Aristotle's Toy Universe

The title might sound condescending, but "toy" is meant in a sense similar to that in a physicist's "toy model," an oversimplified version of a physical situation. Modern physics famously has its spherical cows.

In contrast with the universe of his "scientific" descendants, the cosmos of Aristotle will undoubtedly strike modern people as small. His entire cosmos had its termination in the sphere of the fixed stars that revolved not far outside the sphere of the outermost planet. The earth, of course, sat at the center, the cosmic sump at the bottom of all things; contra Enlightenment rhetoric, the earth was the least important part of the cosmos.

Another way Aristotle's cosmos was smaller was that he had only four or five elements, as opposed to our 118 (at present). Of course, what he identified as elements were probably closer to what we call phases of matter (solid to plasma). Of course we humans can only distinguish elements by their activities. But only the coarsest macroscopic activities were readily accessible to him, hence his identification of phases of matter as elements.

Aristotle was also aware of a much smaller number of plants and animals. There's only so much one can do at the beginning of science to catalog all creatures.¹

But the universe we know today is also, in a way, deeper than Aristotle's cosmos. There is much more structure on the way down. It's as if the bottom of reality, the infinite division that yields featureless matter, were farther away than he estimated. But this is a constant human tendency. Well into the 20th century biologists still thought the protoplasm of the cell was structureless, homogeneous liquid, whereas nowadays we know that it has important structure at all levels down through macromolecules to its atoms.

But it's interesting to consider how much Aristotle's cosmos was very like our conception of the universe. Our universe, most especially our solar system, still has orbiting bodies, though they don't orbit in perfect circles around the earth. We do have (chemical) elements. Most fundamentally, Aristotle was right about the need of any science to distinguish the elements of its study. As he opens the Physics:

When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is attained. (I.1.184a10, trans. Hardie and Gaye)

And for scientists (and philosophers) to know both the form and matter of their subject:

Again, matter is a relative term: to each form there corresponds a special matter. How far then must the physicist know the form or essence? Up to a point, perhaps, as the doctor must know sinew or the smith bronze (i.e. until he understands the purpose of each): and the physicist is concerned only with things whose forms are separable indeed, but do not exist apart from matter. (II.2.194b9-12)

Aristotle described a simpler universe, but many of the right distinctions are present even there. Today the best physicists openly acknowledge that our picture of the universe is much simpler than the reality. The most remarkable thing left out of our "scientific" universe is the scientists themselves, and all humans in fact: the thinking, reflecting subjects that are somehow part of the universe without being thereby constrained to the same level as the rest of it.

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Notes

1. Interesting trivia: Aristotle spent two years studying animals on the island of Lesbos. An infinity of jokes is possible from this one historical fact.

The Arc of Modernity

James Barham has a great post on "Can We Teach Virtue?". It got me to thinking about how we got into such a mess that we can't even teach schoolkids that there is truth (or even just pretend that there is, for their sake—but that's another subject altogether).

Here's a skeletal outline of the arc of modernity:

1. In the late Renaissance and Enlightenment, we reasoned that we can't agree on religious truth (cf. wars of religion), but (modern) science is true (our savior!).
2. In the 19th and (especially) the 20th centuries, we discovered that science doesn't give us access to truth.
3. Therefore, we conclude, nothing is true.

The reasoning is obviously full of holes, primarily the opening premise that since religion is a source of discord, the only alternative is experimental science. What a straw man!

Then, since casual conversation avoids the subjects of politics and religion, it's a wonder parties can ever support conversation. Can people from different backgrounds agree about nothing but "science"? On the contrary, there are broad swaths of agreement on basic human issues (like how to raise children). It's just that some people are unable to provide reasonable ground for why they think what they do. Even more we all agree on our common human experience (as described, for example, in Mike Augros's excellent talk "A ‘Bigger’ Physics"). By setting up the false opposition of "science vs. religion," we've excluded a broad swath of rock-solid objective experience from which we can reason to sure conclusions.

A parallel description:

1. Man¹ can only know through experiment, that is, active intervention—baldly asserted in a raw exercise of power by people like Francis Bacon, but implicit even in Descartes's assertion of dualism.
2. From this stance, man can only see that part of the world that can receive his actions, so the world must be purely passive and lack all inherent activities (and directedness²).
3. The only activity man can see is his own, so man must be the source of all activity.
4. Therefore man is God, so God is dead.³

Again, the reasoning is full of holes. While the Baconian assertion that "knowledge is power" has a monomaniacal consistency, it is far from an axiom (as traditionally understood: immediately evident and requiring no proof)—that is, unless one's basic outlook starts with power as preeminent and primary.

In reality, we are creatures: we act, but we are also acted upon. We are sources of activity, but we are also bodies (with which our souls are intimately connected). To deny the latter obvious truth is the path to madness. In truth, we originate in love and are born in weakness. The net effect of denying our createdness is to shield our desires from rational examination—divine motivations are beyond scrutiny. One's identity becomes identified above all with an impenetrable "I want."

Fundamentally, there are two paths in life:

• Power, and
• Love.

Only one of these can be primary in each life. The Path of Power leads a person to close in on himself and to elevate his own desires above all; ultimately it leads to solipsism and loneliness.

