by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Greeks were usually at pains to separate and
distinguish clearly what was physis from what was nomos. The word physis can perhaps
best be translated by the English word nature. The physis of things
for the Greek philosopher meant the real nature of things, the underlying
reality behind the appearances, the thread so to speak which persisted through
change. The physis then is the unchanging reality. The antithesis to
this is nomos or law. Nomos is that which exists not by
nature, but by artifice, convention, custom, or usage. It is man-made, and not
part of the everlasting order of the world”.
The
two orders of things, the real and
the artificial, can, and should,
exist side by side.
The
one, however, should by no means be mistaken for the other.
Nor
should the artificial order of things
be elevated to the level of deity, and worshipped, as were the “man-made” idols
of antiquity.
“The
words of the prophets” decry and ridicule this folly (e.g. Jeremiah 10:1-16):
Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. This is what
the Lord says:
‘Do not learn the ways of the nations
or
be terrified by signs in the heavens,
though
the nations are terrified by them.
For the practices of the peoples are worthless;
they
cut a tree out of the forest,
and
a craftsman shapes it with his chisel.
They adorn it with silver and gold;
they
fasten it with hammer and nails
so
it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field,
their
idols cannot speak;
they must be carried
because
they cannot walk.
Do not fear them;
they
can do no harm
nor
can they do any good’.
No one is like you, Lord;
you
are great,
and
your name is mighty in power.
Who should not fear you,
King
of the nations?
This
is your due.
Among all the wise leaders of the nations
and
in all their kingdoms,
there
is no one like you.
They are all senseless and foolish;
they
are taught by worthless wooden idols.
Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish
and
gold from Uphaz.
What the craftsman and goldsmith have made
is
then dressed in blue and purple—
all
made by skilled workers.
But the Lord is the true God;
he
is the living God, the eternal King.
When he is angry, the earth trembles;
the
nations cannot endure his wrath.
Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not
make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the
heavens’.
But God made the earth by his power;
he
founded the world by his wisdom
and
stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar;
he
makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.
He sends lightning with the rain
and
brings out the wind from his storehouses.
Everyone is senseless and without
knowledge;
every
goldsmith is shamed by his idols.
The images he makes are a fraud;
they
have no breath in them.
They are worthless, the objects of mockery;
when
their judgment comes, they will perish.
He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these,
for
he is the Maker of all things,
including Israel, the people of his inheritance—
the
Lord Almighty is his name.
The artificial order
Can
be useful to a point
I already had cause
to visit this subject in Part Two, when
quoting from Dr. Gavin Ardley’s book, Aquinas
and Kant, The Foundations of
the Modern Sciences, (Chapter II: Physis and Nomos, “The Two
Orders”). The usefulness, or utilitarian value of the order of nomos is
apparent from Ardley’s description of the activity of the butcher, by contrast
with that of the anatomist. It is worth re-telling:
Let us consider what is involved in this
process of analysis or dissection. In ‘dissection’ it is instructive to compare
the practices of, say, the anatomist and the butcher. When an anatomist
dissects a rabbit or a sheep he traces out the real structure of the animal. He
lays bare the veins the nerves, the muscles, the organs, and so on. He reveals
the actual structure which is there before him waiting to be made manifest. But
when the butcher chops up the animal, he is not particularly concerned with the
real structure; he wants to cut up the carcase into joints suitable for
domestic purposes. In his activities the butcher ruthlessly cleaves across the
real structure laid bare so patiently by the anatomist. The anatomist finds
his structure, the butcher makes his. The one pursuit is of the real,
that of which, we may say, God is the fashioner or creator. In the other case
man himself is the fashioner or creator, or rather the re-creator. Man becomes,
in a minor way, his own god. To this extent Protagoras was right when he said
‘Man is the measure of all things’. It is certainly true that man is the
measure of some things, even though not of all.
The anatomist proceeds by inspection, by
recognition of what is objectively there, using the senses with which he
has been endowed. The activity of the butcher on the other hand is directed subjectively,
and is literally, as well as metaphorically, the procedure of the Procrustean
bed.
[End of quote]
Pursuit of the nomic order will tend to lead one away
from, rather than closer towards, the objective order of the real. Let us consider some examples of
this pursuit.
