allow us to see what is most important to it and may grant us insights into our modern world. I will begin the study of Galileo’s science of motion by asking two questions: What were Galileo’s method and new standard of knowledge? How does his new science of motion relate to the absolute presuppositions of the Dialogue? In the passage I just summarized, Galileo is limiting himself in two ways. First, he is attempting to solve specific physical problems. He is not making comprehensive systems such as the speculations of

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Descartes or Newton’s world system. Second, he is limiting his problems to a mathematical description of motion. He is not attempting to discover the mechanisms by which nature causes movement. The first limitation establishes physics as a specific science, that is, a separate discipline distinct from natural philosophy. The second limitation is especially important in light of our discussion about whether or not the Chinese world had such a thing as a causal law of nature. In Galileo’s opinion, the ability to analyze motion mathematically does not require an understanding of its underlying causal mechanisms. Causality is the problem that Descartes and Newton try to understand. Indeed, here we touch on the lasting significance of Galileo; he is not merely a modern man, but our contemporary: in the twentieth century, quantum physics abandoned the idea of absolute, mechanical causality altogether. The Copernican controversy was over what was the language of philosophy. Could it be mathematics? Resistance to the precision of math went back to Aristotle’s dictum that one should only be as precise as the science allows.4 Galileo wrote for both scholars and the educated public who had a background in Aristotelian physics. He was trying to overcome the resistance due to tradition to the use of mathematics to solve physical problems. Before Galileo, professors of physics were philosophers with no special training in mathematics, and professors of mathematics had little interest in physical problems. Galileo spoke to both kinds of men.5 Galileo made a sharp distinction between the verbal reasoning (discorsi) of the earlier Aristotelian physics and the rigorous mathematical demonstrations (dimostrazioni matematiche) of his new science of motion.6 The weakness of Aristotelian science was that it just tried to persuade people by probable argument without rigorous mathematical demonstration. Galileo asserted that first one had to establish “primary and unquestionable foundations.” Then one had to reason from these foundations “by necessary demonstrations” to conclusions or consequences.7 Galileo’s method was to select well-defined and  restricted areas of inquiry that he could analyze mathematically. He applied to these areas a single mathematical theory that Eudoxus first formulated and Euclid set forth in the fifth book of his Elements—that of the proportion of

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magnitudes in general.8 This method, with its rigor, precision, and constant appeal to empirical observation for recognition, sets modern science on a firm foundation. Galileo’s Discourse is primarily concerned with new methods of understanding motion, and in it Galileo repeatedly declines metaphysical speculation. Despite his disclaimer to metaphysical or theological speculation, however, Galileo’s Discourse follows his Dialogue, and his science rests on absolute presuppositions that are different from that of the old medieval world.9 It rests on the absolute presuppositions the Dialogue expresses. We can see this by examining what Galileo called the “primary and unquestionable foundations” of his new science of dynamics. Galileo begins his new science by defining precisely and mathematically uniform motion: If the distance an object travels in any two equal time periods are equal, then the motion is uniform. After presenting his definition of equable motion, Galileo presents the reader with a number of axioms that follow from the definition. The definition and axioms constitute the first of the new science’s “unquestionable foundations.” Based on these, Galileo develops a number of theorems having to do with ratios and proportions of times, distances, and speeds.10 We must keep in mind that Galileo’s proofs were geometric rather than algebraic. He was using the Greek geometry of Eudoxus, and so his physical laws were relational and proportional. Ratios could be made between like quantities. They could be made between distances, between times, or between speeds. But ratios could not be made between unlike quantities (like time and distance) such as we do in the equation v = d/t. We must be careful in reading our equations into Galileo’s work.11 In the Dialogue Galileo criticizes Aristotle’s idea of straight motion. Galileo asserts that straight motion cannot exist in a well-ordered universe. This is because anything that moves straight continually moves away from its starting point as well as every other place through which it passes. Anything having the principle of straight motion, then, would have been out of place at the beginning of time.12 Galileo then goes on to argue that straight motion is by nature infinite. Because a straight line is infinite and indeterminate, anything that has the principle of moving in a straight line would also have a

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principle of moving toward a place to which it could never arrive. It is therefore impossible that the property of straight motion should belong to any natural object.13 Here Galileo is using an entirely different definition of straight motion than that used by Aristotle. Galileo’s definition is essentially the idea of inertia, an idea that will become the cornerstone of modern physics. In the passage Galileo makes no reference to the center of the world. Rather, Galileo presupposes the modern idea of quantifiable, homogeneous space. Because of their different presuppositions, Galileo and Aristotle are living in two different worlds. Galileo considered inertial motion circular rather than rectilinear. Nevertheless, he was aware that inertial motion might be rectilinear and that this implied that the universe might be infinite. In a footnote, Stillman Drake, the translator of Two New Sciences, tells us of a manuscript copy in which Galileo notes that it should be possible to demonstrate that uniform motion along the horizontal must extend in infinitum. Rectilinear inertia and an infinite universe must stand or fall together.14 For this reason the passage from the Dialogue is especially fascinating. Although Galileo is arguing against Aristotle’s idea of straight motion, Galileo realizes that his new understanding of motion, together with the idea of rectilinear rather than circular motion, would imply an infinite universe. In a few decades, the same argument that Galileo uses to criticize the Aristotelian cosmos, that the idea of rectilinear inertia implies an infinite universe, will form the foundation of an entirely new image of nature—the Newtonian system of the world. After having treated uniform motion in the Discourse, Galileo begins an analysis of what he calls “naturally accelerated motion.” By this he means the motion of falling objects that are near the earth. Galileo wants to give a definition of natural acceleration, deduce consequences from this definition, and then see if experiment verifies these consequences.15 After a great deal of effort he is confident that he has found the right definition because his definition is in agreement with what physical experiments show.16 Then Galileo gives his definition of uniformly (or naturally) accelerated motion. As in the case of uniform motion, he defines it mathematically. If, from a starting position of rest, an object “adds on to itself equal momenta of swiftness in equal times,” it has uniformly

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accelerated motion.17 This definition is the second “unquestionable foundation” of the new science of motion. Galileo uses his new method to show that an alternative definition is not true. Many people defined uniformly accelerated motion as that in which “the speed goes increasing according to the increase of space traversed.” Galileo himself labored under this fallacy for a long time. As Galileo exposes the error of this definition, one sees the real power of Galileo’s new method. It gives one a means for rejecting plausible, but false ideas about nature. Galileo argues (using theorems from the section on uniform motion) that a consequence of this definition is that an object would fall a distance of, say, two feet in the same time that it would fall four feet. One never sees this happening in nature. One must reject the alternative definition.18 After showing that his definition of uniformly accelerated motion is correct, Galileo speaks of the resistance to his new method. He claims that his demonstrations are clear and simple. Yet people (the Aristotelians) won’t accept them because they are reluctant to consider themselves in error.19 Galileo rejects the Aristotelian quest for causes in the study of accelerated motion. He says it is not an opportune time to investigate the cause of acceleration and dismisses the Aristotelian causes as “fantasies,” and that the search for them is a waste of time.20 His alternative program is to “investigate the implications of a mathematically defined motion, and then to see whether they fitted any actual observations. Certainty arises neither from mathematics alone nor from experience alone, but only from their agreement.”21 When Galileo dismisses the Aristotelian search for causes as fantasies, he is dismissing a world like the Chinese world of the Shu-ching where the earth is the center of the cosmos and one is to understand change in terms of the qualitative yin-yang and five element theories. Galileo is making quite different absolute presuppositions about the world.22 Galileo reveals one of the most important of these in a passage where he beautifully demonstrates how points moving in uniform and uniformly accelerated motion along lines generate circles and spheres. Although he would prefer to leave such philosophical and theological speculations

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to others, he claims he is not adverse to them. In fact he suggests that his demonstration shows how the “First Cause” of nature is the uniform and uniformly accelerated motion of points.23 He also asserted that the way he defined uniform and uniformly accelerated motion not only corresponded to what happened in nature, but also, in fact, revealed nature’s “essence.” Mathematically analyzable motions, constituted Nature. Since this was obvious with objects in free fall, we can even characterize Galileo’s physics as a “physics of fall.”24 By the time Galileo has established his definitions of uniform and naturally accelerated motions, he has grounded his science on two “unquestionable foundations.” Now Galileo adds one additional postulate. It is that the speeds the same object acquires as it rolls down different inclined planes will be equal, even when the planes have different slopes, if the heights of the planes are equal.25 Based on these Galileo begins to develop a number of theorems about naturally accelerated motions.26 Since uniform and naturally accelerated motion are the “essence” of nature, it should be possible to understand more complex forms of motion in terms of these fundamental two. What about the common occurrences where the two combine? For instance, one may throw a stone forward; it moves, but eventually falls down. Galileo calls such a combination a projection, i.e. “throwing forward.” He defines it as a kind of motion that is “compounded from equable horizontal and from naturally accelerated downward” motion.27 Galileo develops a number of theorems concerning projections. The first one is that the path of a heavy object as it moves in a motion compounded from equable horizontal and natural falling motion is a semi parabola.28 In another theorem from this section, Galileo talks about compounded motion in a manner that one can recognize as vector addition. He demonstrates that if an object has a motion that is “compounded from” a horizontal and a vertical motion, the square of that object’s momentum will be equal to the sum of the squares of horizontal momentum and the vertical momentum.29 Galileo grounds this analysis on the assumption that nature is uniform. He asserts, for example, that for an object in free fall, one should get similar ratios of times, distances, speeds, and accelerations at all points near the earth.30 Galileo makes no distinction between the earth and the

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heavens. Therefore, he feels free to use his new analysis to reinterpret part of Plato. Galileo provides a mathematical description of how God set the stars in circular motion: Perhaps entertaining the idea that a moveable cannot pass from rest to any determinate degree of speed, in which it must then equably perpetuate itself, except by passing through all the other lesser degrees of speed (or let us say of greater slowness) that come between the assigned degree and the highest [degree] of slowness, which is rest, he [Plato] said that God, after having created the movable celestial bodies, in order to assign to them those speeds with which they must be moved perpetually in equable circular motion, made them depart from rest and move through determinate spaces in that natural straight motion in which we sensibly see our moveables to be moved from the state of rest, successively accelerating. And he added that these having been made to gain that degree [of speed] which it pleased God that they should maintain forever, He turned their straight motion into circulation, the only kind [of motion] that is suitable to be conserved equably, turning always without retreat from or approach toward any pre-established goal desired by them.31

In the beginning, God let the planets fall a distance to gain momentum. Then they moved into their present orbits around the sun. God’s actions were according to mathematical laws. Particularly, His actions were according to the laws Galileo had discovered of uniform motion and naturally accelerated motion. One can understand the structure of the cosmos according to these principles. Not only can one so understand the solar system, but also all the structures of nature. Galileo’s science is a science of movement we can understand mathematically. Points in movement generate the forms of the world. The structure of this passage is most definitely mythical. The Dialogue told us how God intuited in eternity all the mathematical structures of the Book of Nature. Galileo had undertaken heroic labors in time to understand a few of these structures. Here we see how the absolute presuppositions of the Discourse are identical to that of the Dialogue. Both express the rise of a new myth and the corresponding appearance of a new world.

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The “Essence” of Galilean Science In the Discourse Galileo gives a rigorous analysis of uniform motion, naturally accelerated motion, and the combination of uniform and naturally accelerated motion. In so doing, he firmly establishes the modern mathematical analysis of motion, the new science of dynamics that was to revolutionize the world. The various Chinese sciences had a single center or “essence,” the direct intuition of li, the underlying pattern of both the social and cosmic orders. Can we discover a similar “essence” to Galileo’s new method? Does modern science also have a unifying center? According to Needham, the modern scientific method as presented in Galileo’s new science of motion consists of five steps. The first is the selection of the specific aspect of some phenomenon that one can express in numbers. An example would be the “natural motion” of bodies that are falling towards the earth. The second is the formulation of a hypothesis that involves a mathematical relationship. Galileo’s definition of uniformly accelerated “natural motion” as a motion that increases in speed as a function of time is a good example of the second step. The third step was to deduce from the hypothesis certain consequences that one could verify by observation. An example of this third step is Galileo’s reasoning that an alternate definition, that “natural motion” is a motion that increases as a function of distance would mean that a body would fall two feet in the same time that it would fall four feet. The fourth step was to observe to see if they conformed to the deductions. It never happens that a body falls two feet in the same time that it falls four feet. In fact, a body takes longer to fall a distance of four feet than it does to fall a distance of two feet. Finally, if the observations did conform to the deductions, there was the tentative acceptance of the hypothesis. Galileo rejects the alternate definition and tentatively keeps his first definition. The Chinese method roughly corresponds to the first, second, and fourth steps of the Galilean method. That is, it corresponds to selection of some aspects of nature, the formulation of hypothesis, and then further experimental observation. What is missing is the third and fifth steps. There is no rigorous deduction of the consequences of hypothesis or the conscious use of further observation to accept or reject the hypothesis.

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The Chinese did not demand the logical precision and rigor we see in Galileo.32 Although Lévi-Strauss is mistaken in his identification of myth with “archaic” science, it is quite true that Aristotelian and Chinese science used qualitative theories such as the five elements and the yin-yang. In contrast, Galileo demands mathematical precision. Whenever there is a discrepancy between reason and the senses, Galileo decides for reason and even tries to explain the world of the senses by reason and experiment. According to Galileo, since individual sense perceptions such as color are mere names that say nothing and have no definite meaning, one must reduce them to mathematical forms. In contrast to the world presented by the Shu-ching that is so rich in qualitative nuances and variations, Galileo completely quantifies time and space. Time is no longer the duration of human experience but the measurable t of physics. Similarly, space is no longer the living world with its multiple forms and qualities but the abstract d of measuring rods.33 Galileo takes the path of quantification to its end and asserts that mathematical forms alone constitute both the structure of nature and the structure of the human mind.34 Because the human mind corresponds to nature, one can understand it. The mind corresponds so closely that scientific proof can even be apriori.35 Augustine demonstrated that we construct time in our memories. He also showed that time without change of form is a phantasy. The doctrine of creation from nothing expresses the absolute presupposition that mutability, that is, change of form is real. Galileo’s science is a science of motion, a science of events that occur in time. Now motion is a change of form. Galileo held that it exists and we can understand it in terms of mathematical forms. In fact, he held that the only forms that are real are those of mathematics. We can understand change of form itself as a form: time is (mathematical) form. However, Galileo is not yet ready to draw such stark, all-embracing conclusions. He is quite aware that he is dealing with idealizations of what actually occurs in nature. He tells us it is impossible to establish a science of motion because the actual events in nature have too many variations. If one is going to deal with these events scientifically, it is necessary that one abstract from them. He adds that it is important that one selects objects

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and events to study that are as little subject to uncontrollable variation as possible. If one is going to study the motion of projectiles, it is important that one choose objects such as heavy canon balls. Variations from the air will have little effect on these so that their flights will conform to the ideal parabolic paths.36 This passage is the key to modern physics. The ancients knew that they could not understand the local physical world mathematically, because it had too many variations. They had to confine mathematical understanding, therefore, to the eternal, celestial realm. In contrast, the new “metaphysics” of “learned ignorance,” with its ideal of knowledge as comparison and increasingly closer approximations, presents a world in which mathematical understanding of the sub-lunar realm is possible.37 Heinrich Hertz gives us a clear statement on the use of scientific models and their relation to the events of nature that is an accurate expression of Galileo’s mature position. According to Hertz, a scientist must form mental images of external objects in such a way that the logical consequences of the mental images correspond to what happens in the external world. There must be at least some conformity between nature and thought if this requirement is to be satisfied. One knows from experience that one can meet the requirement, and this implies that there is indeed some conformity between the human mind and the processes of nature.38 The cornerstone of modern physics until the advent of quantum mechanics was the concept of inertia. It appears in Galileo’s Two New Sciences in the section where he is analyzing the motion of objects on inclined planes. He states that the speed an object acquires from rolling down an inclined plane becomes a permanent state of the object if nothing external causes it to accelerate or slow down. Only on a perfectly horizontal plane can one achieve such a permanent state of motion. If the object is rolling up an inclined plane, it slows down, and if it is rolling down an inclined plane, it speeds up. But uniform motion on a perfectly horizontal plane is unending: there is nothing to weaken or end the motion.39 In these sections Galileo gives an explanation for changes in motion that suggests a new idea of cause. He begins using the idea of force as a cause of acceleration.40 Although it is an exception to the way Galileo usually uses the concept of force, Newton will develop it in this direction.

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Einstein has pointed out that this central concept of inertia is a result of speculative thinking rather than experiment. He tells us that it is impossible to derive the law of inertia from actual experiments. Galileo derived it from an idealized experiment that he could never actually perform. Nevertheless, it led to a profound understanding of real experiments,41 and in The Essential Tension Kuhn presented a discussion of the structure and function of such speculations or “thought experiments.”42 What is the concept of inertia? It is an abstract idea that transforms the motion of a body into a permanent state or quality of that body. Despite all that is new in Galileo’s method, there is continuity with past tradition. In the concept of inertia, one sees the triumph of Parmenides over the Pythagoreans. The concept of inertia makes change logically understandable by transforming it into being. There seems to be a limited number of structures that the human mind can use to interpret the world. The idea of inertia shows that an intelligible causal model must negate change. The history of quantum physics, however, shows that as soon as the human mind drops the idea of inertia and causality, it must resort to a second alternative—that of looking for patterns within change. This is the strategy of Heraclitus and most traditional Chinese thinkers. It seems to me that the continuity between modern physics and ancient speculative thought is due to the structural limitations of the human mind. At least part of the authority of solar symbolisms is that they express the limits of what one can coherently think. Modern scientific models and ancient thought do indeed show similarities. They also differ from each other in a way that underscores the “essence” of modern scientific knowledge. Chinese science attempted to understand nature through an immediate intuition. There was a direct mental contact between the scientist’s mind and the structures of nature. In contrast, physics after Galileo deals only with abstract models and provides no direct insight or experience of the world. It provides a secondary, derived form of knowledge. Just as intuition of li was the “essence” of Chinese science, the creation of this derivative form of knowledge is the “essence” of modern science. Ancient China chose becoming and sense experience in contrast to the West that chose being and reason. Galileo’s achievement was that

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he made sense experience subject to reason. He did this by making an abstract, imaginary model that was rational, and then making it “fit” or “mapping” it onto sense experience. We now know we can do this to greater and greater degrees of accuracy but never completely. The limits of exactness come with quantum physics and Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle. This derivative, abstract ideal of knowledge is what distinguishes modern and “archaic” science. This is not to say that before Galileo people never used abstract models. They did. But after Galileo they represent a new standard. This is what Gillispie meant by “The Edge of Objectivity.”43 With Galileo we have crossed the threshold from traditional to modern worlds. The ability to analyze nature mathematically by means of idealized models marks the emergence of modern science that, according to Lévi-Strauss, differentiates modern and “archaic” sciences. And the derivative, abstract character of the new ideal of knowledge creates the dualisms between mind and matter, life and matter, and the order of society and the order of nature that are such a hallmark characteristic of the modern world. Einstein gives us a particularly lucid explanation of the new ideal. At the same time, his explanation suggests a liberating modesty with respect to the reach of science. He tells us that physical concepts are “free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.” A scientist is like someone trying to understand a closed watch. One sees the outer movements of the watch, the movements of its hands and face but can’t see its inner workings. One may form an ideal picture of the mechanism that accounts for what one sees, but one has no way of comparing this with the actual one. Nevertheless, one assumes that with persistent effort, one’s knowledge will increase, and one’s ideal model will become more simple and elegant. At the same time, it will account for a wider range of one’s sensuous experiences. Perhaps one also assumes there exists an ideal limit of knowledge that the human mind can approach. This ideal limit is the objective truth.44 This passage allows us to trace a direct line of continuity running from Cusanus through Galileo and ending in Einstein. Because nominalism had desacralized the forms of the medieval world, both Galileo

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and Einstein, like Cusanus, experience the world as homogeneous; both understand the logos as proportion; both understand the limits of human knowledge; finally, both have acquired a kind of “learned ignorance.” Cusanus tells us: [God] wills for us to be brought to the point of admiring so marvelous a world-machine. Nevertheless, the more we admire it, the more He conceals it from us; for it is Himself alone whom He wills to be sought with our whole heart and affection. And since He dwells in inaccessible light, which all things seek, He alone can open to those who knock and can give to those who ask. Of all created things none has the power to open itself to him who knocks and to show what it is; for without God, who is present in all things, each thing is nothing.45

This is what Cusanus experiences as the light of “learned ignorance,” an experience close to Einstein’s ideal of objective truth. In the same way that Parmenides’ experience of being underpins Galileo’s idea of inertia, Cusanus’s experience of grace and the limits of the human mind underpins Einstein’s ideal. Despite the new ideal of “scientific objectivity,” there is continuity between Chinese astronomy and modern mathematical physics. Solar imagery and metaphors of light express fundamental experiences at the root of these two different ideals of knowledge.

Chapter 10

The New Myth of Magic and Power

Galileo represents the rational and mathematical tendency of modernity. Giordano Bruno represents the second, more dominant one—the magical. Both were involved in the Copernican controversy. Like Galileo, Bruno attempted to interpret the heliocentric theory of Copernicus by means of a new set of absolute presuppositions. He is a fascinating figure in part because he lived in an historical context of more or less esoteric ideas. In 1964, Francis Yates published Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. According to Yates, the key to understanding Bruno was Hermeticism, one of the heretical sects that Christianity combated by means of the “metaphysics” of the Trinity. Hermeticism is a magical tradition that centered on solar imagery. Yates said the Copernican theory fascinated Bruno because of its solar imagery. In addition, she argues that the magical tendencies of Hermeticism powerfully stimulated the experimental and technological aspects of the scientific revolution.1 This theory of Yates concerning Bruno and Hermeticism again raises the question of ancient myth and the rise of the mechanistic universe. In a climate of reflection and doubt about both the external world and the reality of the self, subtle structures emerge that relate the two. We cannot imagine any human world in which certain subtle links do not relate “the knower” to “the known.” By whatever name we call them, the subtlest and most prominent of such linkages are religious in nature. The tao expressed one such linking structure. It presents both a world and a way of knowing that world. However, the tao is only one example of the symbolic expression of one of these structures. The first chapter of this book introduced us to the Homeric deity Hermes. He is the divine Olympic counterpart to the demon-like, Titan Prometheus. He carries messages between two opposites, the world of the immortal gods and the mortals. He can guide a person in an uncanny and unexpected way—sometimes to gain, sometimes to perdition. We

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associate Hermes with the night and the mysteries of death. He symbolically expresses a world that is totally uncanny: things appear as the bearers of power; the world appears as susceptible to manipulation. The uncanny aspect of the world evokes a human response. It evokes the magical attitude, the desire to dominate the world, to transform it, and to make it one’s own. Hermes at once presents a dark aspect of the world and a comforting human image. There is a transhistorical quality to the structures that appear between all aspects of “the world,” and “ourselves.” By their bridge-like function, nevertheless, there is a similarity in their appearances. In some periods, in particular, certain people rose up to discover or build such bridges. Through the process of symbolization, each tradition creates a human type and a way of knowing the world. The structures that emerge, even if they did so in the clearest light, are capable of endless transformations that reveal ever-new shades of meaning.2 In describing them, the classicist Kerényi tells us that a particular kind of material determines the art of mythology, an immemorial and traditional body of material contained in tales about gods and god-like beings, heroic battles and journeys to the Underworld—“mythologem” is the best Greek word for them—tales already well known but not unamenable to further reshaping. Mythology is the movement of this material: it is something solid and yet mobile, substantial and yet not static, capable of transformation.3

Hermeticism is one such creative transformation under the magical auspices of Hermes. In this chapter, I will show how Hermetic imagery underpins modern technology and the experimental basis of knowledge. I cannot claim originality for my discovery of Hermeticism’s persistence. My exploration of the relation between Hermetic myth and the modern world of science and technology follows other studies that have interpreted modernism as a form of Gnosticism. In such works as From Enlightenment to Revolution and The New Science of Politics, for example, Eric Voegelin has demonstrated the Gnostic character of modern political movements. According to Voegelin, the kind of Marxism that was so influential on Needham and his interpretation of Chinese science is a form of Gnosticism.4

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There is, however, an important difference between this study and those of people such as Voegelin. Voegelin and others relied upon the work of Hans Jonas, who was an expert on Gnosticism. Jonas and his followers saw the essential characteristics of Gnosticism in the notion of divine knowledge and, in particular, of strict dualism between God and the world.5 One can see the influence of both Jonas and Lévy-Strauss in one of the most recent comprehensive works, The Tree of Gnosis, by Ian Couliano. According to him, the strict dualism that Jonas emphasizes is simply one more form of the logical structures that Lévi-Strauss thinks he has discovered in myth. 6 Although Hermeticism is in many ways similar to Gnosticism, there are important differences. In Sacralizing the Secular, Steve Mcknight has argued that besides passages that express strict dualism between God and the world, others stress their unity. In addition to passages that advise a person to flee the world, others advise him or her to perfect and transform it.7 McKnight’s distinction between Gnosticism and Hermeticism is useful and important. Hermetic literature consists of a collection of texts that anonymous authors composed during a six hundred year period between the third century BCE and the third century CE. One can divide these texts into two distinct classes. The first I will call “popular Hermeticism.” It contains writings on astrology, magic, occult sciences, and alchemy. The second class I will call “philosophical” or “learned” Hermeticism. I will focus on works from this second class. Two works stand out: the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of seventeen books or treatises written in Greek, and the Asclepius, written in Latin.8

The Corpus Hermeticum The title of the first treatise in the Corpus Hermeticum is the Poimandres. It tells how Hermes Trimegister has a vision of Poimandres, the Nous (mind or spiritual “essence”) of Absolute Power. In this vision, Poimandres became a boundless view of pure joyful and serene Light; then Darkness (nature), hateful and coiled, resembling a serpent, emerged

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from the Light and moved downward. When the roar of a fire came from the Darkness, a holy Word from the Light came over it, and two elements, unmixed fire and air, leapt up from nature towards the Word. This left the two remaining elements of nature, earth and water, mingled together. The breath of the Word kept them in motion. After this vision, Poimandres interpreted it to Hermes. He identified himself with the Nous (God), and the Word as the son of God. He also told Hermes that the human mind is the divine Nous and that a person’s faculty of perception is the Word.9 This passage presents all the important elements of the Corpus Hermeticum. The text centers on a visionary experience of Poimandres as infinite light that gives rise to an experience of sheer joy and serenity. This central image is a solar symbolism that is comparable to the examples from the classical traditions. It expresses the unity and even divinity of the world. However, the passage also expresses an extreme devaluation of nature. This is the image of nature as a hateful, serpentine Darkness. There is an almost absolute dualism in the contrast between the sacred light of the sun and the complete darkness of nature. A passage from treatise six underscores this dualism: And for my part, I thank God for this very thought that he has put into my mind, even the thought that the Good is absent, and that it is impossible for it to be present in the Kosmos. For the Kosmos is one mass of evil, even as God is one mass of good.10

According to Hans Jonas, the dualism expressed here was a characteristic of Gnosticism.11 For this reason, he would classify this passage as well as the opening treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum as Gnostic. Notwithstanding its Gnostic tendencies and its dualism, Hermeticism has its own character. To begin with, its dualism is far from absolute. It arises out of the Hermetic world’s hierarchical structure. The highest, most sacred level is the divine, infinite Poimandres. Next is the sphere of the planets where the planets themselves correspond to the Logos. The world below the planets has a hierarchical structure from the pure elements of the atmosphere to the chaotic elements of nature.12 The changes and becoming of nature only seem evil in contrast to the absolute stability of God.13

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The opening passage of the Poimandres presents an image of how this hierarchical structure arose. Poimandres, or God, contains within Himself a model of the cosmos. The Nous (divine intelligence) descends from God, and the Word or Logos (divine form), in turn, descends from the Nous. The Logos fashioned the seven planets, and these govern and give form to the sensible world. When nature had the elements fire and air, it contained an element of the Logos and could imitate the divine pattern. However, when these elements flew up to unite with the Logos, they left nature chaotic and formless.14 Each individual is analogous to the cosmos. The highest level, corresponding to the divine Nous, is the human intellect (intuitive faculty). The next highest, the Logos, corresponds to the human mind or spirit (reasoning faculty). Finally, in the same way that the Logos acts as intermediary between the divine and nature, the human reasoning faculty is an intermediary between the human intelligence and one’s bodily nature. This is composed of the four elements: air, fire, water, and earth. Both cosmos and individual have the same hierarchical structure: the order of the nous or intellect, the order of the spirit, and the material order.15 This image identifies the human intellect with God and attributes to it absolute and unlimited power. This is one of Hermeticism’s most important absolute presuppositions. After presenting this, in the passage that follows, Poimandres reveals to Hermes Trimegister how the Nous brought forth Primal Man and how Primal Man was a Word of God. Primal Man’s brothers, the governors of the planets, gave him a share of their realm, the creation of form. In contrast to the classical Hebrew, Indian, Greek and Chinese traditions that present a human image with a fluid boundary between the individual and the forms of a real nature, Hermeticism presents an image where a person is an infinitely powerful magician, so powerful that there is no world independent of the human mind. Each individual is in reality the divine Primal Man creating the forms of the material world.16 Hermeticism presents God as bisexual and the differentiation of the cosmos is simply the differentiation of God’s bisexual nature. Eros creatively unites the different parts of the world. However, Eros also has a dark and destructive aspect. When the divine Primal Man shows nature his beautiful form, the formless and irrational nature smiles back.

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Primal Man then sees his reflection in the water and falls in love with it. Inflamed with love, he embraces matter and becomes entrapped in his own creation, so that he suffers under the illusion of individual existence and mortality. Through the creative power of Eros, Primal Man projects beautiful forms onto nature. But through that same power, he falls in love with his own creation, and it ensnares him.17 Thus, a person is a tragic figure because he or she is under an illusion that he or she is not god-like.18 That is, through human creative power, a person first projects form onto nature and then falls in love with his own projections. In reality, the individual and nature itself is an illusion created by a person’s divine mind. This is a second of Hermeticism’s important absolute presuppositions. In treatise two solar imagery underpins a world characterized by movement—the world we perceive through our senses. The treatise takes the form of a discussion between Hermes Trimegister and Asclepius.19 The dialogue leads us to the insight that everything that moves, moves in something incorporeal. For the cosmos as a whole, this something is “Space.”20 Then we learn that a body cannot move a body, and therefore the movements of material bodies do not have external causes. Something incorporeal imparts movement to them. Things such as souls operating from within each living being cause the movements of the cosmos and all other living material beings.21 At the end of the treatise, we learn that two things, that in which a body moves, space, and that by which a body moves, soul, are themselves motionless. Moreover, space and soul are interconnected. Space is the divine mind, and mind illuminates soul. However, one should not identify space with God. God is the cause of space and mind. God alone is good.22 This insight is the climax of the treatise, and comes at the end of the dialogue. The passage, then, presents a solar symbolism that reveals a world with a hierarchical structure. The foundation of the world is God. He is the cause of mind or space. Mind or space is the cause of soul. The soul moves the cosmos. The text does not present this as an idea that one can accept or reject; it is presents it as a revelation, a sudden illumination—a truth one experiences.23 This passage is important because of the way it expresses the experience of space. Rather than the qualitatively distinct regions of the

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Chinese world, space is a homogeneous entity that transcends and supports the cosmos. This is something close to one of the central absolute presuppositions of Newtonian physics—an abstract space that one can analyze mathematically. The Corpus Hermeticum presents an underlying unity to the world. Treatise sixteen declares that God and the world are one. God is “the Master and Maker and Father and Encompasser” of all.24 God rules the world through the sun, who preserves and sustains all things living.25 Everything depends on God. He is the father of everything, and sun is His Demiurgus working throughout the cosmos.26 God works through an army of gods and daemons to make all things. However, since all things are part of God, when God creates the world, he also creates Himself. This process is endless.27 The cosmos itself is immortal. Although the forms of the material world undergo change, the underlying material remains constant.28 Treatise fourteen explains that God is not the maker of evil. If the things of this world vary in quality, this does not detract from the glory of God. Because the act of creation is God’s being, nothing can be evil or defective in relation to Him. Evil is something that spontaneously breaks out on something God has created after it has been in existence for a length of time. For this reason, God causes change in this world. Even the instability of the world has a good purpose. When something in this world transmutes into something else, it purifies the world.29 In spite of its images, so far the Corpus Hermeticum does not run counter to our modern “scientific” habits of thought. However, when treatise sixteen tells us how God rules the world through the sun, the treatise takes a decidedly magical and un-modern turn. The sun commands troops of daemons. Different troops serve under different planets. Some troops are good and others bad.30 God gives dominion over all things upon earth to these daemons. The daemons control the disturbances of history and each individual.31 The one exception to this is the rational part of the soul. It is “fit to receive God into itself.”32 Treatise nine develops a theory of knowledge and sense perception explicitly related to Hermeticism’s imagery of a person as an absolutely powerful magician. It starts out by stating that some people think there is a fundamental difference between sense and thought. They think that

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the material world binds the senses, but that an eternal substance binds thought. Treatise nine tells us that this view is false. The truth is that in the case of animals, sense unites with instinct. In the case of people, however, sense unites the eternal substance of thought.33 Now the central issue of Hermeticism is the question of what determines a person’s thoughts. Treatise nine tells us that it is a characteristic of an individual that in him or her sense perceptions are combined with thought. However, not all people benefit from this. Because some people’s thoughts spring from the daemons, their thoughts are evil. The power of God keeps others from evil. Their thoughts are pure and good.34 The person with divine knowledge will have good thoughts. On the other hand, if the material world ensnares someone, that person will come under the power of the daemons. His or her thoughts will be evil and this will lead to every kind of vicious act such as adulteries and murders.35 In treatise seven, we find a radical devaluation of a person’s corporeal existence. It tells us that the human body is a “cloak of darkness,” a “web of ignorance,” a prop of evil, a “bond of corruption,” a “living death,” a “conscious corpse,” a “tomb,” a “robber in the house,” an enemy who hates what is good. It holds us down, and we must learn to hate it. The body perverts a person’s senses. It stuffs them up with matter and sensual pleasures. Thus, we fail to perceive and hear the divine truth. Therefore, we must tear the body off. Ascetic techniques will loosen this entrapment and free us to realize our true self—identity with God.36 One achieves salvation through cultivating the Nous, the intuitive faculty. This purifies the soul which then begins its ascent upward through the spheres. The end of the journey is illumination and ecstasy as the soul contemplates the cosmos in one’s own divine mind.37 With this gnosis, a person is reborn. He or she becomes a god: Stop the working of your bodily senses, and then will deity be born in you.38

The Hermetic tradition asserts that the relation between Hermes and the Egyptians was analogous to that between Moses and the Hebrews: both were lawgivers to their communities. Hermes instructs each soul how to rise again to the intelligible and immortal nature from

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which it degenerated.39 As more and more individuals achieve their divine selves, they liberate the divine from evil illusion. With this liberation, society and the cosmos also undergo progressive advancement.40 The Corpus Hermeticum, then, presents a vision of the world that in many ways is typical of Gnosticism. The center of this vision was a solar symbolism that, in common with many other traditions, expressed experiences of a realm of pure intelligence and being. Although the center of the vision was a solar symbolism that is common to many other traditions, Gnosticism’s radical devaluation of nature together with its over-estimation of human intelligence, set it apart.41 On the other hand, the Corpus Hermeticum also has passages that speak of the world’s unity and even its divinity. These passages in particular seem to differentiate the Corpus Hermeticum from the texts of ancient Gnosticism. The combination of the gnostic passages with those that express the unity and goodness of the world give the Corpus Hermeticum a structure strikingly similar to alchemy in China and tantrism in India.42

The Asclepius The Corpus Hermeticum constitutes the first major part of the Hermetic corpus. The second is the Asclepius. In it, absolute presuppositions similar to those we found in the Corpus Hermeticum form the foundation of the cosmos. For example, the Asclepius tells us how the cosmos moves in an infinite, homogeneous, space. The Asclepius, however, places emphasis on two different powers that structure the world: Destiny and Necessity: That which we name Destiny, Asclepius, is the force by which all events are brought to pass; for all events are bound together in a never-broken chain by the bonds of necessity. Destiny then is either God himself, or else it is the force which ranks next after God; it is the power which, in conjunction with Necessity, orders all things in heaven and earth according to God’s law.43

Necessity structures time. Although time is in constant movement, it has its own stability. Necessity determines that it continually returns into

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itself.44 Numbers limit time. However, because of its cyclical movement, time also partakes of the infinite and eternal. The “rigid immobility,” of eternity sustains “those things which are in motion.”45 In contrast to the Chinese experience of qualitatively different times within the world, the Hermeticist’s experience is of a homogeneous and infinite time that transcends the cosmos. Just as in the Corpus Hermeticum, this experience of time is in perfect harmony with the habitual mathematical procedures of modern physics. However, we should not jump to the conclusion that Hermeticism is pantheistic. According to the Asclepius, God transcends the entire cosmos. Whatever name we use for Him—God, Father, or Master of all—we should “hallow the name with a higher sanctity.” One cannot describe God adequately by any name. However, one can understand Him through contemplation.46 As in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Asclepius presents God as manifest in the cosmos through His bisexual nature. He brings into being all living beings through the fecundity of the His bisexual nature, and He fills everything he generates with His goodness.47 Hence, the world, in imitation, is bisexual and continually regenerates itself. Similarly, all species and races regenerate themselves.48 I should note here that Nicholas of Cusa, one of the great names in the birth of science in the West, was aware of the Hermetic writings and felt rather ambivalent towards them. Although Cusanus’s absolute presuppositions have much in common with Hermeticism, Cusa always maintained a distinction between God and the cosmos. 49 In Hermeticism, this distinction is quite often lost. Although not pantheistic, Hermeticism does have a marked tendency to transform the cosmos into the divine. According to the Asclepius, the most sacred place on this earth is Egypt. Here heaven and earth meet. The gods that rule in heaven have appeared in Egypt, so it is like a sanctuary in which the whole cosmos dwells. However, sometime in the future, the gods will return to heaven and foreigners will occupy the land. The truth of human immortality will then have been lost, and the world will be plunged into disorder.50 In the course of time, however, God will restore those who have gone astray to the right path. Such is His eternal will.