The Path of Love requires self-giving and surrender to the world as it is and to others, but opens the heart to the rest of reality and to communion.⁴

It used to be that only the monarch and the aristocracy were subject to the trap of power. Scientific modernity and its technology have democratized power, making it possible for each of us to regard himself as a little god. This position is untenable in the long run; the question is: how big a crisis⁵ will it take to shake us from our delusion?

How long until our society can return to its only lasting foundation in truth, love?

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Notes

1. I hate having to explain my use of this word. "Man" is a collective and a singular at once; we are collectively man, and at the same time each one of us is man, regardless of our sex (not our gender—we are not parts of speech). The alternatives do not capture this meaning. See Tony Esolen's "What Is Man?", Touchstone 25:1 (Jan/Feb 2012), 15-17.

2. "Directedness" is a rudimentary form of "teleology," but the the later word carries too much undue baggage. (See my post "Four Levels of Teleology.") When Aristotle, for example, talks about "for the sake of which" in his natural/biological works, he means primarily directedness.

3. No matter what one believes about the existence of God, it should be extremely clear to all that man is not God. (Cf. James Barham's "Two Kinds of Atheists", The Best Schools Blog, December 7, 2011.) At least it's immediately clear with regard to others; it's clear with regard to one's self if one is self-reflective or if one allows all men to share a common nature. (From here we get into the nominalist origin of the modern crisis.)

4. Clearly I'm talking about agape (self-giving love, i.e., charity) and not eros (desire-love) here. The latter is not self-sufficient.

5. Idolization of desire seems to be a contributing cause of the current debt crisis. Another cause is the dishonesty of a currency whose value is decreed by fiat and that undermines trust by making every contract a lie.

Newton the Metaphysician

I finally got around to reading a book I've had in my library for some years now and am sorry that it took me so long to get to it. E.A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science is a superb analysis of the sources and content of Isaac Newton's philosophical thought, and thus an incisive critique of the entire enterprise of science and modernity.

The first two thirds of the book explicates the thought of Newton's influential predecessors, and the last third is about the thought of Newton himself. There are many great passages throughout the book, but in this post I will confine myself to excerpting from the parts that most directly deal with Newton as a metaphysician.

[I]n his decisive portrayal of the ultimate postulates of the new science and its successful method as they appeared to him, Newton was constituting himself a philosopher rather than a scientist as we now distinguish them. (33)

[Newton] disliked hypotheses, by which he meant explanatory propositions which were not immediately deduced from phenomena. At the same time, following his illustrious predecessors, he does give or assume definite answers to such fundamental questions as the nature of space, time, and matter; the relations of man with the objects of his knowledge; and it is just such answers that constitute metaphysics.¹ (33)

An interesting question remains however to be asked about [Newton's] method. Do not the very initial experiments and observations, as a result of which the mathematical behavior of phenomena is defined, presuppose something which we can only speak of as an hypothesis, to direct those experiments to a successful issue? (223)

This section, in which Burtt expresses the profound and ultimately insurmountable problems with the positivism Newton left us, is worth quoting at length:

[227] To begin with, there is no escape from metaphysics, that is, from the final implications of any proposition or set of propositions. The only way to avoid becoming a metaphysician is to say nothing. This can be illustrated by analysing any statement you please; suppose we take the central position of positivism itself as an example. This can perhaps be fairly stated in some such form as the following: It is possible to acquire truths about things without presupposing any theory of their ultimate nature; or, more simply, it is possible to have a correct knowledge of the part without knowing the nature of [228]the whole. Let us look at this position closely. That it is in some sense correct would seem to be vouched for by the actual successes of science, particularly mathematical science; we can discover regular relations among certain pieces of matter without knowing anything further about them, The question is not about its truth or falsity, but whether there is metaphysics in it. Well, subject it to a searching analysis, and does it not swarm with metaphysical assumptions? In the first place it bristles with phrases which lack precise definition, such as "ultimate nature", "correct knowledge", "nature of the whole", an assumptions of moment are always lurking in phrases which are thus carelessly used. In the second place, defining these phrases as you will, does not the statement reveal highly interesting and exceedingly important implications about the universe? Taking it in any meaning which would be generally accepted, does it not imply, for example, that the universe is essentially pluralistic (except, of course, for thought and language), that is, that some things happen without any genuine dependence on other happenings; and can therefore be described in universal terms without reference to anything else? Scientific positivists testify in various ways to this pluralistic metaphysic; as when they insist that there are isolable systems in nature, whose behaviour, at least in all prominent respects, can be reduced to law without any fear that the investigation of other happenings will do more than place that knowledge in a larger setting. Doubtless, strictly speaking, we could not say that we knew what would happen to our solar system if the fixed stars were of a sudden to vanish, but we do know that it is possible to reduce the major phenomena of our solar system to mathematical law on principles that do not depend on the presence of fixed stars, and hence with no reason to suppose their disappearance would upset our formulations in the least. Now this is certainly an important presumption about the nature of the universe, suggesting many further considerations. Let us forebear, however, to press our reasoning further at this point; the lesson is that even the attempt to escape metaphysics is no sooner put in the form of a proposition than it is seen to involve highly significant metaphysical postulates.

