Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 166.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-08-14 11:43:13+00:00
From: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.165: limits to attention
Dear Maurizio,
If you watched the excellent documentary on Trinity (“The Day after Trinity”)
you might find the last interview with Dyson useful (on what “went wrong” or
rather, why they were working a scientific experiment they hadn’t “thought
through”).
As for the Salem Witch Trials, my remark was certainly far too elliptical. But
at its foundation I was referring to the symmetry between the Western religions
of Judeo-Xtianity and Science, and their axial objects of attention: God and
Nature. Theology and the Philosophy of Science are, in my view, nearly
perfectly symmetrical rationales for addressing their great unknowns. The best
scientists approach their god “in fear and trembling”, knowing full well that in
their efforts to understand that god and keep their faith in their ways of
knowing and serving, they must not commit the sin of Satan (Faust’s sin, or Elon
Musk’s, or whoever –their names are Legion -- I do prefer the language of the
People of the Book when talking or thinking about Science; pari passu, I prefer
the languages of Science when talking about the faith and sins of the People of
God).
Simply, Science cannot know or control Nature and more than Western religion can
know of “appease” or “give glory to” God. The great “virtue”, in human terms,
of both is when they prosecute their faiths in the faithful understanding that
they not only will fail, but that they might, as Beckett put it, learn how to
“fail better”. That would be Socrates talking.
“Jehovah” and “Jesus” are far more complicated characters and sets of
conceptions. Unlike Socrates, they never let you think that death is something
a human being, the more fully human you try to become, can find as anything but
a loss – in Jesus’s great and terrible view, a crucifixion. (The “Apology” is a
far too complacent little parable – but please don’t think I imagine my way of
thinking and talking can hold a candle the majesty of Socrates, or Plato for
that matter. As Blake would say, did say, in comparing science/philosophy to
art, it is like holding a candle in the sunshine.)
The prejudice of any education is the temptation that by your own wit and effort
you can control your relation to the unknown. But to do that, in our limited
conditions and perspectives, one has to proceed by controlling variables. But
everyone knows or ought to know that you can’t control all the variables, and
the assumption (=prejudice) that “for all practical purposes” you can, pretty
much ensures disaster – not to God or Nature, since both are absolute so far as
we can see, but for ourselves. And the more faustian we become, as we have
during the past 250 years, the more we damage the human world (not the world of
Nature – Nature proceeds along its merry way in any case, though of course we
find those ways – the ways we have summoned – unpleasing and very far from
merry.
I’ll leave it at that. Forgive me for mentioning my recent book on colonial
American language and literature, Culture and Language at Crossed Purposes; but
the chapter of Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana has a discussion of Mather’s
presentation of the Witch Trials that is relevant to your question about “the
prejudice of education”. And if you aren’t completely bored after that you
might look at the last chapter, which is my pedantic manifesto on what Wallace
Stevens called “the scholar’s art” – mu riposte to that American saint’s
saintliness (ie, Emerson’s).
Best, and with thanks for the query and hopes this little tract isn’t too
intractable,
Jerry
From: Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>
Date: Monday, August 14, 2023 at 5:04 AM
To: Mcgann, Jerome (jjm2f) <jjm2f@virginia.edu>
Subject: [Humanist] 37.165: limits to attention
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 165.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org<http://www.dhhumanist.org>
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-08-09 12:02:29+00:00
From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.157: limits to one's attention
hi Jerry,
i must confess that i miss something to fully understand the richness of
your argument:
first of all because i don't fully know the story of the Salem Witch Trials
and hence i only superficially get the deep meaning of the related
dichotomy Enlightenment of Grace/Secular enlightenment, which was
suggested from the beginning by the fact that the atomic experiment was
called "Trinity".
sort of a secular religion in whose name everything is, and cannot but
be, good?
best
Maurizio
[...]
la Repubblica promuove lo sviluppo della cultura e la ricerca scientifica e
tecnica.
la Repubblica detta le norme generali sull'istruzione ed istituisce scuole
statali per tutti gli ordini e gradi.
Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana, art. 9 e 33
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maurizio Lana
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli
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