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In the meantime, memory will allow one to achieve gnosis and thereby retain knowledge of God. Piety also acts as a safeguard. Neither daemon nor destiny has power over one who is pious, and God saves him from all evil. Piety assures one of immortality in the life to come.51 It imparts magical powers thereby enhancing one’s efficiency. It gives one power over Necessity and Destiny.52 Although similar to the world presented in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Asclepius places a  greater emphasis on the positive aspects of the cosmos. With this shift in emphasis, an entirely new image of humanity and its place in the world emerges. This image appears in a passage from the Asclepius where one’s intermediate position between God and the material world is no longer a source of danger and entrapment. It is one’s great glory. The image is of an individual as Magus and Artist. Man is an extraordinary being worthy of all honor and reverence. He has the attributes of a god, and is familiar with the demonic. Because he is certain of the divine in him, he scorns that part of him which is merely human. The properties of man are almost perfectly integrated. Because of the divinity in him, he is linked to the gods and scorns that in him that belongs to the earth. He binds himself to everything with which he finds himself connected through the power of love. Thus, he reverently lifts his eyes to heaven. At the same time, he turns to the earth in loving care. Man’s central place in the world makes him blessed. He is bound to the world through the power of love, and nothing is beyond his reach. His keen thought can penetrate to the bottom of the sea. His wisdom reaches to the heavens. His mind penetrates the elements. Nothing in the world can resist his mental powers or oppose his work. “Man is all things; man is everywhere.”53 Humanity must use its magical powers to complete the universe. The tasks assigned to people encompass everything in the universe that pertains to land and water: cultivating land, herding animals, building harbors, and navigation. It also includes responsibilities in moral and social life; work towards the harmony of all peoples, their intercourse and mutual service. The arts and the sciences enable people to fulfill these duties in the realm of earth and water, within the totality of God’s rule and design:

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myth and the mechanistic universe [Since] the world is God’s handiwork, he who maintains and heightens its beauty by his tendance is co-operating with the will of God, when he contributes the aid of his bodily strength, and by his care and labour day by day makes things assume that shape and aspect which God’s purpose has designed.54

The reward for such service is that at death a person will be freed from the bonds of mortality and his or her higher part will be restored to the divine primal condition.55 Hermeticism, then, is the expression of a vision of the world and humanity’s place in it. Although it is similar with other ancient visions such as tantra, it stresses transforming the world instead of liberation from it. Eliade provides a pithy summary: [Hermetic] science is at once a mystery and the initiatory transmission of that mystery; knowledge of nature is obtained by prayer and the cult or, on a lower plane, by magical control.56

In some ways Hermeticism presents a human image comparable to Yü the Great in the Shu-ching. Hermeticism is similar in that it stresses human autonomy. Hermeticism is different in that a person is above the laws of nature. People can intervene in the laws of nature to perfect the world and thereby make it sacred. Giordano Bruno and the Eclipse of Christianity Although Christianity triumphed in its conflict with Gnosticism, it was never able to suppress gnostic tendencies completely. Gnostic and Hermetic movements continued to exist in the Middle Ages. Christians such as Dante, for example, accepted astrology as a principle of worldly wisdom.57 People commonly assumed that astrological signs ruled different parts of the body and that different planets were related to different temperaments.58 As in China, this kind of presupposition underpinned medical theory.59 Although astrological elements formed the basis of medieval “knowledge,” especially medicine and natural science, medieval faith always

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kept these elements subordinate to God. Moreover, because of the soul’s relation to the infinite, people, not nature, occupied the central place in the cosmos. Medieval thinkers simply assumed nature to be subservient to people and their destiny. All this began to change with the rediscovery of Hermeticism during the Renaissance. Although Hermeticism is similar to many other kinds of esoteric traditions, its method of transmission sets it apart. Eliade writes: It could be said that what we have here [in Hermeticism] is a new model for communicating esoteric wisdom. . . . From the point of view of this new model of initiation, transmission of esoteric doctrines does not imply an “initiatory chain”; for the sacred text can be forgotten for centuries, but if it is rediscovered by a competent reader its message becomes intelligible and contemporary.60

Apparently, many people were prepared to receive the Hermetic revelation as the modern world began to emerge. At the request of Cosmo de’ Medici, Marsilius Ficinus translated the Corpus Hermeticum from Greek into Latin. He completed the translation in 1463.61 The publication of this translation led to a widespread and enthusiastic resurgence of Hermeticism. During the rise of Renaissance Hermeticism, there was also a renewal of the Prometheus symbolism. The Neo-Platonic philosopher, Pico della Mirandola, synthesized the ancient Prometheus symbolism and the story of Adam in Genesis to give a new image of a person as an artist. Pico’s myth of creation tells us that when God created man, He did not give him specific features. He created Adam according to a general image and set him in the center of the world. He told Adam that He had given him no special nature, and that Adam could chose any place, form, and gifts he judged desirable. God told Adam that in contrast to all other creatures whose natures are strictly determined, he was not bound by any natural limit. He was limited only by his will. He could degenerate and become an animal or rise upwards and become a god. Pico concludes: O great liberality of God the Father! O great and wonderful happiness of man! It is given him to have that which he chooses and to be that which he wills.62

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Although Pico remained within orthodoxy because he submits to God, he presents an image that asserts human freedom and the autonomy of the human mind. Giordano Bruno transgressed the bounds of orthodoxy; he transformed Pico’s autonomy and freedom into an entirely new image, that of the Magus, with too much power, freedom, and far too much will to be acceptable to the Church. In contrast to Pico, Bruno expands human powers to the point where one may ultimately know an infinite God and an infinite universe. One of the assumptions implicit in the ancient microcosm symbolism is that to know something is to become one with it because the subject and object are of the same nature. Bruno identified psychic forces with cosmic powers linked with the zodiac. He sought to rise through this level to the divine light in the deepest part of the soul where he would have control over all of nature. Bruno’s expansion of human knowledge to include the infinity of God deified humanity.63 Hermeticism asserted that the experience of individual existence was a magical illusion. Additionally, it developed techniques of memory for regaining the lost primordial unity that gives a person power over the world and thus transforms one into a Magus. In one passage, Bruno describes the full range of powers of such a god-man: [We] need that wisdom and judgment, that skill, industry, and use of intellectual light that are revealed to the world by the intelligible sun, sometimes more and sometimes less, sometimes most greatly and sometimes most minutely. This custom is called Magic[.]

Bruno divided magical practices into three categories: divine, natural, and mathematical. Divine magic was grounded on what Bruno called “supernatural principles.” Natural magic had nature and its secrets as its object. Mathematical magic was an intermediate form. According to Bruno: [Mathematical magic] depends upon the reasons and acts of the soul that is at the horizon between the corporeal and the spiritual, the spiritual and the intellectual.

By “mathematical,” Bruno meant magic based on a Pythagorean number symbolism and not the geometrical analysis of Galileo. In fact,

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Galileo could well have directed his rejection of the symbolic aspects of numbers at the beginning of the Dialogue toward the magical practices of people like Bruno.64 The transition to modernity saw Hermeticism becoming increasingly powerful. At the end of the sixteenth century, Bruno takes a radical step and abandons Christianity. This is when, through his visionary experiences, Bruno destroys the hierarchical medieval cosmos and replaces it with a vision of an infinite universe that corresponds to human divinity: [If] in our times Columbus is to be celebrated for being the one about whom it had been foretold long ago: there will come an age In the far-off years, when the Ocean Shall unloose the bonds of things, And a big land shall emerge, while Tiphys [Tethys] Will disclose new realms, and Thule Shall no longer be the limit of dryland, then what is to be done about the one who found again the way to scale the skies, to make a tour of the spheres, of the planets, and leave behind the convex surface of the firmament?65

Bruno claims to have discovered a new world through his visionary experiences: Now here is he who has pierced the air, penetrated the sky, toured the realm of stars, traversed the boundaries of the world, dissipated the fictitious walls of the first, eighth, ninth, tenth spheres, and whatever else might have been attached to these by the devices of vain mathematicians and by the blind vision of popular philosophers.66

Through his visionary flight Bruno has destroyed the hierarchical medieval cosmos and replaced it with the vision of an infinite universe, a deified universe that corresponds to a deified humanity.67 Mythology, says Kerényi, like the severed head of Orpheus, goes on singing even in death and from afar. In its lifetime, among the peoples where it was

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This certainly is the case with Bruno. He seems to be the living embodiment of Prometheus. According to him, one who is wise will becomes one’s own creator and the god-man who transforms the world. Bruno thought of himself as a prophet and messiah who was trying to unify the world through magical techniques. For him, love was the “essence” of all things. It is a power that the magician should try to appropriate. Love will lead him to the realm above the sky by means of “divine furor.” Through love, one should join oneself to the soul of the world.69 Bruno’s Euroici Furori predicts the return of the Egyptian religion through the revolution of the “great year of the world.” The world now being at its nadir will imminently return back into light and splendor.70 Perhaps to our own sober minds, Bruno seems to have made some of his statements on the uttermost edge of sanity. Declaring him insane, however, would be wholly mistaken. Rather, Bruno exemplified where the generally accepted ideas of Hermeticism could lead. We are closer to the truth if we call Bruno’s efforts heroic or prophetic. In his World-Systems Analysis, Wallerstein sees the whole of modernity and globalization in the long sweep of history as beginning with Columbus. The explorations of the sixteenth century effectively laid the foundation of that expansion. 71 The reference to Columbus in the passage by Bruno is important. At the same time that the passage destroys the medieval cosmos, it articulates a new sense of homogeneous time and space that had become the basis of modern navigational coordinate systems making it possible for the West to explore and expand throughout the world. The passage also presents a new ideal model of a person. This passage truly epitomizes (and marks the completion to) modernity in the West. It would be wrong to say that Bruno brought all this about. The new sense of the world had changed during the century preceding Bruno, and Bruno merely articulated and gave expression to the new orientation—the new “metaphysics”—by which many people consciously or unconsciously were living. He is a good example of how there might be an “official religion,” an “official metaphysics,” if you will, that is dif-

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ferent from the actual religion, the actual absolute presuppositions on which people ground their behavior. Since all people and even entire peoples are prone to self-deception, and since absolute presuppositions (including our own) often change without most of us being aware of it, this is something historians of religions need to keep constantly in mind. We must constantly ask ourselves, “This is what the person says he or she believes. What, in fact, does she believe?” The official gods are often not the real, living gods. Skepticism for historians of religions, as it is for physical scientists, is a necessary (though not a sufficient) virtue. Anselm had laid a secure foundation for knowledge by submitting his intellect to a command of God. In stark contrast, the passage by Bruno presents human imagery in which one achieves knowledge, salvation, and transcendence in the magical act—the willful transgression of boundaries. In his revolt against the Christian vision of the world, Bruno presents an entirely different human image—one of a person overcoming boundaries and achieving salvation through a process of perpetual self-transcendence. This is the modern idea of progress. The vision of Bruno gives mythical expression to one of the most important tendencies of modernity. The passages from Bruno constitute the modern counter-part to the passages from Parmenides, the Shu-ching, and Augustine that we have studied. Like the previous three examples, the passages from Bruno give symbolic expression to an intuition of the world and a fundamental decision that provides the foundation of a civilization.

Bruno and Cusanus As the order of the Middle Ages was coming to an end, Giordano Bruno attempted to articulate a change that had occurred in many people’s absolute presuppositions. He tried to articulate a new picture of the universe, one in which the Copernican theory was true. To do this he appropriated the ideas of Nicholas of Cusa. In contrast to Cusanus, however, Bruno left the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. He revolted against the Christian myth of human redemption by the act of a gracious

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God and replaced it with a myth of human self-assertion. At the same time he denied the transcendence of the infinite God and transferred His attributes to nature. He tells us: “God, considered absolutely, has nothing to do with us[.]” Rather, He communicates with us by the effects of nature. In fact, He is almost identical with nature. If He is not nature, at least one can say He is the nature of nature. If He is not the soul of the world he is at least the soul of the soul of the world.72 According to Bruno, the universe is infinite, and there is no limit to nature’s creative power. Nature is in perpetual movement with infinite power and life.73 With this deification of the universe, there is no history and no providence. And despite the perpetual motion of the parts of nature, as a whole nothing changes. The world considered as a totality is immobile. The parts are all in motion, but nothing perishes or is destroyed.74 Bruno symbolizes the divinity of nature through solar imagery. Having pierced beyond appearances to the real, Bruno understands the fluid relation between the inner and outer worlds. The human intellect and the light of the sun are both manifestations of divine intelligence, and Bruno transforms the Christian cross from an historical symbolism expressing divine providence to a purely magical symbolism expressing the means for realizing the divinity of the universe in its two complementary aspects, matter and intelligence.75 Both Cusanus and Bruno expressed their fundamental intuitions of the world through ancient solar imagery. Yet the meanings of these intuitions were different in at least one important aspect. For Cusanus the imagery of light in the darkness expressed the limits of the human mind. For Bruno the imagery of light expressed the human mind’s divinity. If we return a moment to the central passage from Cusanus, we can put our finger on the fundamental difference between his vision and Bruno’s. In that passage, Cusanus writes that the theology of negation is so necessary for the theology of affirmation that without it God would not be worshipped as the Infinite God but, rather, as a creature. And such worship is idolatry; it ascribes to the image that which befits only the reality itself.76

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Bruno lacks the theology of negation. The transition from Cusanus to Bruno shows how easy it is to step over the boundary from affirmation to idolatry. It is something that has occurred repeatedly in the history of modern science. In contrast to Bruno, Cusanus always stayed within Christian orthodoxy: although the universe was unlimited, it was dependent on the infinite God. When people like Bruno, appropriated Cusanus’s ideas but failed to distinguish between an unlimited cosmos and the infinite God, the modern Newtonian ideas of absolute time and space began to emerge. As these ideas eclipsed the Christian medieval cosmos, they became the foundation of the modern scientific image of the universe as an infinite machine where the laws of nature were more important than either people or God.77 As the Hermetic vision eclipsed the Christian, there was also a corresponding change in assumptions about evil. The biblical myth of the Fall presents evil as something in the will itself, “a kind of involuntariness at the very heart of the voluntary, no longer over against it but in it”: evil is in the servile will.78 The Hermetic myth presents evil as something outside of us: in nature, society, or other nations. Evil is something that one can eradicate, through magical or technological means. This fundamental assumption underpins the modern idea of progress. Life gets better and better as we eradicate evil in the world around us. With Bruno, we are at the mythical origin of modernity. According to Kerényi “Origin” means two things in mythology. As the content of a story or mythologem it is the “giving of grounds” (Begründung); as the content of an act it is the “founding” (Gründung) of a city or the world. In either case it means man’s return to his own origins and consequently the emergence of something original, so far as accessible to him, in the form of primordial images, mythologems, ceremonies.79

Bruno lived at a time when an old world was ending, and a new one was still struggling to become established. He embodies a longing for unity and harmony in an age that could not provide either. In the end he became trapped in the political power struggles of his age and was burned

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at the stake as a heretic. As the flames licked his face, he defiantly averted his face from the crucifix that his executioners held out before him. In his last act he at once rejected the myth of the world that was now passing and embodied the myth of the heroic and terrible new age that was beginning to emerge in full force.80

Hermeticism and Modern Science Bruno embodied a new myth of progress and power that characterizes modernity. One realizes salvation in a continual process of self-transformation. This is the modern myth of progress in general. Do the the mythical and magical elements of Hermeticism have any significance in the narrower sphere of modern scientific rationality? In attempting to answer this, it will be helpful to look at some objections to the thesis of Yates that the historian of science, Robert Westman, raised in an essay, “Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered.”81 Westman argues that the thesis of Yates implies a kind of evolutionary development from magic to science. It begins with Hermeticism, evolves through transitional figures such as Kepler, and ends in the science of Galileo and Newton. Westman points out, however, that Renaissance philosophers such as Ficino and Pico were not part of the scientific revolution, and that Bruno’s contribution to science was of a purely speculative nature. Although there were scientists such as John Dee who were also practicing Hermeticists, they placed  less emphasis on the magical elements of the Hermetic texts than people like Bruno. Moreover, the writings of these scientists show no evidence that Hermeticism influenced their decision to either accept or reject the Heliocentric view of the universe.82 One must recognize the evolutionary scheme implied in the thesis of Yates to be another version of the ideas of Lévi-Strauss and be grateful to Westman for pointing the scheme out to us. In light of Westman’s other criticisms, however, is it possible to say anything positive about the relationship of Hermeticism to the modern scientific revolution? One can see evidence for a close relation between Hermeticism and the scientific revolution in the work of Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-

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1654, Herrenberg, Stuttgart). In 1619 he published Christianopolis and proposed that a new community be established whose purpose was to develop a new method of education based on “chemical philosophy.” The center of the community was to be the laboratory, a place where “heaven and earth are married” and “the divine mysteries are discovered[.]”83 In the opinion of many scholars, Johann Valentin Andreae is also the author of Fama Fraternitatis. Robert Fludd, a member of the Royal College of Physicians, greatly admired the Fama Fraternitatis with its demand for a reform of education. He was an adept in mystical alchemy. For Fludd, a person was a microcosm, so that knowledge of the human body led to knowledge of the universe and even of God.84 One of the fundamental differences between the mechanistic conception of the universe and that of many traditional cultures is the transformation of the image of nature expressed by feminine images, a nature of sheer power and potentiality, into an entirely different image.85 In this new image the accidental and individual dissolves in the necessary, continuous and general.86 Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) was an important figure in the Aristotelian tradition of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. His writings are a good example of how easy it is to transform Gnostic astrological imagery into the modern conception of nature. Pomponazzi wanted knowledge to replace faith and was striving for a purely immanent rather than transcendent understanding of the world. According to him, the rational, continuous order of the world that appears in the movements of the heavenly bodies is the place to discover the all-embracing laws of the cosmos. The revolution of the heavens reveals an unconditional law that causes everything in the world to rise and fall according to cycles. Pomponazzi tries to show that nothing, including magical activity, is capable of breaking through this causal framework.87 The order of the stars also implies the regularity of history. Christianity will not exist eternally, and even God can only influence the world through the medium of the heavenly bodies. By bringing the regularity of the heavens down to earth, Pomponazzi makes the idea of the lawfulness of nature so real and absolute that it eclipses even Providence.88 In the sixteenth century there was a whole spectrum of Hermeticism, from magical to “scientific” and “rational.” This implies that although

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magic and experimental technique are not identical, the boundary between them is somewhat fluid. At the least, one can say that it is possible to modify Hermeticism, an ancient religious form, to be compatible with, and give meaning to, a life that includes scientific activity. What is the “essential” connection between Hermetic magic and scientific knowledge? Modern scientists and philosophers of science emphasize the technical foundation of science. Some stress the active, experimental nature of not only science, but of all human knowledge. Others stress the distinction between a mathematician who is interested in logical coherence and a physicist who must have a feel for how logic fits with nature. They have all shown how all scientific laws have implicit operational definitions. That is, to have rational, scientific knowledge of the world, one must operate on it.89 This is the “essential” connection between magic and science. The Pythagoreans divided society into three different kinds of individuals. Each had different concerns. The first was concerned with wealth; the second with power and world domination; and the third with contemplation. This was a division common to Indo-European cultures. Prometheus presented us with a model of the second kind of person. Pythagoras as well as the other philosophers provided examples of the third kind. The idea that these types should be arranged hierarchically was common to Indo-European cultures. The individual of contemplation was considered the highest type. The individual concerned with power followed him. Then came the individual intent on wealth. The cosmos was also ordered hierarchically to create a correspondence between the cosmic and social orders. Moreover, as in the case with China, a single divine principle underpinned both the cosmic and social orders.90 With the rise of modernity have come new tendencies and important changes. One of the most important of these is the emergence of what Marshall Hodgson has called the “technicalistic spirit.” This expression (which seems almost an inner contradiction) points to a transformation in modern history. It is the force and function of technological achievements, which have made traditional values, divisions, and rankings of people seemingly irrelevant. Hodgson writes that central

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to the technicalistic spirit was the expectation of impersonal efficiency through technical precision.

There had always been some concern for efficiency, technical specialization, and precision, from shipbuilding to computers. Nevertheless, as the modern world emerged, it gave that concern primary consideration to the exclusion of everything else. More and more, aesthetic, traditional, and interpersonal considerations gave way to considerations of technical efficiency. Technical efficiency began to dominate all aspects of social organization. There was “a major shift from authoritative custom toward independent calculation.”91 This drive towards technical precision was, in fact, the counterpart on the material level to the drive towards precision that appeared in the myth of proportion and numbers that began with Cusanus and led to Galileo’s ability to analyze nature mathematically. If this new world of efficiency is “Promethean,” we ought to point out the radical difference between the ancient myth of Prometheus and the new one. The classical Greek Prometheus gives us the image of the individual of action, the one who forges scientific facts; above all, he is the hero of Greek tragedy. With the rise of the technicalistic spirit, it is possible to think of the rise and eclipse of the person of contemplation by the person of action. What is most evident, however, is the eclipse of the classical Greek version of the myth of Prometheus. In that version, the Promethean revolt against the ordinances of Zeus failed. The myth expressed the limits of human action. In the modern technicalistic society, that myth has been replaced by a new one—that of Hermeticism. We can see this in Langdon Gilkey’s description of the modern myth of science and technology: The myth of the new scientific or technological man presents to us the image of the man in the white coat; the man who embodies the gnosis achieved by the new methods of inquiry. This man thus in modest actuality but also—and here is the first element of the mythical–in infinite potentiality knows the secrets of things, what their effective structures are, and therefore how they work. Consequently–and here is the second mythical element–he is the man who can control these forces which he now understands and bring them into the service of human purposes.

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We have already brought this control over the forces of nature, and there is no reason why we can’t bring this control over humanity itself and solve all our psychological, social and historical problems through technology. We should even be able to have technological mastery over human genetic structures. We will control all of human destiny. Like gods, we will create a new human nature, free of every limitation.92 Is this description anything other than what we saw in the almost insane utterances of Bruno? Hermetic myth expresses the decision to abandon tradition and live at the fluid boundary of magic and technique. In Hermeticism, we can discern the dreams, wishes, and the predominant self-image of those of us who inhabit the modern technological world.

Chapter 11

The Mechanistic Universe

In this chapter we shall look at the mechanistic image of the world that emerged in the seventeenth century in the writings of René Descartes and Isaac Newton, the world to which Laplace gave classical expression in the nineteenth century. The purpose of this chapter will be to show how images comparable to ancient solar symbolisms underpin the classical mechanistic image of the world.

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy If Kepler is the founder of modern celestial dynamics and Galileo the founder of modern terrestrial dynamics, Descartes is the founder of modern philosophy. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, he presents “absolute presuppositions,” that orient the modern world. If we can credit one person with originating how our modern world thinks and argues, it is Descartes. We can understand Descartes’ Meditations as a response to the nominalist critique of form. He has the conscious intention of making a new beginning that establishes all knowledge on a new, indubitable foundation. In the course of doing so, he will found a new world of “clear and distinct” ideas. His method is to reject any knowledge that is subject to the least possible doubt. By the end of the second meditation, he has arrived at one indubitable truth—that he exists as a thinking substance. How does this thinking substance gain knowledge of the external world? According to Descartes, the most serious and frequent mistake is to assume that one’s ideas conform to things outside oneself. However, if one simply judges the ideas as merely ideas that may or may not correspond to things in the external world, one can hardly err in one’s judgments.1

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Descartes classifies human ideas into three categories: innate, adventitious, and invented. Innate ideas seem to belong to our nature. These allow us to understand “what a thing is, what truth is, and what thought is.” Adventitious ideas seem to come from outside. They give us knowledge of what we had previously considered (that is, prior to beginning Descartes’ method of systematic doubt) the external world: [My] hearing a noise, as I do now, or seeing the sun, or feeling the fire, comes from things which are located outside me, or so I have hitherto judged.

Invented ideas would include such things as Sirens and other mythical beings. Descartes wants to know which of these ideas gives him true knowledge of the external world and what reasons give confidence in them.2 At this stage of his meditations, it would be possible to consider the world of our senses a mere magical illusion. This is the position asserted by many of the passages of the Corpus Hermeticum. On the other hand, it would also be possible for Descartes to judge Sirens and other extra-ordinary beings to be real. They could be like the omens sent from heaven that the Confucian tradition judged to be of exceptional importance. Thus, one is at a crucial juncture in Descartes’ meditations. Everything will depend on how he establishes what in the world, if anything, is real. To regain the world, Descartes makes a central assumption: the cause of an idea must have at least as much reality as the idea. There are two important consequences of this assumption. First, it is impossible for something to come out of nothing. Second, it is also impossible for something that is perfect and real to come out of something that is imperfect and less real.3 A causal explanation negates change by presupposing an underlying substance that remains the same despite changes. Although Descartes thinks he is making an entirely new beginning in absolute presuppositions, this passage places him in a tradition that goes back to Parmenides and the decision for being. Having established this principle, Descartes must see if he can discover an idea whose reality is so great that he himself could not possibly be the cause or inventor of it. That is, it must be an idea that is greater

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than he. Because the existence of such an idea would ensure there is something that exists outside of himself, if he could discover it, he would regain the world.4 Now there is only one such idea. It is the idea of God. Here Descartes places himself in the biblical tradition with its understanding of the world as God’s creation. Descartes defines God as a substance that is infinite, eternal, and immutable. God is “independent, supremely intelligent, [and] supremely powerful[.]” God is the creator of Descartes, and if there is anything else in the world, God is the creator of that as well. Since Descartes’ idea of God is an idea of something that infinitely surpasses him in perfection, it could not have originated from him. Descartes concludes that God must exist.5 There is, however, something elusive about this idea. Descartes can understand it, but he cannot grasp it: It does not matter that I do not grasp the infinite, or that there are countless additional attributes of God which I cannot in any way grasp, and perhaps cannot even reach in my thought; for it is in the nature of the infinite not to be grasped by a finite being like myself.

Despite its elusiveness, because the idea of God contains all the perfections that Descartes can imagine and perhaps many others besides, the idea of God is the clearest and most distinct of all of his ideas. It contains all that he perceives “as being real and true[.]”6 The idea of God is also the expression of Descartes’ self-image. According to Descartes, when God created people, He also placed the idea of Him in them. The presence of this idea within someone means that a person is made in His “image and likeness[.]” The same mind that allows one to have self-knowledge, also allows one to understand God and this understanding transforms a person into His image. Thus Descartes understands himself as a thing that is incomplete and dependent, something that longs for “greater and better things[.]” That on which Descartes depends is God. And God possesses all for which Descartes longs.7 With this, one has reached the climax of the Third Meditation. The idea of God not only assures Descartes that something exists apart from him, but also that he is dependent on God for his existence.

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Following this is a passage that is of central interest for this study of Descartes’ absolute presuppositions. This passage, with its metaphor of light, presents us with an image similar to ancient solar symbolisms. As in ancient myth, this imagery establishes the reality of a world. The imagery of light at once expresses Descartes most fundamental experience and self-image: I should like to pause here and spend some time in the contemplation of God; to reflect on his attributes, and to gaze with wonder and adoration on the beauty of this immense light, so far as the eye of my darkened intellect can bear it. For just as we believe through faith that the supreme happiness of the next life consists solely in the contemplation of the divine majesty, so experience tells us that this same contemplation, albeit much less perfect, enables us to know the greatest joy of which we are capable in this life.8

The passage is remarkably similar to the central passage of Augustine’s Confessions. Let me take a moment to present Augustine’s passage again: I entered, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays over the same eye of my soul, over my mind: . . . It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it. All who know the truth know this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity. It is the Light that charity knows. Your light shone upon me in its brilliance, and I thrilled with love and dread alike. I realized that I was far away from you. It was as though I were in a land where all is different from your own and I heard your voice calling from on high [.] I asked myself “Is truth then nothing at all, simply because it has no extension in space, with or without limits?” And, far off, I heard your voice saying I am the God who IS. I heard your voice, as we hear voices that speak to our hearts, and at once I had no cause to doubt. I might more easily have doubted that I was alive than that Truth had being. For we catch sight of the Truth, as he is known through his creation.9

In both Descartes’ and Augustine’s visions, the imagery of light expresses the experience of an infinitely good God that appears, para-

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doxically, within the soul of His finite creature, and in both, the imagery establishes a world. However, there are also important differences between them. Augustine immediately accepts the authority of his vision, while Descartes accepts his as true only because he can verify it by principles of rationality. Also, Augustine’s vision establishes the hierarchical cosmos of medieval Christianity, while Descartes establishes a different world—that of a mechanical universe subject to mathematical analysis. From contemplation of the true God, Descartes hopes to find a way to knowledge of the world.10 As a preliminary consideration, Descartes rejects the Aristotelian search for final causes. The idea of God is simply too immense and overpowering to allow speculation on what His final plans for the world are. That is why the physics of the seventeenth century will content itself with formal and efficient causes.11 Descartes begins to consider what other of his ideas besides God are “clear and distinct.” The extension of an object in space, that is, its length, breadth, and depth, are certainly clear and distinct. Similarly, the parts of each object including their sizes and shapes are clear and distinct. Finally, the way objects move as well as the durations of time in which they move are clear and distinct. Indeed, these are so clear that they seem to be eternal: [The] truth of these matters is so open and so much in harmony with my nature, that on first discovering them it seems that I am not so much learning something new as remembering what I knew before; or it seems like noticing for the first time things which were long present within me although I had never turned my mental gaze on them before.12

As in the examples of Augustine, Galileo, and Hermeticism, so it is for Descartes: an act of memory makes truth available. This similarity is merely formal. In each of these examples, the content of the memory is specific and unique. However, it is important to recognize that a return to the foundation of the world through an act of memory is a decidedly mythical theme. And here, in Descartes, we see it at the foundation of modern rationalism. Descartes considered geometric forms as especially clear and distinct. They seem to have their own true, eternal, and immutable natures. After

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describing the properties of a triangle, he concludes that its properties are so clear and seem so logically necessary that neither he nor anyone else could have invented them.13 Today, we know this is not the case. The history of mathematics since the time of Descartes has seen the invention of different geometries some of which are suitable for analyzing nature, and the modern philosophy of language brings into question the status of mathematical knowledge. Nevertheless, in stark contrast to nominalist theology that held that a good God could deceive a person, the idea of God’s goodness guaranteed for Descartes the truth of what he considered the innate ideas of geometry. Descartes maintained that since God would not deceive him, everything that Descartes could clearly perceive must be true.14 Descartes gives us the strongest, starkest formulation of the mechanical picture of the world. In contrast to Galileo who refrained from questions of causality, Descartes attempted to explain the causes of motion mechanically, as due to action of vortexes or whirling masses. Descartes considered the motions of the universe and their mechanical causes to be objectively real, and he could analyze these by means of the clear and distinct ideas of mathematics. With Descartes, the modern dichotomy between the mental and the physical worlds begins. This separation was partly a reaction to the excesses of Renaissance magic and partly a result of the successful attempts to understand nature through the logic of mathematics. In contrast to the mechanical world of objective measurement, there is a mental world of thinking substances. Descartes simply considers the distinction between these two worlds to be fundamental, irreconcilable, and absolute. Only the idea of God could mediate these two separate worlds. As an idea, it belonged to the mental world of thinking substances. However, since one aspect of this idea was God’s goodness, He would not deceive Descartes concerning the reality of the other world, the world of physical extension. Descartes’ certainty of the idea of God led to his certainty of his knowledge of the mechanical universe. Without knowledge of God, he could be certain of almost nothing. With that knowledge, he could achieve certain knowledge of intellectual matters as well as what he considered to be the “subject-matter of pure mathematics”—the physical world.15 Although other philosophers from Bruno to Spinoza and Leibnitz also attempted to come to terms with the mechanization of the universe

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by means of a dualism between mind and matter,16 Descartes has become the epitome of modern Western logic and rationality. His emphasis on clear and distinct ideas has had a profound influence on modern structuralists such as the linguist, Noam Chomsky and the psychologist, Jean Piaget. It can even be said that the theories of Lévi-Strauss concerning myth are a form of Cartesianism.17 However, despite the extreme tendency to see the world mechanically, despite the severe logic, and despite the emphasis on clear and distinct ideas, one should not forget that at the heart of Descartes’ world, the thing that holds his philosophy together, is Descartes’ idea of God. And one should not forget that when he wants to express this idea, Descartes must have recourse to an image of light that evokes the images of ancient solar symbols.

Isaac Newton Although Descartes presents us with the most logical and mechanical of the new ideals of knowledge, the most important figure in the rise of the mechanistic image of the universe is Isaac Newton. We can consider him and Galileo the founders of modern physical science. Newton, like Galileo, is especially important for the development of experimental techniques that produce quantifiable data. Newton’s Principia (Principles of Mathematical Philosophy), first published in 1687, consists of three books: THE MOTION OF BODIES, THE MOTION OF BODIES (IN RESISTING MEDIUMS), and THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD (IN MATHEMATICAL TREATMENT). In it, Newton presents a model of the modern scientific method. In contrast to Galileo, Newton, like Descartes, also attempted to develop a new, comprehensive philosophy. In a preface to the second edition of the Principles, published in 1713, Roger Cotes evaluated Newton’s achievement. Cotes considered two aspects of Newton’s work to be of supreme importance. The first was the discovery and demonstration of the law of gravity. The second was the use of this law to develop a new system of the world.18 The writings not only present us with Newton’s scientific method; they also contain an image of the world that Newton grounded on the absolute presuppositions that time and space are absolute and infinite.

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In the worlds of traditional peoples, the vault of the sky, vast and over-arching this world, suggests a symbolic structure—the expression of sheer, majestic power and the experience of God as creator, victor and king. A variation of this same symbolism expresses the core of Newton’s life and work. According to Newton, God is, above all, the Lord and Ruler of the universe. The entire universe is subject to Him.19 Newton, however, assumed that God was omnipresent as well as omnipotent. Newton almost identifies God with the absolute time and space that is so important an underpinning to his mechanistic science. In many ways, Newton was a transitional figure between traditional and modern worlds. Many scholars think there is a strong Hermetic coloring to Newton’s view of the world. Eliade, for instance, claims that Newton combined Hermeticism and Christianity to form a new symbolic creation.20 There is also strong evidence that he developed one of his most important scientific concepts, force, in his attempts to transform alchemy into chemistry. In The Janus Faces of Genius, Betty Jo Dobbs writes: My studies since 1975 have yielded hints that Newton was concerned from the first in his alchemical work to find evidence for the existence of a vegetative principle operating in the natural world, a principle that he understood to be the secret, universal, animating spirit of which the alchemists spoke. He saw analogies between the vegetable principle and light, and between the alchemical process and the work of the Deity at the time of creation. It was by the use of this active vegetative principle that God constantly molded the universe to His providential design, producing all manner of generations, resurrections, fermentations, and vegetation. In short, it was the action of the secret animating spirit of alchemy that kept the universe from being the sort of closed mechanical system for which Descartes had argued.21

Although the question of what influence Hermeticism had on Newton is still a matter of controversy, it brings us once again to the central theme of this essay, the relation of myth to modern physical science. If Dobbs thesis is true, Newton is one more example (and perhaps the most important one) of the inner kinship between magic and experimental technique. Newton begins the Principles with preliminary definitions of what we would today call mass, momentum, and force. It is here that he presents

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the central principle of inertia. It is a power or force innate in matter. Because of it, a body tends to remain in its present state. If it is at rest, it tends to remain at rest. If it is moving in rectilinear motion, it tends to remain in that state also.22 Newton makes a distinction between two kinds of time. There is absolute time. It is mathematical and homogeneous. It flows continuously. It is sheer duration. On the other hand, there is also common, relative time. One can measure it by means of an instrument. Units of relative time would include the hour, the day, the month, or the year.23 Newton also makes a distinction between two kinds of space. There is absolute space. It is unchanging and immovable. There is also relative space. It is moveable and one can perceive it by its position in relation to bodies. One often mistakes relative space for absolute space.24 However, the order of the parts of absolute space is immutable. The order of the parts of absolute time is also immutable.25 Newton calls the part of space that a body occupies, “place.” There are two kinds of places, absolute and relative.26 Absolute places retain the same position “from infinity to infinity[,]” and are the components of immovable, absolute space.27 Absolute motion occurs when a body changes from one absolute place to another. Relative motion occurs when a body changes from one relative place to another.28 Although it is difficult in practice, it should be possible to distinguish true from relative motions.29 If Newton’s conceptions of absolute space, time, place, and motion confuse you, don’t worry. It caused problems to many others as well, and no one has ever been able to give concrete examples of them. Two centuries after Newton, Einstein resolved the difficulties with the special and general theories of relativity. Having established a framework of time and space, Newton presents his three laws of motion. The first is the law of inertia. A body continues in its state of rest or motion unless a force acts upon it. The second law is that the change of motion is proportional to the force and occurs in the direction of the force. The third law is that an equal and opposite reaction accompanies every action.30 The world the Shu-ching presented was an assemblage of locations, each with its own “essence” and each with its own time and space. In contrast, Newton’s Principles present a world where absolute time and

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space form a framework where all physical bodies are situated. This framework allows one, at least in principle, to speak of the objective location of every physical body. For Newton, “absolute places retain from eternity to eternity their positions in the absolute, that is, infinite and eternal space.”31 For two centuries following Newton, scientific objectivity would stand or fall with Newton’s absolute time and space. Although one has no way of determining absolute places, and one’s sensible measures of place are relative, Newton asserts: [In] philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them.32

This implies that for Newton we can only know absolute time and space, the framework necessary for scientific objectivity, through philosophic meditation. This fundamental knowledge, so essential to Newton’s science, is close to the experience of homogeneous time and space that the Hermetic writings preserve as a revelation of the sacred. So far my concern has been with Newton’s absolute presuppositions. One must remember, however, that Newton is most important as one of the founders of the modern scientific method. Although Chinese and Galilean science were different in character, they each had a center or “essence.” Is it possible to discover such a center to Newtonian science?