[229]For this reason there is an exceedingly subtle and insidious danger in positivism. If you cannot avoid metaphysics, what kind of metaphysics are you likely to cherish when you sturdily suppose yourself to be free from the abomination? Of course it goes without saying that in this case your metaphysics will be held uncritically because it is unconscious; moreover, it will be passed on to others far more readily than your other notions inasmuch as it will be propagated by insinuation rather than by direct argument. That a serious student of Newton fails to see his master had a most important metaphysic, is an exceedingly interesting testimony to the prevailing influence, throughout modern thought, of the Newtonian first philosophy.

Now the history of mind reveals pretty clearly that the thinker who decries metaphysics will actually hold metaphysical notions of three main types. For one thing, he will share the ideas of his age on ultimate questions, so far as such ideas do not run counter to his interests or awaken his criticism. No one has yet appeared in human history, not even the most profoundly critical intellect, in whom no important idola theatri can be detected, but the metaphysician will at least be superior to his opponent in this respect, in that he will be constantly on his guard against the surreptitious entrance and unquestioned influence of such notions. In the second place, if he be a man engaged in any important inquiry, he must have a method, and he will be under a strong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method, that is, to suppose the universe ultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful. Some of the consequences of succumbing to such a temptation have been abundantly evident in our discussion of the work of Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes. Finally since human nature demands metaphysics for its full intellectual satisfaction, no great mind can wholly avoid playing with ultimate questions, especially where they are powerfully thrust upon it by considerations arising from its positivistic investigations, or by certain vigorous extra-scientific interests, such as religion. But inasmuch as the positivist mind has failed to school itself in careful metaphysical thinking, its ventures at such points will be apt to appear pitiful, inadequate, or even fantastic. Each of these three types is exempl[230]ified in Newton. His general conception of the physical world and of man's relation to it, including the revolutionary doctrine of causality and the Cartesian dualism in its final ambiguous outcome (which were the two central features of the new ontology) with their somewhat less central corollaries about the nature and process of sensation, primary and secondary qualities, the imprisoned seat and petty powers of the human soul, was taken over without examination as an assured result of the victorious movement whose greatest champion he was destined to become. His views on space and time belong in part to the same category, but were in part given a most interesting turn by convictions of the third sort. To the second type belongs his treatment of mass, that is, it gains its metaphysical importance from a tendency to extend the implications of his method. Of the third type, mainly, are his ideas of the nature and function of the ether, and of God's existence and relation to the world uncovered by science. We can hardy do better than allow this analysis of the three types to furnish us with an outline of the succeeding sections.

Newton's genius brought mankind great success, but at a great cost that we his children are still paying. Our liberation from nature has enslaved us to ill-conceived philosophy.

Magnificent, irrefutable achievements gave Newton authority over the modern world, which, feeling itself to have become free of metaphysics through Newton the positivist, has become shackled and controlled by a very definite metaphysics through Newton the metaphysician. (230)

The book might be characterized as a reflection on the unexamined presuppositions of modern science, and it does highlight some of the odd religious presumptions on which Newton based his thought (e.g., absolute space as the "sensorium" of God). If one is to believe Wikipedia, Burtt was one of the writers of the first Humanist Manifesto, but not a signatory. Nevertheless he is a broad enough thinker (in some ways comparable to Whitehead) that his own views never intrude to cloud his judgment; I spent the first half of the book thinking he was a mild ally of scientism, and the second half thinking he was a moderate Aristotelian! That he was a professor at Cornell may not be his only similarity to Carl Sagan—but I write no more on that now.

Note

1. That Newton assumed a metaphysics (or more properly a philosophical physics, a.k.a. a natural philosophy) rather than drawing it from rational reflection on nature is what sets Newton's work as far less general than Aristotle's, and far inferior in actual knowledge of the world. It is the reason that his mechanics required correction in the 20th century (viz., quantum mechanics and relativity)—and even these corrections are incomplete.

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E.A. Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954). Same pagination as Dover Books edition.

Ratzinger on Augustine on Time

On this day when we look back to the past year and forward to the new year, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on time. Recently I read Pope Benedict/Cardinal Ratzinger's excellent Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. The original motivation for my picking up the book (which required my obtaining it interlibrary loan, though it's so good that now I will have to buy my own copy) was that it was recommended by Sister Timothy Prokes as a book in which Ratzinger discusses the natural world. Largely that promise has not borne out, but one notable exception is the following exceptional passage:

... we must ask how time belongs to man precisely as man, and so whether it is possible to find here a starting point for conceiving a human mode of existence beyond that which depends on physical conditions of possibility. Pursuing this question, we will find that "temporality" pertains to man on different levels, and so in different ways.