Biblical Structures and Sources
When writing an
article on the:
Structure of the Book of Genesis
I had cause once
again to visit the Ardleian analogy of the anatomist and the butcher, there
writing:
The same sort of analogy may be applied to, I would
suggest, the different methods that have been employed to analyse the structure
of the Book of Genesis. Here I shall contrast only the
archaeologically-based approach, as used by P. J. Wiseman and others - which
method, I believe, resembles that of the anatomist in Ardley’s example -
Wiseman’s findings have captured the
imagination of, for instance, the renowned Old Testament scholar, Professor
R.K. Harrison. See e.g. his Introduction to the Old Testament (Eerdmanns,
1969), on pp. 545-553 of which he summarizes Wiseman’s toledôt theory.
Also, the linguist, Dr. Charles Taylor, who - on the basis of the same theory -
wrote The Oldest Science Book in the World (Assembly Press, 1984). It is
also worth mentioning here that P.J. Wiseman’s son, Donald J. Wiseman, who
wrote the Foreword to Ancient Records, is considered to be one of the
preeminent Assyriologists of our time.
with the Graf-Wellhausen approach - that to my mind
approximates to the activities of the butcher.
Astruc’s Theory
Jean Astruc (d. 1766) was really he who invented the
theory of separate documents, based on the Divine names used. The French
physician had noticed that in the first 35 verses of Genesis (chapters 1-24a),
the word Elohim … “God”, was used, and no other Divine name; while in
chapters 2:4b to 3:24, the only designation given is Yahweh Elohim … “Lord
God” – except where Satan uses the word God. Astruc claimed that the passages
must have been written by different writers; for if Moses himself had
written the whole of it, firsthand, then we should have to attribute to him
this singular variation, in patches, of the Divine name.
This was really the beginning of the documentist
dissection, into fragment upon fragment, of the Book of Genesis.
By the middle of the C19th, owing largely to the efforts
of the German critics Karl Heinrich Graf (1815-1868/9) and Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918),
liberal scholarship had, to its own satisfaction, isolated four main
Pentateuchal sources: J,E,D,P. Thus it was alleged that a writer who used Elohim
was the author of a so-called E document, and the writer who used Yahweh was
the author of J (for Jehovah, the German version of Yahweh). But
since some verses that were obviously written by the same person contained both
names for God, an editor had to be introduced, then a “redactor”.
Then a Deuteronomist source was identified (which R.K.
Harrison considered to be the only valid one amidst the JEDP ‘sources’). After
a century of conjectures and further redactors, it was decided that a
further document, P (Priestly) had been written nearly 1,000 years after
Moses, and so on ....
In this way Genesis has been reduced to a series of
confused fragments and authors, in order to account for the way in which the
name of God is used in the book. The fourfold sigla, JEDP, of Graf-Wellhausen
is now dogmatically retained (though in modified form) in academic institutions
the world over. Nonetheless, the critical scholars have to admit that
their literary expedients break, not only the logical, but also the grammatical
sequence of the passages. As Wiseman commented (Clues, p. 143): “It is
confusion confounded!”
Really, since what was formerly known as the
“Documentary Hypothesis” had its inception based upon an unrealistic
premise: the presumption that a single author would not be likely to use
more than one name to designate God, it does not come as a surprise to discover
that the modern end-product of such a line of reasoning is a totally artificial
form of analysis; a butcher-like activity, ruthlessly cleaving across the
natural structure of the scriptural texts - so chopping and hewing them into
fragments that their original form and shape are no longer recognisable.
Wellhausen himself had in fact acknowledged that the
result of all of this dissecting was “an agglomeration of fragments” (as quoted
by Wiseman, Clues, p. 144). Despite this, Wellhausen’s History
of Israel (1878) “gave him a place in Biblical studies comparable, it was
said, to that of Darwin in biology” (Clues, p. 145).
[End of quote]
One may wonder what could be the advantages of such
a dissection of the biblical texts, which does not immediately appear to have
the obvious advantages of the activities of the butcher. And if, as Wiseman
claimed: “It is confusion
confounded!”, then there may be very little at all to recommend it.
When the books of the Bible were originally
written there were no such things as chapters or verses. Each book was written
without any breaks from the beginning to the end.
They Have Been Divided For Convenience
The chapter and verse divisions were added to
the Bible for the sake of convenience. There is no authoritative basis for the
divisions we now find.
[End of quote]
Today we would be quite lost without these handy
points of reference.