The “Essence of Newtonian Science” As stated above, Newton titled book three of the Principles SYSTEM OF THE WORLD (IN MATHEMATICAL TREATMENT). In the introduction, Newton states that in the previous books he has developed mathematical principles of motions and forces. In book three he will use these to develop a view of the world.33 This book contains the “essence” of mechanistic science. Newton begins by presenting a number of rules for developing his system. One is to limit explanations of natural phenomena to causes that are both true and sufficient. One is to attribute the same causes to similar

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phenomena. One is to regard as universal, qualities of material bodies that are constant and found in all material bodies one investigates.34 Newton adds one last rule. It has to do with the limits of scientific knowledge: one is to avoid speculation. Even if one can imagine alternative hypotheses, one is to regard those propositions as true that one infers from induction based on experimental observation. Because one can always make such propositions more accurate or find exceptions to them, one must consider even these latter kinds of propositions as only provisionally true.35 In his study of early modern science, Peter Dear has shown how Newton, by means of these rules, gives the knowledge derived from contrived experiments philosophical respectability. He writes: Newton’s version of “experimental philosophy” postulated the actual production of particular phenomena so as to allow the formation of a universal science from singulars; the trick lay in that final stage and was accomplished, to the extent that it could be accomplished, by framing the issues in terms of physico-mathematics. . . . The Newtonian rhetoric of inductive generalization, purportedly based on the mathematical method of analysis and synthesis, gave event experiments a philosophical respectability that they had formerly lacked.36

After stating his rules of experimental philosophy, Newton develops a mathematical description of the movement of the planets. The periods of the five primary planets are in the same proportion to each other as are their mean distances from the sun when these are raised to the 3/2th power. If one draws radii from each of the primary planets to the sun, the areas that they sweep out in various times will be proportional to those times. Similarly, if one draws a radius from the moon to the center of the earth, the areas that it sweeps out during various time periods will be proportional to these periods.37 So far, Newton is merely repeating the type of analysis pioneered by Galileo. Using idealized models, Newton has succeeded in providing a mathematical analysis of how bodies move. We have not yet, however, discerned the “essence” of Newtonian science. Newton, unlike Galileo, is interested in causal explanations. When discussing the universal qualities of bodies, Newton included a number of concepts that were necessary for the mathematical description of how bodies move. These were extension,

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hardness, impenetrability, movability, and inertia. To these Newton added one more. This has to do with why bodies move. According to him, all bodies about the earth, including the moon, gravitate to the earth with a force in proportion to their matter. By inference, all bodies possess a principle of mutual gravitation.38 Newton then develops propositions to analyze the motion of the planets according to the laws in book one. This is the first step towards his demonstration of the law of gravity. Forces that tend toward the sun hold the primary planets in their orbits. At each place in a planet’s orbit, the magnitude of the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the planet to the sun’s center. Similarly, a force that tends toward the earth holds the moon in its orbit around the earth. At each place in the moon’s orbit, the magnitude of the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the moon to the center of the earth. At each place in the moon’s orbit, inertia tends to keep the moon traveling in a straight-line drawn tangent to the orbit at that place. The direction of the moon due to inertia and the direction of the force due to gravity are perpendicular to each other. They form a right angle at the moon’s center of gravity. Inertia and gravity interact so that the motion of the moon in its orbit is an example of what Galileo called compound motion. Because of inertia, the moon tends to move in a rectilinear motion out into space. However, because of gravity, as the moon is traveling in a straight line drawn tangent to its orbit, it is also falling towards the earth. That is, the force of gravity continually “bends” the rectilinear path into a circle. Thus, gravity keeps the moon in its orbit.39 From the example of the moon, Newton generalizes. The moons of Jupiter gravitate towards Jupiter, the moons of Saturn gravitate towards Saturn, and the planets gravitate towards the sun. In all these cases, the force of gravity “bends” the path of the celestial body and keeps it in its orbit. Newton concludes that every material body has a force of gravity that is proportional to its mass.40 Having demonstrated the law of gravity, Newton develops a model of the solar system with the sun as the center of the world. Newton writes: [The] common centre of gravity of the earth, the sun, and all the planets, is to be esteemed the centre of the world. . . since the sun

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itself is moved, a fixed point is to be chosen from which the centre of the sun recedes least, and from which it would recede yet less if the body of the sun were denser and greater, and therefore less apt to be moved.” The orbits of the planets are ellipses. They have a common focus in the center of the sun.41

This is Newton’s version of the mechanistic universe. It consists of bodies in motion as well as the forces that cause their motions. In creating this picture of the world, Newton synthesized Galileo’s mathematical analysis of motion and Descartes’ concern with causality. However, instead of Descartes’ idea that the cause of motion is the mechanical impact of one solid body against another, Newton’s idea is that bodies act on each other at a distance. It is because the distance between bodies was so critical to Newton’s analysis of motion that his science required the assumption of absolute time and space. For Newton, not only do bodies act on each other from a distance; the forces of their interactions are a function of distance as well. Here one comes to the “essence” of Newton’s mechanistic universe: because they are a function of the distance between bodies, the forces that cause the motion of bodies, like the motion of those bodies themselves, are subject to rigorous mathematical analysis.42 The two centuries following Newton and Galileo characterized all scientific work by the idea that it is possible to describe all natural phenomena in terms of simple forces between unalterable objects. In the middle of the nineteenth century Helmholtz will write: [We] discover the problem of physical material science to be to refer natural phenomena back to unchangeable attractive and repulsive forces whose intensity depends wholly upon distance. The solubility of this problem is the condition of the complete comprehensibility of nature. The solutions are uniquely determined, and science will come to an end once it has discovered these.43

This statement of Helmholtz, expresses the “essence” of Newton’s mechanistic science.

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We have touched the center of Newton’s mechanistic science. It is important to remember, however, that Newton’s mechanistic science was part of a total vision that included more than mathematical philosophy. Newton aimed at a truth that encompassed not only natural philosophy but also God. For this reason, he could not limit himself to any single approach to knowledge, and one of his most important methodological principles was that of balancing the truth of one study against that of others. These included “theology, revelation, alchemy, history, and the wise ancients.”44 “Voluntarist” theology greatly influenced Newton. This theology was, in part, a response to the nominalist rejection of universals, and it understood the creation as a manifestation of God’s will rather than His intellect. Voluntarist theology did not assume that the world related to God by participating in divine forms; rather, the order of creation was a consequence of the law God imposed on it. Therefore, the defining characteristic of a person, as the creature of God, was his or her voluntary obedience to God’s will. God’s laws marked the boundaries of a person’s life, and living within them led to union with God.45 A study of Newton’s theological writings shows that he emphasized the will of God to such an extent that he had left the limits of orthodox Christianity.46 Orthodox Christianity develop creeds in its struggles with heretical views. Newton rejected these creeds as authoritative and said that just as one can disagree on the meaning of many parts of the Bible, so can one disagree in one’s interpretation of the creeds even though orthodoxy requires one to affirm them in church liturgy.47 Newton replaced the creeds with “Twelve Articles.” An examination of the first article shows that Newton held the heretical views of Arius: there is one God, the Father; He is eternal and exists everywhere; He is all knowing and all-powerful; and He is the creator of heaven and earth. This first article expresses an absolute presupposition—the unity of truth: True knowledge was all in some sense a knowledge of God; Truth was one, its unity guaranteed by the unity of God.

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This presupposition underpinned all of Newton’s diverse studies. Many different sources of knowledge—experiment, revelation, reason, and interpretation of ancient religious documents—could, if correctly interpreted, be reconciled “in the infinite unity and majesty of the Deity.”48 Newton rejected the doctrine of the Trinity as well as the drama of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although Christ Jesus is the one mediator between God and people, he was only a man the Jews crucified for his teachings. After being put to death, God used the power by which he gives life to all animals when they are born to bring Jesus back to life. Jesus then appeared to his disciples and explained to them the meaning of various prophetic books.49 This passage presents us with the Arian ideal image of a person. One becomes a god through obedience to the will of God. Then one will have the insight and the ability to understand the meanings of scripture. Here Newton gives expression to the underlying motive of his theological studies—to rediscover a primordial revelation about God, nature, and the purpose of human existence. Newton’s Christ was in charge of, or even identified with, the active natural powers through which God, in His providential care, formed the world: Newton apparently thought that when organized matter first arose from chaos, Christ, as God’s executive, directed the vegetative, nonmechanical processes between the most minute primordials[.]

At the end of book three of the Principles, Newton said that natural diversity “could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing.” It was the Christ, united with God in a “unity of dominion” though not of substance, that put the ideas into effect[.]50

Newton seems to have integrated his alchemical studies into his Arian theology by identifying Hermes with Christ: Newton had declared “the Mercury of the philosophers,” signified by Hermes, to have “dominion” in all three kingdoms of nature. Hermes was thus a pagan type of Christ himself, the Christ that shared in the Godhead through a “unity of dominion.” As the

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myth and the mechanistic universe Christ acted in his capacity of assistant to the Father to frame the cosmos in the beginning, and since the creation of the world prefigured the alchemical work, the active agent in alchemy is thus identified as the Logos—still acting as God’s creative agent in the framing of the world of matter. Alchemy, and the nonmechanical processes with which it dealt, was the story of God’s ongoing activity in the world of matter.51

The fifth of Newton’s “Twelve Articles” tells us that the Father is immobile. No place can become emptier or fuller of Him. Everything else is “movable from place to place.”52 It presents the absolute presuppositions of the mechanistic universe as well as the new ideal of “objective” knowledge. Here it is instructive to compare Newton’s conception of absolute time with Augustine’s conception of time as something created by memory. For Newton, time is part of God and provides a stable framework in which his creature, Christ, can act. For Augustine, time is part of the creation that comes into being through Christ, God made flesh. When Newton’s Principles appeared, it met with two kinds of criticism. The followers of Descartes were highly critical of Newton’s “action at a distance.” They thought it was a regression to Renaissance magic. In addition, some accused his mechanistic picture of the world as implying atheism. In response, Newton appended a discussion to the third edition, fist published in 1726, in which he defended himself against these criticisms. Newton begins with an attack against the Cartesian system of the world. He argues that the observed motions of the sun and planets do not correspond to the proportions suggested by Descartes’ theory of vortexes.53 The followers of Descartes had been critical of Newton’s concept of gravity. For them, it was a relapse into the “occult” sciences of Renaissance magic. It was something that Newton merely conjured up. Newton admits that he has failed to find a cause of gravity, and he therefore refuses to “frame a hypothesis,” that is, speculate, on its nature.54 A struggle between the Cartesian ideal of a completely mechanical picture of the world and the world of Renaissance magic had ensnared Newton. Richard Westfall succinctly describes Newton’s dilemma: In one sense, Newton was facing the generic problem of mechanical philosophies. Whereas the tradition of Renaissance Naturalism had

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spoken of active principles, the mechanical philosophy insisted that the reality of nature does not have to be identical to its appearance. Both traditions had perforce to deal with the same phenomena, however, and Newton as a mechanical philosopher was acutely aware of the apparent presence of active principles in nature. Indeed, he was aware of them to the point that some commentators have been willing to describe the ‘Hypothesis’ [Newton’s ‘hypothesis’ on the nature of light] as an alchemical cosmology.55

When Newton finally solved the dilemma, he had achieved a remarkable synthesis. Through his concept of force, the nucleus of his mechanistic science, Newton united the Pythagorean tradition of understanding the world through numbers, the Democritian tradition of atomism, and the Hermetic magical tradition.56 Although Newton’s concept of force is the cornerstone of the mechanistic universe, Newton himself considered forces to have only a relative, provisional status. The ultimate source of the movements of nature was God. Westfall writes: In Newton’s ultimate metaphysics, forces were no more real entities in the universe than they were from the point of view of orthodox mechanical philosophy. In the one case they were the result of invisible mechanisms. In the other case, they were the effects of an incorporeal medium, the infinite God who, in His sensorium, controls and moves the material world even as we control and move our bodies.57

At the end of the Principles, Newton writes: He [God] endures forever, and is everywhere present; and, by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and nowhere. In him [God] are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. It is allowed by all the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and everywhere.58

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This passage concerning the omnipresence and dominion of God, expresses the absolute presuppositions underpinning Newton’s science and picture of the world. God was central to all of Newton’s life, including his vision of nature. However, others considered the Principles as being atheistic. Therefore, after responding to his Cartesian critics, Newton turned to those who accused him of having constructed a godless system. In responding to his critics, Newton, like Galileo, drew upon the tradition of the two books, the Bible and the Book of Nature, that Augustine began. He asserted that we could only know God through nature, and that we revere and adore Him as His servants.59 Thus, his science and system of the world, far from implying atheism, is itself proof of God. At the end of the Principles we find the following: This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems[.]60

Is the light that Newton speaks of in this passage something spiritual or material? Dobbs suggests that Newton’s view was close to the Hermetic doctrine of the sun as the channel of creative power from the celestial to the terrestrial realms.61 It is impossible to settle the question once and for all. Nevertheless, it is tempting to see in the imagery of light presented in this passage, yet one more example of an ancient solar symbolism appearing at the center of Newton’s mechanistic universe.62 Like traditional myth, Newton’s Principles presents a unified vision of the world. The highest, most spiritual and real of all beings is God. He is all-powerful, eternal, and omnipresent. Next in the order of the universe comes absolute time and space. Then comes the active forces and finally passive matter. Compare this with the vision of the world presented in treatise two of the Corpus Hermeticum. It tells us that the foundation of the world is God. He is the cause of Mind or Space. Mind or Space is the cause of soul. The cosmos moves in Space and is moved

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by soul. In many ways, the two visions are similar. In one way they are almost identical. The center of both visions is an analogy between how the human mind moves a person’s body and how the mind of God moves the universe. In Hermeticism, however, there was an emphasis on the mind’s function of knowing. With Newton the emphasis was on the mind’s function of willing. This was because Newton integrated the Hermetic elements his thought into his Arian vision. [Newton’s was] a vision of God’s activity not only in this world as we know it but also at the world’s beginning and at its apocalyptic end and renovation. It was a vision in which the Arian Christ, acted as God’s “Agent” throughout time[.]

It was through this Christ that God enacted His will. It was through this Christ that God kept in contact with the physical and human worlds.63 According to Eliade, Newton’s synthesis of Hermeticism and Christianity ended with him, and science rejected the symbolism that gave it birth.64 Some scholars even claim that Hermeticism was not essential to Newton at all, and that any similarities between Newton’s philosophy to the Hermetic vision of the world is due more to a common neo-Platonic origin rather than any direct influence. However, one way or another, Newton was speaking to an audience that did take it seriously.65 And if there was no direct influence of Hermeticism on Newton, nevertheless, many of his absolute presuppositions were common to Hermeticism. Modern scholars have also raised the question, “To what extent was Newton’s theology central to his science in particular and to modern science in general?” The consensus of modern historians is that one can take the theology away from Newton’s science. One cannot, however, take it away from Newton. Here, again, one comes up against the particularity of the historical individual. His theology was essential to Newton, the man, and his understanding of his scientific work.66 In his Principles of Mathematical Philosophy, then, Newton gives expression to the paradigm for the sciences of nature. The writings also contain an image of the world that is grounded on Newton’s assertions that time and space are absolute and infinite. According to Newton,

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absolute time is true time. It is mathematical time and constantly flows according to its own nature. It is independent of anything external. One calls absolute time duration. Similarly, absolute space is independent of anything external. It is unchanging and immobile.67 The immobility and omnipresence of God are the grounds upon which Newton justifies his conception of absolute time and space. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this framework had become authoritative. Newton felt that most of nature was impenetrable to the human mind and that God continually acted on the universe to keep it in order. However, those who followed Newton failed to detect His forces and no longer considered Him necessary for the maintenance of the world. As they came to see the universe as self-contained, scientific materialism and the ideal of objectivity became supreme. By the mid-nineteenth century, God had left the world leaving only absolute time and space.68

The Mechanistic Picture of the World Newton had a profound influence on British thought in the century after his death.69 His ideas, however, took a peculiar twist on the continent. In 1848 the French mathematician, Laplace, published a text that has become the classical formulation of the mechanistic universe. It expresses an image of the world that Westerners almost universally accepted in the nineteenth century and still often forms the basis of modern scientific and technical communities.70 According to Laplace, a chain of causality links the universe together. The past state of the universe has caused the present that, in turn, will determine the future. The causes are physical forces acting on material bodies. If, for one instant, an infinitely powerful intelligence knew the positions of all the bodies as well as the forces acting on them, it would be able to describe the motions of everything in the universe in one differential equation. In that moment, there would be absolute certainty about the entire universe including all past and future states. The achievements of modern science, especially Newton’s universal law of gravitation, inspired this image. This, together with advances in mechanics and geometry, allowed a person to unite the past and future

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states of the celestial system in one mathematical formula. By applying the methods of the new science to other objects, people have been able to reduce them to differential equations and thereby predict future events that are bound to result from present conditions. As the sciences continue to progress, people will approach knowledge of a mechanical universe that is objective and absolute. Laplace concludes by asserting that the quest for truth brings people closer to the infinite intelligence. Although he can never achieve this goal, the quest for this infinite intelligence makes people superior to animals. We are to judge the worth of nations and centuries by their progress toward achieving this goal.71 This passage by Laplace presents an image of nature that is self-contained and even determines humanity’s purpose and destiny so that the physical sciences provide access to a fundamental knowledge of the world by which we can understand everything else, including people and human culture.72 The passage presents us with the spirit of positivism and scientism that permeates the modern world. Whenever I have shown this passage to scientists and engineers, most of them immediately recognize it as an expression of something close to their own understanding of the world. The passage is authoritative. It presents a vision of the world that everyone just “knows” to be true. They assume this is how the world is. The passage has a function in the modern world that is similar to the cosmogonic myths of traditional cultures. It would be possible to interpret Laplace’s mechanistic image of the world through the ideas of Lévi-Strauss. Laplace’s ideal of an infinite intelligence before whose eyes past and future states of the universe are made present could well be understood as a modern counterpart of an “archaic” science that aims at knowledge of the empirical world which is temporally and spatially unified into a timeless totality. The essential difference between Laplace’s image of the mechanistic universe and ancient images would be that, in contrast to “archaic” science that attempts to achieve unity through mutually reflecting images, the ideal of science presented by Laplace attempts to achieve such unity through differential equations. According to Lévi-Strauss, “archaic” science is concrete; modern science is abstract and conceptual.73 However, Lévi-Strauss’s understanding of traditional images is not convincing. It is certainly true that in contrast to myth, Laplace presents

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a world discursively, through ideas rather than the imagery of myth. For this reason the passage by Laplace seems scientific and completely modern in tone. But this difference is not as great as one might at first think. Remember that the imagery of myths and symbols have many levels of meaning and that each of these can be expressed discursively. At one level mythical imagery contains implicit absolute presuppositions that can be made explicit through discursive language. I think I can show that the passage by Laplace has a structure and expresses absolute presuppositions that are similar to the structure and absolute presuppositions of the first treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum—the ancient Poimandres. In the first line, when Laplace asserts that earlier states have caused the present state that will, in turn, cause the future state, he is presenting an image of the reality behind appearances. This reality is not the world of sensuous form and life, but a mechanistic world of strict causality, of inelastic particles interacting with one another through forces of attraction and repulsion. As in the Poimandres, the world that one perceives with one’s senses is an illusion. The laws of physiology destroy even the idea of unique individuals. We no longer consider thoughts and other acts of consciousness as the creations of particular individuals who are the unique actors of history. Ultimately, mental operations are the product of particles in motion in the brain. Laplace emphasizes an infinite intelligence that could know the precise position of all physical bodies and all forces acting upon them at any given time and that could unite these variables within a single mathematical formula. The idea that it is possible to locate the absolute position of a particle assumes the absolute time and space that Newton associated with an infinite God. Newton emphasized the absolute dominion of God over the universe. He controlled it through His absolute power. In contrast, Laplace emphasizes an infinite intelligence. It does not control the universe. It understands it. We can discern at the center of the passage by Laplace similar absolute presuppositions to those presented in the solar symbolisms of many religious traditions. I would even suggest that the passage by Laplace presents us with a rationalized solar symbolism that goes back through Newton to the Hermetic tradition. Laplace’s infinite intelligence is similar to the divine Mind that is central to Hermeticism. In addition, Laplace’s

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idea of uniting all particles and forces in a single mathematical formula expresses the same urge for unity transcending the flux and multiplicity of this world that is typical of all forms of Gnosticism. We can see the deep yearning of people to overcome time that was of central significance to Hermeticism in the third section. Here Laplace tells us that nothing would be uncertain to such intelligence and that it could simultaneously comprehend past, present, and future. Laplace points to astronomy as an example of human aspiration towards this intelligence. The Newtonian synthesis of mechanics, geometry, and physics within the law of universal gravitation allows astronomers to deduce past and predict future states of the stars from the present, and Laplace asserts that such knowledge is, in principle, possible for all of existence. This passage reminds us of the Aristotelian Pomponazzi. He transformed astrology into an expression of the absolute lawfulness of both human and natural events. The passage by Laplace is an echo of the Hermetic urge to find regularity in terrestrial events that mirror the regularity of the stars. Again, it is instructive to compare Laplace’s ideal of knowledge with Augustine’s understanding of human knowledge as part of creaturely existence. Let me again present Augustine’s description of the most powerful of human minds: If there were a mind endowed with such great power of knowing and foreknowing that all the past and all the future were known to it as clearly as I know a familiar psalm, that mind would be wonderful beyond belief. We should hold back from it in awe at the thought that nothing in all the history of the past and nothing in all the ages yet to come was hidden from it.

This is almost identical to the description by Laplace. Although this mind is powerful, almost beyond imagination, Augustine maintains that it still exists in time and its knowledge exists in time. Therefore, its knowledge is nothing compared to God’s. He exists and knows eternally. He would, in fact, be the creator of this most powerful of created minds.74 Augustine held that each individual person created time by an act of memory. In Laplace’s vision, however, the memory of the individual does not create time. How could it? The individual does not even exist. Rather, he or she is reduced to the laws of physiology. But if the individual

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can be reduced to the laws of physiology, and if his or her thoughts can be reduced to particles in motion in the brain, how is it possible for one to know anything? Isn’t scientific knowledge also a product of those particles in motion? Laplace answers this question in the conclusion of his passage. He asserts that humanity’s entire quest for truth allows a person to transcend the merely subjective and individual. The quest tends to bring a person ever closer to the infinite intelligence. This is what gives a person dignity and what distinguishes nations and historical epochs. One is to judge individuals and nations by this norm. The final passage of the Poimandres tells us that we are to orient ourselves by overcoming the illusion of individuality in which nature has entrapped us and by approaching the infinite intelligence of God. When Laplace identifies the acquisition of knowledge that is somehow “objective” and “scientific” as a step towards the infinite intelligence he is presenting us with an orientation that is almost identical to that of the Poimandres. By providing a coherent vision in which scientific activity has meaning, the text by Laplace functions the way cosmogonic myths do in traditional cultures. In this study, I have traced the transformation from the world presented by the Hermetic tradition to that presented by Laplace. The text by Laplace grew out of this ancient tradition (or at least something similar in structure), and the text retains Hermeticism’s essential meaning. The text, then, is a religious document comparable to those of traditional societies. It presents a rationalized and transformed solar symbolism and a vision of the world that has essential Hermetic absolute presuppositions. The text, that seems so modern, is a transformed Hermetic myth. The mechanistic universe, although camouflaged in scientific garb, is nothing new. It continues the Hermetic tradition. This mechanical universe grew out of the Hermetic vision of the world. The rise of science transformed the ancient solar symbolism into absolute time and space and Gnosticism’s radical devaluation of nature into scientific mechanism. It is an expression of a basic orientation that people have assumed at various times and places in history. My study of the classical expression of this philosophy has shown that despite the great prestige of the mathematical sciences, which its adherents use to defend their basic orientation, modern scientism is another example of the persistence and power of religious symbols and the essentially religious nature of people.

Chapter 12

Religious Forms and Physical Science

We have seen how Laplace revived and transformed an ancient Hermetic myth. In this chapter, I will show how similar transformations continue up to the present. In The All-Knowing God, Raffaele Pettazzoni studied sky gods and solar imagery and found them to be almost universal and with a definite structure. He tells us that all these sky-gods [who he has just described] are omniscient. To them we must add a great many more who, if their names are not so transparent, still are assuredly proved by various indications to be sky-gods likewise, and likewise possessed of all knowledge. One of the most significant traits in which this omniscience of sky-gods expresses itself (we have already mentioned that it is a visual omniscience, in other words a universal vision) is that they are equipped with eyes which are the stars, or else the sun and moon. The notion of the stars being eyes is quite widely spread.1

During the Renaissance, this kind of solar imagery appeared at the center of the Copernican revolution. In the tenth chapter of his introduction to De Revolutionibus (On the Revolution of the Spheres), Copernicus presents a vision of the world as a cosmic temple. At its center is the Sun. Because the middle of the temple is the perfect location to illuminate the entire world, the Sun is enthroned there. The Sun is the Lamp, the Mind, and the Ruler of the Universe. According to Hermes Trimegistus, the Sun is the Visible God. “Sophocles’ Electra calls him the All-seeing.” He sits on a royal throne as ruler of the universe. He sits there immobile while his children, the planets, circle round him.2 This passage betrays a complex relation among solar symbolisms, science, and society in the work of Copernicus.3 This solar imagery was also at the center of Giordano Bruno’s vision of a divine nature. In this vision, God was present throughout a universe

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that had infinite time and space. When Newton appropriated this vision (or something close to it), it became the foundation for his version of the mechanistic universe. Solar imagery is central to this image. Newton held that the sun is almost motionless near the center of gravity of the universe, and he considered it the center of the world. In one of his non-scientific works he wrote about what he thought was the original, true, and uncorrupted religion. The first religion didn’t consist of the idea of the transmigration of souls; nor did it consist of a cult of the stars and elements. According to Newton, there was an even older religion. It was the Vestal cult. The center of this religion was a sacred place in which a sacrificial fire burned perpetually. Newton held proper worship of God to be reverence for His work. Therefore, true worship would take place in a temple that represented His creation. The temple in Jerusalem was just such a representation. It had seven lamps representing the planets with the central fire representing the sun.4 Although Einstein transformed Newton’s model of the universe, something akin to solar imagery oriented him. Throughout his life, Einstein corresponded with the Queen Mother of Belgium. On January 9, 1939, he wrote her a letter in which he expressed his views of the world. He tells her that they were living in oppressive times. Everyday he sees more evidence of a general moral decline that leads to ever more suffering. This troubles him so greatly that he cannot stop thinking about it. Although he has thrown himself into his work in physics, he cannot escape the premonition of a coming tragedy that none of them will be able to avoid. Nevertheless, there are moments of true freedom that liberate him from human weaknesses and limitations. During such moments, he imagines that he is on a small planet. He looks out in wonder at the eternal and unfathomable universe. Life becomes death, and then death becomes life. In the “cold yet profoundly moving beauty” of such moments, time disappears. There is “neither evolution nor destiny; only being.” Einstein tells the Queen that he continues his theoretical work. In the past year, he has found a path that may prove fruitful. He, along with a few younger companions, steadfastly explore the path that has opened up before them. The work is slow and painful, and he cannot be certain

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where it will lead. He doesn’t think he has enough time left to find out. Nevertheless, he is grateful that fate has made his life such an exciting experience. It has at least given it the appearance of having a meaning and purpose.5 This passage, expressing a vision of “eternal being,” an intuition of a world transcending one’s ordinary world of senses and reason, oriented Einstein and the community of scientists that gathered around him. It continues the tradition going back to Parmenides and his vision of an eternal, unchanging being that Parmenides symbolized by transforming ancient solar imagery into his image of a perfect, symmetrical, sphere. Einstein is not the only person at the center of the modern world who oriented himself by a vision with an inner kinship to those expressed by ancient images. A vision of process and becoming oriented his great rival, Niels Bohr. This is a vision of a world in constant flux and irreducible to strict logical categories, a vision of a world permeated by time. It places Bohr in a tradition going back to Heraclitus. Like Parmenides, Heraclitus tried to transform a mythical image, Chaos, into a rational logos. However, in contrast to Parmenides, Heraclitus saw the logos as eternal flux. The world is in constant but lawful change, and the logos that mysteriously held everything together was time. For Bohr, the world was multiform and one could grasp it in different ways and with different concepts. Yet, in a mysterious way, the world cohered and knowledge was possible. Bohr called this coherence “complementarity,” and he considered it a fundamental property of the world. Bohr influenced a whole generation of physicists with this vision. Today it has eclipsed Einstein’s and functions authoritatively in many scientific circles. “Complementarity” is comparable to the vision that Heraclitus expressed through the image of fire. Like the sphere of Parmenides, this image was also a transformed solar symbolism. Einstein and Bohr are examples of people at the center of the modern world who oriented themselves by visions comparable to those expressed by the solar symbolisms of traditional cultures. Recently Gerald Holton has explored the fundamental themes that motivate scientific creativity and has noted their affinity to ancient myth.

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He writes: The early, indeed the classically simple, state of science, then, is the true home of the “revolutionary” scientists’ imagination. . . . Considerations of an aesthetic nature and the yearnings for a simple state of science merge in the requirement that the number and types of hypotheses be severely restricted in any true theory. . . . Simplicity, it should be recalled, is characteristic both of the state of theory in antiquity and of the desired state of theory in the future. The right path, these men seem to say, is, in science as in all mythically driven activities, from the past through the unfolding present into a regained state of the past.6

In this chapter, I want to use the symbolisms of traditional peoples such as the Ngaju Dayak, the Chinese, and the ancient Greeks, as a mirror in which we can see the reflection of our own world. I have divided the chapter into two main sections. The first explores the character of Einstein’s science. The second attempts to relate the ancient images of sky, earth, and their union to the fundamental experiences that underpin the science he inaugurated.

The Character of Einstein’s Science An ever-increasing tendency to understand nature in terms of mathematics characterizes modern physical science. The history of mathematics, like the history of physical science, is intimately bound up with solar imagery. I have been able to trace the origins of this mathematical tendency to Nicholas of Cusa and his experience of the limits of the human mind that he saw in the “light of learned ignorance.” Cusanus’s image of a person presents an ideal of knowledge that stressed proportion and a striving for unity that was at once limited by, and perfected in, the infinite. Cusanus had a direct influence on the founder of modern astronomy, Johannes Kepler. But Kepler was not the only person this new ideal inspired. It also inspired mathematicians and had a powerful influence in the rise of one of the most powerful tools of scientific analysis ever created—the calculus.

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In ancient Greece, the four paradoxes of Zeno arose because of the difficulties in visualizing or imagining the nature of a continuum, or of infinite aggregates, conceptions that are of fundamental importance to the modern mathematical conception of number. (Recall, for example, the famous paradox of the race between Achilles and the tortoise.) Modern mathematical analysis, however, has shown these conceptions to be logically coherent, and it is easy to resolve Zeno’s paradoxes logically by means of the calculus once one drops all attempts, such as using graphs and geometrical figures, to visualize a solution.7 Rather, one must understand motion by means of algebraic formulae. For example, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mathematician Cauchy established clear notions of important concepts to the calculus—limit, infinitesimal, and infinity. He then went on to define the central concept of the calculus, the derivative, in completely algebraic terms as follows: 1) Let the function be y = ƒ(x). 2) To the variable x give an increment Δx = i. 3) Then form the ratio Δy/Δx = {ƒ(x + i) – ƒ(x)}/i. 4) Let ƒ´(x) represent the limit of this ratio (“when it exists”) as i approaches zero. 5) This entity, ƒ´(x), according to Cauchy, is the derivative.8 After Cauchy, the logical formalization of the calculus continued for another half century. The triumph of modern mathematics over Zeno is supremely ironic. Zeno’s attack on the Pythagoreans was in defense of the philosophical monism of his master. Parmenides had insisted on the oneness of an eternal, unchanging being. Parmenides established this doctrine by means of a severe logic. Although his monism contradicted everything about the world that our senses tell us, he insisted that the way of logic, not the way of sense experience, is the way of truth. Modern mathematics makes motion coherent. However, in the course of its history, mathematics transforms motion into pure logic. In the case of the calculus, geometric forms are a kind of sense experience in contrast to algebraic formulae that are pure logic. Modern mathematics defeats Zeno: we, in fact can understand motion. Nevertheless, Zeno accomplishes his

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purpose. He vindicates Parmenides who asserted knowledge to be a matter of pure reason. Since the moment Galileo succeeded in analyzing motion using geometry, the history of mathematics has been intimately bound up with the history of physics. Once mathematics had freed itself from sense experience to become strictly logical, it would not be long before this development opened up the possibilities for yet one more revolution in the history of physics. This occurred with Einstein’s theory of relativity at the beginning of the twentieth century. In The Meaning of Relativity, Einstein presents to the educated public his mature understanding of the significance of his theories. As in the case of Galileo, Einstein is tearing down an old set of absolute presuppositions and replacing them with new ones implicit in his theories. Einstein begins by making an assertion about the nature of science. It is almost identical to what Lèvi-Strauss held about myth. Einstein writes that the object of all science, whether natural science or psychology, is to co-ordinate our experiences and to bring them into a logical system.9

Then Einstein introduces the central problem of relativity theory, the relation of one’s experiences of space and time to one’s ideas of space and time.10 According to Einstein, one can arrange one’s experiences as a series of events in such a way that some of the events appear as “earlier” and some as “later.” (This is a variation of Augustine’s conception of time as the creation of an act of memory.) One cannot reduce this order to anything else. It is what one means by subjective time. It is not measurable. However, Einstein continues, it is possible to associate the events of subjective time with a second series of events—those generated by a clock.11 One must communicate one’s subjective experiences with others, so that, together, people can make a common world of meaning. If one’s experiences correspond to those of other people, one regards them as “real” and “objective.” Rigid bodies and clocks are examples of such experiences.12 Just as Galileo criticized Aristotle’s absolute presuppositions, Einstein must destroy the absolute presuppositions of Newton. He argues that Newton’s conceptions of absolute time and space are not

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real. If Hermeticism presented infinite time and space as a revelation that is experienced, by the time of Einstein, a process of secularization has occurred. The experience has faded to a mere idea. Just as Galileo could no longer see in the heavens a sacred and eternal realm, Einstein can no longer see in absolute time and space the expressions of something sacred. He writes that the only justification for our concepts and system of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy. . . . This is particularly true of our concepts of time and space, which physicists have been obliged by the facts to bring down from the Olympus of the a priori in order to adjust them and put them in a serviceable condition.13

In forming a conception of space, Einstein considers it essential to pay strict attention to the relation of experience to one’s concepts. If one does so, one can no longer speak of space in the abstract. One can only speak of the “space belonging to a body A.” That is, one can speak only of “bodies of reference,” or “space of reference.”14 This is the same thing as the bodies and spaces you can point to with your finger. There is nothing abstract about the bodies and spaces of Einstein’s physics. Newton made a distinction between absolute motion and relative motion. It corresponded to the distinction that he made between absolute time and space and relative time and space. When Einstein abandoned absolute time and space, he also abandoned absolute motion. Einstein made the principle of the relativity of motion the foundation of his physics. According to him, one’s understanding of motion is always a matter of comparison. In abandoning the absolute time and space of Hermetic myth or Newtonian Arianism, Einstein rediscovered what Cusanus had “seen” in the light of “learned ignorance”: understanding that is “merely human” is just that, “merely human”; it can never be absolute. We can trace Einstein’s absolute presuppositions back through Galileo and Cusanus to Anselm who submitted his intellect to a revealed Name of God—“something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived.” However, it is doubtful that Einstein did his work based on Christian authority. All we as historians can do is point out that Einstein based his work on the same absolute presuppositions implicit in Anselm’s theology.