Most valuable in such an analysis is Book X of the Confessions where Augustine traverses the varied landscape of his own being and comes across memoria, "memory." In memory he finds past, present and future gathered into one in a peculiar way, which, on the one hand, offers some idea of what God's eternity might be like, and, on the other, indicates the special manner in which man both is bound to time and transcends time. In these reflections, Augustine comes to realize that memory alone brings about that curious reality we call the "present." This it does, compass-like, by cutting out the circumference of a circle from the continuous flux of things, and demarcating it as "today." Naturally, the present of different people differs, in dependence on the extent of that which consciousness presents as present. Yet in memory, the past is present, albeit in a diverse manner from the presence of that which we take to be "the present." It is praesens de praeterito: the past, present in its quality as past. And something similar is true of the praesens de futuro.

What does this analysis tell us? It tells us that man, insofar as he is body, shares in physical time measured as that is in terms of the velocity of moving bodies by parameters which are themselves in motion and thus also relative. Man, however, is not only body. He is also spirit. Because these two aspects inhere inseparably in man, his belonging to the bodily world affects the manner of his spiritual activity. Nevertheless, that activity cannot be analyzed exclusively in terms of physical data. Man's participation in the world of bodies shapes the time of his conscious awareness, yet in his spiritual activities he is temporal in a different, and deeper, way than that of physical bodies. Even in the biological sphere, there is a temporality which is not mere physical temporality. The "time" of a tree, expressed in the yearly rings of its trunk, is a manifestation of its specific life cycle, and not a mere unit of rotation around the sun. In human consciousness, the various levels of time are at once assumed and transcended, rendering that consciousness temporal in a way all its own. Time is not just a physical quality ascribed to man but wholly external to him. Time characterizes man in his humanity, which itself is temporal inasmuch as it is human. Man is temporal as a traveller along the way of knowing and loving, of decaying and maturing. His specific temporality also derives from his relationality—from the fact that he becomes himself only in being with others and being towards others. Entering upon love, or indeed refusing love, binds one to another person and so to the temporality of that person, his "before" and "after." The fabric of share humanity is a fabric of shared temporality.

When I read Confessions in my undergrad studies, I was fascinated by time. I must have overlooked the import of Confessions X because it struck me as too "subjective," and not enough about the nature of things in themselves. I did not yet realize that when we give an account of physical reality, we primarily have to give a phenomenology of human experience (at very least a preliminary one). I will definitely have to re-read Confessions X!

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Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic Univ. of America Press, 1988), 182-184.

The Past and Future of Space Exploration

Today is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned Moon landing and Moon walk.¹ To commemorate, Google has introduced Google Moon, which includes markers for the six manned moon landings (but what about the unmanned? robots are people too! haha). Here's a zoomed-in map of the Apollo-11 moon landing site. (Hat-tip to GoogleMapsMania, where there are a few more moon-related links.)

Apparently the Apollo 11 astronauts are on the stump today for the manned mission to Mars. I'm rather doubtful of the advisability of working toward such a mission now.

First of all, manned missions are "astronomically" more expensive than unmanned missions for the simple reason that we rightly value human life and want to return our astronauts to Earth alive. Equipment requires testing so that some spring doesn't fly off and puncture a spacesuit, for example. Even more, all the equipment to maintain an Earth-like environment is dreadfully heavy. Since increasing payload weight increases the amount of fuel required, which itself increases the weight and thus the amount of fuel needed, the total fuel required to lift a payload into orbit increases with the square of the weight. So life-support alone makes manned missions much, much more costly.

Secondly as any space scientist can tell you (privately), the vast bulk of space science comes from unmanned missions, e.g., the successes of Voyager, Mars Rover, and Galileo. Scientists remain silent in public because they want to keep their NASA funding. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, unmanned missions are scientifically orders of magnitude far more productive than manned missions.

Of course there's far more than scientific discovery at stake with a Mars mission: there's also national pride, firing the imagination of science students, etc. But can we really afford to spend billions of dollars simply to feel better about ourselves at this point? Can't we motivate our students in a more cost effective way, say, by promoting parental involvement? Besides, unmanned missions are exciting too: just look at the interest created by the pictures from the Voyager missions, or the Mars Rover.

Granted: our government has just given away close to $100 billion to unwise banks and failing businesses. The federal budget is over $2 trillion. A couple billion dollars a year seems a measly amount by comparison. Mark Thornton has a great response:

I have to admit that with all the hundreds of billions of dollars the federal government is wasting, it is hard to muster the energy to argue against a few additional billion. I reiterate that the real cost is not just a dollar amount, but all the things that could be produced if the proposal is rejected. This is an enormous amount of scientific and technical ability that could otherwise be used in the private sector to produce important discoveries and help keep the US economy number one in the world. In contrast to conventional wisdom which sees government budgets as a benefactor to science, the economic view shows that every dollar government spends on science actually hurts the progress of science and scientific discovery because scientific resources are diverted away from where they are needed most into nonperforming bureaucracies. We must also consider the fact that estimated or projected budgets are almost universally inaccurate and vastly underestimate the true cost of programs. For example, the International Space Station was more than 500% over budget and is still incomplete after twenty years. The actual cost of the Shuttle moving resources into space was underestimated by a factor of twenty. Based on current estimates of the total cost of going to Mars ($170 billion) the true cost could easily mount to $1 trillion.

As history has shown, government bureaucracies are horribly inept at space exploration. (This is for the simple reason that it gets its funding from its citizens at gunpoint, as it were—bullies are horribly lazy.) Privatizing space exploration would be far more efficient way to achieve goals in space and to benefit society.