However, we need to be ever aware of the fact that
these chapters and verses are of the order of the artificial and do not
define the true structure of the sacred texts. The difference between finding
the structure of something (as does the anatomist), and making it
(the butcher), is apparent from the following contrasting of the JEDP approach,
the “Documentary Hypothesis”, with the approach adopted by P. J. Wiseman, using
archaeological data. I continued to write:
….
Because of the newness of the science of archaeology … we
can say that, from a stratigraphical/historical point of view, the study of
Scripture is still in its infancy. Pre-archaeological theories, such as those
advanced by the C19th documentists, suffer from an almost total ignorance of
the methods and styles of the ancient scribes, since these really became known
only in the previous (20th) century, after the vast libraries of the
ancient world had been excavated and their data slowly and painstakingly
sifted by modern scholars. The modern awareness of ancient scribal methods
would serve to show up with embarrassing starkness the numerous defects in the
old “Documentary Hypothesis”.
P.J. Wiseman, on the other hand, was fortunate to have
had the opportunity of participating in some of the most important
archaeological digs that took place in Mesopotamia midway through the C20th;
for example, that of Sir Leonard Woolley at the site of Ur, and of
Professor S. Langdon at Kish. Wiseman had many discussions about ancient
writing methods and related subjects with these and other scholars (most
notably, Professor Cyril Gadd). In the light of all of this firsthand evidence
and expertise that had become available to him, Wiseman found himself perfectly
equipped to re-examine the structure and authorship of the Book of Genesis. He
discovered that the book’s structure was really quite straightforward, and was
completely explained by the facts of archaeology. In true anatomist fashion -
according to Dr. Ardley’s analogy - Wiseman was able to lay bare the real
structure of the Book of Genesis, and thereby scientifically to expose, by
stark contrast, just what an unholy mess the JEDP dissectors were leaving
behind them. In fact, nowhere do the clumsy techniques of the documentists show
up so embarrassingly as when contrasted against the light of Wiseman’s patient
uncovering of the essential structure of the Genesis texts. Wiseman had at
least been prepared to concede on behalf of the early documentists, as an
excuse for their radical fragmenting of the texts, that they had not been in a
position to compare the literary form and structure of Genesis with other
ancient methods of writing, that would have enabled them to have read Genesis
in the light of the times and circumstances in which it was written. But, in
the case of contemporary exegetes, he considered that: “... it cannot be
regarded as other than serious that notwithstanding archaeological discoveries,
many still read Genesis not as ancient, but as though it had been written in
relatively modern times” (Clues, p. 143). The mistake had been made, he
said, despite the very obvious fact that the Genesis narrative itself “is
constructed in a most antique manner by use of a framework of repeated
phrases” ….
[End of quote]
Pursuit of the real
is of a far higher order, and is wiser, than is the pursuit of utilitarian ends. The one pertains to
the kingdom of Jesus Christ and the other to that of
Pontius Pilate:
A Kingdom of Truth not Power
Matthew 6:33: ‘But seek first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to
you’.
“In our modern Bibles, there is a chapter division between the appearance
of the Ark of the Covenant and the description of the “woman clothed with the
sun.” But chapter divisions were added in the Middle Ages to make the books of
the Bible easier to refer to. John did not make any divisions: he wrote
straight through from Revelation 11:19 to Revelation 12:1 without a break”.
The
human activity discussed in Part Three
(i), of ‘cleaving across the
real structure’ of things, for some legitimate utilitarian purpose, rather than
patiently studying ‘the thing as it is in itself’ (Immanuel Kant’s das
Ding an sich), is apparent from the
artificial re-arranging of the Book of Genesis into 50 chapters each consisting
of multiple verses - whereas the book in-itself naturally falls into those
eleven toledot (‘family history)
divisions as discussed in my:
Structure of the Book of
Genesis
Today we would be hard put to live without
those familiar chapters and verses, artificial though they be, which can serve
as a handy mnemonic device and points of reference. However they, because they
are artificial, can also have the unfortunate effect of hindering one from
properly grasping the original intention and meaning of the author(s) of the
text.
This is well exemplified when we turn from
the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to the last, Revelation. Dr. Scott Hahn,
writing of what he calls “The Ark of the New Covenant”, explains how St. John
the Evangelist’s intended meaning gets completely lost due to the thematic
discontinuity caused by the artificial division of Revelation’s Chapters 11-12
(https://stpaulcenter.com/studies/lesson/lesson-three-the-ark-of-the-new-covenant):
A. The Ark Reappears in Heaven
Luke uses parallel language and images to make his point.