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Like Galileo, Einstein’s physics is relational. Three centuries earlier Galileo established modern mathematical physics with his analysis of uniform motion, naturally accelerated motion, and the combination of uniform and naturally accelerated motion. In the rest of The Meaning of Relativity, Einstein will provide his own analysis of these same kinds of motions. However, Galileo’s use of Euclidean geometry limited him. In contrast, Einstein will make good use of the developments in mathematics since Galileo’s time. Now these preliminary statements of Einstein contain an implicit absolute presupposition. Rather than absolute time and space, the foundation of Einstein’s science is the communication of common experiences that takes place among individuals. Although Einstein uses the examples of clocks and rigid bodies, these are by no means the most important or most fundamental of our common experiences. All people’s, including modern physicists, use myths and symbols, not scientific instruments to give form and structure to their most important experiences. In Einstein’s opening statements we are confronted once more with the central theme of this essay—the relation between myths and symbols to the quantifiable, mechanistic universe. In the course of this essay, I have drawn frequently on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl with its method of reductions. In the first reduction you will recall, the external world is “lost” into human subjectivity. In the second reduction, the individual is “lost” into the external world. I also emphasized that when both reductions occur together, then one has assumed the theoretical attitude of phenomenology. As in the case of Chinese science, it will be helpful to interpret relativity theory from the philosophical positions corresponding to both reductions. In Substance and Function, Ernst Cassirer interprets relativity theory within a philosophical framework similar to Husserl’s from the perspective of the first reduction. Cassirer’s is the philosophical position of subjective idealism. He places special emphasis on the subjective aspect of one’s knowledge of the world. By doing so, Cassirer uncovers the “essence” of Einstein’s understanding of nature. Science requires a general framework that allows one to relate specific, individual, measurements of the physical world to one another. This is necessary for the measurements to be meaningful. Newtonian science

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developed such a framework using Euclidian geometry and grounded on the assumption that time and space are rectilinear, infinite, and absolute. Since this was in contrast to traditional assumptions that time and space are cyclical and finite, the rise of the Newtonian mechanistic universe shattered the traditional understanding of the world as a cosmos. Newton assumed absolute time and space to be physical realities, so that the precise measurement of time by clocks, and distance by measuring rods provided a model of objectivity. The “essence” of Newtonian science was that one could analyze all physical problems into bodies and the distances between them and that all such problems had a unique solution. Thus, mathematical time and space functioned as a framework and necessary foundation for mathematical-physical knowledge of nature. To deny its reality was to deprive the fundamental laws of dynamics, especially inertia, of any real physical significance. To deny its reality was to deny the most secure and solid form of knowledge in the modern world, the  knowledge that, we so often assume, separates us from the people of traditional societies. But deny it we must. With their acceptance of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, modern physical scientists discarded Newton’s absolute presupposition. Relativity theory poses the problem of what one means by scientific objectivity and—by extension—suggests that the difference between modern and traditional worlds is not absolute. A closer examination of how Einstein criticized Newtonian science will help us to understand better the nature of scientific conceptual systems. We must keep in mind that Newton never proved absolute time and space; he merely assumed it. Einstein revolted against the conceptions of absolute time and space, and his theory of relativity thus shattered the mechanistic framework of Newtonian science. His revolt was an important movement in the development of a new, more organic picture of nature much more akin to ancient images. Einstein asserted that one must define all scientific concepts through physical operations. Since experiment can neither confirm nor refute the propositions of geometry, his emphasis on operational definitions exploded the illusion that Newtonian space is objectively real. Einstein’s criticism of Newton removed the last remainder of physical objectivity from space.

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Descartes considered geometric forms to be innate, almost eternal, ideas. In contrast, today one knows that mathematics is part of history and that there are many geometries. Some of these are useful for analyzing the physical world. Geometries have no physical existence. They are merely ideal and symbolic languages that one can sometimes use to talk about space. Similarly, the emphasis on operational definitions exploded the illusion that Newtonian time is objectively real. According to Einstein, optical laws that one defines operationally establish the time of the change in position of a heavenly body. However, if two observers, each observer regarding himself at rest and using the same laws, are moving in relation to one another, they will establish different times for the same change in position. There will be the time of the first observer and the time of the second observer but no objectively real time is common to them both.15 Most Americans know that it is always three hours earlier on the west coast than on the east coast. Nowadays, all of us know, as if instinctively, that both spatial and temporal coordinates are not things but systems relating empirical measurements. Although spatial and temporal measurements of the same event made by two different observers might differ, this does not mean that the world is absurd. Through transformation formulae, one can translate the values one observer obtained into those of the second. The unity of time and space is no longer the identity of values obtained in experiments; it is the ability to relate different values gained in different systems. Because we can coherently relate these different measurements from one system to another, knowledge is possible. Laplace’s ideal of scientific knowledge was of an infinitely powerful intelligence that, in one instant, knew the positions of all the bodies as well as the forces acting on them, so that it would be certain about the entire universe including all past and future states. In their quest for an accurate calendar, ancient Chinese astronomers, to some extent, approached Laplace’s ideal, especially in regard the predictive, instrumental value of an accurate calendar. It allowed an agricultural people to organize labor. This seems rational and scientific enough. Einstein’s ideal of science as a process in which people unify the world by communicating measurements of the same event taken at different locations differs quite markedly from Laplace’s. Nevertheless, Einstein’s ideal

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also sheds light on aspects of ancient Chinese astronomy. For example, Chinese astronomers’ concern for data that were not only accurate, but also reliable led to the practice of comparing observations of the same event that different astronomers made independently. In this practice, we can discern the attempt to achieve something like Einstein’s ideal unifying the world through the communication of measurements and observations. Recall the passages of the Shu-ching we studied that showed how each location of the world had its own time aspect and space aspect. Although each location was unique, one could relate it to all the others. As the sovereign tours his territory and ritually transforms one place after another into a world, he is like the sun that lights up one after another part of the world as it passes. Although each part has its own unique characteristics, the royal virtue, the tao, unites it with all the others. As a sovereign ritually enacts society, he simultaneously transforms the fragmented and broken elements of existence into a cosmos. In the light of Laplace’s ideal, these passages are decidedly un-scientific. However, in the light of Einstein’s ideas, the passages of the Shuching appear much different. Einstein’s idea that there are only the specific, concrete times and spaces, each time and space belonging to a specific location is akin to the conceptions of the Shu-ching. So is his idea that people can achieve a coherent world by communicating and translating (from one location to another) specific, concrete measurements. I am not saying that Einstein’s ideas are identical to ancient Chinese imagery. There are obvious differences. Nevertheless, these similarities between Einstein’s ideas and the ancient Chinese text do more than merely make passages from the Shu-ching less problematic from a scientific point of view. They begin to make the passages almost transparent. Galileo reduced time from the duration of human experience to the measurable t of physics. Similarly, he reduced space from the living world with its multiple forms and qualities to the abstract d of measuring rods. Einstein takes this process to its conclusion. The criticism made by the theory of relativity of physical concepts such as space and time frees one from the naively sensuous view of the world by transforming the seemingly fixed and absolute properties of things, their spatial and temporal dimensions, into a system of relations. Relativity theory transforms space and time into pure numbers.16

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There is a tendency for each creative epoch of science to take its preliminary and relative concepts—conceptions of time and space, for example—as objects endowed with reality.17 When this happens, scientists of each epoch appear to inhabit completely different worlds. Here one should recall Einstein’s statement that physical concepts are “free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.”18 We cannot call Newton’s image of the world “weird” anymore or any less than Einstein’s, but a change in our vision takes place. It is possible to describe the world of events in the Newtonian fashion, dynamically; the picture of the world changes in time against a background of three-dimensional space. Nevertheless, it is also possible to describe the world by a static picture against a background of a “four-dimensional time-space continuum.” Which is the true picture? From the Newtonian point of view, the two are equivalent. From Einstein’s point of view, the static picture is more elegant. But more than that, Einstein maintains it is also a closer approximation to his ideal of objective knowledge.19 This brings us to the “essence” or center of Einstein’s science. Indeed, it is almost in complete agreement with Cusanus’s ideal of knowledge. According to Einstein, one is to understand a physical process entirely in terms of quantitative relations and numerical constants, that is, in terms of ratios and proportions. This reduces the unity of an object to a series of logical relations.20 Any coordinate system, whether it be the hour-circles of ancient Chinese astronomy, the absolute time and space of Newtonian dynamics, or Einstein’s four-dimensional space-time, is important only in so far as it allows us to understand the physical world as an ordered and intelligible pattern of numbers.

Cosmic Imagery and Physical Science For the worlds of traditional peoples, solar imagery was a manifestation of power, dependability, and intelligence that orders the world. The light of the sun presents power as pure intelligence. The regularity of the sun as it crosses the sky each day gives the idea of coordination of

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time and a calendar. 21 These symbolisms form a totality by joining this ordinary world of our reason and senses with an experience of something transcendent. From a realm surpassing this world, the sun imbues nature with order and meaning, and nature becomes the garment of spirit. 22 These images do not end with traditional peoples. Modern scientists also express themselves by them. What is the relation of solar symbolisms to the modern mathematical sciences of nature when we try to understand these as creations of the human mind? Within the phenomenological epochē, flexible structures appear that allow one to interpret the world. Religious symbols express these structures. When we look at religious symbols in their concrete, historical specificity, they seem to vary infinitely. However, out of this variation, a limited number of types emerge. This does much to account for the continuity and persistence of religious imagery throughout history. When modern scientists express themselves through images similar to those of other cultures, it means similar structures determine their perceptions. Holton argues that at all times in physical science there exists a polarity between “precision and measurement” and intuitions and other “subjective” activity.23 If mathematical forms characterize what Holton calls the “objective” side of science, religious forms characterize the intuitive side. The religious structures determine a person’s world, even when one does not have the vocabulary to articulate them. The history of the calculus provides strong evidence of this. Why were mathematicians dissatisfied with the calculus as first formulated by Newton and Leibnitz?24 What drove them to continue their rigorous formulation of it? There must have been some inner necessity or compulsion. I would suggest that discrepancies between their mathematical ideas and one of the flexible structures by which one perceives the world produced an inner tension. They had to continue until they had eliminated any discrepancy between their mathematical ideas and their intuitive sense of what was coherent thought. This meant that they had to continue until their thought came to rest on one of those underlying structures that determined their perceptions of the world. In the case of the mathematicians after Newton and Leibnitz, that structure was the one discovered by Parmenides—

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being is, and, despite what our senses tell us, we must understand the world in terms of logical relations. Boyer gives us a succinct summary of this process: The history of the concepts of the calculus shows that the explanation of the qualitative is to be made through the quantitative, and the latter is in turn to be explained through the ordinal, perhaps the most fundamental notion in mathematics. As the sensations of motion and discreteness led to the abstract notions of the calculus, so may sensory experience continue thus to suggest problems for the mathematician, and so may he in turn be free to reduce these to the basic formal logical relationships involved. Thus only may be fully appreciated the twofold aspect of mathematics: as the language of a descriptive interpretation of the relationships discovered in natural phenomena, and as a syllogistic elaboration of arbitrary premises.25

In the history of the calculus, human understanding changed, and yet, something truly basic remained. As Parmenides did, traditional peoples might have expressed that which compelled and determined the quest of modern mathematicians by means of solar symbolisms. The structures that form one’s world are flexible. Consequently, the symbolisms that express them have many shades of meaning. Cusanus could use a metaphor of light to express the limits of the human mind. Bruno could use the same imagery to express its divinity. Moreover, the boundaries between these meanings are fluid. One meaning can transform itself into another. Einstein is like Cusanus in that he saw all knowledge as proportion and comparison. On the other hand, he is also like Bruno in that he had strong pantheistic tendencies and a powerful urge to transcend time. I think we are now in a position to relate properly scientific conceptual systems to religious symbols. Any geometry relating spatial measurements presupposes the coherence of the spatial order. Similarly, systems relating temporal measurements presuppose a coherent temporal order. Finally, the coordination of spatial and temporal measurements presupposes an underlying unity between the spatial and temporal orders; it presupposes a single, coherent world that is transcendent to one’s senses.

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All the solar imageries, including the sphere of being of Parmenides, with its perfect absolute symmetry, to which Einstein alluded in his letter to the Queen Mother of Belgium, as well as the complementarity of quantum physics, with its relation to the fire of Heraclitus, express these intuitions or absolute presuppositions. Even the absolute time and space of Newtonian science is an absolute presupposition originating in a solar symbolism. Although symbols are not scientific conceptual systems, they do express the intuitions underpinning them. My interpretation of some aspects of relativity theory from the perspective of subjective idealism has helped us to understand science as the creation of a community of scientists that orients itself by means of religious images. However, Eliade tells us a tradition must balance solar symbolisms with lunar symbolisms lest the former lead to sterility. A solar hero will always present a dark side.26 Similarly, we cannot view science as merely a human creation. This was the difficulty of Gnosticism and its Hermetic variant. These saw not only science, but also the forms of nature itself as the magical projection of an absolute, divine mind. However, science also claims to achieve at least some understanding of nature. Therefore, we must also interpret science from the perspective of critical realism. This is the philosophical position that corresponds to Husserl’s second reduction, and assumes that the picture of the world that science presents is not only the creation of our minds; critical realism assumes that science also tells us something about the external world that appears to us from out of an endless horizon as manifold patterns. The interpretation of relativity theory from this perspective, together with another important aspect of modern science, its proliferation into a multitude of sciences, provides us with an image of nature that is in dramatic contrast to that presented by Laplace. One useful interpretation from the perspective of critical realism of some of the more important aspects of Einstein’s view is that of Aloys Wenzl. It is especially useful, because Einstein read it and was in essential agreement.27 According to Wenzl, the image of the mechanical universe (the universe of Newton and Laplace) assumed that absolute time and absolute space were two independent orders that allowed one to determine a specific amount of time and a specific distance that separates two

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physical events. In contrast, relativity theory assumes that, although the spatial and the temporal orders are not interchangeable, they are related. Two events might be separated temporally, spatially, or a combination of both. Although the separation is specific and unique to the two events, it may appear more temporal or more spatial depending on the conditions of observations. This interrelatedness of time and space is possible because the reality behind the appearances in the external world is a “many-dimensional arrangement of order, which demands more dimensions than are at the disposal of our perceptual capacity.” Moreover, behind the reality disclosed by mathematical physics there is an even greater richness of possibilities. Events appear out of a background of pure potentiality. The mechanistic universe of Laplace assumed nature to be causally connected through the interaction of inelastic atoms. In contrast, the new image assumes it possible that the pure potentiality of nature might show itself in discontinuous events. The only continuity that one can really speak about with certainty is the continuity of the potentiality. Erwin Schrödinger created an image of the physical world that stressed its contingent, fluid, even discontinuous, character.28 Laplace’s image asserted that one could describe the movement of physical atoms mathematically, because this was lawful. In contrast, the new image merely asserts that the events appearing in the external world allows one to relate their temporal and spatial measurements as ratios of space to time. The interpretation of relativity theory from the philosophical perspective of critical realism, then, gives us a new image of nature. This new image assumes that one’s intuitive or intellectual capacity is deeper and richer than one’s perceptual capacity. In contrast to one’s intellect that can understand a world of almost infinite dimensions, one’s perceptions are limited to an understanding of three. Since the external world is not material but appears as mathematical structures and forms, the greater power of the human intellect allows it to penetrate deeper into the appearances of physical reality. From the side of nature, forms appear. As people give expression to these forms and penetrate ever deeper into the natural world, the sciences proliferate. This proliferation, itself, tells us something of nature. With

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the shattering of absolute time and space, the ideal of absolute, objective, and unified knowledge also disappears, and we see science as a process that deepens one’s understanding of nature.29 Yet something of nature always remains just beyond one’s grasp. Robert Oppenheimer gives beautiful expression to this experience of movement and endlessness. He tells us that the history of the earth and the processes of evolution have taught us a sense of history, time, and change. One no longer talks of the earth and ourselves as being eternally fixed. Now one speaks of a world that continually transforms itself in ever-new ways. It is a process of constant change. As one part decays, new growth takes its place.30 Here we should recall what we discovered about the ancient symbolism of earth. In the worlds of traditional peoples, earth produces living forms, and symbolisms of mother earth have one fundamental idea: “Life, what is, reality, is somewhere concentrated in one cosmic substance from which all living forms proceed, either by direct descent or by symbolic participation.”31 This symbolism of the earth expresses how everything that is on earth is united with everything else, and all make up one great whole.32 This image is not a theoretical invention to explain change; it is a fundamental experience: contemplating the world, one sees forms appearing out of a fluid background. The experiences that some modern scientists have of nature are close to those expressed by the ancient images. That is, recent physics and the proliferation of the sciences brings about a new understanding of nature that appears more and more like the ancient imagery of the earth and her powers—of nature as sheer, endless potentiality and abundance. Interpreting aspects of science from the perspective of subjective idealism has allowed us to relate solar imagery to science as a human creation. Similarly, interpreting these aspects from the perspective of critical realism has allowed us to relate imagery of the earth to science as an instrument by which to discover knowledge of nature. The two philosophical perspectives are complementary. An examination of the relation between these two interpretations of science will help us to relate modern science to the third ancient image—the marriage of earth and sky. Nature presents itself in a multitude of forms. One can transform some of these forms into quantities through the intervention of experimental techniques. Within this flux, some people orient themselves

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through solar imagery that becomes the foundation of a world of ideas. Physical science is the attempt to join this almost eternal, ideal world to the world of nature’s flux by relating experimental measurements to a coherent whole. An inner tension remains. It is for this reason, that modern physics entails a paradox. On the one had, it is grounded on concepts that are  simple and fundamental. On the other hand, it requires  intricate mathematical tools and  subtle and difficult reasoning to relate theory to observation. Modern physics is actually simpler than Newtonian physics. Since it requires such difficult mathematics, however, it appears complex.33 In Husserl’s meditations, the simultaneous reduction of both the empirical world and the ego reveals the fluidity of the world. At the same time, these simultaneous reductions uncover deeper structures linking the ego with its surroundings. Although the bracketed world appears fluid, because there are structures transcending the ego and “life-world” which unite them, it is not chaotic. While the fluidity of the world corresponds to the reality presented by the image of the earth as mother, the transcending structures that appear within this fluidity correspond to the aspect of a person and the world presented by celestial images. The world is fluid but not chaotic, because these structures determine how it changes. Scientific genius operates at the level of these structures.34 When Hesiod tells us how earth bore heaven to be a partner, he presents us with the image of a total and complete cosmos. This image shows the earth and celestial symbolisms comprising such a cosmos to be complementary. Similarly, during the moments when scientists succeed in uniting their ideal world to the flux of nature, they also realize an ordered cosmos. In these moments, people find themselves in a new world, perfectly comparable to the worlds that traditional peoples express through the image of the marriage of heaven and earth. According to Einstein, as our picture of the external world becomes simpler and at the same time embraces more facts, to greater and greater degrees it “reflects in our minds the harmony of the universe.”

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Conclusions In modern physical science, then, images exist that correspond to symbolisms of traditional peoples such as the Ngaju Dayak, the Chinese, or the ancient Greeks. There is continuation of solar imagery expressing the harmony and unity of an ideal world of sheer numerical relations. Such imagery provides the basic assumptions that ground modern physical theory. There is also continuation of the imagery of earth and woman in nature as sheer power and potentiality that presents itself in events that are subject to mathematical interpretation. Finally, from time to time, modern science realizes a unity between a nature of unending potentiality and flux and an ideal world of scientific theory. This unity corresponds to the image of a total, living cosmos presented in the synthesis of solar and earth symbolisms, an image that expresses an experience that is prior and transcendent to both nature and science. The idea of the world as an infinite machine, however, asserts that nothing surpasses nature. It also expresses an ideal of “objective” knowledge that considers the truth of ancient symbols to be meaningless. However, when scientists such as Einstein and Bohr want to express their most important experiences, they use images comparable to those of traditional peoples. The ideal of “objective” knowledge not only obscures the truth of ancient symbols; it truncates our understanding of science, the model of such “objective” knowledge. I have tried to overcome an artificial chasm between traditional and modern worlds. I have tried to interpret ancient and modern religious imagery within a single philosophical framework, transcendental phenomenology. Comparing the experiences of scientists and the people of traditional cultures within such a framework is an important step for coming to terms with claim of truth of ancient symbols. By using the world of traditional people as a mirror, we have been able to gain a deeper understanding of our own. In this process the two worlds have illuminated one another and thus enabled us to come to terms with the claim of truth of the passage by Hesiod. In the beginning, that is, prior to, and deeper than, anything else, including our modern sciences of nature, we find expression of an ordered whole through images of the earth and sky; in the beginning we find Chaos, earth, and starry sky.

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Part Three

Religious Forms and History

Chapter 13

Myth and the “Technicalistic” World

Any attempt to understand modern science and technology must also try to assess the plight of the modern age, with its deep yearnings for peace and its great fear of nuclear war. The great irony of our age, which prides itself to such an extent on its scientific achievement, is the threat to ourselves this achievement poses. Ours is the age of the sorcerer’s apprentice. In his famous essay, The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega Y Gasset argues that the proliferation of scientific workers has become a threat to real human culture.1 These are the practitioners of Thomas Kuhn’s “normal science.”2 According to Ortega, the success of this “normal science” has at once released awesome powers and created a new kind of barbarian. Scientific achievement appears as a formidable obstacle to peace and political stability. In his essay, Ortega makes a distinction between the average scientific worker and the great creative scientist. Great, revolutionary science is a result of the human imaginative faculty. In The Crisis of European Science, Edmund Husserl has shown how human subjectivity grounds the sciences.3 Because of this grounding, there is a structural connection between a people’s self-image and the mystery of human creation. In this chapter, I will explore the symbolic underpinnings of the technological aspects of the modern world. Despite all that is new in the modern world, one can find comparable experiences and structures in traditional cultures. Much in the modern “technicalistic” world, for example, brings to mind the ancient image of Hermes, the Homeric god who embodied the magical attitude and the desire to transform and dominate the world through the appropriation of power. For this reason, it is possible to understand the paradoxical situation of our age by listening to what these ancient images have to tell us about human life. In addition to presenting aspects of the world, ancient solar symbolisms and images of the earth also presented human imagery. The story of

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Prometheus has much to tell us about the perennial dilemma of a person entrapped by his own technological prowess. In this chapter, my primary concern will be with understanding a pervasive experience: despite the tremendous power that our world has unleashed, a sense of uneasiness and disquiet pervades our lives. An inner sense of peace and security seems constantly to elude us. In this chapter, I will show how one can understand this pervasive experience in the light of the ancient story of Prometheus. Modern Hermeticism radically transformed that ancient image. However, in this chapter I want to focus on the ancient image, not the modern, transformed one. The ancient image will tell us something about the pervasive unease that is endemic to modernity. I will also consider three individuals as they illustrate three ancient structures: Robert Oppenheimer as the embodiment of an ancient primordial man symbolism, Albert Einstein as a continuation of the symbolic themes embodied in Parmenides, and Niels Bohr as a continuation of the themes embodied in Heraclitus.

Magic and Modernity The most important thing that all ancient peoples tell us about power is that it is dangerous and one must respect it. For this reason, they surround objects of power with taboos whose violation will bring about an almost automatic reaction. A magical act requires both human consciousness with its powers of concentration and an order of nature that is strict but not mechanical. The truly magical act takes place in a condition of extreme mental and emotional excitement. The cause of this agitation is the horrible discovery that someone has violated the rule of nature.4 The pervasive sense of uneasiness, always lurking beneath a veneer of rationality, in the modern world, is akin the experience of ancient peoples when taboos have been violated. In ancient Greece, Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus gave concrete expression to this experience of magical power. Together, the two brothers form one example of an extremely widespread symbolism, that of the primordial man. The symbolism expresses the spirit of disorder, the enemy of boundaries. It expresses an aspect of a person that protests

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and rebels against limits. At the same time, it expresses an irrational aspect of the world that makes it susceptible to manipulation. Wherever it appears, this primordial man symbolism is associated with the magical and technological capacities of people. In the case of the primordial man formed by Prometheus and Epimetheus, each brother presents a different aspect of a person’s technological prowess. Prometheus has foresight and power over the world. On the other hand, Epimetheus has only hindsight and is the victim of the unexpected consequences of the actions of his brother. The primordial man symbolism has a structure that reveals a plastic and fluid quality of both the self and the world. To get a more precise understanding of this relation, I want to return once again to the philosophical meditations of Edmund Husserl and his technique of systematic reductions. In Husserl’s first reduction, the world exists for the self, and the self is hypostatized. This reduction corresponds to the philosophical position of subjective idealism. When carried to an extreme, this position gives a person the magical illusion of power. Prometheus represents this aspect of the primordial man. In the second reduction, the self is lost into the world. This reduction corresponds to the philosophical position of critical realism. When this position is carried to an extreme, a person becomes the victim of nature’s powers and even his or her own cultural creations. Epimetheus represents this aspect of the primordial man. The story of Prometheus also has a structure that corresponds to the alternation of these two reductions. While fire expresses humanity’s power over nature, the creation of woman (whom Epimetheus marries) as punishment for its acquisition, expresses the powers of nature and the world to which a person is subject. In his meditations, Husserl emphasized repeatedly that both philosophical reductions must occur simultaneously. When one does this, subtle structures appear that join the subject, who perceives, to the world he or she perceives. While Prometheus expresses the fluid, magical aspect of the self and nature, the image of Chaos that joins the earth to the sky expresses the transcending structures. The story of Prometheus shows that the human tendency to transgress the boundaries set by these structures is futile. In the end, the chains of Zeus bind Prometheus.5

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The Poimandres, the beginning treatise of the Hermetic texts that had such a wide circulation during the Renaissance, presents an image of a person in magical revolt against limits. The Poimandres tells how man is different from all other creatures on earth because of his dual nature. On the one hand, he has a mortal body. On the other hand, he is in reality the Anthropos, the Divine Man. By virtue of being immortal, man possesses authority over all things. Nevertheless, he shares in the fate of mortals and is subject to Destiny. He is above the world of the spheres, but also a slave within the world. God, the bisexual Father, generated man as male and female. Because of his divine origin, man is immortal. Still, he is defeated by love and death.6 According to the Poimandres, the Anthropos is a universal Man. He is immortal and identified with the divine Logos. Each individual participates in this Logos through his or her intellect, which is also immortal. At the same time, a person also participates in the vicissitudes of temporal existence through his or her sensual nature. Not only is man dual in that he is both mortal and immortal. He is also both male and female. According to the passage, man is generated from a bisexual God: the opposite aspects of human existence are complementary and meet in a higher reality. We can understand the rise of Hermeticism and the mechanistic universe in terms of the story of Prometheus. Both the Poimandres and the mechanistic universe of Laplace have a structure that corresponds to Husserl’s first reduction; both Hermeticism and the rise of the mechanistic universe are rebellions against the divine limits; both are attempts to divinize the human intellect by reducing nature to a magical creation of the mind. The speculations of the pre-Socratic philosophers that we studied transformed the Homeric gods into the divine logoi or structures of nature. When Christianity entered the Greco-Roman world, it transformed these structures into the image of Christ as the divine Logos. In all of these cases, submission to the Homeric gods, the divine logoi, or Christ, placed limits on desire and this gave form and structure to the chaotic nature of humanity. The rise of the mechanistic universe was a Promethean revolt against the divine Logos. Gnosticism was always in competition with orthodox Christianity, and the Church Fathers developed many of their doctrines

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as a means of combating Gnostic and other heretical tendencies within the Church. Modern science rose as orthodox Christianity was losing its authority. This is especially clear in the case of Newton whose Arianism was a rejection of the orthodox doctrine of Jesus Christ as divine Logos. In place of the Trinity, he stressed the omnipresence of the Father. This became the absolute time and space of the mechanistic universe. Let us return for a moment to the passage where Bruno claims to have discovered a new world through his visionary experiences: Now here is he who has pierced the air, penetrated the sky, toured the realm of stars, traversed the boundaries of the world, dissipated the fictitious walls of the first, eighth, ninth, tenth spheres, and whatever else might have been attached to these by the devices of vain mathematicians and by the blind vision of popular philosophers.7

In addition to marking completion of the transition to modernity, this passage also presents us with a widespread mythical theme of having magical power over the universe. This theme does not end with Bruno. Like many of the other ancient symbolic forms I have already discussed, this imagery also persists into modern times. Hermeticism, with its deification of humanity, has an inner kinship with the modern ideal of knowledge as creation and construction. This ideal stresses the active, creative role of the human subject in the formation of knowledge. It also stresses human autonomy in the formation of society and history. That a modern individual knows the world through creative action is close to the idea that a person is a divine magician. The cosmos presented by the Corpus Hermeticum was only a background for the human imagery presented in the Asclepius. Similarly, the mechanistic universe provides a philosophic background for modern technological society. Here technical efficiency and the quest for power replace custom, tradition, and law. This process takes place daily and in many areas of the modern world. It is also a Promethean revolt against limits. The passage by Bruno is paradigmatic of this revolt. At the moment that Bruno destroys the medieval cosmos, he acquires magical power through the violation of taboo. At that same moment, he establishes the modern world.

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This brings us to the “essence” of modernity. Modernity did not come into being, once and for all with Bruno. Rather, the passage by Bruno is a paradigm that people enact daily on a worldwide scale, in the developed, developing, and underdeveloped worlds. Modernity occurs in that rebellious moment when one makes a decision to abandon custom, tradition, or law, in favor of technical efficiency and power. The moment is truly one of magic in the sense that in that moment, just as in the case with Bruno, one acquires power through the violation of taboo. It is also truly modern in the sense that the power thus acquired takes the form of rational efficiency.

Robert Oppenheimer and Prometheus One can see the Hermetic structure of the modern world in the writings of many modern scientists. Robert Oppenheimer is a striking example. In one passage he tells us how all of human life, including the struggles for progress and improvement, for the increase in knowledge and power, as well as the drama of human corruption and partial redemption, takes place against a background of impermanence. Everything, our civilizations, the carved stone, the written word, and the heroic act, are subject to the power of time. They fade into a memory and then disappear without a trace. There will even come a time when all people will have vanished, and just as the sun ages and grows old, this earth will have become unfit to sustain life. The life of every person, whether agnostic, Buddhist, or Christian, is part of history. All that one thinks, all that one does, all that one experiences—“the falling of a leaf or a child’s joke or the rise of the moon”—occurs within the flux of time. However, Oppenheimer continues, all these things are not only part of history, becoming, and process. They are also part of the world that transcends time. The light of eternity illuminates them. Oppenheimer concludes by asserting that a person has two distinct ways of comprehending the world. The first is the way of time and history; the second is the way of eternity and timelessness. One cannot comprehend the way of eternity by the way of time; nor can one comprehend

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the way of time by the way of eternity. One cannot reduce one way of thinking to the other. The way of time and history and the way of eternity and timelessness are complementary ways of seeing the world. Each supplements the other; neither tells the whole story.8 Oppenheimer’s emphasis on the dual natures of a person that complement each other and meet in a higher harmony presents us with an image that is almost identical to Bruno’s transformation of the Cross of Christ to a magical cross symbolizing the dual natures of the universe, mind and matter. Both the image of Oppenheimer and the image of Bruno are similar in structure with that presented in the Poimandres. During the Renaissance the Poimandres was of secondary importance to the Asclepius. An essential aspect of Renaissance Hermeticism is that the divinized person turns back to the world to perfect it. It is especially in Oppenheimer’s work in the development of nuclear weapons that he enacts the Hermetic model. Ricoeur tells us that one can only understand the experience of evil itself by means of symbolic expression. The various myths—tragic, gnostic, and biblical—of the origin of evil reveal new aspects of our experience of it. These “myths relate our experience to the deeds of paradigmatic figures such as Prometheus, Anthropos, and Adam.”9 They shed light on our own experiences in the modern world of science and technology. Like the theft of fire by Prometheus, the advent of the nuclear age that released tremendous new powers for world domination, had something of a magical quality. The work at Los Alamos required tremendous concentration of talent and material and took place in an atmosphere of extreme intensity. Above all, it took place under strict military secrecy.10 A passage from the Pythagorean tradition spoke of the three kinds of lives. This division was not unique to the Pythagoreans. In his classic study, Georges Dumézil has shown that Indo-European civilization is grounded on a division of people into three classes: intellectuals, those who exercise power, and producers of wealth. Divine justice, governing both the natural and social orders, requires that those who exercise power must do so under submission to those who exercise intellectual authority. One was to exercise power under the authority of divine law, and, in the Indo-European division of society, the function of the intellectual class as carriers of tradition was to show the limits of power. I would suggest that, in his

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subordination to the military, Robert Oppenheimer enacted the model of modernity symbolized by Bruno. At that moment of subordination, we see the fatal decision to violate taboo in order to acquire technological power.11 And like Bruno, in his transgression of boundaries, Oppenheimer ushered in a new era—the age of weapons of mass destruction. The Hermetic myth presents evil as something outside of us—something in nature, society, or other nations. Evil is something that one can eradicate through magical or technological means. In contrast, the biblical myth of the Fall presents evil as something in the will itself, “a kind of involuntariness at the heart of the voluntary, no longer over against it but in it”: evil is in the servile will.12 The Hermetic myth of modernity would evaluate Oppenheimer’s submission to the military as something positive: as transcendence, salvation, and progress. In complete contrast, the myth of Adam would evaluate it as a manifestation of evil. Oppenheimer’s act does not only begin evil; it also continues it. Evil is a tradition, a “historical concatenation,” a “reign of the already there.”13 However, “the origin of this propensity to evil remains impenetrable to us because it must be imputed to us.”14 Only long after Oppenheimer has made his decision, does it begin to dawn on him what he has done and in what he has become involved. External circumstances and events that pass judgment on his actions awakens him to his awareness of his culpability. Modern Hermetic myth emphasizes only one aspect of the primordial man symbolism—that presented by Prometheus. In this, it is radically different from the classical Greek image is formed by the combination of both Prometheus and Epimetheus. Nevertheless, Epimetheus is always in the background. Because of his submission to the military, Oppenheimer was able to achieve tremendous power over nature. Here we see the face of Prometheus, the first aspect of the primordial man symbolism. However, because of this same submission, he found he had no control over his own creation. He had opened the Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferation. As he realized the illusory nature of his power, he became a truly tragic figure. The face of Prometheus disappeared and a new one came into view—that of Epimetheus. (Oppenheimer was aware of his position. In some ways, he was like the Confucian figure Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai, although not nearly so successful. We should also note that both Einstein, initially, and Bohr were involved

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in the development of the atomic bomb, and all three sought peace and the control of atomic weapons after the war, though in different ways.) Hermeticism, as a revolt against limits, was the attempt to divinize the human mind and obtain domination over the world. The story of Prometheus, however, shows the futility of this attempt. The recent history of the construction of nuclear weapons shows that although the Hermetic myth has a powerful hold on our modern imaginations, the classic myth of Prometheus still has its claim on truth. The story of Oppenheimer and the atom bomb is an example of how we can use the truth of ancient images to illuminate our own age. Oppenheimer at once embodies the technical foundation of science and the tragic actor who, in the pursuit of power, transgresses the limits that God has placed on humanity.

Einstein and Parmenides In addition to Prometheus, a second ancient image illuminates our modern world. It also appears in the passage from the Pythagorean tradition that tells us of the three kinds of lives: the philosopher, the seeker of power, and the seeker of wealth. The story of Prometheus in relation to the passage from the Pythagorean tradition tells us that Prometheus is the seeker of power as well as the tragic actor of a drama. On the other hand, the philosopher is the spectator of the tragedy. Just as Oppenheimer lived out the Prometheus symbolism, there are theoretical scientists who embody the Pythagorean philosopher. One of the most remarkable aspects of Holton’s study on the thematic origins of science is that despite tremendous advances in the sciences, the fundamental themes are quite limited and stable. Holton thinks there are less than fifty couples or triads of themes, and that these have been sufficient to account for the vast proliferation of scientific discoveries.15 Where Holton uses the term “thematic origins,” I have used roughly equivalent terms such as “mythologems,” “intuitions,” “metaphysics,” and “absolute presuppositions.” All of these, like Holton’s “thematic origins,” have a limited number of types. Einstein is a good example of this. He is part of a long tradition of individuals, going back to Parmenides who saw the world as an eternal,

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unchanging being and the logos as a logical structure that denied all change. Einstein expressed this absolute presupposition in a passage that brought together the three themes that express the core of Einstein’s life: the tragedy and limitations of the human condition, a vision of an eternal unchanging being, and his pursuit of that vision in physics that made his life appear meaningful. Einstein’s vision of being is intimately bound up with his quest for causal explanations in physics. This is clear in the following passage by Einstein: Physical Theory has two ardent desires, to gather up as far as possible all pertinent phenomena and their connections, and to help us not only to know how Nature is and how her transactions are carried through, but also to reach as far as possible the perhaps utopian and seemingly arrogant aim of knowing why Nature is thus and not otherwise. Here lies the highest satisfaction of a scientific person . . .16

Einstein considered science important as a search for truth transcending the individual. In an address to the Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze in October, 1950, he raised the question: “Should the search for truth be the independent objective of science? Or should that search be subordinated to practical considerations?” For Einstein, such a decision was a fundamental orientation affecting the whole personality. He considered it a religious attitude. He said that he must confess that he considers the struggle for truth essential to the life of anyone who thinks. The quest for ever greater insight and understanding is an end in itself. Without it, life would be meaningless.17 Einstein considered science and the search for truth to be, above all, a creative endeavor, appealing to a person’s aesthetic sense—the disclosure of truth revealing a profoundly haunting beauty. An intuition of the truth, guiding free creation of the human imaginative faculty, made discovery of scientific truh possible. Subordinating the self to this intuition of transcendental truth ennobled and oriented a person. Human subjectivity made possible science as a spiritual discipline ennobling the human soul. Because the quest relies on the integrity and honesty of the scientist rather than traditional authority, the scientist stands apart from society.

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The quest offers a vantage point from which to judge history. And from this vantage point what does the man of science see? He is proud of the liberation from drudgery that science has made possible. But he has also seen how technological development has allowed for the concentration of power in the state. Thus a small minority dominates the lives of the masses who appear more and more amorphous. According to Einstein, the economic and political power that has been concentrated into a small group of people is serious and dangerous. It makes the man of science economically dependent. At the same time, techniques are developed to manipulate his inner life. He can no longer develop an independent personality.18 The man of science is truly tragic. In his efforts to achieve inner independence, he has fashioned the means that “will not only enslave him but destroy him from within.” Einstein concludes that the man of science has degenerated. He accepts his slavery to the nation state as his fate. Even worse, he compliantly works on projects that will create instruments that will eventually destroy the entire world.19 In his concern with the problem of war and peace, Einstein had become convinced that humanity’s instinctual nature was the cause of war and violence. “The tendency toward war is as much a part of man’s nature as it is a part of the nature of rivers to inundate their banks from time to time[.]”20 But people also had a higher nature, the ability to understand interdependent causal relations of the world. People also have the ability to think. They have intelligence, and this allows them to learn from the past and to plan. It also allows them to give up immediate and short-term goods for ones that are long lasting. We know, for example, that a stable society is necessary for one’s individual happiness. We also know that social stability requires laws, and that individuals must submit to these laws. The result of all this is peace. It is only through the power to think and reason that one can make progress in any field of endeavor. These include art, science, agriculture, industry, and government.21 We must use this higher nature to govern the lower: “Just as we use our reason to build a dam to hold a river in check, we must now build institutions to restrain the fears and suspicions and greeds which move peoples and their rulers.” Based on law and justice, the institutions would have authority over atomic bombs and the power to enforce that authority.22

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The causal laws of the universe that were understandable to the human mind united the soul of the scientist with nature. Einstein found tremendous fascination and mystery in this, and it was the source of his scientific creativity. Emile Meyerson’s analysis showed how scientific concepts of causality were a way of abolishing change.23 From Parmenides to Einstein, the quest for understanding of being was a religious impulse towards the eternal. The intellectual quest thus allowed one to transcend the pettiness of individual existence. It freed the individual from the passions of nationalism and indicated those institutions that were needed to abolish war. Just as insight into the immortal Olympic gods oriented the ancient Greek, the subordination of the personality to the quest for causal understanding oriented someone like Einstein. Peace and security was not merely the absence of war. It was also the glimpse of an ennobling transcendent truth that is eternal and beautiful.