People arguing for publicly funded manned missions point to the legacy such missions will leave for future generations. But I think it is more likely that future generations would blame us for opting to pleasure ourselves (as our consumeristic society already does too much these days) with an inefficient effort that saddles them with more public debt.

I'm sure that someday we'll land astronauts on Mars. In the meantime public funding would be better spent on exploring with robots and maybe developing more efficient propulsion systems. But really it would be best to turn over space exploration to the free market.

Notes

1. There is an obvious joke here, but that poor man's memory has been held in public view far too long already.

On Marriage: a Bad Good-Article and Two Better Ones

I've been terribly busy with work, but I'd like to call to you attention an interesting triptych of articles on marriage in Touchstone.

First "Divorced from Reality" by Stephen Baskerville. I've rather inclined to believe what the article has to say: that unilateral ("no-fault") divorce is effectively a way for the state to stage hostile take-overs of families. The currency of this issue cannot be overstated:

Today’s disputes over marriage in fact have their origin in this one. Demands to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples are inconceivable apart from the redefinition of marriage already effected by heterosexuals through divorce. Though gays cite the very desire to marry as evidence that their lifestyle is not inherently promiscuous, activist Andrew Sullivan acknowledges that that desire has arisen only because of the promiscuity permitted in modern marriage. “The world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50 percent divorce rates preceded gay marriage,” he points out. “All homosexuals are saying ... is that, under the current definition, there’s no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is . . . a denial of basic civil equality” (emphasis added). Gays do not want traditional monogamous marriage, only the version debased by divorce. (20)

The problem is that I found the histrionic tone made it rather too easy to doubt the author's credibility. For example:

Some four decades ago, while few were paying attention, the Western world embarked on the boldest social experiment in its history. With no public discussion of the possible consequences, laws were enacted in virtually every jurisdiction that effectively ended marriage as a legal contract. Today it is not possible to form a binding agreement to create a family. The government can now, at the request of one spouse, simply dissolve a marriage over the objection of the other. (19)

It may be that the move "four decades ago" was truly as idioticly undiscussed as this passage implies. It may be that it is impossible to explain the historical debate, because the debate was non-existent. But one would expect at least some sign of self-awareness about the incredibility of describing such a situation. The way it is written, it sounds as if the author is oversimplifying and making rhetorical capital out of it.

Second is Allan Carlson's "Meaningful Intercourse: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Constitution of the West" (not available online), which draws the parallel between modern notions of sexuality and those of ancient Gnosticism. He points out the demise of our civilization is coming through the acceptance of contraception and the legitimating of illegitimacy.

Third, I would also like to commend to you another article in the same issue "Phony Matrimony" by Christopher Oleson (not available online).¹ Oleson traces the implosion of marriage in the West back to the easy acceptance of contraception. He points out that it is difficult for a couple these days to marry in the traditional understanding of that term, because (1) we don't see openness to children as essential to marriage, and (2) in the backs of our heads we all have an escape-hatch conception of marriage: as a revocable contract, so that if worse comes to worse, we can divorce and remarry someone who will make us "happy." Excluding same-sex couples from "marriage," in this understanding of the term, is not logically consistent, he says.²

All three articles are insightful, and look behind the popular uproar over same-sex "marriage" to find the much more fundamental problem: we now miss the horses, but they left the stable a long while ago, and we ourselves let them out.³

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Notes

1. Corny title. A colleague of Oleson's I spoke to said Oleson was somewhat annoyed that Touchstone changed the title of his "Our Last 'Marriage' Taboo" without asking him. In the current issue, the editors' reply to a letter reveals that they had cut a substantial, substantive section of an article in the October 2008 issue "for reasons of space" (9). It sounds like Touchstone's editors need to take more care with their authors' intentions.

2. Anthony Esolen weighs in in a sidebar (p. 37), agreeing largely with Oleson, but adding that real same-sex (i.e., non-sexual) friendships are also a good to be protected in uniquely opposing homosexuality. Of course, he's not speaking specifically of "marriages", but of relationships in general.

3. This is in the best tradition of Touchstone, which some years back pointed out that the more basic problem with openly homosexual Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson came not with his Church's acceptance of his sexual "preference," but with his Church's acceptance of his abandonment of his wife and children.

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Stephen Baskerville, "Divorced from Reality," Touchstone 22:1 (Jan-Feb 2009), 19-25.

Allan Carlson, "Meaningful Intercourse: The Rise and Fall of the Sexual Constitution of the West," Touchstone 22:1 (Jan-Feb 2009), 26-31.

Christopher Oleson, "Phony Matrimony," Touchstone 22:1 (Jan-Feb 2009), 32-37.

Greatness and History

I was talking to a friend the other day about the current trend among certain faithful Catholics to refer to the late Pope John Paul II as "John Paul the Great." There is even a "John Paul the Great University" that opened its doors this fall. It seems like an unwise trend to me and one characteristic of the narcissism of our society to pronounce on a matter better left to posterity.