But John, the author of Revelation, tells us directly that he saw the Ark of
the Covenant - the holy object that had been lost since Jeremiah’s time - in a
vision.
“Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of
his covenant could be seen in the temple. There were flashes of lightning,
rumblings, and peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm. A
great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon
under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and
wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth” (see Revelation 11:19 and Revelation 12:1-2).
This is a strange string of images, almost overwhelming -
like much of the book of Revelation. But certainly the statement that the Ark
of the Covenant was visible must have caught the attention of the first people
who heard the vision.
If the Ark had been seen, then the time Jeremiah spoke of
must have come: the time when “God gathers his people together again and shows
them mercy,” the time when “the glory of the Lord will be seen in the cloud,
just as it appeared in the time of Moses” (see 2 Maccabees 7-8)
And indeed the sights and sounds are the same as in the
time of Moses - storm and earthquake:
“There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of
thunder, an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm” (see Revelation 11:19).
“On the morning of the third day there were peals of
thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud
trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled . . . Mount Sinai
was all wrapped in smoke, for the LORD came down upon it in fire. The smoke
rose from it as though from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled
violently” (see Exodus 19:16, 18)
Naturally, we want to hear more about the rediscovered
Ark of the Covenant. And John goes on to describe what he sees: “a woman
clothed with the sun” (see Revelation 12:1).
In our modern Bibles, there is a chapter division between
the appearance of the Ark of the Covenant and the description of the “woman
clothed with the sun.” But chapter divisions were added in the Middle Ages to
make the books of the Bible easier to refer to. John did not make any
divisions: he wrote straight through from Revelation 11:19 to Revelation 12:1 without a
break.
In the dream-like but deeply significant logic of John’s
vision, the Ark of the Covenant is “a woman clothed with the sun.”
B. The Woman Clothed With the Sun
And who is this woman?
“She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she
labored to give birth ” (see Revelation 12:2).
“She gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule
all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his
throne” (see Revelation 12:5).
The one destined to rule the nations with an iron rod (a
shepherd’s rod) is the Lord’s Anointed, the Messiah or Christ (see Psalm
2). The “woman clothed with the sun,” whom John sees when he looks at the Ark
of the Covenant, is the Mother of the Christ.
C. What Makes Mary the Ark of the New Covenant?
The Ark of the Covenant was the sign of God’s real
presence among His people. In Jesus Christ, born of Mary, God was really
present among his people in an even more direct way.
The Ark held the Word of God written in stone. Mary bore
the Word of God in flesh.
The Ark contained the rod of Aaron, symbol of his
priesthood. Mary bore Jesus Christ, our High Priest (see Hebrews 3:1).
If the Ark of the Covenant was holy, then by the same
standards Mary is even holier. As Mother of God, she is the Ark of the New
Covenant, bearing Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Bread of Life, our great
High Priest. That is not a re-interpretation of the Gospel: it is a truth made
clear by the New Testament writers themselves.
[End of quote]
For more on this fascinating subject, see the
following article:
'The Marian Dimension'. Part Three: Mary as New Ark of Covenant
I do not know whether Eduard Meyer, a
German, was himself also a Kantian by philosophical persuasion, but Meyer
certainly did to Egyptian chronology
what Kant claimed the physicists were doing to the order of nature. He actively imposed his pre-conceived mathematical system,
which, unfortunately, has no compelling basis in reality. His elabo-structure,
like some clumsy and mis-placed scaffolding offering no practical points of
reference, is basically the model that is so lauded today, whilst the real
Egyptian history awaits its Tutankhamun-ian resurrection.
Introduction
Though I would be far from describing myself as ‘Kantian’, my favourite book
on the subject of the philosophy of science is Gavin Ardley’s Aquinas and
Kant: The Foundations of
the Modern Sciences, in which Dr. Ardley gives the
credit to Immanuel Kant for having uncovered the nature of modern theoretical
science (or physics). The modern physicist apparently, quite unlike the earlier
scientists, does not seek to study nature as it really is (Kant’s Ding an sich), but, instead (and this is Kant’s immense contribution), actively imposes his/her ‘a priori’
mental constructs upon nature. According to Ardley this is for utilitarian and/or
commercial purposes.
