Science and the Sense of Self (article)

Science and the Sense of Self: The Medieval Background of a Modern Confrontation
By Lynn White Jr., for Daedalus (1978)

This article is a bit heady, but is mostly comprised of a discussion of the medieval conceptions of nature, the individual and the sacred, and the origins of scientific thought in Europe. It makes some interesting notes on the desacralization of nature that speak to the world culture inherited by Mandeville.

One of the early interesting discussions concerns the Law of Nature as articulated by Roger Bacon. This Law is “inherent in God’s purpose for all his creatures” (48) and “God is chiefly praised by the perfection with which his creatures exist according to the laws that he has established for and in them” (48). This may be a stretch, but I think that the mark of Christ on pre-Christian nature and peoples may be evidence of the same.

White marks a cultural shift from pagan to Christian values as they prevail in wider society, a shift that dramatically changes how people conceive of nature. While it forms the foundation of pagan beliefs, which celebrate the spirits of place and animistic power, nature is desacralized through “belief in an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God” (49). In Judaism and, later, Christianity, nature is mastered – not worshipped.

As White notes, “Since they awaited the end of the world momentarily, the early Christians had little interest in science, the study of something that would shortly turn to ashes” (49). However, this thought is part of an interesting sequence. Though the lasting import of science is undermined, it remains a marker, in some sense, of Christ’s presence in the world (through study of nature). A false dichotomy is created between the natural and the sacred. Or, nature and natural objects are not permitted to be sacred in themselves – only in the degree to which they manifest Christ within them.

But as nature is desacralized, and natural spaces and wilderness, the desecration of what is pristine and wild is normalized through essentially violent and disruptive acts such as pilgrimage and crusades and expansion of civilization. Intrusion into wilderness, which has been robbed of its animistic power, becomes a means of empowering (falsely but demonstratively) the Christian faith.

This weird suspension between the sacred and profane in the power granted to nature creates an uncomfortable space for Mandeville to inherit in his discussion of nature and natural objects in the Travels. He is, in effect, a secular traveler (though he does discuss pilgrimage and revelation); his purpose is not to edify but delight, and many of the most compelling elements of his narrative are natural ones. He is not part of “the great waves of pilgrims . . . who swept eastward to experience for themselves the dust and heat and thirst of the roads of Palestine, and who walked the Via Dolorosa on bloody knees” (52).

He is not clearly part of the crowed who asserted that “Piety demanded empirical experience” (52). But he walks a fine line between reason and revelation that serves as an early enough marker of an important schism in Western thought and culture. One could locate that schism earlier in the works of philosophers, theologians and scientific thinkers, but I think its clear manifestation in literature is more telltale of its prevalence in the wider culture.

Shit, this makes my head hurt.