Please don't get be wrong. I admire the late pontiff as much as anyone. Playing such a large role in bringing down communism might itself qualify someone as "great," but in addition John Paul II also left us with so many wonderful writings, not to mention the courageous example of his holy death.

The problem I see is that we really cannot fairly assess the value of a person's legacy for years—that is, until we really see the fruit of that legacy. To call someone "great" who is only a few years in the grave is to assume a power that lies beyond any single generation. But as self-involved as we are these days, we assume that anything that strikes us as great at this moment can only be great for all time. This is the same narcissistic age that arrogates to itself the power to name itself ("modern," "post-modern").

What's even more troubling is the undercurrent one senses among many "John Paul the Great" cheerleaders that faithful Catholics can only share their enthusiasm and that to do otherwise is to be less than faithful. It's almost as if they believe Christian orthodoxy requires the believer to surrender to the cult of personality that accreted around the late Pontiff (and that to a degree extends to his successor). Let's not take our eyes off the ball: the whole point of the Papacy is not the man who occupies the Chair of Peter, but the reverence due the office of Peter and its role in preserving the orthodoxy of the Catholic Faith.

Comprehending the Infinite

As part of the commentary on Aristotle’s Physics that I am composing, I’ve been researching infinity, which is one of the topics in book III.

David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity was the first I read. As I’ve noted here before, Wallace’s writing style is extremely mannered. His treatment of the mathematical concepts and ideological camps is very understandable, but unfortunately, his thinking and writing are not so clear on the implications and meanings of the mathematical developments. The book could use circumscription by a table of contents and an index, though perhaps the lack of these is intended as an artsy way of embodying the “infinite.”

Brian Clegg’s Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable was an accessible and straight-forward recounting of the history of conceptions of the infinite. It wasn’t particularly deep or probing and covered roughly the same ground as Wallace’s book, but in less detail, and certainly less manically.

Paolo Zellini’s penetrating A Brief History of Infinity was reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges’s writings, and not merely because he starts the book with a quotation from Borges. The book supplies a sweeping treatment of the implications of conceptions of infinity, and if I could tag it with any flaw, it would be that its depth combined with its brevity (200-pp.) flirt with impenetrability of language—but then infinity is an obscure topic (and it’s difficult to translate from Italian). The Wallace book’s treatment of the paramount proofs was good background for this book.

I thought it would be helpful to summarize the most significant points of Zellini’s work. Then I'll conclude with a brief consideration on how Aristotle's conception of infinity compares with modern developments.

Preliminary Clarification of Terminology

Part of the difficulty of Zellini’s book was keeping track of various terms for the two kinds of infinity.

These terms are roughly synonymous with each other: potential infinity, syncategorematic infinity, improper or false infinity, infinity ex parte materiae, material infinity, negative infinity

These terms are antonymous in a sense with the previous list, but synonymous with each other: actual infinity, categorematic infinity, real or true infinity, infinity ex parte formae, formal infinity, positive infinity.

This last set of terms is sometimes synonymous with the absolute or simple infinity actualized in God.

It might be helpful to recall through an example how potentiality and actuality are linked to temporal succession. A car is able to move because it is potentially in another place; once it has moved to that place, it is there actually and not potentially. Thus change in general is a succession of potentiality and actuality.

The Classical-Medieval Understanding

The Greek word for infinite, apeiron, means indefinite or unlimited. A connotation of perfection is completely foreign to it. Aristotle understood the term as denoting incompleteness. Limits make any object exist concretely, individually and with proper form; apeiron denotes a privation of limits—formlessness.

Aristotle writes, “The infinite [apeiron] is not what has nothing outside of it, but what always has something outside of it.” The infinite is always potential, because more can always be added to it. The infinite by division also exists only potentially: a concrete thing can potentially be divided an infinite number of times.

Numbers to the ancient Greeks were intimately tied to concrete things. Even if these things were conceived as abstract entities, they were nevertheless embodied in a sort of intelligible substance. Thus the Greeks could not conceive as a number as an entity in itself, but only as the result of counting a concrete set of things, and of course, one can never complete (or actualize) the counting of an infinite number of things (that is, in time).

St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle’s basic point, but with the additional information of the Christian revelation of God’s infinitude, added a new layer of meaning to the infinite. As Zellini writes,

Aristotle had excluded any possibility of confusing the false infinite of apeiron with the infinite divine perfection, simply by denying the latter any infinite attributes. Divine perfection was designated by terms referring to its ‘totality,’ its ‘plenitude’, and to its ‘eternity’, but not to its unlimitedness. The last term belonged exclusively to the realm of quantity, and was therefore completely extraneous to God.

Aquinas dares not follow Aristotle’s formulation of the problem [because of the condemnation of Arabic Aristotelianism in 1277], and instead embraces the thesis that ‘God is infinite and eternal and boundless’. But he immediately adds that the infinite can have two opposite natures: one derived from the idea of form, and the other from the idea of matter.

The infinite ‘on the part of matter’ (ex parte materiae) thus had to correspond to an analogue of the false infinity of Aristotle’s apeiron. By contrast, the infinite ‘on the part of form’ (ex parte formae), by referring to a sort of formal perfection, could indicate in what sense one could speak correctly of God’s infinity. (59–60)

Infinity on the part of form means that God is infinitely articulated (delimited in a positive sense)…and yet Aquinas’s Five Ways show God to be infinitely simple in another sense….