Bohr and Heraclitus In the same way that Einstein was in a tradition that reduced change to eternal being, Niels Bohr was in a tradition going back to Heraclitus. In contrast to Parmenides, Heraclitus saw the logos as eternal flux. For Bohr, the world is in constant but lawful change, and time is the logos that mysteriously holds everything together. All being is reduced to becoming, and the world is irreducible to strict logical categories including Einstein’s causality. This difference in orientation was the basis for the profound disagreement between Einstein and Bohr over the interpretation of Planck’s quantum of action.24 The quantum of action was the discrete step-like way in which energy is absorbed or emitted at the microcosmic level. The quantum of action means the world changes in a discontinuous, step-like manner. Bohr’s revolution was to assume this change was fundamental and irreducible to anything else. Because of this irreducible character, one can see many physical phenomena from mutually exclusive aspects. One can see light either as a wave or as a particle. One can determine either the position or the

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momentum of an electron precisely but not both. The irreducibility of the quantum also reveals a limit to the precision of causal determination. This was Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminacy.25 Although the quantum appears in various aspects that are mutually exclusive, they are complementary. By viewing the quantum from various aspects, one acquires a sense of what it is. Thus one arrives at an intuitive knowledge of a world that coheres despite its refusal to be contained in one’s categories.26 Gerald Holton considers Bohr’s complementarity to be one of the themes that underpin modern science. He writes that the complementarity principle is a manifestation of a thema in a sense which I have previously developed—one thema in the relatively small pool of themata from which the imagination draws for all fields of endeavor. . . . From this point of view we realize that Bohr’s proposal of the complementarity principle was nothing less than an attempt to make it the cornerstone of a new epistemology.27

Bohr held this complementary aspect of the world to be a general absolute presupposition. For instance, like the quantum for physics, life was an irreducible category for biology. One could view the organism as an entity with purpose or as a physico-chemical mechanism. The two views were complementary.28 Human subjectivity was another irreducible category. The human subject was at once actor and spectator. The complementary aspect of self-knowledge corresponded to the complementary aspect of one’s knowledge of nature.29 The complementary aspect of knowledge had to do with the mystery of language and the multifaceted way one can look at the world. Science was a language system that could look at the world in complementary ways.30 For Bohr, there were a number of autonomous levels of knowledge. An irreducible object that one could understand in complementary ways determined each level. Language and its categories were not absolute. They were useful tools with which to talk about a world that could not be contained in those categories. Yet, in a mysterious way, the world cohered, and knowledge was possible.

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This basic assumption also influenced Bohr’s style of research. While Einstein worked in isolation, Bohr worked best surrounded by colleagues and students. Much of the work in the field of atomic physics was conducted in Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen where Bohr had gathered around him the most promising young physicists in Europe. In the informal atmosphere of his institute, Bohr could test his ideas in the give and take of conversation. In this manner, Bohr influenced the research of a whole generation of physicists. More than any single discovery, his intuition into the nature of the world and human knowledge helped guide the revolution that occurred with the development of quantum physics.31 If we turn to Bohr, we shall see that, as in the case of Einstein, the same intuition that guided Bohr’s science determined his ideas about peace. On June 9, 1950, Bohr sent a letter to the United Nations in a plea for an open world. In the first paragraph of his letter, Bohr tried to generalize his experience as a physicist to international relations. The development of atomic physics, the result of international cooperation, should be a model for other cultural realms. In a concrete way, it presented a norm which Bohr called an “open world.” In opposition to the open world that Bohr assumed as normative, there existed the closed, compartmentalized world of nations. In the second paragraph of the letter, Bohr stressed the tension between the two worlds. The open world of scientific endeavor led to the possibility of the release of atomic energy. Yet, the closed world of nations led to the Second World War and even eclipsed the international community of scientists who were split into rival camps. This rivalry led to the development of atomic weapons. But now this development had made the compartmentalized world of separate nations obsolete. Bohr saw that the progress of science, which had led to the release of atomic energy, created the demand for a new order of international relations. The great scientific and technical developments of the past few years underscored the need to change international relations. These developments offered the possibility of improvements in the general welfare of humanity. They had also given us formidable means of destruction.32 Although a new order was trying to be realized, blind inertia kept the

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old world, which moved according to its own rules, in power. However, the existence of atomic weapons, like the quantum of action on the level of physics, was an irreducible political fact. In the same way that the quantum ultimately led to a revolution in physics, the pressure of this new fact would break the power of inertia and lead to the new framework of international relations. According to Bohr, people were fortunate that the adjustments in international relations that the recent advances in science and technology require would help bring about what everyone was hoping for—a future of ever increasing international co-operation. Moreover, the novelty of the situation should offer a unique opportunity of appealing to an unprejudiced attitude, and it would even appear that an understanding about this vital matter might contribute most favorably towards the settlement of other problems where history and traditions have fostered divergent viewpoints.33 Bohr’s vision of an open world was intimately connected with his understanding of knowledge. Because of the complementary nature of the world, Bohr always had respect for the perspective of the individual. He also thought that one must look for complementarity in the ways various cultures view the world.34 The complementarity of knowledge arose from the mystery of time and becoming. This mystery would be the foundation of the new world order. Peace was the realization of transcendence within time.

The Individual as a Microcosm The deepest intuition of Bohr was the ground of both his science and his vision of peace. While for Einstein science and peace were both quests for a vision of an eternal unchanging being, for Bohr the process of transcending and reconciling partial points of view were the foundation of both science and peace. Deepening insight into the processes of becoming led to the enrichment of knowledge. This, in turn, led to progress both in science and in peace. Holton argues that such tensions as existed between Einstein and Bohr have existed both within and between scientific geniuses of all ages.35 At the beginning of scientific speculation, the gods were transformed

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into the logoi of the Eleatics including Parmenides and Heraclitus. For Parmenides and Einstein, the reduction of the world and ego leads to the discovery of a causal, logical structure and transcendence experienced as eternal being without change. For Heraclitus and Bohr, the transcending logos is an eternal change and flux, ceaselessly becoming. Theoretical science in the representative persons of Bohr and Einstein goes back through the Eleatic philosophers, to the Olympic gods. On the other hand, the experimental aspect of science and technology in the representative person of Oppenheimer is connected with the symbolisms of the goddess and the ubiquitous primordial man. The experimental and theoretical aspects of science correspond to two human tendencies. The Galilean tendency of science toward precision and measurement is only one aspect of modern science. Intuitions and absolute presuppositions comprise this modern science’s more subtle and profound foundation.36 Husserl was trying to disclose this personal, private, and “subjective” foundation of science in The Crisis of European Science. In the discussions of Husserl’s epochē that have appeared throughout this essay, we have seen how the fluidity of the world appears with the simultaneous reduction of both the empirical world and the ego. Although the bracketed world appears fluid, it is not chaotic. There are structures transcending the ego and “life-world” which unite them. The fluidity of the world and the self corresponds to the reality presented by the goddess and primordial man symbolisms. The transcending structures that appear within this fluidity correspond to the aspect of the self and the world presented by the Olympic deities. The world is not chaotic, because the manner in which it changes is determined by these structures. According to Husserl, a conversion occurs with philosophical meditation. Where the world is not reduced to the ego or the ego to the world, the soul opens up to transcendence.37 At each place where transcendence is realized, a mystery occurs. By subordination to this mystery, a person becomes properly oriented. The mystery reveals an orienting center that safeguards a person from that bifurcation that leads first to magic, then to tragedy. For both Bohr and Einstein these centers were also the sources of their creative power and scientific inspiration. While each center appears with the

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simultaneous bracketing of the world and ego, the logos or structure for each differed. The center itself cannot claim to be absolute. Let us generalize from the examples of Bohr and Einstein and say that each center is the source of the particularity and uniqueness of the individual. William James has described the general process of conversion as a restructuring of one’s entire existence around a new spiritual center of gravity. 38 The history of the scientific community as well as history in general discloses an infinity of such centers. Although each center is unique, each center has the potential to be the source of human creativity, the opening of the soul towards transcendence and the realization of peace.

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Chapter 14

From Cosmos to History

Although we find people in the modern world that embody ancient images of a person as a microcosm, we must not forget that the rise of the modern world shattered the ancient cosmos of traditional cultures. Bruno was the mythical embodiment of that act, the “essence” of modernity. So we cannot simply return to the old world of the organic cosmos, but the idea of the mechanistic universe assumes too great a distinction between ourselves and other cultures. This chapter is an attempt to discover a meaningful framework of understanding that will allow us to compare our world and those of other peoples without distortion. In Religion in an Age of Science, Ian Barbour suggests such a framework—a “systematic synthesis.”1 He draws upon Whitehead’s process philosophy to construct it. Barbour thinks we must use a common myth—a myth of process—to relate science to religion. Process thought understands the biblical stories as the expression of God’s ongoing action of creation and renewal in the world, the divine logos as God’s creation of rational structure and meaning within the world, and the Spirit as God’s divine presence. “Systematic synthesis” attempts to express God’s action as both Creator and Redeemer in both the human and natural spheres.2 Because Whitehead created process philosophy under the influence of both science and religion, Barbour considers it the most promising candidate for uniting science and religion.3 Process philosophy was Whitehead’s attempt to overcome dualisms that appeared when the mechanistic universe shattered the organic cosmos of traditional worlds. But it was a failed attempt. In The Idea of Nature, R. G. Collingwood, starting from the pre-Socratics and ending with Whitehead, studied the great cosmologies of the Western philosophical tradition. Until the scientific revolution, these cosmologies had achieved the kind of unity that we have seen in Eliade’s model of the cosmologies of traditional

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peoples. The Renaissance, however, shattered that unity, and people found themselves estranged in the mechanistic universe of modern science and technology. Collingwood then showed how all the modern cosmological systems since the scientific revolution, including Whitehead’s, which attempted to restore that unity failed.4 There are still many attempts to construct a unified cosmology grounded on science. One of the more recent is by Stephen Toulmin.5 He wants to find ways of “reinserting” people back into nature. No longer should we consider ourselves as merely objective onlookers of nature. We should begin to view people and human processes as part of evolution.6 This is not particularly original. Others in the past have tried this approach. But Collingwood has shown how they too failed. At the end of his critical study of modern cosmologies, Collingwood asserted that since we cannot go back to the world before the rise of modern science, neither the old image of the world as a cosmos nor the new mechanistic universe can be a starting point for constructing a unified vision of the world. We must find another one. Collingwood concluded that it must be the idea of history.

The Idea of History Underpinning Collingwood’s idea of history is an idea of time that is almost identical to that of Augustine. According to Collingwood, every individual exists in a present moment that is always mutating into two different things—the future and the past. This is true for those individuals who are the subjects of historical study, and it is true for every historian.7 A second element of Collingwood’s conception of history is about the nature of ideas. Ideas in some way transcend the flux of individual moments. Because they can exist apart from the moment in which someone thinks them, ideas provide continuity to human life, and by remembering ideas, the human mind creates a sense of time. Another important aspect of ideas is that they are the inner causes of human actions whose outward manifestations are the events of history. Through the study of historical evidence, it is possible for someone to rethink the ideas of another person from the past, and thereby penetrate to the

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inner causes or “essences” of historical events. This makes the science or art of history possible. We can characterize historical knowledge as the successful realization of this possibility. It is entirely possible to extend Collingwood’s idea of history so that it includes not only ideas, but also the experiences and intuitions that myths and symbols express. Through a sympathetic understanding of the various religious texts presented so far in this essay, we have gained historical knowledge of “essential” intuitions and experiences of such diverse people as the Ngaju Dayak, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese, Augustine, Cusanus, Galileo, Bruno, Descartes, Newton, Laplace, Einstein, Bohr, and Oppenheimer. Because the human mind is autonomous, the myths and symbols by which these diverse people have expressed themselves are free creations of the mind. History is an autonomous discipline. Only through thinking the thoughts of others does the historian learn what the human mind can do. History shows us there is no fixed human nature. History is the discipline in which we discover what people are by discovering what they have made of themselves in the past.8 When nominalism destroyed the symbolic forms of the medieval cosmos, it paved the way for new kinds of knowledge. One of these is the idea that we can understand all of nature, at least in principle, in terms of mathematical forms. A second new kind of knowledge is the idea of history, the idea that we can reenact in our minds, at least in principle, all past human thoughts. A logical relation exists between these two new forms of reason. Analyzing nature mathematically is merely one act of the human mind. It is one part of history. For example, before Einstein could reform Newtonian physics, he had first to reenact Newton’s ideas in his mind. After that, he critically evaluated and then reworked them. Thus, the idea of history is more fundamental and prior to the mathematical analysis of nature. In ancient Greece, being meant the being of nature. In the modern world, being means the actions of autonomous individuals. Being means the becoming of history. According to Collingwood, the essential difficulty that modern cosmologists such as Whitehead could not overcome was that the mechanistic universe was incompatible with the image of a person

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as a microcosm. Because we cannot reduce the human mind to the mathematical abstractions of modern physics, the rise of modern science created a gap between people and nature. Those who used the mechanistic universe as their starting point could not breach it. On the other hand, by starting from the idea of history Collingwood could overcome the rift easily. The “essence” of history is human autonomy and freedom, and Collingwood could easily unite the new idea of nature to this conception by treating the mechanistic universe as simply one result of this autonomy and freedom.9 In his interpretation of the mechanistic universe as an historical creation, Collingwood was drawing upon the new ideal of knowledge by construction that arose with the transition from the medieval to the modern worlds. If we extend Collingwood’s idea of history to include the worlds of traditional peoples, it is possible to understand all worlds, including both the mechanistic universe of modern science and the divine cosmos of traditional cultures, as human creations. Although this takes the process of the nominalist critique of forms one step further, it brings modern and traditional worlds together and allows us to compare them.10

Symbolic Forms and Types of Persons An important method in comparative history is the classification of people by means of ideal-types. When we classify people into a type, it does not mean that the people are identical. History always confronts us with the specific and particular. Rather, the classification means they have something common in how they orient themselves, and so, in important ways, their existences are similar. Like symbolic forms, ideal-types are transhistorical. One finds similar types of people in widely differing historical circumstances. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, idealtypes are not real. They are creations of the historical imagination. Such creations are attempts to discover both continuity within the Western tradition and points of contact between the Western and other traditions. Parmenides in the Greek world, the saints of classical India, and Einstein, each in their own way, made the decision for being. They all embody the same ideal-type of person. Similarly, Heraclitus in the Greek

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world, Yao in the Chinese world, and Bohr in the modern world are people that realized a similar vision or structure within their persons. Because, each in his own way made the decision for becoming, each is an example of the same ideal-type. A third ideal-type is what I would call Hermetic. The images from the writings of Oppenheimer are Hermetic in structure. They express an intense desire for immortality, a willingness to manipulate of the structures of the natural world in pursuit of that quest, and the idea that the realization of that quest entails the reconciliation of opposites in a higher harmony. These are also central themes to tantric yoga.11 Bruno and Oppenheimer are representatives of the Hermetic ideal-type of person. Each man represents in his own way a revolt against limits and a decision for instrumental power. Types are tendencies. They are not air tight and mutually exclusive. A single individual can combine in his or her person different types, and at any period in history, there are competing types and tendencies. The important thing is which type predominates in any historical period. We saw how the creedal formulations of the Christian liturgy were designed to exclude and repress heretical types. In the medieval Europe, Christian imagery dominated Gnostic. However, historical constellations are always shifting, and with the rise of modernity, Hermetic types eclipsed Christians. The Hermetic ideal-type is predominant in the modern secular world of technology. Similarly, in Western learned circles, the type Parmenides represented predominated over the type of Heraclites until the last two hundred years or so. But gradually, in such persons as Darwin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset, and Dilthy, there has been a conversion from the way of Parmenides to the way of Heraclitus. The one who decides for becoming is eclipsing the one who decides for being. The triumph of Bohr and “complementarity” over Einstein is just one of the more recent examples of this tendency. The changes in predominant human types reflect changes in the absolute presuppositions of a civilization. More and more, the assumption of becoming, chance and randomness (in such diverse fields as physics, biology, economics, probability, chaos or complexity theory, and game theory) is eclipsing the decision for being and causal explanations that dominated in the West from Parmenides to Einstein.

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myth and the mechanistic universe The Person as a Microcosm of History

When nominalism destroyed the ancient imagery of the world as a cosmos, it also destroyed the ancient imagery of a person as a microcosm. Although the image of Christ as a microcosm was central to Cusanus, in the transition to the modern world, the relationship between people and the world became more important than that between the soul and God. Then, in order to express the new relationship between people and world, the barriers set up by the Catholic Church against the system of astrology began to fall, and ancient astrological symbolism triumphed over, biblical imagery.12 As this imagery became mathematical and mechanical, a second rift between people and nature occurred. Because Galileo could analyze mathematically only primary qualities such as extension, he considered them real. In contrast, secondary qualities such as color were merely subjective. Thus, people began to define the real world as that which is outside of a person, and Hobbes took this a radical step further when he reduced all human experience to particles in motion in the brain. Hobbes gives us the final triumph of mechanism and the complete disappearance of the individual.13 I am aware that this view of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries is a simplification for the purposes of this essay that leaves out many events such as the Reformation and pietism that have had an influence on science. But I think it is essentially correct. Ricoeur speaks of the rise of the modern world as a moment of “forgetting the signs of the Sacred, losing hold of man himself as belonging to the Sacred.” He attributes this to the rise of modern science and technology. He maintains that forgetting “is the counterpart of the imposing task of nourishing men and satisfying their needs through a technical control of nature.”14 However, Ricoeur also thinks that one can recover the lost or forgotten religious experiences of peoples through the history and phenomenology of religions. The reenactment of lost experience in the imagination of the historian gives new life and depth to a universe that has lost its meaning.15 Throughout this book I have had recourse to C.P. Snow’s idea of the “two opposing cultures”—the scientific and humanistic. The mathematical

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analysis of the world destroys much of its meaning, while historical reason brings much of that same meaning back to life. The “two cultures” seem to be moving in opposite directions. This is the central problem of this book, the search for some inner connection or reconciliation between them. I think such reconciliation is possible if one begins with the idea of history and then transforms the ancient imagery of a person as a microcosm into the image of a person as a microcosm of history. Rather than achieving transcendence by reflecting in one’s existence the cosmic order, a person achieves transcendence by reflecting in his or her individual existence, at least in potential, all the processes of history. That a person is microcosm of history implies that all knowledge, including religious knowledge, has a social and historical aspect. Every page of the Shu-ching, for example, shows that the human imagery it presents arose during the political history of an agricultural people. The great labors of Yü in controlling the flood and organizing the territories, as well as the importance of the calendar, are all concerned with the problems of an agriculturally based economy. Political processes determine the location of the center of the ancient Chinese world, and we know that this center changes several times before the time of Confucius. Finally, we know that the appearance of the Confucian tradition itself is a response to a political crisis. In a recent study of Robert Boyle, Stevin Shapin shows that even what constitutes a scientific fact is a decision with a moral and social character.16 Each tradition creates a type of person through the process of symbolization. The symbolic images are not static. They are capable of endless transformations that reveal ever-new shades of meaning.17 In his study, Shapin shows how Robert Boyle was a living symbol—a Christian gentleman—that embodied absolute presuppositions underpinning the experimental science of the Royal Society.18 Perhaps the extreme example in this sociological approach is that of Helen E. Longino. In Science as Social Knowledge, she writes that science “is not a culturally autonomous activity.” “When purged of assumptions carrying social and cultural values,” theories lose their power and become impoverished.19 I consider Longino’s position untenable. Symbolic forms, including the images of a person as a microcosm of history, appear within the flux

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of historical existence. They are, however, transhistorical, and we cannot reduce them to their historical circumstances. They point to something beyond time and history. This is why we can compare them, and this why they have a claim to universal truth. Although Longino is too extreme, she and people like her are important in reminding us that science is a human activity that takes place in history, and that scientists, like everyone else, come under the influence of a great many powers and forces, many of which we aren’t even aware and don’t understand. None of us has a master key to the great processes of existence of which we are a part. Even the scientific method, whatever you might imagine it to be, is not a master key. Master keys don’t exist.20

Prophetic Types In the introduction to this book, I mentioned three modern writers, SØren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, and Karl Barth, whose works expressed the underlying absolute presuppositions of this essay. Their stress on the autonomy and particularity of the individual are also the fundamental presuppositions of Collingwood’s idea of history. I also suggested that Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Karl Barth are modern representatives of “prophetic” types of person’s. SØren Kierkegaard, Emmanuel Levinas, and Karl Barth, are “prophetic” because they are critical of the prevailing Hermetic tendency of modernity. They have an emphasis on justice rather than knowledge. Since a prophetic symbolism establishes my interpretive framework, a certain tension arises. Which symbolism is more fundamental, the one I am trying to interpret or the one that provides me with a foundation? Scientists of genius live within the tension created by antithetical forces and experience these deeper currents in their complexity. An “inner necessity” demands this of them. Students of religion should follow this example. The crucial thing is learn to live with the tension and the clash of claims to truth. I want to avoid an overarching system and thereby foreclose the possibility that ancient and modern religious forms might be true in a way that confronts, challenges, and even changes our own place in the world. Our encounter with ancient China has already made us more aware that

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change and becoming are important and that the West has sometimes not been the first to embark on the truest path. It has made us moderns reevaluate ourselves. Truth is dialectical, not systematic. The last of the three modern prophetic types just mentioned, Barth, is a theologian. In contrast to natural and process theologies, however, the theology of Barth is practical. Barth intended it to be an aid for proclaiming the word of God in liturgy. I think it is important to stress here that Barth is in no way a fundamentalist, and certainly does not reduce the word of God to the words of the Bible. For Barth, the word of God is a symbolism with many shades of meaning. It is not to be confused with a concept or mere idea. Barth’s theology is normative. The real person is the one that says, “yes,” to the word of God. The pseudo person is the one that rejects it. But this is never final. The same person at one time might say “yes,” but at another time say “no.” A person only encounters God in a specific command. God addresses specific commands to specific people. These commands hold history together. But a command and a person’s response remain a mystery. God acts or commands in a freedom that is at once complete and divine. Moreover, it is divine only as far as it is inseparable and bound up with love. God’s command is thus inseparable from God’s grace.21 God reveals His divinity through grace. God establishes fellowship with humankind through the power of His love. It is a completely free act on the part of God. A person can make no claim what-so-ever to merit God’s grace; nor does a person’s lack of merit or a person’s resistance present any effective resistance to it. Grace overcomes all obstacles that humankind sets up against God. This is in fact how one recognizes God’s love as divine grace.22 God is gracious because He turns in love towards humankind. In complete contrast to the Gnostic and Hermetic texts, Barth asserts that God alone is transcendent and absolute, and nothing is equal to Him. Yet, He wills in complete freedom to turn to the world and save it in an act of love that “includes every conceivable benefit[.]”23 God is gracious to sinners, and His love overcomes even the power of sin and the resistance of humankind to His will. Grace does not nullify the power by which a person opposes God; in fact, grace presupposes

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that power. Grace comes to terms with it and victoriously overcomes all opposition.24 Kierkegaard, Levinas, and Barth all stress the particularity of history (and the particularity of persons and their actions—the objects of historical investigation) over the unity of the cosmos or the being of the world. Levinas, for example, tells us how the initial experience of another person, the “other,” awakens the desire to understand him or her. Levinas calls this desire, “metaphysical desire.” In a central passage, Levinas tells us that when we understand man on the basis of his works he is more surprised than understood. His life and his labor mask him.

This way of understanding people simply as objects, based on what we see them doing, is a way of life, an orientation, a religion. However, according to Levinas, it is an illusory dream world where nothing is ultimate and all is relative—a vortex of unending interpretation. But when the other person presents himself in his speech, and we attend to it, the dream world ends and the order of being begins, and a day dawns from whose depths no new day is to dawn.

Here Levinas is describing a conversion experience, from an orientation where the being of the solitary individual who objectively observes and interprets the people and world around him is fundamental, to an orientation whose foundation is our response to the speech and presence of another person. What the being of the solitary individual who observes and interprets lacks is not a heightened interior existence prolonging and amplifying the equivocations of interiority and of its symbolism, but an order where all the symbolisms are deciphered by beings that present themselves absolutely—that express themselves.25

The true being of another person hides itself from us until the person speaks, and, more often than not, he is surprised by how we have judged

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him simply based our observations of his actions. Then the person discloses himself in his or her word, that is, tells us what he is really doing and thinking, and, more often than not, what he says surprises us. We find we have misjudged him. (For example, the other person might tell us that the traditional myths and symbols by which he and his people orient themselves are not at all a kind of primitive science.) This awakens “metaphysical desire,” the desire to understand and thereby be just to the other person. This is the moment of conversion. We no longer live in a world where we judge the works of people as if they were mere objects. We now live in a world of persons in living communication, a world that arises out of that very communication and the very presence (whether that presence is physical or in our historical imaginations) of other persons. In an ironic passage that he seems to be directing against Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of being, Levinas stresses that the foundation of the world is not the being of nature; nor is it time—the being of becoming. Rather, it is the mutual inter-relation of individuals in communication: Being is a world in which one speaks and of which one speaks. Society is the presence of being.26

In the passage above, Levinas touches the paradoxical core of this essay. Although I stress the particularity of the individual in history, the individuals that I have been attempting to understand, were interested in the “essence” of nature and the unity of the cosmos. They were representatives of entirely different types of people than the prophetic types that have been so important in providing me with a vision for interpreting them. “Metaphysical desire” is the desire to understand the truth that the “other” lives. There exists in history different types of people that live according to different assumptions about the world. My desire to understand their absolute presuppositions is a desire to understand these “others.” This is as true for the peoples of different historical and cultural circumstances as it is for the type of persons that inhabits our modern world of science and technology. In the context of this essay, we can say it is as

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true for those who express themselves in scientific and mathematical language; it is as true for those who express themselves in poetic and literary language; and it is as true for the peoples of traditional cultures who express themselves through religious myths and symbols. Despite all these differences, what allows us to create a common world is the attempt to understand what each person says. I pay attention to their myths and symbols, realizing that behind each document is a unique human being that at once reveals and conceals himself in his symbolic expressions. Underpinning the art of interpretation is the desire to be just to another person.

The Biblical Meaning of History God revealed Himself to Anselm by disclosing a new Name, “something beyond which nothing greater can be conceived.” This disclosure was also an authoritative command that required a human response. It required that we must understand all merely human knowledge as a matter of comparison and proportion. Obedience to this command by Cusanus set the foundation for the modern mathematical analysis of nature. More importantly, obedience to this same command also prevents us from falling into a fanaticism that divides the world and history into things and people that are absolutely good on the one hand and absolutely evil on the other, obedience to the Name is the foundation of a non-dogmatic, yet optimistic, vision of history. It is not particularly important if the readers of this book share this normative vision in common with me. I would be surprised if many do. This is not an apologetic work. However, it is important that I make my normative positions explicit so that the reader can know the absolute presuppositions I have brought to bear on the evidence. Only in this way is it possible for people with different normative stances to speak with one another. Since only God is absolute, only God can be good. Everything else can only be a relative good. The good we perceive in politics only appears as good, because it is in contrast to what we perceive as evil. Moreover, a person or a people who appear as good today might appear as evil

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tomorrow. This is not relativism. At each moment, a person is choosing either to become good or to become evil. At each moment, conscience commands us to choose intelligently what appears to us as good and prudent and to reject and resist what appears as evil and foolish. But there is always more than enough foolishness to go around. However, Barth tells us that God’s grace overcomes all merely human powers: God is gracious to sinners, and His love overcomes even the power of sin and the resistance of humankind to His will. Grace does not nullify the power by which a person opposes God; in fact, grace presupposes that power. Grace comes to terms with it and victoriously overcomes all opposition.27

The good that appears against a background of what appears as evil in human relations is a dim reflection of God’s infinite and absolute goodness. If there were no evil in human relations, we could never know of God’s goodness. More than that, although we can never look directly at it or experience it with immediacy, God’s infinite goodness, as reflected in human affairs, is the light by which we discern and make judgments. An absolute good that transcends the relative opposites of good and evil (the opposites that set the boundary conditions of our lives) illuminates our judgments. As Paul expresses it: Just as formerly you were disobedient to God, but now have received mercy in the time of their disobedience, so now, when you receive mercy, they have proved disobedient, but only in order that they too may receive mercy. For in making all mankind prisoners to disobedience, God’s purpose was to show mercy to all mankind.28

Lest one accuse Barth of a narrow sectarianism, it is important to realize that in this passage Barth interpreted “Gentiles” allegorically as those without formal religion and “Israelites” allegorically as those who belonged to an institutional religion. Barth famously accused organized religion in general, and Protestant Christianity in particular, as being the worst form of idolatry. Rather than a narrow sectarianism, Barth’s vision, as expressed in his interpretation of the passage by Paul, gives

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rise to an experience of serenity and salvation, even in the midst of the struggles of history and politics in which we find ourselves. This vision is the “essence” of the biblical tradition.29

Chapter 15

Myth and the Mechanistic Universe

In my study of the opening passage of the Shu-ching, we saw how Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho presented an image of a person as a microcosm as well as a model for the people to enact the world by means of ritual. Such ancient religious images still live on and influence our modern “scientific” picture of the world. They structure fundamental experiences that orient scientific activity. This chapter attempts to place these religious forms within a sociological framework that is similar to the one I used in the study of Chinese myth and its relation to ancient astronomy. In the pages that follow, I will interpret Oppenheimer’s writings concerning the scientific and technical community that formed around him at the dawn of our modern nuclear age. I will focus on a passage by Oppenheimer in which he transformed Bohr’s “complementarity” into human imagery. Let me take a moment to present the passage by Oppenheimer where that image appears: The wealth and variety of physics itself, the greater wealth and variety of the natural sciences taken as a whole, the more familiar, yet still strange and far wider wealth of the life of the human spirit, enriched by complementary, not at once compatible ways, irreducible one to the other, have a greater harmony. They are the elements of man’s sorrow and his splendor, his frailty and his power, his death, his passing, and his undying deeds.1

As I hope to show, this passage presents us with a symbol, perfectly comparable to those of traditional cultures, of an experience that oriented that community and the modern world of science and technology.

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myth and the mechanistic universe The Orders of Nature and Society

Almost all traditional cultures assume that a single law or principle of order unites and provides a foundation to both the social and cosmic orders. An example is ancient China’s absolute presupposition that li expressed both a norm for social interaction and the order of nature. In contrast, the new, modern ideal of knowledge gives rise to the distinction between the order of nature and the order of society. There is no longer a cosmos. Now there is a social order that is quite distinct from the natural order. Moreover, to a greater and greater extent, technical efficiency and instrumental rationality determine the social order. The result is an increasing instrumental rationalization of the world. This rationalized web of power marginalizes or destroys traditional cultures as it integrates traditional peoples into a single global economic and political system. New forms of social organization come to the fore. Characteristically, these new forms require that individuals specialize to ever-greater degrees and thus individuals become increasingly isolated from other people. The human mind might be able to understand both the new social and natural orders as separate entities with ever more precision. But can we speak any longer of some underlying unity to them? If not, how, can there be such a thing as the ritual enactment of the cosmos? We must answer this question not only to understand the modern world and ourselves but also to come to terms with the claim of truth of the Shu-ching.

The Community of Monads In Cartesian Meditations, Edmund Husserl tries to overcome the fragmented character of the modern world through the philosophical technique of epochē. Husserl appropriates Leibnitz’s term, “monad,” to designate the conscious individual and shows how the pure awareness that each monad embodies provides a foundation for all knowledge. In so doing, Husserl deepens Collingwood’s theme of history by transforming the ancient image of a person as a reflection of the larger cosmos into an

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image of a person as a microcosm of history, a reflection of the larger world of both past and present historical communities. Husserl is attempting to establish a coherent view of the world. However, after establishing the autonomy of the monad, an almost insurmountable difficulty confronts him: each monad is an individual that appears to live in his or her own private world, and there appears to be as many worlds as individuals. Husserl overcomes this difficulty by showing how, through empathy and the process of communication, a group of monads constructs a common world. The foundation of every coherent world is just such a community of monads.2 This brings us once again to the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In addition to being a representative of the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel, he is also a philosopher who is in the tradition of Husserl. All of his important discoveries are from within the phenomenological epochē. The deepest, most fundamental experience is that of another person. A person is present in his words. I, in response, try to understand the person. But the process of understanding is never complete. One word comes after another. The person continually “overflows” my conceptions of him or her. The person is infinite, and although one can deepen one’s understanding of someone, one can never make a person into an object. Always something remains a mystery. At the moment when one experiences this, one grasps the “essence” of a person—that something of person, by his or her nature, will always remain beyond our grasp.3 The relation between the person who speaks and the one who responds to the speech is an ethical relation. There is no deeper relation; it has the paradoxical structure of a religious symbol; it is like Descartes (or before him, Augustine) when he discovered the idea of the infinite within him and realized he, who was finite, could not have created it. I whom am finite have this idea of the infinite within me. In the course of ordinary, everyday conversation, when someone addresses me, the person actualizes this latent idea. What is infinite, “the other,” appears and is experienced in what is finite—me. In that moment, one can no longer maintain the phenomenological suspension of judgment. Any kind of rationalism or idealism is exploded, and the world becomes real. This ethical relation, discovered by Levinas, is the foundation of the world.

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The process of communication, though never perfect and never ending, that is, infinite, creates a common world of meaning. Levinas calls the desire to understand the other person “metaphysical desire.” It is unlike material wants and needs because one can never fulfill it; one can only deepen it; Metaphysical desire is desire for the infinite. This desire is the foundation of all scientific activity. (And let me add with Levinas that the most important words of another are those symbolic expressions that reveal his or her self-image.) The insights of both Husserl and Levinas emphasize that all worlds, both traditional and modern, are human creations. Their foundations are communities formed through a process of communication. Together, they form a framework for the understanding of traditional worlds that still has the coherence and unity that was so appealing in Eliade’s model.4 The social order that the Shu-ching presents is an example of a community of monads formed in history. My study of the Chinese ritual showed how the Chinese enacted their world through symbolic communication as the sovereign toured time and space. My new framework, however, has the advantage that one can also use it to understand the modern world by comparing it with those formed in other moments of history.5

Evil in Society The weakness of this model is that it ignores the stark reality of evil—a realty that makes relations between people troublesome and problematic. Evil is part of our experience as social beings, and everywhere we find it expressed through religious symbolisms. One important symbolism of this evil is the biblical story of the first murder, when Cain slew his brother Able. We find another in African traditions and the symbolism of the sorcerer or wizard. Ryszard Kapuściński gives us a vivid, poetic ideal-type of this figure: Although no one knows what the wizard looks like, we know a lot about him. He moves only at night. He participates in ceremonies during which sentences are meted out—we are sleeping, and over there, unbeknownst to us, our demise has been decided. He

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can transport himself to wherever he wishes with fantastic speed, quicker than lightning. He adores human flesh, dotes on human blood. He does not speak, so we cannot recognize his voice. We do not know his facial features, the shape of his head. But it is possible that one day a man will be born with such strength of vision and such willpower that, staring intently into the blackness, he will see the night begin to thicken, stiffen, coalesce into black crystals, and then will see these crystals compose themselves ever more clearly into the silent and dark visage of a wizard.6

I can think of no greater contrast in human imagery than the one between the ideal of the wizard Kapuściński created and Descartes’ image of a person as a machine. Yet, we cannot just ignore or dismiss the African imagery as being primitive. It is worth keeping in mind the many passages where Karl Marx excoriates the capitalist bourgeoisie for their insatiable lust for the labor of workers. Marx considered this labor as almost a quasi-divine substance. One might even venture that Marx considered this substance to be the “essence” of human life. And Marx saw how the capitalists were voraciously devouring it. The African imagery and imagery of Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, are similar and express the same meaning. Because the “other” is infinite, our encounter with him or her creates our world. However, because the “other” is infinite, and there are limits to what we can know of him or her, the “other” is unreliable. Even worse, he or she is dangerous. People play out these dangerous relations through power politics on the stage of history. In his research into the nature of the social, Man and People, Ortega Y Gasset discovers that this is the “essential” fact, the fundamental truth underpinning all of society and politics: The pure Other is in fact provisionally true and equally my possible friend or my potential enemy. We shall see later that this opposed but equally likely possibility, that Man may be friend or enemy, that he may be for us or be against us, is the root of everything social.7 The reality “society,” in its very root, signifies both its positive and its negative meanings, or, as I say for the first time in these lectures, every society is at the same time, to a greater or lesser extent, dissociety—which is a living together of friends and of enemies.8

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Ortega’s reflections are true and important. However, we must keep in mind that symbolic images such as Cain and Abel or the African wizard always have a surplus of meaning that philosophy and our discursive reasoning cannot exhaust. Evil is real. We can understand part of it. Yet, ultimately, it remains a mystery. The model I made thus betrays its Enlightenment roots in that it ignores the reality of evil. So I need to correct my model of society. We must be just to someone who not only establishes our world, but who also is unreliable and dangerous. I spoke earlier of skepticism as being a necessary quality for the historian of religions. Now I must speak of one more—our desire for justice in dealing with others must be tempered by prudence. It must be judicious. With these ideas of the community of monads as the foundation of a world and symbolisms such as the story of Cain and Able or Africans’ vivid imagery expressing the mystery of evil that eats away at that foundation of society in mind, let us return to the writings of Oppenheimer.