Now I believe that a similar type of artificial ‘a
priori’ process has been applied by the Berlin School of Egyptology’s Eduard
Meyer to ancient Egyptian chronology, which then became the yardstick for the
chronologies of other ancient nations.
Meyer’s ‘Sothic Theory’
an unmitigated disaster
The pattern of this series has been to distinguish
between the two orders of things, namely:
(i) the real
nature of things or underlying and unchanging reality behind the appearances, and
(ii) that which exists not by
nature, but by artifice, convention, custom, or usage. It is man-made, and not
part of the everlasting order of the world.
- known to the ancient Greeks as, respectively,
(i) physis, and (ii) nomos.
The reason for taking pains to make the
distinction is so that the artificial is not taken for reality, and virtually
idolised (as with those ancient man-made idols), as so often tends to happen.
The order of nomos
we have found to serve some most useful purposes, as aide-mémoire,
as points of reference – for
example, in the case of the artificial numbering of biblical texts into
chapters and verses.
As long as one does not lose sight of the underlying reality, though.
For, in the case of the modern numbering of the Bible, the artificial
divisions can also be an impediment when it comes to one’s grasping the
original intentions and meanings of the authors. I gave an example of this
previously.
But, whilst the mathematising of the Scriptures
has proven to be a most effective contribution to biblical studies - though
with the types of limitations just referred to - Berlin chronologist Eduard
Meyer’s attempt to bring some type of mathematical (astronomically-based) order to the
highly complex Egyptian chronology (30 dynasties), laudable though his
intentions may have been, has had the most disastrous results from which
ancient history is yet far from recovering. For a handy summary of all of this,
see my:
The Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology
Revisited
I do not know whether Eduard Meyer, a German, was himself
also a Kantian by philosophical persuasion, but Meyer certainly did to Egyptian chronology what Kant
claimed the physicists were doing to the order of nature. He actively imposed his pre-conceived mathematical system, which,
unfortunately, has no compelling basis in reality. His elabo-structure, like
some clumsy and mis-placed scaffolding offering no practical points of
reference, is basically the model that is so lauded today, whilst the real
Egyptian history awaits its Tutankhamun-ian resurrection.
“… It seemed to me as nearly
certain as anything in the future could be, that historical thought … would
increase in importance far more rapidly during the 20th; and that we
might very well be standing on the threshold of an age in which history would
be as important for the world as natural science had been between 1600 and 1900”.
R. G. Collingwood, Autobiography
One
may find rather illuminating - when considering Eduard Meyer’s artificially
reconstructed (along Kantian lines) Egyptian dynastic ‘history’ in contrast to
real objective Egyptian history - the Kantian-influenced professor R. G.
Collingwood’s approach to history, as summarised by Gavin Ardley, in Aquinas
and Kant: the foundations of the modern sciences (Chapter XIV: History as
Science)?
Professor
Collingwood
The
modern progressive science of physics commenced when, in the words of Kant, we
ceased to be like a pupil listening to everything the teacher chooses to say,
but instead like a judge, compelled Nature to answer questions which we
ourselves had formulated. It has been suggested in recent years that a
progressive science of history might be started if a like Copernican revolution
could be brought about in historical studies.
The late
Professor R. G. Collingwood [d. 1943] was one of the leading exponents of this
view. His thought is permeated through and through with Kant’s great idea about
the Galilean epistemology, and he believed he could see a future for history as
brilliant as the career of physics since Galileo.
He writes
in his Autobiography [Ch. VIII].
Until the
late 19th an early 20th centuries, historical studies had
been in a condition analogous to that of natural science before Galileo. In
Galileo’s time something happened to natural science (only a very ignorant or a
very learned man would undertake to say briefly what it was) which suddenly and
enormously increased the velocity of its progress and the width of its outlook.
About the end of the 19th century something of the same kind was
happening, more gradually and less spectacularly perhaps, but not less
certainly, to history.
… It
seemed to me as nearly certain as anything in the future could be, that
historical thought, whose constantly increasing importance had been one of the
most striking features of the 19th century, would increase in
importance far more rapidly during the 20th; and that we might very
well be standing on the threshold of an age in which history would be as
important for the world as natural science had been between 1600 and 1900.