Formal and material infinities parallel actual and potential infinities. As to whether the actual infinite could exist outside of God, Aquinas contrasts the divine infinite by essence or simplicity (per essentiam or simpliciter) with the relative infinite (infinitus secundum quid), corresponding to a specific nature. Aquinas seemed to think the latter could only exist potentially and thus seemed to identify it with the potential infinite. (61)

In the interest of clarity, Peter of Spain introduced novel terminology. The syncategorematic infinite is the potential infinite, but stripped of the residual connotation in “potential” of an actual orientation to an end or possibility of actual realization. The categorematic infinite, in contrast, is an actually realized whole that is simply larger than any finite quantity. (67)

Enlightenment Turn

Descartes distinguished the infinite from the indefinite. The latter roughly parallels the false or potential infinite, but with a significant attitudinal shift. For Descartes the imperfection of the indefinite is not its boundlessness, but the boundedness that remains. “It was the same continual opening which Boethius had rejected as a ‘monster of malice’, and which Aristotle had associated with non-being and privation. Instead…Descartes perceives in it the unequivocal sign of a divine imprint.” (103) While Descartes did not believe in the existence of the actual infinite, he paved the way for its use by speculating about the mind’s openness to the infinite as a standard of perfection.

Renaissance painting discovered perspective, which manifests the convergence of lines on the horizon, that is, at infinity. This innovation grounded the change in the concept of the infinite. Descartes’ rationalization of space is premised on “the affirmation of existence culminating in the visibility of a point in which the entire infinity of visual space appears enclosed and unified.” (111)

The shift in attitude is dramatically apparent by contrasting Aristotle with Leibniz, the originator of infinitesimals. Whereas Aristotle writes that “Nature avoids what is infinite, because the infinite lacks completion and finality, whereas this is what Nature always seeks,” Leibniz writes that nature “involves the infinite in all it does” (112–113)

Modern Developments

While the Leibniz’s conception of the infinite incorporated some flaws, its practical application convinced Bernard Bolzano of its reality. Bolzano saw that the infinite, as with other mathematical entities such as zero and imaginary numbers, could be an objective idea without corresponding to a concretely existing thing; a thing could be determinate without existing in reality: the infinite can be defined unambiguously even if it is impossible to enumerate its elements. (143) As Zellini writes,

When we speak of the set of inhabitants of Peking, we individuate a well-defined set without being required to enumerate separately all its components one by one. Analogously, the terms of an infinite sequence can all be specified by the law governing the formation of the sequence, which renders superfluous enumerating its terms: it is the law that specifies the sequence, and not ‘all’ its terms counted one by one. (148)

“Dedekind did not scruple to declare that arithmetic evolves perfectly independently of a priori intuitions of space and time, and that the concept of number is an immediate result of the laws of thought.” (160)

Like Bolzano, Dedekind said that an intellectual entity could be determined by all that can be said or thought about it. Similarly Cantor believed that mathematical entities can be considered actual insofar as they, as he wrote, “assume a perfectly determinate place in our knowledge, are clearly distinct from all other constituents of our thought, stand in definite relation to them, and therefore modify the substance of our mind in a definite way.” But (as any Platonist) he also believed that we don’t arbitrarily construct these entities, but receive them from “the voice of nature.” Still, he put the existence of these entities outside the competence of mathematics—such metaphysical questions have no bearing on mathematics. Furthermore, he saw clearly that transfinite numbers cannot even approach an understanding of the Absolute, which can only be acknowledged but never known. (160–161)

Yet, in the 12th chapter on “The Antinomies, or Paradoxes of Set Theory,” Zellini argues that Cantor’s achievements are not unqualified. Hilbert tried to preserve them by formalizing mathematics in a rigid system of “symbols without significance,” but Gödel showed that symbolic systems were not able to express a complete and closed world of mathematics. (177)

In 1932, Weyl condensed this finding in a neat summary: the infinite is intuitively accessible as an indefinitely open field of possibility, and in this respect would seem analogous to a series of numbers that can be extended unlimitedly. Yet completeness, the so-called actual infinite, lies beyond our reach. Nevertheless, the exigencies of totality impel the mind to imagine the infinite, by means of symbolic constructions, as a closed entity. (179)

It may be my lack of mathematical expertise that keeps me from understanding how later limits to mathematics concerned Cantor’s achievements (or perhaps Zellini is simply vague). Perhaps it is fair to summarize the conclusion of the book as saying that modern mathematics shows that transfinite numbers are never completely formless—that they can be handled in a determinate way, even though unable to completely exclude paradox.

How Aristotle Falls Short

As we have seen, infinite numbers aren’t unequivocally infinite, that is, without bound or indeterminate. Merely the fact that they are numbers constrains their properties. For example, that they are ordered bounds them from complete chaos. They needn’t be actualized in matter to be determinate.