The World of Oppenheimer In his writings it becomes clear that Oppenheimer is deeply concerned about the realization of a common vision of the world because modern technology has forced upon us an historical situation in which artificial barriers are no longer tolerable. The foundation of such a world is an ideal of universal brotherhood. He tells us that ours is a time of change and expanding knowledge. It is a time of contrasts: of rising collective power and increasing individual weakness; of heroic acts and drudgery; and of increasing human welfare as well as suffering and misery. And we, who find ourselves thrown together in such time, are brothers.9 Although he understood himself to be heir to the Christian tradition, Oppenheimer’s understanding of brotherhood, extending to vast parts of the world where people neither ever have been nor ever may become Christian, is universal. All communities, or to use Husserl’s phrase, monadic communities, are situated within the flux of time and history. Some, like political parties and trade unions, exist for long periods of time. Others exist only for

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a moment. Oppenheimer emphasizes their fluidity. He says that in our world these communities are fleeting and in constant flux. New parts are added while others leave. Some parts are living and growing while others are dying and falling off. It is “almost as a form of life itself.” Just as nature is multiform and ever changing, each community is multiform and ever changing, woven together into a web of fleeting interconnections. The universal ideal of brotherhood and human community can only be concretely realized in the more modest, diverse and fleeting associations that make up the substance of human life.10 A person as an individual and a person as part of a community, a person as a monad and as a member of a monadic community, are two complementary aspects of human existence that manifest something “essential” to human life that is deeper than either aspect alone. Oppenheimer tells us that the formation of each community is an act of creation. (This we know is an echo of Durkheim.) If it were not for them, not only would the life of every one of us be impoverished, but also we would lose something “essential” to being human. Something fundamental would be lost.11 This “essential” “something” is experienced during the formation of human communities. Oppenheimer thinks of times during the Second World War when people from entirely different occupations were thrown together. Even when the circumstances were bleak, their life together gave rise to a profound new power. Oppenheimer reminds us that we all know how the group that we belong to in some way transcends us. We have all experienced the comfort of a companion’s knowledge to compensate our ignorance; of a companion’s wisdom to compensate our foolishness; or of a companion’s courage to help us overcome our doubts and fears.12 The experience is the foundation of the community and the world it creates. The world of Oppenheimer, like the worlds of other cultural traditions, could only become coherent and real when individuals formed a community through common submission to a power that transcended the flux and chaos of history. This is the same as we saw in chapter four in our study of the opening passage to the Shu-ching and its relation to the ordering of society and knowledge. As a sovereign ritually enacts society according to the model presented in this passage, he simultaneously transforms the fragmented and broken elements of existence into a cosmos.

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Oppenheimer used the term “complementarity” to express his experiences of something that seems to come from beyond this world when individuals form a community. “Complementarity” is also an image of a person that appears as the center of the passage by Oppenheimer that I presented at the beginning of this chapter. These two aspects of “complementarity” make the passage comparable to cosmogonic myths. Like the myths of traditional cultures, the passage presents an image of a person. It also expresses something that seems to appear from beyond this world. Like myth, the passage presents an image that is the foundation of a community and world.

The World of Science The philosophic framework of Husserl that we have used to help us understand the world of Oppenheimer and its relation to myth showed how human communities form the foundations of cultural worlds in general. Before we can understand the proper relation between myth and the mechanistic universe, however, we must again sharpen our ideas about a specific cultural creation—modern physical science. In his interpretation of relativity theory, Ernst Cassirer shows how human communities form the foundation of science. We will again find Cassirer’s essay to be helpful. According to Cassirer, there are two components of science, a conceptual framework and experimental technique. The conceptual framework is the mechanistic universe. He understands Einstein’s theory to be a radical criticism of this framework that no longer allows us to regard its fundamental elements, time, space and number, as physical objects. Rather, they are ideas. Moreover, they are so interrelated that one can only understand each element within the total framework created by all the elements together. However, one cannot reduce one element to any other because each is defined by a specific experimental operation. Einstein tells us that it is the whole system of assumptions, not just one or two hypothesis, that is tested in an experiment. The system of concepts that make up Newtonian physics works well in one’s understanding of the solar system. However, it is possible to construct another system based on different assumptions that could work just as well.13

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The two components, then, are interdependent. On the one hand, the conceptual framework makes the measurements obtained by experiment meaningfully coherent. On the other hand, experimental technique grounds the conceptual system to the empirical world. The physical operation brings the sensible and the intelligible orders together. Since this operation is, above all, a human activity, it is the living community of scientists that joins the two components of science, conceptual framework and experimental technique.14 This community, not the mechanistic universe, is the central, irreducible ground of modern science. In a passage from one of his writings, it is clear that this view is compatible with how Oppenheimer understood his life’s work—historically, as the creation of a human community. He takes us on a tour of one of the rooms in the house we call “science.” It is the room we call “quantum theory” or “atomic theory.” It is quiet now because the great work of constructing it was completed two decades ago by a generation of our predecessors. People still visit it and every once in a while, someone makes a minor alteration so that it might become even more harmonious. Many of us have studied this room as young men, and some of us who are studying the primordial structure of matter are trying to erect another chamber that is just as fair and beautiful.15 Because of this understanding of science, Oppenheimer considered the power and freedom of people bonded in brotherhood to be “essential” to the scientific enterprise. Although individual scientists might not be able to fully understand even one branch of science, and most will remain outside of science, the enterprise is open to anyone. “The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of people for its furtherance” are the elements that make the modern world of science and technology “a world of human community.” True scientific communities are characterized by an open access to knowledge and the freedom to either resolve difference by converse or, if this fails, to tolerate diversity. True scientific communities are incompatible with modern political tyranny.16 His understanding of human communities as the foundation of science led Oppenheimer to understand the unity of science in an entirely different way from that presented by the mechanistic universe of

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Laplace. The unity of science comes from the common orientation of scientific communities, rather than from a few basic truths or techniques that can illuminate all of nature from galaxies to genes and sense organs. He tells us that the unity of science is not a matter of a common body of knowledge; it is a unity of common dedication. True scientific communities are open, and the history of science offers many examples where technique and ideas developed in separate circumstances are brought together in a new creative synthesis. A scientist may profit from learning about any other science, but he does not have to learn them all. The unity of science is the possibility of such synthesis. The unity of science is a potential unity.17 This is similar to what we discovered about ancient Chinese astronomy in chapter five. There we saw that the history of astronomy as a science, which included the development of astronomical instruments and the recording of observations, the development of coordinate systems, and the formulation of cosmological theories, was the attempt by the ancient astronomers to transform the world of one’s senses into a coherent pattern of unified mathematical relations. Its ultimate aim was to create a calendar grounded in a single structure that astronomers hoped to discover within the flux of time. The unity of ancient Chinese astronomy, like the unity of modern science, was a potential unity. According to Oppenheimer, from time to time scientists partially actualize this potential in their scientific work. At such moments, they achieve a unity of community, nature, measurement, and reason, all grounded on an experience of something surpassing this world. The harmony achieved at such moments is normative, and is, therefore, an end in itself. During those moments when physical scientists have been most pure, it has been experiences of nature’s haunting beauty, of the “the strange and compelling harmony of its order,” that has inspired and sustained them in their work. These experiences should be the underpinning of the scientific enterprise. If the way that society supports their work takes into account that this is their ultimate concern and motivation, “new knowledge will never stop as long as there are men.”18 In listening to Oppenheimer describe the “strange and compelling harmony” of the order of nature as the ultimate motivation for scientific work, we are reminded of Eliade’s assertion of how traditional peoples

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desire to live in a pure and holy cosmos. The passage suggests that the relation between the world created by science and that enacted through myth is deep and powerful. We, having understood something of both worlds, are now in a position to understand this relation.

Myth and the Mechanistic Universe The cosmogonic myths of traditional cultures present images that speak to us on many different levels. They point to a realm that transcends the flux of time and history. They also present an image of a person, a model of meaningful human relations, and the image of the world as an ordered whole. By joining the transcendent world with the diverse facets of this world, they present a model for the enactment of a coherent totality that is permeated with meaning. Similarly, the central imagery of the text by Oppenheimer expresses an experience of harmony that is deeper than ordinary historical existence. It presents an image of a person as well as a model through which individuals can form a community and, in the process, enact a meaningful world. Although mechanistic imagery is especially powerful as a background for experimental science, the human mind simply does not operate like a machine. A mechanical world has all the parts external to each other. In contrast, mental life is flexible; one idea evokes and shades off into another, so that a person constantly weaves together memories, ideas, values, and perceptions in rich and complex patterns defying the easy mathematization of mechanism. For this reason, I said that the rise of the mechanistic image of the world gave rise to a chasm that at once separates the modern world from traditional cultures and the “two cultures” as described by C. P. Snow. Overcoming this chasm is the reason for writing this book. In Philosophy in a New Key, Susanne Langer has shown how the spontaneous creativity of the human mind constantly transmutes the raw “experiential data” of human life through a process of “symbolic transformation” into a meaningful pattern. This is what makes us human. Langer tells us that the process of symbolic transformation accounts for those human traits that separate us from other animals.

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These include ritual, art, laughter, weeping, speech, superstition, and scientific genius.19 This creative power of the human mind, manifest in the human ability to symbolize, is the source of human freedom and autonomy that is the foundation of one’s understanding of history and brings us to the “essence” of the relation between myth and the mechanistic universe. In his essay on relativity theory, Cassirer makes it clear that the spatial and temporal orders of the corporeal world as well as an underlying harmony between them form a foundation that is “essential” for the two elements of science, conceptual systems and experimental techniques. However, neither of the orders is ever given directly to experience; rather, they are schemes for arranging events; both orders are the results of an intellectual construction made by the community of scientists prior to any scientific activity. Moreover, the harmony of these two orders is never proven by science; it is always assumed. Before any scientific activity takes place, a community of scientists must have previously enacted a world grounded on the assumption of the underlying harmony of the spatial and temporal orders; before the world is investigated in an “objective,” “scientific” way, the community must have previously enacted a coherent world at a deeper level.20 Einstein says that there could be no science without the fundamental intuition of the inner harmony of the universe. This intuition motivates all scientific creation. In the entire history of science, in the struggle between old and new views, there is always a single, eternal longing for understanding grounded on the unshakable intuition of the harmony of our world.21 According to Langer, this is the level of myth. Rather than conceptual and logical structures such as the mathematical components of the mechanistic universe, the heart of physical science is an image such as the one presented in the text by Oppenheimer. She writes that a new philosophical theme for the coming age is the comprehension of science through the power of symbolization.22 In our study of ancient Chinese astronomy, we saw that although myth is not science, it does provide the absolute presuppositions on which a science rests. Chinese astronomers combined two distinct elements, instruments of observation and a conceptual framework, to

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construct an instrument that transformed the world one perceives with one’s senses into a world of numerical relations. Although the instrument was completely scientific in nature, it required a proper foundation, and this was mythical. Myth and the ritual enactment of the world set the stage for all human activity. We have long known this to be true for human social and political activity. The positivist in us, however, would like to make an exception for the precise sciences. At the end of chapter six I wrote that Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho object to this. They remind us that myth sets the stage for all human activity, even the scientific study of nature. In the same way, the central image of the text by Oppenheimer expresses the “complementarity” or harmony of time and space, the absolute presupposition that underpins the world in which science takes place. The deep, structural relation between sacred time and space that Eliade has shown to be manifest in the cosmogonic myths of traditional cultures expresses the same harmony. This identity of structure makes the relation between the modern mechanistic universe of science and the worlds of traditional cultures clear. Before they can construct the mechanistic universe through scientific concepts and experimental techniques, a community of scientists must have previously enacted a world in precisely the same way that traditional cultures enact theirs—through submission to authoritative human imagery.

Possible Objections It is at this point that those who are committed to a philosophy of critical realism or those such as Barbour who are committed to process theology might object that I have reduced science to mere subjectivity. In his criticism of those who interpret science as a social construct, Barbour writes: I believe these authors lean too far toward relativism and underestimate the constraints placed on theories by the data arising from our interaction with nature. Their interpretation of science fails to

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myth and the mechanistic universe account for its success in making predictions and generating applications.23

The criticism Barbour directed to those who hold a philosophical position of extreme relativism is not applicable to my understanding of the social construction of science. Although I stress the logical priority of knowledge of society to knowledge of nature, I do not consider my position to be in conflict with such realists as Hilary Putnam.24 I have emphasized that experiments ground all scientific knowledge. I consider the physical operation to be real, but I consider the mathematical and theoretical aspects of science to be imaginary. That is, they are useful tools of analysis, not real things. Both modern science and the ancient Chinese could make predictions of solar and lunar eclipses, for example, but the sense of the world in which the ancient Chinese and modern astronomers made these predictions differed considerably. The history I have just completed shows how often fundamental scientific ideas change in the course of time. Those are the facts. Just imagine what Descartes would have thought about uncertainty and randomness as being crucial for the stability of the physical world. However, for us these are the new “clear and distinct ideas.” Why? Because we’re now used to them.25 We even use ideas such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principles as absolute presuppositions and make deductions from them about the nature of physical reality.26 It is important to keep in mind that, in general, I work within the suspension of judgment that constitutes the phenomenological epochē. To say that one first enacts the world mythically is not to say that the world is, in fact, an illusion. It might be real; it might not. To posit that it is real is an absolute presupposition; but it is a presupposition that I really do make. I am simply making it self‑consciously and critically instead of positing it dogmatically. I’m almost absolutely certain my thesis (that religious symbols provide the foundation for scientific work) is true. I have easily discovered the religious underpinnings of other sciences in addition to physics. Underpinning Darwinian evolution, for example, is a concept of life that is at once immanent and transcendent. It is immanent, because life only appears in specific, concrete organisms. It is transcendent, because when one concrete form disappears, life appears in another new form that takes the place of

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the old one. This conception of life, being both immanent and transcendent, is, by definition, a religious symbolism. The great economist, Joseph Schumpeter, gives us another example of the symbolic underpinnings of yet another science. The foundation of his economics is “creative destruction”—a pre-analytic vision, in which the opposites, creation and destruction, coincide. Again, this is a common and widespread mythical theme. In these examples, religious images are not merely decoration at the fringes of the sciences. They are their foundation stones. And I could go on doing this indefinitely. Finding the absolute presuppositions (and their mythical or symbolic expressions) of scientific work could even become a research project along the lines of what Kuhn called normal science. However, because of the work of Karl Popper, we have all become aware that we are biased towards evidence that confirms our ideas and also biased against evidence that shows them to be false. For this reason I welcome a second kind of potential critic. I ask those opposed to my thesis for intelligent criticism. Arguments that are sheer polemics or ad hominem are not intelligent. On the other hand, arguments pointing out flaws in my reasoning or factual errors definitely are intelligent. Above all, I would ask the intelligent critic opposed to my thesis to show me examples of significant scientific work that does not take place in a community that has previously oriented itself by agreement to a number of absolute presuppositions that are paradoxical, symbolic, and religious in nature. There are no crucial experiments. A few trivial examples won’t defeat my thesis. A large number of major examples will. My thesis is that although our knowledge of nature has some legitimate claim to objectivity, nevertheless, it is always mediated through a community whose members, by means of symbolic communication, share a common orientation. If my thesis survives the intelligent attack of the second kind of critic, there is always a third kind with whom I must contend. This is the one that says that this thesis of mine is just obvious and commonsensical. With this third kind of critic I would agree but not completely. My thesis is that science can neither prove nor disprove religion, and it is religion that provides the foundation on which science is grounded. This is now obvious and commonsensical to me, but it is diametrically opposed to the way most modern educated people think about the relation between religion and science. This rather modest thesis

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of mine, if accepted as obvious and commonsensical by the majority of modern educated people, would amount to a Copernican revolution.

Conclusions This study has been an attempt to extend Eliade’s framework of ideas to include the world of modern physical science. Since the rise of modern science transformed the image of the world from that of a divine cosmos to the mechanistic universe, I found it necessary to transform Eliade’s model into one that is based on the idea of history. This transformation allowed us to bring traditional and modern worlds together within a single vision. Both the divine cosmos of traditional cultures as well as the mechanistic universe of modern science and technology became, above all, the respective cultural creations of historical communities. When I interpreted the writings of Oppenheimer within this framework, we were able to catch a glimpse of the relation between the myths of traditional peoples and the world of modern science for which we had been searching. We saw how the concrete ativity of doing science presupposes a coherent world that scientists have previously enacted as they form a community. Like the worlds of traditional cultures, intuition of a deep harmony between the spatial and temporal orders grounds this world. The central imagery of the passage by Oppenheimer expressed this intuition. Like the worlds of traditional cultures, an image of a person expresses this intuition. Moreover, this world becomes a world when individuals form a community through submission to this image. Although the world of myth and the world of science are not the same, there exists an important structural relation between them. Before one analyzes the world scientifically, one must first enact it mythically. We have seen how this is true in the case of ancient China as well as in the case of modern physical science. Thus, we have overcome the chasm that at once separates modern and traditional cultures. Simultaneously, we have overcome the chasm within modernity separating the “two cultures,” the physical sciences and the humanities. Nature presents itself to communities, both ancient and modern, in many, many forms. Some of these are mathematical; some are qualitative.

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The rise of the mechanistic universe occurred when modern scientific culture began selecting those forms that are mathematical out of the many others. When Galileo made time the t of clocks and space the d of meters he was making a decision about what was real in nature. The Chinese knew that they could analyze time and space mathematically. The example of the gnomon shadow template is an example of this. The “essential” difference between them and us is that they decided that a great many of the forms that nature presents are significant. This included not only those that are mathematizable; it also included differences in colors and even moral characteristics. Nature is not reduced to the community’s ideas. But those ideas and preliminary assumptions make nature intelligible. Nature exists independently of the community; but one doesn’t know anything about nature except that which is mediated through a community. Myth is not science. It is “metaphysics.” It tells the community what to select out of the multitude of forms that nature presents to it. Myth helps a community define and humanize nature. A cosmogonic myth is the presentation of human imagery. It presents a structure in which a person exists and knows the world. Yao and the brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Prometheus, are all symbolisms. Each in its own way structures human experiences of the world. By presenting an image of a person as normative, a myth is selecting certain patterns and structures as normative. At the same time, it is rejecting other patterns. Through ritual, a culture reinforces a type of experience and creates a type of person. It creates a common world.

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Epilogue

The problem I attempted to solve in this essay is that of the “two cultures.” In the introduction, we saw how the literary humanists tried to bridge the chasm between the two cultures imperialistically by treating scientific concepts as symbols. Then we saw how a physicist tried to bridge the chasm from the other side by treating symbols as scientific hypothesis. This, too, was imperialistic. This problem is not merely academic. Since the expansion of the West, there has been a consistent tendency to justify Western dominance by means of natural law, an idea that has now transformed itself since the European Enlightenment into an ideal of human rights. Although both natural law and human rights present themselves as being universal, they are, in fact, Western. They are an ideology of power that suppresses the symbolic foundation of other peoples.1 The problem of the “two cultures” reflects an acute difficulty that the West has with the rest of the world. It’s important to solve it. The modern theologian, Thomas Torrance, speaks from within the same non-liberal, dialectical tradition of Christian theology that underpins my interpretive efforts. In a work that is concerned with the relation of theology to physical science, he writes that the movement of eternity into time in Jesus Christ has the effect of temporalizing space and spatializing time in an orderly continuum of successive patterns of change and coherent structures within which God may reflect and fulfill His own creative and redemptive intentionality.2

Like the passage from Oppenheimer, this passage presents human imagery that serves as the foundation of a community. Again, like the passage from Oppenheimer, the same human imagery that forms the foundation for the community also reveals an underlying harmony to time and space. It is one more example of how one enacts the world mythically. However, unlike the passage from Oppenheimer, this passage is Christian rather than Hermetic in structure.

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We know that the rise of modernity created tension between a tradition of creative use of the imagination within limits, represented by Cusanus and a tradition that drew its power from the heroic transgression of limits, represented by Bruno and Oppenheimer. With the rise of the mechanistic universe, a rift appeared between Christianity and the physical sciences. The rift did not come about because of the results of science. It came about because scientific communities sometimes made decisions for fundamental intuitions that differed from those Christian communities made. It is clear that physical science at times has had a foundation that is quite at odds with the human imagery of Christianity. For this reason, it would be strange if there were not clashes between the Christian and scientific communities. The tension between them arises because the scientific and Christian communities often embody different images of what it is to be human. The intention of this essay has been to place the myths and symbols of other peoples on an equal footing with those of the modern world. However, symbolic forms have competing claims to truth, and we must somehow come to terms with these claims. In this clash of claims to truth, Barbour and others, warn us about falling into a highly inconsistent cultural relativism. Barbour writes that the extreme relativists are inconsistent, for they assert that their own analysis is valid for all cultures. Their own claims somehow escape the charge of cultural relativism of which everyone else is accused.3

On the other hand, the natural theology of people like Jaki, while avoiding cultural relativism goes to the other extreme of being at once both imperialistic and provincial. Because, in contrast to the literary humanists, Sokal the physicist, and Jaki, the Catholic theologian, I have made a good faith effort to understand other peoples and cultures, before making a judgment on them, my attempt at bridging cultures is not imperialistic. And because in my efforts to understand these “others,” I do bring my own normative commitments to bear on their claims to truth. My attempt does not fall into extreme relativism. Throughout this book, I have grounded my interpretation on the assumption that the relationship between persons is fundamental. From

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my perspective, it is not so important that Einstein was right in his decision for being or that Bohr was right in his decision for becoming. What was important was the ethical relation between Einstein as a person and Bohr as a person. Although Einstein understood quantum mechanics well enough, he could never understand how Bohr could be committed to complementarity as a fundamental principle. In this way, Bohr presented a mystery to Einstein. The ethical relation requires that we be just to another person, although the “essence” of a person is that we can’t ever fully understand him or her. This isn’t a vision of a universal culture. A universal culture doesn’t exist today, and I would be surprised if it came into being anytime soon. Nor should we call it multiculturalism. That term evokes the image of a mélange of hermetically sealed entities. But we live in a world of interdependent people that differ greatly in basic assumptions, in “metaphysics.” So perhaps the best term for my orientation is a kind of polyculturalism, grounded in the desire for justice. In this book, I have attempted to clarify the relation between myth and the mechanistic universe. My thesis is that science can neither prove nor disprove religion, but rather, science has a religious foundation. And as I said before, since this is diametrically opposed to the way most modern educated people think about the relation between religion and science, this rather modest thesis of mine, if accepted, amounts to a Copernican revolution. In the introduction to this book, I presented a passage by the physicist, Richard Feynman, in his attempt to account for the “two cultures.” Let me present part of that passage again: I would use the words of Jeans, who said that ‘the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician’. To those who do not know mathematics, it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature.4

At that time, I said that the solution to the problem of the “two cultures” was closer than Feynman might think. The crucial words in the passage are, “the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician”. We now have had enough historical experience to

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recognize the statement to be an assertion of an absolute presupposition. Feynman is asserting, “I assume there is a nature that exists apart from me and that it is understandable through mathematics.” The assertion makes a claim to universal truth. However, even though Feynman’s work as a scientist was highly successful, the success didn’t prove the assumption to be true. The success just shows that the assumption works. It shows that the statement is provisionally true. Thus the importance of the word “seems.” The statement is not that the Great Architect is a mathematician; rather, it is that the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician. We should now be able to recognize that Feynman’s statement is every bit as mythical as the statements of the Shu-ching establishing ancient Chinese astronomy. It oriented (or rather, reoriented) Feynman (and his audience), and it did so prior to any scientific work. The statement was a mythical enactment of the world, and Feynman grounded his work within the world so enacted. By now the truth of the ancient images of the Shu-ching that presents the ritual enactment of the world and the establishment of astronomy in ancient China should be apparent to us moderns. Those ancient images showed how each location of the world had its own time aspect and space aspect that it realized ritually. Although each location was unique, because it was related to all the others, the Chinese world cohered. Similarly, we have seen how there is no common uniform time or space that unites the mechanistic universe. There are only the measurements at each location. Although the set of measurements at each location is unique, transformation equations allow communication from one location to another. Like the Chinese world, our modern “scientific” world consists of only separate locations that a community first mythically enacts. Knowledge of nature is dependent on the community, and the community is dependent on ethical relations that are more fundamental than nature. But we must also keep in mind the ancient biblical image of Cain and Able or even the African imagery of the wizard, images that express what we moderns tend to ignore—the reality of evil always eroding the foundations of society. Then we must admit that these relations are dependent on something more fundamental yet. The name for this “something” is grace.

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In this book, I have attempted to clarify the relation between myth and the mechanistic universe. My aim is not to establish a universal culture. My intentions are modest. The practical consequence of understanding that science has a religious foundation is that before making a judgment about a strange or unfamiliar religious myth or symbolism expressing the “metaphysics” of a person or of a people, one would stop and think a bit. Perhaps something from the religious foundation of our scientific, mechanistic world would come to mind. I am not advocating an ideology of natural law or human rights. Rather, I am advocating dealing with matters cases by case—a kind of situational ethics. By being patient and waiting a bit before judging, we leave open the chance for a moment of insight, a moment of human recognition. And this moment, not science and technology, is the foundation of all things human. It is only with this moment of insight that we have a chance of being just in our judgments of a people’s myths and symbols. This would be especially important if one were in a position to exercise political or technological power. In a discussion of the value of science, Feynman first mentioned its instrumental value. From there he went on to discuss the beauty of the mechanistic universe. Finally, he talked about science’s social value. It was not that it could solve the problems of society. Rather, physical science had a social value because it created a type of person—one who could live with doubt: The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain. 5

After discussing this characteristic of scientific knowledge, Feynman goes on to say that

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myth and the mechanistic universe we scientists are used to this [uncertainty], and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true.6

Feynman considers this paradox, “to know that it is possible to live and not know,” to be so important that it is the responsibility of scientists to pass it down to future generations: It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.7

Here, Feynman is doing something we can recognize as religious. He’s advocating for a tradition that creates, from generation to generation, a of a type of person—one who has the freedom to doubt. Moreover, Feynman’s paradox, “to know that it is possible to live and not know,” expresses is very similar to the ideal of knowledge as “learned ignorance” that Cusanus articulated at the origin of the modern mathematical analysis of nature—the very analysis that characterizes the mechanistic universe. Feynman’s paradox is also similar to what the Ngaju Dayak tell us when the say, “Long ago, in the beginning of time, everything was still in the jaws of the coiled Watersnake.” A select group of priests preserved this story. They new it was what held the world of the Ngaju Dayak together. Similarly, a select group, scientists and engineers are to preserve Feynman’s paradox, the secret that hold our world of science and technology together. Despite differences in form and language, both scientist and the tribal people, each in their own way, are part of traditions telling us that at the foundation of the world there is a paradox. And it is this paradox that makes human life possible. If the reader can recognize in Feynman’s paradox the mythical underpinning of his scientific work, I will have done much towards accomplishing my desired purpose.

Notes Notes to introduction 1. Hans Schärer, Ngaju Religion: the Concept of God Among a South Borneo People, trans. R. Needham (The Hague: M. Nijhoff: 1963), 163–65. 2. For an example of how one can use this division as an effective framework of universal history, see Marshal G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). 3. Edwin A.Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967). 4. Alexander Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1957). 5. See Alexander Koyré, Galileo Studies, trans. J. Mepham (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978). 6. Edward J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture, trans. C. Dikshoorn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 3. 7. Roger Hahn, “Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe,” in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, eds. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1986), 256–76. 8. Descartes, “Description of the Human Body,” in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, vol. 1: The Early Writings (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 226–27. 9. Descartes, “Discourse on Method,” in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, vol. 1: The Early Writings (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 6.62. 10. Descartes, Discourse on Method, 6.62. 11. Dijksterhuis, 3. 12. Dijksterhuis, 3. 13. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. W. R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959), 162–215. 14. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 68–115. 15. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 73–76. 16. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 65. 17. Charles P. Snow, The Two Cultures: and A Second Look: An Expanded Version of the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1962), 10.

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18. Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Laws (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1965), 58. 19. Richard P. Feynman (as told to Ralph Leighton), “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”Further Adventures of a Curious Character, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988), 244. 20. Feynman, The Character of Physical Laws, 58. 21. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series, vol. 22 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 1. 22. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 1. 23. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 1. 24. Jean Bricmont and Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science (New York: Picador, 1999). 25. Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 26. See Milton Scarborough, Myth and Modernity: Postcritical Reflections, SUNY Series, The Margins of Literature, Edited by Mihai I. Spariosu (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994). 27. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (London: Duke University Press, 2004). 28. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 201–13. 29. Koyré, From the Closed World, 43. 30. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusian Mysteries, trans. Willard Trask (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1:xiii. 31. For an extended discussion of Eliade, the concepts he uses, and his critics, see Bryan S. Rennie, Reconstructing Eliade: Making Sense of Religion, with a foreword by Mac Linscott Ricketts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 32. Also see, Kees W. Bolle, The Enticement of Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press: 2002). 33. For a discussion of the phenomenological method in the comparative study of religions, see G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology, trans. J.E. Turner, Torchbook edition, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 2:67–78. 34. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972). 35. SØren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 18. 36. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne Studies: Philosophical Series, Vol. 24 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 178.

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37. For a discussion of the axial age, see Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Vol. 4: The Ecumenic Age (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State university Press, 1974.) 38. Nathan Sivin, “Preface,” in Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, eds. Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin, M.I.T. East Asian Science Series, Vol. 2. (London: MIT Press, 1973), xiv–xv. 39. Sivin, “Preface,” xxx. Notes to chapter 1 1. Marcel Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmêli. (Oxford: The Oxford University Press, 1975), 16–40. 2. Chandogya Upanishad 3:19. 3. Charles Long, Alpha: Myths of Creation (New York: George Braziller, 1963), 126–28. 4. Sir George Grey, “The Children of Heaven and Earth,” Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History (Auckland: H. Brett, 1885), 1–8. 5. Schärer, 18–19. 6. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), 15. 7. Lévi-Strauss, 263. 8. Foucault, 199–204. 9. Lévi-Strauss, 246–47. 10. Hesiod Theogony: Works and Days, trans. Dorothy Wender (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973), 622–65. 11. Van der Leeuw, 1:66. 12. Psalm 97:1–5 NEB (New English Bible). 13. Bhagavadgītā 11:15–24. 14. Psalm 19:1–6 NEB (New English Bible).. 15. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958), 129. 16. Eliade, Patterns, 127. 17. van der Leeuw, 1:71. 18. van der Leeuw, 1:73–74. 19. van der Leeuw, 1:68. 20. Eliade, Patterns, 136. 21. Eliade, Patterns, 124. 22. Eliade, Patterns, 138. 23. Eliade, Patterns, 134. 24. Eliade, Patterns, 146. 25. Eliade, Patterns, 136. 26. For this interpretation of the Homeric gods, see Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, trans. M. Hadas

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(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). 27. Otto, 61–90. 28. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 69. 29. G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 1–4. 30. Harold Chernis, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (New York: Octagon Books, 1964). 31. William K. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), vol. 2: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 32. Parmenides Frgs. 1. 33. Parmenides Frgs. 7, 8. 34. Giorgio de Santillana, “Prologue to Parmenides,” in Reflections on Men and Ideas, with a foreword by H. R. Trevor-Roper (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press, 1968), 119. 35. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1948), 112–13. 36. Heraclitus Frg. 30. 37. Guthrie, 1:471–72. 38. Iamblichus The Life of Pythagoras, in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy, comp. and ed. K. S. Guthrie, with an introduction by D. R. Fideler and a foreword by J. Godwin (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987), 90–91. 39. Eliade, Patterns, 147–50. 40. Van der Leeuw, 1:91. 41. Eliade, Patterns, 254. 42. Van der Leeuw, 1:92. 43. Eliade, Patterns, 188. 44. Heraclitus, Frg. 125. 45. Heraclitus Frgs. 6, 12, 49a, 91. 46. Heraclitus Frg. 52. 47. Heraclitus Frg. 53. 48. Marcel Granet, La Pensée Chinoise (Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1934), 139. 49. For an excellent study of this structure, see Karl Kerényi, Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence, trans. R. Manheim, Bollingen Series, no. 65, vol. 1 (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963). 50. Otto, 263–86. 51. Hesiod The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-

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White (New York: Macmillan, 1914), 117–25. 52. Kerényi, Prometheus, 35–38. 53. Otto, 104–19. 54. Otto, 119. 55. Karl Kerényi, “The Trickster in Relation to Greek Mythology,” trans. by R.C. Hull, in Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York: Schocken, 1978), 190. 56. Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (New York: Schocken, 1978), 125. 57. Van der Leeuw, 1:43–51. 58. Otto, 23–24. 59. Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, trans. S. Corrin (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), 79–96. 60. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 294. 61. Kerényi, Prometheus, 35–38. 62. Kerényi, “The Trickster,” 176. 63. Kerényi, “The Trickster,” 185. 64. van der Leeuw, 2:547–48. 65. Otto, 37. 66. Otto, 263–87. 67. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 294. Notes to chapter 2 1. Arthur W. H. Adkins, “Myth, Philosophy, and Religion in Ancient Greece,” in Myth and Philosophy, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, the SUNY Series Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions, Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1990), 97. 2. Jaeger, 14. 3. Francis M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950), 3. 4. K. S. Guthrie, comp. and ed, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy, with an Introduction by D. R. Fideler and a Foreword by J. Godwin (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987), 22. 5. Carl B. Boyer, The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (The Concepts of the Calculus), with a foreword by Richard Courant (New York: Dover Publications, 1949), 20; Thomas Heath, A History of Greek

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Mathematics, vol. 1: From Thales to Euclid (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921), 67–69. 6. Boyer, 17–18. 7. Photius, The Life of Pythagoras, chapter 15, in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy, comp. and ed. K. S. Guthrie, with an introduction by D. R. Fideler and a foreword by J. Godwin (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987), 31. 8. Parmenides Frg. 2. 9. Parmenides Frg. 2. 10. Heraclitus Frgs. 41, 64. 11. Heraclitus Frg. 94. 12. Jaeger, 115. 13. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 1:465. 14. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 1:432. 15. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 1:459. 16. Jaeger, 116. 17. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 1:471. 18. Adkins, 121. 19. Paul J. Griffiths, “Denaturalizing Discourse: Abhidharmikas, Propositionalists, and the Comparative Philosophy of Religion,” in Myth and Philosophy, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, the SUNY Series Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1990), 65. 20. Democritus Frg. 9. 21. Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Mathew Sands, The Feynman Lecturers on Physics: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat, 6th ed. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. 1 (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1977), 1–2. 22. Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966) 52. 23. For a history of the concept of the atom, see Andreas G. M. van Melsen, From Atomos to Atom: The History of the Concept Atom (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960). 24. Boyer, 18; Heath, 150–54. 25. Boyer, 19. 26.Boyer, 20. 27. Heath, 155. 28. Boyer, 4. 29. Iamblichus, 79. 30. Boyer, 25–26. 31. Heath, 272.

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32. Boyer, 25–26. 33. Jean Varenne, Yoga and the Hindu Tradition, trans. Derek Coltman (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 88–89. 34. Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, with a preface by Arthur Waley (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, Ltd., 1951; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 105–14. 35. Griffiths, 73. 36. José Ortega Y Gasset, Historical Reason, trans. Philip W. Silver (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 99–100. 37. Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality, trans. Kate Loewenberg (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 17–55. 38. Meyerson, 113–56. 39. G. E. R. Lloyd, The Revolutions of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient Greek Science (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.) 40. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985), 306. 41. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity, trans. by Willard R. Trask (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 2:202. 42. Charles Taylor, “Comparison, History, Truth,” in Myth and Philosophy, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, the SUNY Series Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions, eds. Frank Reynolds and David Tracy, (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1990), 48–50. 43. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 2:19. 44. See Aristotle Metaphysica A. 45. R. G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics, Philosophical Essays, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), 5–6. 46. Collingwood, Essay, 34–48. 47. Georges Gusdorf, Mythe et métaphysique: introduction a la philosophie (Paris: Flammarion, 1953). 48. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 281. 49. David B. Allison, “Introduction,” in Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison, with an introduction by David B. Allison, with a preface by Newton Garver. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. John Wild (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), xxvii, 54. 50. Allison, xxxii–xxxiii. 51. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 24–25. 52. Deleuze, 25. 53. Deleuze, 25.

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54. Deleuze, 26. 55. Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk: How randomness Rules Our Lives (New York: Random House, 2008). 56. Henry C. Warren, Buddhism in Translation (New York: Atheneum Press, 1972), 56–58. 57. Levinas, Totality and Infinity. 58. Georges Dumézil, L’idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens, Collection Latomus, vol. 31 (Bruxelles: Berchem, 1958).

Notes to chapter 3 1. Collingwood, Essay, 46. 2. Schärer, 9. 3. Shu-ching: The Canon of Yao. This and all subsequent passages from the Shu-ching are from Shu Ching, trans. Clae Waltham (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1971), 4–5. 4. Joseph R. Levenson and Frank Shurmann, China: An Interpretive History: From the Beginnings to the Fall of Han (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 56. 5. See Levenson and Shurmann. See also Kwang-chih Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) and Kwang-chih Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). 6. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China. vol. 2: History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 2:290–91. 7. Derk Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 103–32. 8. Granet, 117–19. 9. Granet, 87. 10. Shu-ching: The Great Plan. 11. Granet, 91. 12. Granet, 117–19. 13. Granet, 87. 14. Granet, 87. 15. Granet, 330. 16. Granet, 139. 17. Granet, 300–14. 18. Granet, 125. 19. Granet, 317. 20. Granet, 301. 21. Granet, 104–5.

