This is a genuinely exciting book (dating from 1993) about modernity- our age where science in all its facets has not only transformed practical existence, but also our spiritual lives, de-mystifying nature and tossing religions, one after the next, onto the scrap heap. Appleyard is not happy about it, however- far from. He is tortured by it, and while he can not stomach going back to religious orthodoxy, whether of fundamentalist or mildly liberal varieties, nor can he accept the new regime, which he views, somewhat mistakenly, as scientism. That is the belief, fostered (in Appleyard's view) by the gushing popularizers like Carl Sagan, Jacob Bronowski, and Richard Dawkins, that science can not only solve all our questions of knowledge, but forms a new technocratic morality of reasonable-ness and tolerance which, if properly worshipped, could resolve our social, political, and spiritual problems as well.
The first half of the book is far better than the second. Setting up the problems of modern spirituality is far easier than solving them. In broad strokes, humanity used to be at home in heavily archetypal religious realities. While actual reality did intrude from time to time, the fables of Christianity, to take the main example in the West, were (and for some, still are) magical tales which gave us hope of a benevolent meta-reality and a pleasant afterlife. But intellectuals kept trying to make sense of them, until they "sensed" them completely out of existence. Appleyard cites Thomas Aquinas as perhaps the finest of these intellectuals in the theological tradition. His main work was to reconcile Aristotle, the pre-eminent scientist of antiquity, with Christian orthodoxy. This was taken as the height of theology, not to mention truth in general. But it planted the seed of modernization and logic- if something is logically or empirically true, it must necessarily be consonant with the Catholic religion, which is by definition true. Thence downwards through the enlightenment, Newton, the industrial revolution, existentialism, liberal theology, to the plague of atheists we see today. The Catholic church tried to draw the line with Galileo and the heliocentric model, but that did not go well, and a few hundred years down the road, they gave up and said they were sorry.
"Science was the lethally dispassionate search for truth in the world whatever its meaning might be; religion was the passionate search for meaning whatever the truth might be."
All religious pretensions to scientific truth have been exploded, and the only choices left, as Appleyard sees it, are regression into fundamentalism, continuation to the endpoint of modernist anomie where humans are morally worthless or even negative destroyers of pristine nature, an acceptance of science itself as humanity's triumphalist project, which through its powers and gifts can give us all meaning, ... or something else. Appleyard spends much of the second half of the book on the fourth option, discussing quantum weirdness, chaos theory, computational incompleteness theories, and related fields which put the lie to the determinist dreams of nineteenth century science. Science does not know everything, and can not know everything, thus there is some gap for us as humans to be free of its insidious, deadening influence- a humanist space.
There are many things wrong with Appleyard's take on all this, some of which are contained in his own arguments and writing. Science has long held to the fact/value distinction, as he discusses at length. Even such a solidly scientistic enterprise as Star Trek recognizes regularly that Spock can neither supply all our values, nor even on his own terms operates without idiosyncratic values and meaning. The world of Star Trek is morally progressive and rational, but its motivations and meaning come from our human impulses, not from an algorithm. Exploration, skimpy uniforms, and great fight scenes are who we are.
"The key to the struggle, it cannot be said too often, is the way in which science forces us to separate out values from our knowledge of the world. Thanks to Newton we can not discover goodness in the mechanics of the heavens, thanks to Darwin we cannot find it in the phenomenon of life and thanks to Freud we cannot find it in ourselves. The struggle is to find a new basis for goodness, purpose, and meaning."
But then Appleyard frequently decries the new scientistic regime as having destroyed morals in general.
"... all moral issues in a liberal society are intrinsically unresolvable and all such issues will progressively tend to be decided on the basis of a scientific version of the world and of values. In other words they will cease to be moral issues, they will become problems to be solved. The very idea of morality will be marginalized and, finally, destroyed."
This makes no sense, as he himself concludes by the end of the book. It seems to be a matter of looking for morals and meaning in all the wrong places. After a long excursion through the death of scientific determinism, he consoles us that science doesn't, and can't know everything. Thus we can go about our lives with our own values, desires, and dreams without paying much mind to any moral teachings from the scientific priesthood, which didn't exist anyhow. Whew! Determinism is a complete red herring here. Science studies all of reality, whether complicated or simple. If broad swathes can be subsumed into the master equation of gravity, that is wonderful- empowering on practical and psychological levels. But sometimes the result of all this study is a large database of genes and their properties, whose complicated interactions preclude easy prediction or codification (harkening back to the cataloguing of Aristotle and Linnaeus). Or sometimes it is a prediction system for weather which, despite our best efforts, can only see a limited distance into the future, due to inherent limitations to any model of a chaotic reality. That is OK too. Such pursuits are not "not science", and nor does such ignorance furnish us with free will- that comes from adaptability. The results of our studies of reality do not imply much about our meaning and values in any case, even as they defang the oddly materialistic superstitions and totems of yore. Our powers of understanding may be amazing, and fetishized by the educational system and science popularizers, but are not the foundation of our moral humanity.
Scientific studies of ourselves have, however, been enlightening, uncovering the unconscious, Darwinian designs, ancient urges, and a great diversity of ways of being. They have also clarified the damage we are doing to our environment via the wonders of modern life. This has informed our self-image and hopefully our values, but hardly determined them. Humility is the overall lesson, as it has been from all the better religious traditions. Appleyard decries relativism, the liberal tendency towards excessive humility- suspicion of one's own culture, and excessive regard for those of others. But isn't that merely a slight overshoot / correction from the madness of colonialism, slavery, genocide, rampant technology, greed, and war that has been the Western history over the last couple of centuries? Isn't it a spiritually healthy step back? In any case, it is an example of human values at work, perhaps more influenced by our prosperous condition than by any dictates from science.
Appleyard's fundamental complaint is against the new priesthood that has taken over management of the wonders of creation, but has at the same time failed to address our human needs for solace and meaning. Indeed, some of its high theologians delight in telling us that the universe, and ourselves, are utterly meaningless. Appleyard constantly weaves god into the discussion, while taking no exlicit pro-god position. He can not bring himself to bite that bullet, but rather is content to complain about being thrown out of Eden for the sin of too much knowledge. Well, it was always a cheap trick to read our fate in the stars or in goat entrails, and to read our meaning in ancient wonder-tales. These methods were merely externalizing values that came from within. The patriarchial systems of theology express most clearly the interests and desires of the men who run them. So we are, in the modern dispensation, merely reduced to a state of honesty about stating what we want, without the false veils of magic, authority, and supposed moral objectivity. And that change seems, at least to me, beneficial for our moral situation, overall.
- Can morality be reasonable? Which animals are worth helping?
- Typical enviro screed about saving space for nature...
- Forest loss continues apace.
- Roubini forcasts disaster, as usual. With details.
- We saved the wrong people in the last financial crisis.
- Financial sleaze.
- Who cares about truth anymore?
- Our common economic statistics are not cutting it.
- Japan is doing very well, thank you.
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