History
in the past was what Collingwood calls a ‘scissors and paste affair’. This was
like physics before Galileo. Collingwood writes:
If
historians could only repeat, with different arrangements and different styles
of decoration, what others had said before them, the age-old hope of using it
as a school of political wisdom was as vain as Hegel knew it to be when he made
his famous remark that the only thing to be learnt from history is that nobody
ever learns anything from history.
But what
if history is not a scissors and paste affair? What if the historian
resembles the natural scientist in asking his own questions, and insisting on
an answer? Clearly, that altered the situation.
The past
with which the historian deals is not a dead past, but a past which is living
on in the present. With the Copernican revolution in our approach to this
living past, history, so Collingwood hopes, will become a school of moral and
political wisdom.
Collingwood
peaks of political ‘wisdom’ being the Baconian fruits of this revolution. But
on the analogy of the natural sciences ‘wisdom’ seems hardly the right term.
Terms such as power, control, utility, prediction, would be more appropriate.
This really is what Collingwood envisages in other passages. He writes: [Ch.
IX].
It was a
plain fact that the gigantic increase since about 1600 in his power to control
Nature had not been accompanied by a corresponding increase, or anything like
it, in his power to control human situations….
It was
the widening of the scientific outlook and the acceleration of scientific
progress in the days of Galileo that had led in the fullness of time from the
water-wheels and windmills of the Middle Ages to the almost incredible power
and delicacy of the modern machine. In dealing with their fellow men, I could
see, men were still what they were in dealing with machines in the Middle Ages.
Well meaning babblers talked about the necessity for a change of heart. But the
trouble was obviously in the head. What was needed was not more good will and
human affection, but more understanding of human affairs and more knowledge
of how to handle them.
This
increase in our ability to handle human affairs, then, is to be brought about
by the same revolution which transformed natural science in the 17th
century, the nature of which revolution was first recognised by Immanuel Kant.
As
Collinwood sees it, history as a science of human affairs did not begin to
emerge until the 20th century. In the pre-scientific history age men
perforce searched elsewhere for a science of human affairs. The 18th century
looked for a ‘science of human nature’. The 19th century sought for it in the
shape of psychology. These both turned out to be illusory. But since the
revolution in history, history has revealed itself as the one true science of
human affairs. [Ch. X].
The Two
Histories
We might
point out, however, something which Collingwood does not make clear, and about
which he was probably not at all clear himself. This is the matter to which we
drew attention when we doubted the appropriateness of the word ‘wisdom’ for the
knowledge acquired through the new science of history, and suggested such
epithets as control, power, utility, etc., in its place. For, as we have
insisted throughout this book, the fact that we have a Procrustean science does
not mean that we have in any way abolished the structure of Nature, or that we
can no longer know Nature in the way in which the philosophia perennis
knows it.
Collingwood’s
proposed Kantian revolution in history will give us, of course, a Procrustean
categorial science of history. But real objective history will carry on just
as before. The relation between the two will be like the relation of modern
so-called ‘physics’ to real physics, i.e. of nomos to physis.
[cf. e.g. modern sociology on the one hand and ethics on the other (Ch. XIII),
or Freudian therapeutic psychology and rational psychology (Ch. XV)]. The term
‘wisdom’ is more appropriate to knowledge of the physis than to the
categorial structure devised by the ingenuity of man. The latter, in the case
of history, is a practical instrument of manipulation for the prince, the
former is the pursuit of the real nature of history.
The
Character of Scientific History
Collingwood
laid down the general principle which must be followed if history is to become
a science, but he did not pursue the subject into specific terms.
We might
develop a scheme of procedure in history by following the analogy of modern
physics. This suggests the introduction into history of laws, fictions,
artificial constructions, etc., as in physics. The concepts of ordinary life
must be replaced by others more convenient for our purpose. For instance, in
the exact physical sciences, the English term ‘hard’, which is a familiar and
vague expression, is replaced by a number of artificial but exact terms, such
as malleability, shear modulus, tensile strength, etc. This would lead to a
monstrous jargon in history akin to the formidable technical terminology of the
Procrustean natural sciences. The new Procrustean history would now be only for
specialists and would soon become as unintelligible to the layman as is modern
physics. But its justification, if indeed it could be constructed, would be the
pragmatic sanction of practical utility. It would be a handy machine for
princes. It should be remembered too that the new history would be potentially
a dangerous weapon, just as dangerous, if not more so, than the control we now
possess over inanimate Nature.