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22. Granet, 104. 23. Granet, 129. 24. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 2:13–17. 25. Sarah Allen, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, eds. David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). 26. See Kwang-chih Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge, Massacusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983). 27. Shu-ching: The Canon of Yao. 28. Shu-ching: The Canon of Yao. 29. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 30. Shu-ching: The Counsels of the Great Yü. 31. Shu-ching: The Counsels of the Great Yü. 32. Granet, 317. 33. Granet, 122. 34. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao, 27. 35. Shu-ching: The Great Plan, 127. 36. Shu-ching: The Great Plan, 130. 37. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. by David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970); for a critical introduction to Husserl’s philosophy, see Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, trans. Lester E. Embree and Edward G. Ballard, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Edited by John Wild (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967); for a discussion of Husserl’s technique of systematic reductions see Henry Duméry, The Problem of God in Philosophy of Religion, trans. Charles Courtney (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 39–76; for a discussion of Husserl’s philosophy and the theoretical attitude, see Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. André Orianne, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Edited. by John Wild (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 38. Allison, xxxii–xxxiii. 39. Igor de Rachewiltz, “Yeh-Lü Ch’u-Ts’ai (1189–1243): Buddhist Idealist and Confucian Statesman,” in Confucian Personalities, eds. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett, Stanford Studies in the Civilizations of Eastern Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 189. 40. de Rachewiltz, 192. 41..de Rachewiltz, 193. 42. de Rachewiltz, 210.

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43. de Rachewiltz, 199. 44..de Rachewiltz, 209. 45. de Rachewiltz, 209. 46. de Rachewiltz, 210. 47. Arthur F. Wright, “Values, Roles, and Personalities,” in Confucian Personalities, eds. Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett, Stanford Studies in the Civilizations of Eastern Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 16–19. Notes to chapter 4 1. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (New York: The Free Press, 1965), 29. 2. Bodde, 194. 3. Bodde, 345. 4. Schärer, 139. 5. Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, 3rd ed. (London: Cornell University Press, 1974), 93–111. 6. Shu-ching: The Great Plan. 7. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao. 8. Shu-ching: The Great Plan. 9. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao. 10. Shu-ching: The Yi and the Chi. 11. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao. 12. Shu-ching: The Yi and the Chi. 13. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao. 14. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 15. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 16. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 17. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 18. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao. 19. Shu-ching: The Great Plan. 20. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Yü the Great. 21. Shu-ching: The Counsels of Kao Yao. 22. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1967), 1. 23. Granet, 343. 24. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 25. Granet, 119. 26. Granet, 120. 27. Granet, 325–28. 28. Shu-ching: The Great Plan.

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29. Granet, 93. 30. Granet, 93–94. 31. Granet, 96–98. 32. Granet, 102. 33. Granet, 107–14. 34. Kees W. Bolle, The Freedom of Man in Myth (Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 34. 35. Bolle, 86–90. 36. Shu-ching: The Yi and the Chi. 37. Shu-ching: The Great Plan. 38. de Rachewiltz, 200. 39. de Rachewiltz, 201. 40. de Rachewiltz, 201. 41. de Rachewiltz, 210–11. Notes to chapter 5 1. Shigeru Nakayama, “Joseph Needham, Organic Philosopher,” in Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition, eds. Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin, M.I.T. East Asian Science Series, vol. 2 (London: The MIT Press, 1973), 23–43. 2. Nakayama, 24–26. 3. Nakayama, 26–28. 4. Nakayama, 28. 5. Joseph Needham, “Thoughts of a Young Scientist on the Testament of an Old One,” Science and Society 1 (1936): 490–91. As quoted in Nakayama, 28. 6. Nakayama, 32. 7. Nakayama, 39. 8. Nakayama, 39–41. 9. Charles Coulston Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 521. 10. Nakayama, 31. 11. Nakayama, 34–35. 12. Nakayama, 35. 13. Nakayama, 34–35. 14. Gillispie, 521. 15. Gillispie, 524. 16. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, vol. 2, no. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 92–110. 17. Nakayama, 34. 18. Nathan Sivin, “Preface,” xix–xxv.

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19. Sivin, “Preface,” xix–xxv. 20. Bodde, 309–27. 21. Sivin, “Preface,” xxvi–xxvii. 22. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 159. 23. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:163–64. 24. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:163–64. 25. Needham, Science and Civilization, 2:526–27. 26. Needham, Science and Civilization, 2:526–27. 27. Needham, Science and Civilization, 2:528. 28. Needham, Science and Civilization, 2:565–66. 29. Needham, Science and Civilization, 2:558. 30. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:284–86. 31. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:286–87. 32. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:307–9. 33. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:302. 34. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:332–34. 35. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:343. 36. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:294–97. 37. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:313, 317. 38. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:329. 39. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:191. 40. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:245–46. 41. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:210–15. 42. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:216–17. 43. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:219. 44. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:410–17. 45. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:245–46. 46. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:390. 47. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:176. Notes to chapter 6 1. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:188. 2. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:189. 3. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:189–90. 4. Shu-ching: The Canon of Shun. 5. Shu-ching: The Great Plan. 6. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:189. 7. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:189. 8. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:152.

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9. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:193. 10. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:19. 11. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:22–23. 12. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:294–98. 13. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:292. 14. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:225. 15. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:334–36. 16. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:414. 17. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:412. 18. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:414–15. 19. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:46–47. 20. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:4. 21. Gusdorf, Mythe et métaphysique. 22. de Rachewiltz, 194. 23. Granet, 96–98. Notes to chapter 7 1. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 294. 2. Henry Duméry, Phenomenology and Religion: Structures of the Christian Institution, Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions, ed. Kees W. Bolle (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 6–27. 3. Romans 1:19–20 NEB (New English Bible). 4. Robert S. Westman, “The Copernicans and the Churches,” in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, eds. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 95–96. 5. John 1:1–5 NEB (New English Bible). 6. St. Augustine Confessions 7. 9. 7. St. Augustine Confessions 7. 10. 8. Genesis 1:1–3 NEB (New English Bible). 9. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 10. 10. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 20. 11. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 29. 12. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 28. 13. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 30. 14. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 31. 15. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 31. 16. St. Augustine Confessions 12. 6. 17. St. Augustine Confessions 12. 7. 18. St. Augustine Confessions 12. 7. 19. St. Augustine Confessions 12. 11.

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20. St. Augustine Confessions 12. 7. 21. St. Augustine Confessions 12. 15. 22. Francis A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (New York: Random House, 1964), 5–6. 23. See Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, trans. Robert McLachlan Wilson (Harper & Row 1983, San Francisco). 24. Rudolph. 67–87. 25. Ricoeur, 299. 26. Rudolph, 113–70. 27. Yates, 9. 28. Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism—A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 5. 29. Gregg, 8. 30. Gregg, 63. 31. Gregg, 58. 32. Gregg, 58. 33. Gregg, 44. 34. Gregg, 86. 35. Gregg, 96. 36. Gregg, 114. 37. Gregg, 115. 38. Gregg, 116. 39. Gregg, 180–81. 40. Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre Press, 1945), 485– 86. 41. Collingwood, Essay, 225–27. 42. St. Augustine Confessions 13. 5. 43. St. Augustine Confessions 13. 8. 44. St. Augustine Confessions 13. 9. 45. St. Augustine Confessions 13. 10. 46. St. Augustine Confessions 13. 11. 47. Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through The Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 69–70. 48. Pelikan, 69–70. 49.St. Anselm Proslogion 2: 1.101, 3f. 50. Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, 2d ed. trans. Ian W. Robertson (Richmond: John Knox Press), 101. 51. Barth, Anselm, 78. 52. St. Anselm Proslogion 2: 1.101, 4f. 53. Barth, Anselm, 76. 54. Barth, Anselm, 75.

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55. St. Anselm Proslogion 2: 1.101.5ff. 56. Barth, Anselm, 103–06. 57. St. Anselm Proslogion 3: 1.103.3ff. 58. Barth, Anselm, 153. 59. St. Anselm Proslogion 3: 1.103, 6ff. 60. Barth, Anselm, 155. 61. Barth, Anselm, 166–70. 62. Barth, Anselm, 95–100. 63. Barth, Anselm, 61–62. 64. St. Anselm Proslogion 4: 1.104, 5ff. 65. Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 9. 66. Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979), 1–45. Notes to Part 2 Introduction 1. William H. McNeil, A History of the Human Community, vol. 2: 1500 to the Present, 3rd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990), 397. 2. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, ed. Thomas McCarthy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M. I. T. Press, 1983), 457–596. 3. Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society, and Science. 4. Bodde, 355. 5. Needham, Science and Civilization, 2:518–83. 6. R. Hooykaas, Natural Law and Divine Miracle: The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology and Theology, 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963). 7. Michael Foster, “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science.” in Creation: The Impact of an Idea, eds. Daniel O’Connor and Francis Oakley (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 39. 8. Bodde, 332–51. 9. H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 483–88. 10. Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 107. 11. Romans 2:14–15 NEB (New English Bible). 12. Huff, 339. 13. A. C. Graham, “China, Europe, and the Origins of Modern Science: Needham’s The Grand Titration,” in Nakayama and Sivin, 45–69, 69. 14. Hodgeson, The Venture of Islam, 1:184, 197. 15. Stanley L. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God, The Gifford

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Lectures 1974–75 and 1975–76 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), vii. For a Protestant apologist see, R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973). 16. Jaki, 4. 17. Jaki, 4. 18. Jaki, 14–15. 19. See R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History with Lectures 1926–1928, revised ed. Edited by Jan van der Dussen, with an Introduction by Jan van der Dussen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 212–15. 20. David C. Lindberg, “Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 19. 21. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. 22. Koyré, “From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe;” Alexander Koyré, Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). 23. Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry. 24. Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 10–12. 25. Funkenstein, 290–345. 26. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, (London: Oxford University Press, 1960; reprint ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1981), 111. 27. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, 111. 28. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, 111. 29. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:157. 30. Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 3. 31. Dupré, 30. 32. Dupré, 24. 33. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 7–72. Notes to chapter 8 1. Dupré, 39. 2. Dupré, 39. 3. Dupré, 40–41. 4. Dupré, 41. 5. Dupré, 41. 6. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docto Ignorantia, trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1981), 84.

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7. John, 1:3–5 NEB (New English Bible). 8. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 131. 9. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 131. 10. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 135. 11. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 135. 12. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 50. 13. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 52. 14. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 51. 15. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 13–14. 16. Mircea Eliade, The Two and the One, trans. J. M. Cohen, Harper Torchbooks (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). 17. Hermann Weyl, The Open World: Three Lectures on the Metaphysical Implications of Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), 9, 84, and 87. 18. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 116–17. 19. Koyré, Metaphysics and Measurement, 3; Burtt, 62. 20. Pierre Duhem, To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo, trans. Edmund Doland and Chaninah Maschler, with an Introduction by Stanley Jaki (Chicago: Chicago University Press). 21..G. E. R. Lloyd, Greek Science After Aristotle, Ancient Culture and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973), 58–61. 22. Nathan Sivin, Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 66–68. For a history of Chinese cosmological ideas see John B. Henderson, The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press: 1984). 23. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems— Ptolemaic & Copernican, trans. by Stillman Drake, with Notes by Stillman Drake, with a Foreword by Albert Einstein, 2d ed. (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967), 3. 24. Galileo, Dialogue, 11. 25 Galileo, Dialogue, 8. 26. Galileo, Dialogue, 14–15. 27. W. A. Wallace, “Galileo’s Concept of Science: Recent Manuscript Evidence,” in The Galileo Affair: A Meeting of Faith and Science (Proceedings of the Cracow Conference 24 to 27 May 1984) Edited by G. V. Coyne, S.J., M. Heller, and J. Zycinski (Vatican City State: Specola Vaticana, 1985), 34; J. Dietz Moss, “The Rhetoric of Proof in Galileo’s Writings on the Copernican System,” in The Galileo Affair, 58. 28. Galileo, Dialogue, 41. 29. Galileo, Dialogue, 50–51. 30. Galileo, Dialogue, 84. 31. M. Lubanski “Galileo’s Views on Infinity,” in The Galileo Affair, 134. 32. Galileo, Dialogue, 123.

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33. J. Casanovas, “The Problem of the Annual Parallax in Galileo’s Time,” in The Galileo Affair, 71–72. 34. Galileo, Dialogue, 255; for a discussion of the significance of the relativity of motion in the history of science, see M. Heller, “Galileo’s Relativity,” in The Galileo Affair, 113–24. 35. Galileo, Dialogue, 376–77. 36. Galileo, Dialogue, 376–77. 37. Galileo, Dialogue, 101. 38. Feynman, The Character of Physical Laws, 58. 39. Galileo, Dialogue, 101–2. 40. Gary Hatfield, “Metaphysics and the New Science,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 118–28. 41. Hatfield, 128–43. 42. Galileo, Dialogue, 103. 43. J. Dietz Moss, “The Rhetoric of Proof in Galileo’s Writings on the Copernican System” in The Galileo Affair, 41–65. 44. Galileo, Dialogue, 103. 45. Galileo, Dialogue, 104. 46.Giorgio de Santillana, “Necessity, Contingency, and Natural Law,” in Reflections on Men and Ideas, with a Foreword by H. R. Trevor-Roper (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press, 1968), 74–79. 47. Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615),” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. by Stillman Drake, with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1957), 206–07. 48. G. V. Coyne and U. Baldini, “The Young Bellarmine’s Thoughts on World Systems,” in The Galileo Affair, 107–08. 49. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 55. 50. Galileo, Letter, 212–13. 51. Dupré, 229. 52. J. M. Zycinski, “Why Galileo’s Research Program Superceded Rival Programs,” in The Galileo Affair, 142. 53. Stillman Drake, Galileo Studies: Personality, Tradition, and Revolution (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1970), 63–78. 54. G. E. R. LLoyd, Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 257–67. 55. Bodde, 173–94. 56. Bodde, 317. 57. Bodde, 318. 58. Drake, Galileo Studies, 77.

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Notes to chapter 9 1. For the central place of Galileo in the rise of modern science, see Koyré, Galileo Studies. 2. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 67–68. 3. Galileo Galilei, Two New Sciences: Including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion, trans. Stillman Drake, with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake, (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press 1974), 147. 4. Westman, “The Copernicans and the Churches,” 76–77. 5. Stillman Drake, “Introduction,” Two New Sciences: Including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion, Galileo Galilei, trans. Stillman Drake, with an Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake, (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press 1974), xxi. 6. Drake, “Introduction,” xi. 7. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 15. 8. Drake, “Introduction,” xxi. 9. Zycinski, 135–48. 10. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 148. 11. Drake, “Introduction,” xxiii. 12. Galileo, Dialogue, 19. 13. Galileo, Dialogue, 19. 14. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 193–94. 15. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 159. 16. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 153. 17. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 154. 18. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 159–60. 19. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 161. 20. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 158–59. 21. Drake, “Introduction,” xxviii. 22. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 158–59. 23. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 181–83. 24. Koyré, Galileo Studies, 176. 25. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 162. 26. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 165. 27. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 217. 28. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 221. 29. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 229. 30. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 235. 31. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 232–33. 32. Needham, Science and Civilization, 3:156. 33. Burtt, 86–87.

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34. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 54–55. 35. Burtt, 64–65. 36. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 225. 37. Zycinski, 143–47; W. A. Wallace, Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 332–33, 346, 340–41. 38. Drake, “Introduction,” xix. 39. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 197. 40. Galileo, Two New Sciences, 197–98. 41. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 7–8. 42. Thomas Kuhn, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 240–66. 43. Gillispie, 5–7. 44. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 31. 45. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 124. Notes to chapter 10 1. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. 2. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 2. 3. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 2. 4. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952); From Enlightenment to Revolution, ed. John Hallowell (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1975). 5. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religions, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). 6. Ian Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism, trans. H. S. Wiesner and the author (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992). 7. Steve McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of Modernity (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). 8. Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, 2:294–95. 9. Jonas, 148–53. 10. Corpus Hermeticum 6. 4a. 11. Jonas, 57. 12. Jonas, 43. 13. Corpus Hermeticum 6. 2a. 14. Jonas, 169–73. 15. Jonas, 154–55. 16. Jonas, 155–61. 17. Jonas, 150–51; 161–65. 18. Jonas, 96–97.

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19..Corpus Hermeticum 2. 1. 20. Corpus Hermeticum 2. 6a. 21. Corpus Hermeticum 2. 8a. 22. Corpus Hermeticum 2. 13. 23. Corpus Hermeticum 2. 12a and 12b. 24. Corpus Hermeticum 16. 3. 25. Corpus Hermeticum 16. 12. 26. Corpus Hermeticum 16. 17 and 18. 27. Corpus Hermeticum 18 and 19. 28. Corpus Hermeticum 8. 2, 3, and 4. 29. Corpus Hermeticum 14. 7. 30. Corpus Hermeticum 16. 13. 31. Corpus Hermeticum 16. 14. 32. Corpus Hermeticum 16. 15. 33. Corpus Hermeticum 9. 1c. 34. Corpus Hermeticum 9. 5. 35. Corpus Hermeticum 9. 3. 36. Corpus Hermeticum 7. 2b and 3. 37. Jonas, 165–69; Yates, 4. 38. Corpus Hermeticum 13. 7a and 7b. 39. Yates, 26. 40. Jonas, 152–53; 264–65. 41. Jonas, 44. 42. Mircea Eliade, Yoga, Immortality, and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series, vol. 56 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 274– 92. 43. Asclepius 3. 39. 44. Asclepius 3. 31. 45. Asclepius 3. 31. 46. Asclepius 3. 20a. 47. Asclepius 3. 20a and 20b. 48. Asclepius 3. 20b and 21. 49. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 80–82. 50. Asclepius 3. 24b. 51. Asclepius 3. 29b. 52. Asclepius 3. 23a and 23b. 53. Asclepius 1. 6a. 54. Asclepius 1. 8. 55. Asclepius 1. 11b. 56. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 2:296. 57. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 99. 58. Yates, 62.

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59. Yates, 9. 60. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 2:299–300. 61. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 2:300. 62. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 85–86. Pico Della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis, with an Introduction by Paul J. W. Miller (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1965), 4–5. 63. Yates, 266. 64. Giordano Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, Third Dialogue: Second Part, trans. and ed. Arthur D. Imerti, with an Introduction and Notes by Arthur D. Imerti (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 239. Yates, 268. 65. Giordano Bruno The Ash Wednesday Supper: La Cena De Le Ceneri, First Dialogue, trans. Stanley L. Jaki, with an Introduction by Stanley L. Jaki (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 59. 66. Yates, 237. 67. Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, 61–62. 68. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 4. 69. Yates, 272. 70. Giordano Bruno, Des Fureurs Héroïques, Seconde Partie, Dialogue I, trans. Paul-Henri Michel (Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1954), 304. Yates, 279. 71. Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis. 72. Yates, 269. 73. Yates, 269. 74. Sidney Greenberg, The Infinite in Giordano Bruno (New York: King’s Crown Press, 1950), 160; Yates, 243. 75. Yates, 236–37; 353. 76. Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance, 84. 77. This is the theme of both Koyré in From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, and Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. 78. Ricoeur, 306. 79. C. J. Jung and C. Kerérnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 14. 80. Blumenberg, 549–50. 81. Robert S. Westman, “Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered,” in Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, March 9, 1974, with an Introduction by Lynn White Jr. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), 5–91. 82. Westman, 68–72. 83. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 3:259. 84. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 3:259. 85. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1980).

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86. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 105. 87. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 104–05. 88. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 106–08. 89. For the operational definitions of scientific laws, see Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality: A Philosophy of Modern Physics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), 285, 295, 495; on the distinction between a physicist and a mathematician, see Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1963–5); also see Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Laws, 15; on the general experimental nature of knowledge, see Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 49–63; also see Andreas G. M. van Melsen, Science and Technology (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1961); also see Andreas G. M. van Melsen, Physical Science and Ethics (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 1967); on the Marxist view on changing the world through work and changing human nature, see Sidney Hook, From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1976). 90. Dumézil, L’idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens. 91. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3:187–88. 92. Langdon Gilkey, Religion and the Scientific Future: Reflections on Myth, Science, and Theology (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970), 79. Notes to chapter 11 1. Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, vol. 2: Meditations on First Philosophy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 3. 37. 2. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 38. 3. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 40. 4. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 42. 5. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 45. 6. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 46. 7. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 52. 8. Descartes, Meditations, 3. 52. 9. St. Augustine Confessions 7. 10. 10. Descartes, Meditations, 4. 53. 11. Descartes, Meditations, 4. 55. 12. Descartes, Meditations, 5. 63–64. 13. Descartes, Meditations, 5. 64. 14. Descartes, Meditations, 5. 70. 15. Descartes, Meditations, 5. 71. 16. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, 98–112.

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17. Howard Gardner, The Quest for Mind: Piaget, Lévi-Strauss, and the Structuralist Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). 18. Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, with an Introduction by A.D. Vecchio, The Science Classics Library, eds. D.D. Runes and T. Kiernan (New York: Philosophical Library, 1964), xxi. 19. Newton, Principles, 544. 20. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 3:261. 21. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 5. See also Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy: or “The Hunting of the Green Lyon” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 22. Newton, Principles, 2–3. 23. Newton, Principles, 6. 24. Newton, Principles, 6. 25. Newton, Principles, 8. 26. Newton, Principles, 6–7. 27. Newton, Principles, 9. 28. Newton, Principles, 7. 29. Newton, Principles, 12. 30. Newton, Principles, 13. 31. Newton, Principles, 20. 32. Newton, Principles, 8. 33. Newton, Principles, 397. 34. Newton, Principles, 398–99. 35. Newton, Principles, 400. 36. Peter Dear, Discipline & Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution, Science and Its Conceptual Foundations, ed. David L. Hull, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 242. 37. Newton, Principles, 404–05. 38. Newton, Principles, 398–99. 39. Newton, Principles, 406–7. 40. Newton, Principles, 410–14. 41. Newton, Principles, 420. 42. See Richard S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanism and Mechanics, 4th ed. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 43. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 53–54. 44. Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius, 8–9. 45. Eugene M. Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought (New York: University Press of America, 1985), 33. 46. Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 23.

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47. Newton, Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan, with an Introduction by H. McLachlan (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1950), 37. 48. Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius, 6. 49. Newton, Theological Manuscripts, 54. 50. Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius, 83. 51. Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius, 83. 52. Newton, Theological Manuscripts, 56. 53. Newton, Principles, 543. 54. Newton, Principles, 546–47. 55. Richard S. Westfall, Force in Newton’s Physics: The Science of Dynamics in the Seventeenth Century (London: Macdonald & Company, 1971), 367. 56. Westfall, Force, 512. 57. Westfall, Force, 398. 58. Newton, Principles, 545. 59. Newton, Principles, 546. 60. Newton, Principles, 544. 61. Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius, 159–60. 62. See Dobbs, The Janus Face of Genius, 165–66. 63. Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, 254. 64. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 3:261. 65. See J. E. McGuire, “Neoplatonism and Active Principles: Newton and the Corpus Hermeticum,” in Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution: Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, March 9, 1974, 95–133, with an Introduction by Lynn White Jr. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). 66. See James Force, “Newton’s God of Dominion: The Unity of Newton’s Theological, Scientific, and Political Thought,” in Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology, eds. James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 75–102. 67. Newton, Principles, 17. 68. The rise of natural science to a position of dominance over Christianity is a complex issue. For three different reconstructions of this process see Richard S. Westfall Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, Ann Arbor Paperbacks (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1973); Michael J. Buckley S.J., At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); and Michael Hunter, “Science and Heterodoxy: An Early Modern Problem Reconsidered,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 437–460. 69. See Margaret C. Jacob, “Christianity and the Newtonian Worldview,” in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, eds. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), 238–55.

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70. Roger Hahn, “Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe,” 56–76. 71. Laplace, Theorie Analytique des Probabilities, Oeuvres VII, (Paris: 1847), 464. 72. Burtt, 10. 73. Lévi-Strauss, 15–22. 74. St. Augustine Confessions 11. 31. Notes to chapter 12 1. Raffaele Pettazoni, The all-knowing God; researches into early religion and culuture, trans. H. J. Rose (London: Methuen, 1956), 6. 2. Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, trans. A. M. Duncan, with an Introduction and Notes by A. M. Duncan (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), 50. 3. Robert S. Westman, “Proof, poetics, and patronage: Copernicus’s preface to De revolutionibus,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, eds. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 167–206. 4. Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 354–55. 5. Albert Einstein, Einstein on Peace, ed. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), 282. 6. Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973), 111–12. 7. Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 25. 8. Boyer, The History of the Calculus, 275. 9. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 1. 10. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, 1. 11. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, 1. 12. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, 1–2. 13. Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, 2. 14..Einstein, The Meaning of Relativity, 2–3. 15. Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function, trans. William Swabey and Marie Swabey (Chicago: Dover, 1953), 402. 16. Cassierer, Substance and Function, 358. 17. Cassirer, Substance and Function, 358. 18. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 31. 19. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 208. 20. Cassirer, Substance and Function, 402. 21. van der Leeuw, 1:71. 22. van der Leeuw, 1:73–74.

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23. Holton, 375–76. 24. Boyer, 272–73. 25. Boyer, 309. 26. Eliade, Patterns, 147–50. 27. Aloys Wenzl, “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Viewed from the Standpoint of Critical Realism, and Its Significance for Philosophy,” in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P. A. Schilpp, The Library of Living Philosophers (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1957), 581–606. 28. Erwin Schrödinger, Science and the Human Temperament, trans. James Murphy and W. H. Johnston (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1935), 52–80. 29. Alfred N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1968). 30. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” in Uncommon Sense, eds. N. Metropolis, Gian-Carlo Rota, and David Sharp (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1984), 68. 31. Eliade, Patterns, 254. 32. van der Leeuw, 1:92. 33. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 213. 34. Holton, 375–76. Part 3 Notes to chapter 13 1. José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1932), 78–96, 107–14. 2. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 23–42. 3. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences. 4. Otto, 23–24. 5. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 287–315. 6. Robert Haardt, Gnosis: Character and Testimony, trans. J. F. Hendry (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 171. 7. Yates, 237. 8. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Uncommon Sense,” 57–66. 9. Ricoeur, 315–16. 10. See Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, trans. James Cleugh (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958). 11. See Georges Dumézil, L’ idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens. 12. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 306. 13. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 304. 14. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 308. 15. Holton, 29.

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16. Holton, 242 17. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, 534–35. 18. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, 535–36. 19. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, 536. 20. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, 469. 21. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, 378. 22. Einstein, Einstein on Peace, 378. 23. Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality. 24. For the controversy between Bohr and Einstein, see Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist The Library of Living Philosophers, (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1957). 25. Niels Bohr, “Atomic Theory and the Fundamental Principles Underlying the Description of Nature,” 102–19. 26. Neils Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), 90–91. 27. Holton, 149–50. 28. Bohr, Atomic Physics, 13–22. 29. Bohr, Atomic Physics, 67–82. 30. Bohr, Atomic Physics, 67–82. 31. Richard Courant, “Fifty Years of Friendship,” in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by his Friends and Colleagues, ed. S. Rozental (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967), 304. See also Werner Heisenberg, “Quantum Theory and Its Interpretation,” in Niels Bohr, 94–108. 32. Bohr, “Open Letter to the United Nations,” in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by his Friends and Colleagues, ed. S. Rozental (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967), 347. 33. Bohr, “Open Letter,” 345. 34. Bohr, Atomic Physics, 23–31. 35. Holton, 375–76. 36. Holton, 375–76. 37. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences, 137. 38. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, with a Foreword by Jacques Barzun (New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1958), 157–206. Notes to chapter 14 1. Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, The Gifford Lectures 1989– 1991, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 28. For other attempts to relate Christianity to modern science see Arthur Peacocke, Intimations of Reality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984); and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1959).

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2. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 269–70. For an example of process theology see John B. Cobb, Jr. and David Ray Griffen, Process Theology: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976). 3. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 30. 4. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature. 5. Stephen Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), 255. 6. Toulmin, 260. 7. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 363–65. 8. Collingwood, The Idea of History, 205–301. 9. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, 174–77; Collingwood, The Idea of History, 15–20; see also Benedetto Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, trans. Sylvia Sprigge (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1970). 10. See Mary Hesse, “Physics, Philosophy, and Myth,” in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, eds. Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J., with a Preface by George V. Coyne, S.J. (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 185–99. 11. The text from which the passage by Oppenheimer was taken has a structure almost identical with tantric Yoga. See Eliade, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom, 267–73. 12. Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos, 99. 13. Burtt, 117–27. 14. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 288. 15. Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, 319. 16. Stevin Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, Science and Its Conceptual Foundations, Edited by David L. Hull (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 310–11. 17. Jung and Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology, 2. 18. Shapin, 185–86. 19. Helen E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 219. 20. Karl Barth, Insights: Karl Barth’s Reflections on the Life of Faith, trans. by O. C. Dean Jr. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 70. 21. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, ed. G. Bromiley and T. Torrance, trans. T. Parker, W. Johnston, H. Knight, and J. Haire (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1976), pt. 1, 351. 22. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2: pt. 1, 353. 23. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2: pt. 1, 355. 24. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2: pt. 1, 355. 25. Levinas, 178. 26. Levinas, 181.

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27. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2: pt. 1, 355. 28. Romans 11:30–32 NEB (New English Bible). 29. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th ed. trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 417–21. Notes to chapter 15 1. J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Uncommon Sense,” in Uncommon Sense, eds. N. Metropolis, Gian-Carlo Rota, and David Sharp (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1984), 66. 2. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1977). 3. Levinas, Totality and Infinity. 4. For a similar discussion of the interrelation of philosophy, history, and human communication, see Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, with an Introduction by Charles A. Kelbley, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, ed. John Wild (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965); for a discussion of myth as the foundation of a community, see Joachim Wach, The Comparative Study of Religions, ed. Joseph M. Kitagawa, with an Introduction by Joseph M. Kitagawa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 121. 5. For a comparison of myth and scientific concepts as two distinct types of language, see Ian G. Barbour, Myths Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) and Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), 238–70. 6. Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun, trans. Klara Glowczewska Kindle Edition (New York: Random House, 2001), 191. 7. José Ortega Y Gasset, Man and People, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963), 150. 8. Ortega Y Gasset, Man and People, 151. 9. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” in Uncommon Sense, 72. 10. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 73. 11. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 74. 12. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 72–73. 13. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 30–31. 14. Cassirer, Substance and Function, 352–66. 15. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 67. 16. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 75. 17. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 75. 18. Oppenheimer, “An Open House,” 76. 19. Susanne Katherine Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the

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Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951), 43. 20. Cassirer, Substance and Function, 411–19; for another discussion of the relation of space and time to scientific activity see Alfred N. Whitehead, The Principle of Relativity with Applications to Physical Science (London: The Cambridge University Press, 1922); see also Hermann Weyl, Space, Time, and Matter, trans. Henry L. Brose (New York: Dover Publications, 1952). 21. Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, 296. 22. Langer, 21. 23. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 75. 24. For a discussion of the issues by several prominent philosophers, see Ernan McMullin, ed., Construction and Constraint: The Shaping of Scientific Rationality, with a Foreword by Vaughn McKim, Studies in Science and the Humanities from the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, vol. 1 (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). See Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism, The Paul Carus Lectures (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1987). 25. Charles Sanders Pierce, Philosophical Writings, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 23–41. 26. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 2–6. Notes to Epilogue 1. Immanuel Wallerstein, European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power (New York: The New Press, 2006). 2. Thomas, F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 72. 3. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 75. 4. Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Laws, 58. 5. Feynman, “What Do You Care, 245. 6. Feynman, “What Do You Care, 245. 7. Feynman, “What Do You Care, 248.

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Selected Bibliography Adkins, Arthur W. H. “Myth, Philosophy, and Religion in Ancient Greece.” In Myth and Philosophy. Edited by Frank Reynolds and David Tracy. The SUNY Series Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Religions, Edited by Frank Reynolds and David Tracy. 95-130. Albany: State University of New York, 1990. Allen Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Edited by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. Allison, David B. “Introduction.” In Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs by Jacques Derrida. Translated by David B. Allison. Introduction by David B. Allison. Preface by Newton Garver. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Edited by John Wild. xxxi-xlii. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Anselm, Saint Proslogion. Aristotle Metaphysica. Aristotle Physica. Asaṅga. On Knowing Reality: The Tattvārtha Chapter of Asaṅga’s Bodhisattvabhūmi. Translated by Janice Dean Willis. Introduction and Notes by Janice Dean Willis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Asclepius. Augustine, Saint Confessions. Barbour, Ian G. Issues in Science and Religion. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. ———. Myths Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. ———. Religion in an Age of Science. The Gifford Lectures 1989–1991, Vol. 1. San Francisco: Harper, 1990. Barth, Karl. Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946–52. London: SCM Press Ltd., 1954. ———. Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of his Theological Scheme, 2nd ed. Translated by Ian W. Robertson. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960. ———. Church Dogmatics, Vol. 2, The Doctrine of God. Edited by G. Bromiley and T. Torrance. Translated by T. Parker, W. Johnston, H. Knight, and J. Haire. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1976.

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———. Insights: Karl Barth’s Reflections on the Life of Faith. Translated by O. C. Dean Jr. Louisville: Westminster-John Knox Press, 2009. ———. The Epistle to the Romans, 6th ed. Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskyns. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1967. Bhagavadgītā. Translated by Kees W. Bolle. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979. Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Translated by Robert M. Wallace. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought. Edited by Thomas McCarthy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M. I. T. Press, 1983. Bodde, Derk. Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. Bohr, Niels. Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958. ———. “Open Letter to the United Nations.” In Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by his Friends and Colleagues. Edited by S. Rozental. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967. ———. “The Atomic Theory and the Fundamental Principles Underlying the Description of Nature.” In Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature. 102–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934. Bolle, Kees W. The Enticement of Religion. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. ——— The Freedom of Man in Myth. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968. Boyer, Carl B. The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development (The Concepts of the Calculus). Foreword by Richard Courant. New York: Dover Publications, 1949. Bricmont, Jean and Alan Sokal. Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York: Picador, 1999. Bruno, Giordano. The Ash Wednesday Supper: La Cena De Le Ceneri. Translated by Stanley L. Jaki. Introduction by Stanley L. Jaki. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. ———. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast. Translated and Edited by Arthur D. Imerti. Introduction and Notes by Arthur D. Imerti. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964. ———. Des Fureurs Héroïques, Seconde Partie, Dialogue I. Translated by PaulHenri Michel. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1954. Buckley S.J., Michael J. At the Origins of Modern Atheism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

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Buddhist Wisdom Books: Containing The Diamond Sutra and The Heart Sutra. Translated by Edward Conze. Notes by Edward Conze. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1958; paperback ed., San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1972. Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Translated by John Raffan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985. Burtt, Edwin A. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science: A Historical and Critical Essay. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967. Casanovas, J. “The Problem of the Annual Parallax in Galileo’s Time.” In The Galileo Affair: A Meeting of Faith and Science (Proceedings of the Cracow Conference 24 to 27 May 1984). Edited by G. V. Coyne, S.J., M. Heller, and J. Zycinski. 67–74. Vatican City State: Specola Vaticana, 1985. Cassirer, Ernst. The Individual and the Cosmos. Translated by Mario Domandi. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. ———. Substance and Function. Translated by William Swabey and Marie Swabey. Chicago: Dover, 1953. Chang, Kwang-chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. ———. Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983. ———. Shang Civilization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Chandogya Upanishad. Cherniss, Harold. Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Octagon Books, 1964. Cobb, John B. Jr. and David Ray Griffen, Process Theology: An Introduction. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976. Cohen, H. Floris. The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Collingwood, R. G. An Essay on Metaphysics. Philosophical Essays, Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. ———. The Idea of History with Lectures 1926–1928. Revised ed. Edited by Jan van der Dussen. Introduction by Jan van der Dussen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). ———. The Idea of Nature. London: Oxford University Press, 1960; reprint ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1981. Conze, Edward. Buddhism: Its Essence and Development. Preface by Arthur Waley. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, Ltd., 1951; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1959. ———. Buddhist Thought in India: Three Phases of Buddhist Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1962. Copernicus. On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Translated by A. M. Duncan. Introduction and Notes by A. M. Duncan. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976.

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Cornford, Francis M. Plato and Parmenides. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950. Corpus Hermeticum. Courant, Richard. “Fifty Years of Friendship.” In Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by his Friends and Colleagues. Edited by S. Rozental. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967. Croce, Benedetto. History as the Story of Liberty. Translated by Sylvia Sprigge. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1970. Couliano, Ian. The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism. Translated by H. S. Wiesner and the author. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992. Coyne, G. V. and Baldini, U. “The Young Bellarmine’s Thoughts on World Systems.” In The Galileo Affair: A Meeting of Faith and Science (Proceedings of the Cracow Conference 24 to 27 May 1984). Edited by G. V. Coyne, S.J., M. Heller, and J. Zycinski. 101–10. Vatican City State: Specola Vaticana, 1985. Dear, Peter. Discipline & Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. Science and Its Conceptual Foundations. Edited by David L. Hull. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Democritus. de Rachewiltz, Igor. “Yeh-Lü Ch’u-Ts’ai (1189–1243): Buddhist Idealist and Confucian Statesman.” In Confucian Personalities. Edited by Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett. Stanford Studies in the Civilizations of Eastern Asia. 189–216. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962. de Santillana, Giorgio. “Necessity, Contingency, and Natural Law.” In Reflections on Men and Ideas. Foreword by H. R. Trevor-Roper. 71–81. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press, 1968. ———. “Prologue to Parmenides.” In Reflections on Men and Ideas. Foreword by H. R. Trevor-Roper. 82–119. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press, 1968. ———. “Scientific Rationalism.” In Reflections on Men and Ideas. Foreword by H. R. Trevor-Roper. 231–70. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M. I. T. Press, 1968. Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Translated by David B. Allison. With an Introduction by David B. Allison. With a Preface by Newton Garver. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Edited by John Wild. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Descartes. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, Vol. 1: Early Writings.

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London: Cambridge University Press, 1985. ———. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, Vol. 2: Meditations on First Philosophy. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Dijksterhuis, Edward J. The Mechanization of the World Picture. Translated by C. Dikshoorn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. Dix, Gregory. The Shape of the Liturgy. London: Dacre Press, 1945. Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy: or “The Hunting of the Green Lyon”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Drake, Stillman. Galileo Studies: Personality, Tradition, and Revolution. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1970. ———. “Introduction.” In Two New Sciences: Including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion by Galileo Galilei. Translated by Stillman Drake. Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake. ix–xxx. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. Duhem, Pierre. To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo. Translated by Edmund Doland and Chaninah Maschler. Introduction by Stanley Jaki. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Duméry, Henry. Phenomenology and Religion: Structures of the Christian Institution. Hermeneutics: Studies in the History of Religions. Edited by Kees W. Bolle. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975. ———. The Problem of God in Philosophy of Religion. Translated by Charles Courtney. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Dupré, Louis. Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Durkheim, Emile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: The Free Press, 1965. Dumézil, Georges. L’idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens. Collection Latomus, Vol. 31. Bruxelles: Berchem, 1958. Einstein. Einstein on Peace. Edited by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960. ———. The Meaning of Relativity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950. Einstein and Leopold Infeld. The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Eliade, Mircea. A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusian Mysteries. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978. ———. A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Chicago: The

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University of Chicago Press, 1982. ———. Patterns in Comparative Religion. Translated by R. Sheed. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958. ———. The Forge and the Crucible. Translated by S. Corrin. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962. ———. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by W. R. Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959. ———. The Two and the One. Translated by J. M. Cohen. New York: Harper & Row. ———. Yoga, Immortality and Freedom. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series, Vol. 56. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Feynman, Richard P. The Character of Physical Laws. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1965. Feynman, Richard P. (as told to Ralph Leighton), “What Do You Care What Other People Think?”: Further Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988. Feynman, Richard P., Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Lecturers on Physics: Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat. 6th ed. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. 1. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1977. Force, James E. “Newton’s God of Dominion: The Unity of Newton’s Theological, Scientific, and Political Thought.” In Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology. Edited by James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin. 75–102. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. Foster, Michael. “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science.” In Creation: The Impact of an Idea. Edited by Daniel O’Connor and Francis Oakley. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Freeman, Kathleen. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1978. Funkenstein, Amos. Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Galileo. “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615).” In Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. Translated by Stillman Drake. 173–216. Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1957. ———. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World System-Ptolemaic & Copernican. Translated by Stillman Drake. Notes by Stillman Drake.

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Gusdorf, Georges. Mythe et métaphysique: introduction a la philosophie. Paris: Flammarion, 1953. Haardt, Robert. Gnosis: Character and Testimony. Translated by J. F. Hendry. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971. Hahn, Roger. “Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe.” In God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Edited by David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers. 256–76. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Hatfield, Gary. “Metaphysics and the New Science.” In Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Edited by David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman. 91–166. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Heath, Thomas Little. A History of Greek Mathematics, Vol. 1: From Thales to Euclid. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1921. Heisenberg, Werner. “Quantum Theory and Its Interpretation.” In Niels Bohr: His Life and Work as Seen by his Friends and Colleagues. Edited by S. Rozental. 94–108. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1967. Heller, M. “Galileo’s Relativity.” In The Galileo Affair: A Meeting of Faith and Science (Proceedings of the Cracow Conference 24 to 27 May 1984). Edited by G. V. Coyne, S.J., M. Heller, and J. Zycinski. 113–24. Vatican City State: Specola Vaticana, 1985. Henderson, John B. The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press: 1984. Heraclitus. Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. EvelynWhite. New York: Macmillan, 1914. Hesiod. Theogony: Works and Days. Translated by Dorothy Wender. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973. Hesse, Mary. “Cosmology as Myth.” Concilium 166 (1983):49–54. ———. “Physics, Philosophy, and Myth.” In Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding. Edited by Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J. Preface by George V. Coyne, S.J. 185–99. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Hodgson, Marshal G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in World Civilization, 3 Vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Hoffmann, Banesh. Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel. New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1973. ———. The Strange Story of the Quantum: An Account for the General Reader of the Growth of the Ideas Underlining Our Present Atomic Knowledge. 2d ed. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1959. Holton, Gerald. Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973.

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Hook, Sidney. From Hegel to Marx: Studies in the Intellectual Development of Karl Marx. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1976. Hooykaas, R. Natural Law and Divine Miracle: The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology and Theology. 2d ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963. ———. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973. Hunter, Michael. “Science and Heterodoxy: An Early Modern Problem Reconsidered.” In Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Edited by David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman. 437–460. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Huff, Toby E. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1977. ———. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Iamblichus, The Life of Pythagoras. In The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings Which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy. Compiled and Edited by K. S. Guthrie. Introduction by D. R. Fideler and Foreword by J. Godwin. 90–91. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987. Jacob, Margaret C. “Christianity and the Newtonian Worldview.” In God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Edited by David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers. 238–55. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Jaeger, Werner. The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1948. Jaki, Stanley L. The Road of Science and the Ways to God, The Gifford Lectures 1974–75 and 1975–76. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Foreword by Jacques Barzun. New York: The New American Library, Inc., 1958. Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. Jung, C. G., and C. Kerényi. Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Bollingen Series, Vol. 22. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jungk, Robert. Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists. Translated by James Cleugh. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958.

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Kalupahana, David J. In The Philosophy of the Middle Way by Nāgārjuna. Translated by David J. Kalupahana. Introduction by David J. Kalupahana. SUNY Series in Buddhist Studies, Edited by Kenneth K. Inada. SUNY Series in Buddhist Studies, Edited by Kenneth K. Inada. 1–98. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986. Kapuscinski, Ryszard. The Shadow of the Sun. Translated by Klara Glowczewska. Kindle Edition. New York: Random House, 2001. Kerényi, Karl. Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence. Translated by R. Manheim, Bollingen Series, no. 65, Vol. 1. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963. ———. “The Trickster in Relation to Greek Mythology.” Translated by R.C. Hull. In Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. 173–91. New York: Schocken, 1978. Kepler, Johannes. Mysterium Cosmographicum: The Secret of the Universe. Translated by A. M. Duncan. Introduction and Commentary by E. J. Aiton, and Preface by I. Bernard Cohen. New York: Abaris Books, 1981. Kierkegaard, Søren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Translated by David Swenson and Walter Lowrie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. ———. The Present Age and Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle. Translated by Alexander Dru. Introduction by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. Kirk, G. S., and R. E. Raven. The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Klaaren, Eugene M. Religious Origins of Modern Science: Belief in Creation in Seventeenth-Century Thought. New York: University Press of America, 1985. Koyré, Alexander. From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1957. ———. Galileo Studies. Translated by J. Mepham. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978. ———. Metaphysics and Measurement: Essays in Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. ———. Newtonian Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Kuhn, Thomas. The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979. ———. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago: The Universisty of Chicago Press, 1977. ———. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol 2, no. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langer, Susanne Katherine. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951.

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index absolute presupposition, 128, 129, 150, 162, 176, 236, 237, 243, 260,263, 284, 296, 304 absolute presuppositions, 35, 36, 37, 43, 68, 86, 110, 120, 126, 127, 131, 143, 155, 156, 157, 162, 164, 170, 172, 174, 181, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 197, 205, 206, 208, 220, 222, 223, 226, 234, 235, 243, 259, 273, 275, 276, 279, 294, 296, 297 absolute time and space, xv, 37, 199, 212, 214, 217, 222, 224, 226, 228, 234, 235, 236, 237, 240, 243, 245, 255 Adkins, 311, 312, 339 Allen, 53, 315, 339, 341 Allison, 313, 315, 339, 342 ancient image, 20, 37, 245, 251, 252, 259, 284 ancient symbolic forms, xxv, 33, 255 Anselm, 127, 128, 129, 130, 136, 151, 197, 235, 280, 320, 321, 339 aphorisms; Chinese manuals of divination, 74 archaic science, 5, 28, 30, 41, 167, 176, 179, 225; its method, 5 Aristotle, 10, 30, 34, 35, 139, 149, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 167, 169, 170, 171, 234, 310, 313, 323, 339, 341, 349 armillary sphere, 95 Asaṅga, ix, 339 Asclepius, 183, 186, 189, 190, 191, 255, 257, 327, 339 astrology, 89, 111, 121, 123, 165, 183, 192, 274 astronomy, 89, 94, 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 110, 112, 131, 145, 153, 155,

165, 227, 283, 292, 304 Attic tragedy, 21 Augustine, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130, 136, 151, 156, 162, 163, 176, 197, 208, 209, 220, 222, 227, 234, 270, 271, 285, 319, 320, 329, 332, 339; tradition of the two books, 117; vision of God as light, 117 authority, xv, 48, 52, 66, 69, 71, 103, 105, 121, 128, 131, 136, 146, 151, 164, 178, 209, 235, 254, 255, 257, 260, 261 Barbour, 269, 295, 296, 302, 334, 335, 336, 337, 339 Barth, xxvi, 276, 277, 278, 281, 320, 321, 335, 336, 339, 340 becoming, 17, 25, 31, 37, 38, 48, 61, 119, 157, 178, 231, 256, 265, 266, 271, 273, 277, 279 being, xxiv, 12, 17, 21, 25, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 119, 120, 125, 126, 157, 178, 180, 189, 231, 233, 242, 243, 260, 262, 265, 266, 271, 273, 278, 279, 303 Berger, 72, 316, 340 Bhagavadgītā, 8, 309, 340 Bible, 116, 122, 163, 218, 222, 277, 309, 319, 321, 323, 336, 351 biblical, 48, 115, 116, 131, 163, 164, 199, 207, 257, 269, 274, 282, 286, 304 Blumenberg, 136, 321, 328, 340 Bodde, 137, 138, 142, 165, 314, 316, 318, 321, 324, 340 Bohr, xvi, 231, 247, 252, 258, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 271, 273, 283, 303, 334, 340, 342, 346

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Bolle, iii, xi, 76, 77, 308, 317, 319, 340, 343 Book of Nature, 116, 138, 156, 163, 164, 174, 222 Boyer, 242, 311, 312, 313, 332, 333, 340 Bricmont, xxi, 308, 340 brothers Hsi and the brothers Ho, 44, 52, 53, 73, 74, 78, 80, 97, 110, 114, 125, 153, 283, 295, 299 Bruno, 131, 136, 155, 165, 181, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 210, 229, 242, 255, 256, 257, 258, 271, 273, 302, 313, 320, 326, 328, 340, 341, 345, 355; destroys the hierarchical medieval cosmos, 195 Buckley, 331, 340 Buddha, xxvii, 9, 27, 39, 313, 343 Buddha, Gautama; example of discovering “essence” by abstraction, 39 Buddhism, 27, 40, 64, 80, 86, 313, 314, 341, 354 Burkert, 34, 313, 341 Burtt, xiv, 143, 144, 161, 307, 322, 323, 325, 326, 328, 332, 335, 341 calendar, 9, 53, 76, 98, 99, 103, 109, 112, 154, 238, 241, 275, 292 Canon of Shun; fluid relation between the social and cosmic orders, 73; touring the world ritually actualizes specific times and spaces, 73 Casanovas, 324, 341 Cassirer, 147, 165, 236, 290, 294, 313, 321, 322, 323, 324, 326, 327, 328, 329, 332, 335, 336, 337, 341; human communities as the foundation of science, 290 causal explanation, 32, 33, 37, 206

chance, 16, 37, 38, 39, 142, 273, 305 Chandogya Upanishad, 4, 309, 341 Chang, 107, 108, 314, 315, 341 change opinion into real knowledge, 161 chaos, 4, 8, 38, 79, 110, 219, 273, 289 Chaos, 7, 21, 23, 25, 26, 158, 231, 247, 253; meeting of earth and sky, 26; symbol of transcendent reality, 21; where earth and sky meet, 21 Cherniss, 11, 341 Chinese astronomers, 95, 96, 97, 98, 107, 109, 112, 113, 238, 239, 294 Chinese astronomy, xxvii, 83, 84, 94, 96, 97, 103, 105, 106, 109, 113, 155, 166, 180, 239, 240, 292, 294, 304; instruments. See armillary sphere, clocks, gnomon, gnomon shadow template, sighting tube, sundial, See Einstein’s basic instruments for comparison Chinese experience of time, 74 Chinese science, 31, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 109, 141, 176, 178, 182, 236; induction, 91 Chingis Khan, 64, 65, 66, 79 Chou, 45, 46, 47, 56, 96, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107 Christian, ix, xiv, xxvi, xxviii, 115, 116, 117, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130, 131, 136, 138, 140, 146, 149, 151, 156, 163, 164, 197, 198, 199, 235, 256, 273, 275, 288, 301, 302, 319, 321, 343, 344 clocks, 96, 102, 234, 236, 237, 299 close relation between mythical imagery to empirical science in the construction of theories, 107 Cobb, 335, 341 Cohen, 138, 321, 322, 323, 341, 344, 348

index Collingwood, xviii, 35, 144, 145, 146, 269, 270, 271, 272, 276, 284, 313, 314, 320, 322, 329, 335, 341; “essential” historical act rethinking the ideas of someone else while aware that one is doing so, 270; conception of time identical to Augustine’s, 270; failure of modern cosmologists, 271; history must replace cosmology, 272 Columbus, xxii, 195, 196 Confucian, xxvii, 44, 45, 46, 52, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 90, 91, 92, 93, 103, 110, 112, 125, 131, 138, 165, 206, 258, 275, 315, 316, 342, 355 Confucian canon, 46 Confucianism, 27, 64, 86 Confucius, xxvii, 46, 123, 275 converting in the West from being to becoming, 141 Conze, 313, 341 Copernican, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 169, 181, 197, 229, 298, 303, 321, 323, 324, 344, 348, 350 Copernicus, 155, 181, 229, 332, 341, 354 Cornford, 311, 342 Corpus Hermeticum, 183, 184, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193, 206, 222, 226, 255, 326, 327, 331, 342 cosmic, xiv, xix, xxiii, 15, 26, 47, 68, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81, 92, 138, 175, 194, 202, 229, 245, 275, 284 Cosmo de’ Medici, 193 cosmogonic myths, 53, 77, 81, 158, 225, 228, 290, 293, 295; working definition, xviii cosmos, xiv, xv, xix, xxiii, 3, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 23, 25, 31, 53, 68, 72, 74, 77, 78, 81, 97, 117, 125, 127, 130,131, 142, 143, 145, 146,

359

147, 150, 151, 153, 158, 166, 171, 172, 174, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 199, 201, 202, 209, 220, 222, 237, 239, 246, 247, 255, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 278, 279, 284, 289, 298; working definition, xix Couliano, 326, 342 Courant, 311, 334, 340, 342 Coyne, 323, 324, 335, 341, 342, 346, 349, 350, 354, 355 Croce, xviii, 335, 342 Cusa, ix, 136, 150, 151, 154, 160, 190, 197, 232, 322, 323, 326, 327, 328, 350 Cusanus, 136, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 160, 161, 165, 166, 179, 180, 190, 197, 198, 199, 232, 235, 240, 242, 271, 274, 280, 302, 306; and the new, modern ideal of knowledge, 153 de Santillana, 324, 342 de Rachewiltz, 315, 316, 317, 319, 342 Dear, 215, 330, 342 decision for becoming, 37, 141, 273, 303 decision for being, 31, 37, 38, 48, 141, 206, 272, 273 Deleuze, 313, 314, 342 Democritus, 27, 28, 34, 310, 312, 342, 345 denaturalized discourse, 30 Derrida, 36, 37, 61, 62, 313, 339, 342 Descartes, xv, xvi, xxi, 5, 6, 169, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 217, 220, 238, 271, 285, 287, 296, 307, 329, 342, 343; vision of God as light, 208 Dijksterhuis, xiv, xvi, xvii, 307, 343 Dilthey, xviii

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divination, 46, 74, 75, 77, 95, 105, 109, 111 divine logos, 25, 34, 146, 269; symbolic transformation of Chaos, 23 Dix, 123, 320, 343 Dobbs, 212, 222, 330, 331, 343 Drake, 165, 171, 323, 324, 325, 326, 343, 344, 345 Duhem, 155, 323, 343 Duméry, 315, 319, 343 Dumézil, 257, 314, 329, 333, 343 Dupré, 145, 146, 156, 322, 324, 343 Durkheim, 67, 68, 101, 289, 316, 343 Einstein, ix, xvi, 12, 28, 38, 86, 167, 178, 179, 180, 213, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 243, 246, 247, 252, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 267, 271, 272, 273, 290, 294, 303, 312, 323, 325, 326, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337, 343, 345, 346, 352, 354; basic instruments. See Chinese astronomy, instruments for comparison; clocks and rigid bodies, 236; conception of time similar to Augustine’s, 234; his science viewed historically, 234; science is the communication of common experiences, 236; elements that one immediately recognizes as empirical and scientific in the opening passage of the Shuching, 83 Eliade, ix, x, xviii, xix, xxiii, xxiv, 177, 181, 192, 196, 197, 202, 205, xxvii, 6, 10, 15, 19, 34, 37, 53, 207, 212, 219, 223, 225, 227, 228, 67, 77, 78, 81, 86, 87, 147, 153, 244, 245, 247, 252, 257, 269, 292, 295, 298, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 315, 323, 326, 327, 328, 330, 331, 333,

335, 343, 352; succinct summary of Eliade’s model, xviii Eliade’s model; image of a person as a microcosm to be replaced by image of a person as a microcosm of history 286 Eliade’s model; of ritual; sociologically reinterpreted, 67 emblem, 50, 59, 60 Epimetheus, 18, 19, 20, 252, 253, 258 epochē, 60, 61, 62, 75, 94, 241, 266, 284, 285, 296; clarification of the term, 60 essence, xxvii, 10, 24, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41, 50, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 70, 142, 173, 175, 178, 183, 196, 213, 214, 215, 217, 237, 240, 256, 269, 272, 279, 282, 285, 287, 294, 303; working definition, 39 experiences, xxi, xxiv, xxv, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 21, 24, 30, 41, 47, 51, 72, 75, 90, 91, 95, 142, 161, 164, 180, 186, 189, 195, 232, 234, 235, 236, 245, 247, 251, 255, 256, 257, 271, 274, 283, 285, 292, 299 experiment, 159, 171, 178, 219, 237, 290, 291 experimental, xxi, 20, 105, 135, 140, 175, 181, 182, 202, 211, 212, 215, 246, 266, 275, 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, 329 expression, xv, xxi, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 35, 43, 74, 75, 87, 90, 109, 123, 165, 177, 181, 192, 196, 197, 202, 205, 207, 212, 219, 223, 225, 227, 228, 244, 245, 247, 252, 257, 269 expressions, 4, 6, 7, 25, 41, 51, 68, 235, 280, 286, 297 Feynman, xx, xxii, 28, 161, 303, 304, 305, 306, 308, 312, 324, 329, 337, 344

index Ficinus, 193 five elements, 46, 49, 176 Force, 131, 325, 331, 343, 344, 345, 354 Foster, 138, 321, 344 Foucault, xviii, xxv, 6, 308, 309, 344 Freeman, 344 fundamental intuition, 118, 150, 294 fundamental intuitions, 6, 32, 35, 43, 105, 109, 198, 302 Funkenstein, 143, 322, 344 Galileo, xiv, xvi, 6, 28, 32, 86, 135, 138, 143, 150, 151, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 194, 195, 200, 203, 205, 209, 210, 211, 215, 216, 217, 222, 234, 235, 236, 239, 271, 274, 299, 307, 323, 324, 325, 326, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346, 348, 349, 350, 354, 355; creates his own cosmogonic myth thus driving a stake in the heart of the idea that myth is archaic science., 174 Gardner, 330, 345 Gilkey, 203, 329, 345 gnomon, 83, 94, 95, 96, 105, 106, 107, 299 gnomon shadow template, 94, 106, 299 gnosis, 122, 188, 191, 203 Gnosticism, 34, 36, 122, 123, 124, 182, 183, 184, 189, 192, 227, 228, 243, 254, 320, 345, 352 Graham, 139, 321, 345 Granet, 47, 48, 310, 314, 315, 316, 317, 319, 345 Grant, 345 Greenberg, 328, 345

361

Gregg, 320, 345 Grey, 309, 345 Griaule, 309, 345 Griffiths, 312, 313, 345 Gusdorf, 36, 313, 319, 346 Guthrie, 11, 310, 311, 312, 313, 345, 347, 351 Haardt, 333, 346 Hahn, 307, 332, 346 Hatfield, 162, 324, 346 Heath, 311, 312, 346 Heisenberg, 263, 296, 334, 346 Heller, 323, 324, 341, 342, 346, 349, 350, 354, 355 Helmholtz; succinct characterization of the “essence” of Newtonian science, 217 Henderson, 323, 346 Heraclitus, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 119, 178, 231, 243, 252, 262, 266, 272, 273, 310, 312, 346 Hermes Trimegister, 183, 185, 186 Hermetic, 121, 181, 182, 183, 184, 188, 190, 192, 193, 199, 200, 202, 204, 212, 214, 221, 223, 226, 227, 228, 229, 235, 243, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 273, 276, 277, 301, 320, 326, 355 Hermeticism, 121, 122, 131, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 209, 212, 223, 226, 227, 228, 235, 252, 254, 255, 257, 259, 328, 331, 349, 354 Hertz; on the relation of scientific models to the events of nature Galileo’s mature position, 177 Hesiod, 7, 15, 17, 21, 25, 158, 246, 247, 309, 310, 346 Hesse, 335, 346

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heterodox, 90 historical, ix, xiv, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 6, 11, 35, 39, 46, 47, 76, 77, 81, 87, 101, 115, 121, 122, 127, 141, 142, 155, 181, 198, 204, 223, 228, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 276, 278, 279, 285, 288, 293, 298, 303 history, ix, x, xi, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 28, 29, 31, 33, 37, 39, 43, 45, 46, 47, 54, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 110, 111, 116, 118, 123, 124, 125, 140, 143, 144, 155, 165, 166, 168, 178, 187, 196, 198, 199, 201, 202, 210, 218, 226, 227, 228, 232, 234, 241, 242, 245, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 265, 267, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 293, 294, 296, 298, 307, 312, 323, 324, 336; for fundamental ideas about history I use, See Collingwood Hodgson, 202, 307, 329, 346 Hoffmann, 346 Holton, 231, 241, 259, 263, 265, 332, 333, 334, 346 Homer; being of nature, 21 Hook, 329, 347 Hooykaas, 137, 321, 322, 347 how human communities form the foundation of science; my working model of science, 290 Hsia, 46, 47, 56 Huff, 138, 139, 321, 347 Hunter, 331, 347 I would ask the intelligent critic opposed to my thesis to show me examples of significant scientific

work that does not take place in a community that has previously oriented itself by agreement to a number of absolute presuppositions that are paradoxical, symbolic and religious in nature, 297 Iamblichus, 13, 14, 29, 310, 312, 347 image of the earth, 49, 246 imagery, xx, xxi, xxvii, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 24, 26, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, 45, 47, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 63, 67, 69, 70, 73, 75, 77, 78, 80, 88, 90, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 116, 117, 122, 126, 131, 135, 147, 150, 151, 153, 163, 164, 180, 181, 182, 186, 187, 197, 198, 201, 208, 209, 222, 226, 229, 230, 231, 232, 239, 240, 241, 242, 245, 246, 247, 251, 255, 273, 274, 275, 283, 287, 288, 293, 295, 298, 299, 301, 302, 304 imagery of light, 198, 208 images of the earth as mother, 3 Incarnation, 117, 124, 337, 353 infinite machine, xv, xvi, xvii, 199, 247 Jacob, 331, 347 Jaeger, 310, 311, 312, 347 Jaki, 140, 141, 302, 321, 322, 323, 328, 340, 343, 347 James, 267, 311, 331, 333, 334, 344, 347, 352 Jaspers, xxvii Jonas, 183, 184, 326, 327, 347 Jung, 308, 326, 328, 335, 347 Jungk, 333, 347 Kalupahana, 348, 350 Kapuscinski, 348 Kepler, 155, 200, 205, 232, 332, 346, 348 Kirk, 310, 348

index Klaaren, 330, 348 knowledge, xvii, xxvi, 5, 11, 13, 14, 26, 44, 61, 72, 78, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 101, 103, 105, 115, 119, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 140, 143, 144, 149, 152, 153, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 166, 168, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 187, 188, 191, 192, 194, 197, 201, 202, 205, 207, 209, 210, 211, 214, 215, 218, 219, 220, 225, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 234, 236, 237, 238, 240, 245, 247, 255, 256, 263, 264, 265, 271, 272, 275, 276, 280, 284, 288, 289, 291, 292, 296, 297, 305, 306, 329 Kuhn, 88, 131, 156, 178, 251, 297, 317, 321, 326, 333, 348 Langer, 293, 294, 336, 337, 348 Lincoln, 349 Lindberg, 307, 319, 322, 324, 331, 332, 346, 347, 349, 354 liturgy, 10, 78, 123, 125, 218, 273, 277 Lloyd, 33, 34, 313, 323, 349 Long, xiii, 104, 155, 306, 309, 349 Longino, 275, 276, 335, 349 Lubanski, 323, 349 Luckmann, 72, 316, 340 magic, 18, 19, 20, 84, 111, 183, 194, 200, 202, 204, 210, 212, 220, 256, 266 magic and science, 202 magical, 19, 20, 21, 122, 123, 124, 181, 182, 187, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 206, 221, 243, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258 Magus and Artist, 191 Manuel, 330, 349 Margenau, 329, 349 marriage between earth and sky, 50

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marriage of earth and sky, 47, 158, 245 marriage of heaven and earth, 17, 246 marriage of the sky and the earth as foundation of pre-Socratic philosophy, 26 Marxist, 72, 85, 86, 329 mathematical, xiv, xvii, xx, xxi, xxii, 28, 89, 94, 99, 103, 109, 110, 129, 130, 136, 145, 146, 150, 152, 155, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 181, 190, 194, 209, 210, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 224, 225, 227, 228, 232, 233, 236, 237, 241, 244, 246, 247, 271, 272, 274, 280, 292, 294, 296, 298, 299, 306 mathematics, ix, x, xvii, xxi, 24, 32, 89, 94, 105, 109, 151, 154, 169, 172, 176, 210, 215, 233, 234, 238, 242, 246, 304 McKnight, 183, 326, 350 McMullin, 337, 350 McNeil, 321, 350 mechanical, ii, xiv, xv, xvi, xxi, 16, 19, 85, 108, 169, 209, 210, 212, 217, 220, 221, 225, 228, 243, 252, 274, 293 mechanism, xvi, 85, 179, 228, 263, 274, 293 mechanistic, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, 4, 5, 6, 84, 92, 108, 109, 135, 142, 144, 145, 147, 150, 153, 181, 201, 205, 211, 212, 214, 217, 218, 220, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 236, 237, 244, 254, 255, 269, 270, 271, 272, 290, 291, 293, 294, 295, 298, 299, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 338; memory, 118, 120, 191, 194, 209, 227, 234, 256

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Merchant, 328, 350 metaphysics, xxvii, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 87, 88, 103, 110, 111, 112, 125, 130, 131, 135, 167, 177, 181, 196, 221, 259, 299, 303; my working definition, 35 method, ix, xvii, 28, 36, 43, 61, 62, 63, 72, 90, 95, 101, 115, 124, 160, 168, 169, 170, 172, 175, 178, 193, 201, 205, 206, 211, 214, 215, 236, 272, 276, 308 Meyerson, 32, 262, 313, 334, 350; a causal explanation as the attempt by our minds to overcome time, 32 microcosm, xix, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, 41, 60, 63, 90, 104, 117, 151, 153, 161, 194, 201, 269, 272, 274, 275, 283, 285; working definition, xix microcosm of history to replace Eliade’s image of a person as a microcosm, 275 Mirandola, 193, 328, 350 Mlodinow, 314, 350 model, xviii, xix, xxiii, xxiv, xxvii, xxviii, 45, 46, 47, 52, 55, 63, 64, 67, 69, 71, 72, 76, 78, 80, 81, 88, 102, 113, 124, 147, 178, 179, 185, 193, 196, 202, 211, 216, 230, 237, 247, 257, 258, 264, 269, 283, 286, 288, 289, 293, 298; Eliade’s model of ritual sociologically reinterpreted, 67; my model to replace Eliade’s, 286 Moss, 323, 324, 350 mother, xxvi, 15, 16, 124, 245, 246 my thesis; religious symbols provide the foundation for scientific work, 296 myth, xiv, xix, xx, xxii, xxviii, 3, 4, 5, 6, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 68,

74, 77, 81, 87, 88, 101, 105, 109, 113, 114, 116, 121, 131, 136, 138, 147, 151, 156, 158, 164, 165, 167, 174, 176, 181, 182, 183, 193, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 208, 211, 212, 222, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 234, 235, 258, 259, 269, 283, 290, 293, 294, 295, 298, 299, 303, 305, 336, 338 Nāgārjuna, 158, 348, 350 Nakayama, 84, 85, 86, 309, 317, 321, 345, 350, 352 necessity, 16, 18, 38, 162, 163, 189, 221, 241, 276 Needham; images of Yao, Hsi and Ho as a mere substitute for scientific knowledge, 101 Neugebauer, 351 Newton, xvi, 135, 138, 143, 145, 169, 177, 200, 205, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226, 230, 234, 235, 237, 240, 241, 243, 255, 271, 313, 330, 331, 332, 339, 342, 343, 344, 349, 351, 354 Newtonian, 37, 92, 137, 171, 187, 199, 214, 215, 227, 235, 236, 237, 238, 240, 243, 246, 271, 290, 331, 347, 348 Ngaju Dayak, xiii, xiv, xx, xxii, xxvi, 4, 8, 43, 44, 68, 131, 232, 247, 271, 306 Nietzsche, xviii, 20, 37, 38, 273, 313, 342 nominalism, 136, 146, 149, 271, 274 normal science, 88, 251, 297 Ockham, 149 Ögödei, 64, 79 Oppenheimer, 245, 252, 256, 257, 258, 259, 266, 271, 273, 283, 288,

index 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 298, 301, 302, 333, 335, 336, 351 organicism, 85 orthodox, xi, 90, 124, 125, 131, 218, 221, 254, 255 Otto, 9, 309, 310, 311, 332, 333, 343, 351 Parmenides, 10, 11, 12, 13, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 48, 117, 119, 121, 128, 141, 149, 178, 180, 197, 206, 231, 233, 234, 241, 242, 243, 252, 259, 262, 266, 272, 273, 299, 310, 311, 312, 342, 345, 351; solar imagery and knowledge, 10 path, 8, 11, 25, 51, 78, 105, 141, 159, 160, 173, 176, 190, 216, 230, 232, 277 Peacocke, 334, 351 Pelikan, 127, 320, 351 Pettazoni, x, 332, 351 Photius, 312, 351 Pico, 193, 194, 200, 328, 350 Pierce, 337, 351 Plato, 10, 23, 26, 27, 34, 138, 149, 154, 155, 156, 161, 174, 311, 323, 342, 343 Poimandres, 183, 184, 185, 226, 228, 254, 257 Polanyi, 329, 351 Pomponazzi, 201, 227 Popper, 297, 351 primordial man, 18, 19, 20, 252, 253, 258, 266; and experimental technique, 20 Prometheus, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 41, 115, 136, 140, 181, 193, 196, 202, 203, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 299, 310, 311, 348 Putnam, 296, 337, 352 Pythagoras, 13, 14, 23, 29, 32, 41, 152, 202, 299, 310, 311, 312, 345,

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347, 351 Pythagorean theorem, 94, 104 Pythagoreans, 14, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32, 41, 156, 178, 202, 233, 257, 310, 345; crisis of incommensurability, 29 Radin, 311, 348, 352 reason; Taylor’s working definition, 34 Rennie, 308, 352 revelation, 29, 43, 116, 131, 163, 164, 186, 214, 218, 219, 235 revolutionary science, 88, 251 Ricoeur, 20, 21, 36, 115, 257, 274, 311, 313, 315, 319, 320, 328, 333, 335, 336, 352 ritual, xix, 21, 67, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 83, 101, 107, 112, 113, 123, 125, 283, 284, 286, 294, 295, 299, 304 Rudolf, 352 sacred, ix, xix, xxiv, 10, 29, 43, 63, 68, 78, 81, 112, 130, 131, 146, 184, 190, 192, 193, 214, 230, 235, 295; working definition, xxiv Scarborough, 308, 352 Schärer, 43, 68, 307, 309, 314, 316, 352 Schilpp, 333, 334, 352, 354 Schrödinger, 244, 333, 352 Shang, 46, 47, 53, 56, 104, 105, 107, 314, 341 Shapin, 275, 335, 352 Shu-ching, xxvii, xxviii, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 77, 80, 95, 97, 98, 101, 102, 112, 113, 125, 140, 153, 172, 176, 192, 197, 213, 239, 275, 283, 284, 286, 289, 304, 314, 315, 316, 317,

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318; as authoritative model for the creation of society, 71; social order constructs the world, 72 Shun, 47, 54, 55, 56, 63, 64, 70, 73, 75, 80, 93, 95, 315, 316, 318 sidereal year, 94 Smith, 308, 344, 352 Snow, xx, xxi, 274, 293, 307, 353 Sokal, xxi, 302, 308, 340, 353 solar imagery, 181 Solar imagery, 14; and Parmenides, 10; as power that orders the world, 9 solar symbolisms, xxvi, 7, 10, 13, 14, 17, 178, 205, 208, 226, 229, 231, 241, 242, 243, 251; essential structure, 10; form a totality, 9 sovereign ritually enacts society simultaneously enacting a cosmos, 78 Sproul, 353 structure, xi, xviii, xix, xxii, xxv, xxvi, 5, 7, 8, 15, 19, 20, 21, 24, 41, 43, 47, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 71, 72, 78, 80, 87, 88, 92, 99, 111, 112, 118, 119, 120, 146, 153, 158, 161, 162, 165, 174, 176, 178, 181, 184, 185, 186, 189, 212, 226, 228, 229, 236, 241, 253, 254, 256, 257, 260, 266, 267, 269, 273, 283, 285, 291, 292, 295, 299, 301, 310, 335; what symbolic structures are not, xxv sundial, 95 symbolisms, xxvi, xxvii, 3, 9, 14, 15, 17, 24, 123, 153, 232, 241, 242, 243, 245, 246, 247, 266, 278, 286, 288, 299; working definition, 9 symbolizing, 257 Symbolizing; my basic ideas about, xviii symbols, xviii, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii,

xxviii, 5, 24, 36, 43, 47, 51, 56, 58, 62, 68, 72, 81, 83, 85, 87, 88, 103, 109, 115, 141, 147, 211, 226, 228, 236, 241, 242, 243, 247, 271, 279, 280, 301, 302, 305 symmetry, xix, 12, 243 synodic or lunar month, 98 taboo, 20, 43, 255, 256, 258 tao, 27, 47, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 63, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 93, 105, 106, 108, 112, 119, 120, 140, 153, 181, 239 Taoism, 27, 86 Taylor, 34, 313, 353 technical, xxi, 33, 85, 91, 94, 97, 98, 105, 106, 135, 140, 166, 202, 203, 224, 255, 256, 259, 264, 274, 283, 284 technical operation of transforming time into length required an intuition or assumption of an underlying harmony of time and space, 105 technique, ix, 20, 30, 60, 83, 105, 135, 168, 202, 204, 212, 253, 284, 290, 291, 292, 315 The goddess speaks with authority, 25 This study is an attempt to bridge the chasm separating the two cultures, xxii, See my thesis time and space, xiv, 12, 73, 76, 80, 81, 105, 137, 143, 146, 176, 196, 211, 213, 214, 223, 230, 235, 237, 238, 239, 244, 286, 295, 299, 301 Torrance, 301, 335, 337, 339, 353 Toulmin, 270, 335, 353 transhistorical, xix, 182, 272, 276 Trinity, 126, 127, 162, 181, 219, 255 tropical or solar year, 98 Turner, 68, 308, 316, 353

index two cultures, xxi, xxii, 161, 275, 301, 303 Two Cultures, xx, 307, 353 underlying harmony of the spatial and temporal orders, xix, 294 Upanishads, xxvii, 27, 30, 31, 353 van der Leeuw, x, xviii, 308, 309, 311, 332, 333, 353 van Melsen, 312, 329, 353 Varenne, 313, 353 virtue, 44, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 66, 69, 70, 71, 78, 92, 105, 112, 119, 123, 165, 197, 239, 254 Voegelin, 182, 183, 309, 326, 353 Wach, 336, 353 Wallace, 321, 323, 326, 340, 354 Warren, 314, 354 water symbolism suggesting endless potentiality, 16 Way of Opinion, 11 Wenzl, 243, 333, 354 Westfall, 220, 221, 330, 331, 332, 354 Westman, 200, 319, 322, 324, 325, 328, 331, 332, 346, 347, 349, 354 Weyl, 154, 323, 337, 354 Whitehead, 84, 93, 94, 269, 270, 271, 333, 337, 355 working definition of a physical theory, 28 Wright, 86, 315, 316, 342, 355 yang, 17, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 70, 74, 89, 90, 105, 108, 131, 140, 153, 172, 176 Yao, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 63, 64, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81, 83, 97, 102, 110, 113, 114, 121, 125, 153, 273, 283, 295, 299, 314, 315, 316

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Yates, 181, 200, 320, 326, 327, 328, 333, 354, 355 Yeh-lü Ch’u-ts’ai, 64, 65, 66, 79, 80, 111, 112, 258 yin, 17, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 70, 74, 89, 90, 105, 108, 131, 140, 153, 172, 176 Yü, 47, 54, 55, 56, 57, 63, 69, 70, 75, 77, 104, 105, 192, 275, 315, 316 Zeno, 11, 29, 30, 34, 233 Zycinski, 323, 324, 325, 326, 341, 342, 346, 349, 350, 354, 355