Whether
such a Procrustean scheme will ever be born remains to be seen. For the
inherent tractability or intractability of the raw material forming the primary
subject matter of the Procrustean science must have some bearing on the ease
with which such a science can be developed. The Procrustean method has had its
greatest triumph in modern physics. In the biological sciences it has made much
less progress, and in the human sciences and history has hardly started. Is
this comparative failure outside physics due merely to dilatoriness and
ineptitude, or is there a more underlying cause: that the subject matter in the
animate and rational worlds is so much more intractable that it does not lend
itself to Procrusteanisation?
If a
Procrustean history does emerge, as Collingwood hopes, there may possibly be in
consequence an initial reaction away from classical history, like the reaction
away from Aristotelian science, and indeed all things Aristotelian, in the
times of Galileo. But such a reaction in historical studies would be as
ill-founded as was the 17th century reaction.
Let wiser
counsels prevail, and the two pursuits may go on side by side. To prevent
confusion of the two, which caused so much trouble with the old and new
physical sciences, it would be better to find a new name for the new
Procrustean history. To go on calling it ‘history’ would be a perpetual source
of confusion with real history. We would suggest the term nomics except
that we have already applied that term to post-Galilean ‘physics’. No doubt
some new term appropriate to the situation could be found.
[Wikipedia:
"As he slowly lost
the ability to write, he developed compensatory visual methods, including
seeing equations in terms of geometry."]
“Equations
are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of
geometry”.
S. Hawking
“The axioms of geometry are neither synthetic a priori judgments
nor experimental facts. They are conventions;
our choice among all possible conventions is guided by experimental facts; but it remain free and is limited only by the
necessity of avoiding all contradiction. Thus it is that the postulates can
remain rigorously true even
though the experimental laws which have determined their adoption are only
approximative. In other words the
axioms of geometry (I do not speak of those of arithmetic) are merely disguised definitions.
Then what are we to think of that question: Is the Euclidean geometry
true?
It has no meaning.
As
well ask whether the metric system is true and the old measures false; whether
Cartesian co-ordinates are true and polar co-ordinates false. One geometry can
not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient”.
H.
Poincaré
Poincaré appears to have well understood the Procrustean foundations of modern
science. Again he wrote on the ‘a priori’ nature of scientific endeavour: “It
is often said experiments must be made without a preconceived idea. That is
impossible. Not only would it make all experiment barren, but that would be attempted
which could not be done”.
The elaborate equations of physicists like
Stephen Hawking
purport to be keys to understanding the workings
of nature and its laws.
They are not. They are an elaborate science
fiction, but “boring” (Hawking’s own description).
As Gavin Ardley has explained, in Aquinas
and Kant: the foundations of the modern sciences:
The Rôle of Physics
The new orientation to the
subject is significant as regards the status of physics in the world. It is
likely to make a considerable difference in the rôle of physics in man’s
thinking, whether he believes physics is wresting out the secrets of Nature, or
whether he believes the whole thing is quite artificial, and only of
utilitarian and aesthetic significance, valuable as these latter may be.
When it is generally realised
that modern physics is not really telling us anything of the world about us, in
other words that the ontological status of the world of physics is very low,
then we might expect that physic will be allotted to its proper place as an
auxiliary to life and a fascinating intellectual exercise. Then, being released
from our self-imposed shackles, we will be free to turn our attention elsewhere
in search of the real world. There we will find real matter, time, and space.
We learn more about time from the simple words of the hymn:
Time,
like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears
all its sons away.
than from any text-book of
physics.
This mental freedmen will be
good for the layman, and it will be good too, for the physicist, in so far as
he is a man. For the physicist is not always in his laboratory disciplining
himself. Sometimes he emerges into the real world of everyday life with its
warmth and colour, hopes and fears, its beauty, love, laughter, tears, its good
and its evil. This is a world of values, quite different from the monotone of
physics where values have been systematically excluded. In this real world the
physicist finds modern physics but a broken reed. Of course, no human being is
completely devoid of the knowledge of real life. The complete and utter
physicist could not continue to live. The physicist – like nearly all
scientists – must lead something of a dual existence. He leads one life in the
laboratory and another and quite different life outside it.
[End of quote]
And God is still in his
heaven and unknowable, even to clever scientists.