As is well known, Aristotle failed to separate the actuality of form from the actuality of existence. The great advance of Aquinas was seeing that a determinate essence still required an act of being (esse) to be real. For example, you can conceive of a unicorn in a perfectly consistent and rather complete way, which means the unicorn has a certain actuality; but this actuality doesn’t mean such a creature actually exists. It seems to me that mathematical entities similarly can be fully determinate (formally actual) without being actualized in matter (possessing an act of being).¹ Potentiality and actuality in the fully real sense of existing in the world have no part in such beings, so the inability to actualize infinity in the world is irrelevant to the actuality (or determinateness) of infinity.

Thus, Aristotle’s mistake was part of his general failure to distinguish formal actuality from existential actuality.

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Notes

1. But then it would seem that only actually existing things can be determinate (or consistent) in the fullest sense.

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Paolo Zellini, A Brief History of Infinity, trans. David Marsh (New York: Penguin Books, 2004).

David Foster Wallace, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003).

Brian Clegg, Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable ( (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004).

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17 Feb 2006: Minor edits.

The Crisis of Fatherhood and Christian Unity

Note: Blogger was bought out by Google, who've now forced me to switch to their new "improved" system. Please be patient while I get the kinks worked out of the template.

Thursday last week was the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, and the last day of the Octave of Christian Unity.

Some years ago Fr. Thomas Loya, an Eastern-rite Catholic priest, gave a talk in which he said (I'm going from memory) the Western Church is the masculine to the Eastern Church's feminine: the West is much larger and more active, whereas the East is less expansive. Western churches thrust upward, whereas Eastern churches are more rounded and shorter. Furthermore the Western mentality is more analytic, where the East is more mystical.¹ Both of these principles are essential aspects of the unity that is (or should be) the Church.²

The plan of this post is to use this conceit to understand Church history, and to see how it may help show us the road forward to Christianity unity. DISCLAIMER: Much of this is based on conversations I've had with fellow Christians of various Churches and denominations, so don't think of it as an academic document: it's more like a "cartoon ecclesiology." I offer it to help us understand the broad outlines of Church history, and to stimulate conversation. I welcome any clarifications and corrections that readers may offer.

It seems clear to me that the West is the masculine side essentially because its head is the Papa, the Pope. What we in the West often forget is that Pope wears two hats (tiaras?). We're all familiar with his role as head of the Church, but at least until recently, he also bore the title of "Patriarch of the West."³ Historically there are four apostolic Churches in Christianity: Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and Rome; Constantinople was added later. Each of these Churches is headed by a patriarch who has special charge over the ceremony and discipline of that Church. Of course, as bishops, each of these patriarchs also certifies doctrine as orthodox and catholic in his respective region, but in his added role as head of the Church, the Pope is in charge of doctrine in the entire Christian Church in ensuring correct doctrine (e.g., by approving the decrees of Ecumenical Councils, and rejecting false councils, like the robber council of Ephesus). As Head of the Church, the Pope enforces doctrine, but as Patriarch of the West, he controls discipline and ceremony; the latter role is (traditionally) restricted to the Western Church.

Another thing we Westerners overlook is that, despite the formal mutual excommunications in A.D. 1054 ("The Great Schism"), the East and West were actually in communion until the thirteenth century sacking of Constantinople by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade. This event is probably the saddest of Church history: supposedly Christian soldiers ravaged the great Christian city, raping nuns, and stabling horses in Hagia Sophia, one of the most beautiful churches in all Christendom. To top it off, after the perpetrators of this crime acknowledged their sin, the Pope forgave them without imposing any substantial penance.

To this day, this painful memory is seared into the Eastern Christian memory. I contend that it colors all of their views and opinions of the Western Church. Using this post's conceit, the sacking was like a man drunkenly raping his wife; the easy forgiveness was like his sober self-justification; the long memory of the East is like that of an injured wife.

Today, it's not unusual to hear Orthodox Christians decry the doctrinal "innovations" of the Catholic Church. I contend that Catholics and Orthodox substantially share the same beliefs. The "innovations" are reformulations of the same doctrines that the Orthodox maintain, but the West's analytic bent and concentrated authority has allowed it more flexibility in expressing these doctrines in new ways to engage a changing world and protect against new errors. (There's a reason Islam didn't develop in the West's backyard.) The Orthodox for their part maintain doctrinal "purity," but at the expense of being frozen in first-millennium formulations and unable to speak to the modern world. The Orthodox sometimes do acknowledge their doctrinal unity with the Catholic Church, but what very understandably stands in their way of consistent acknowledgement is the cultural scar left by the sack of Constantinople.

Unfortunately the West has not always used its authority for the good of the Church. The abuses of the medieval papacy are well known (though often exaggerated), and need no recitation here. Suffice it to say that some of them exercised their authority not for the good of the ruled, but for their own aggrandizement. In northern Europe in particular, the clergy were poorly formed and poorly disciplined. The result was the Protestant Reformation. A Protestant colleague of mine reminds me of the embarrassing fact that Luther didn't leave the Church, but was excommunicated by Rome. It's difficult to decide whether to call the Protestant Churches abandoned children or runaways, but in any event they are estranged from their true home, and not entirely by their own doing.

In reality, authority needs to put itself in service of the Tradition handed down through the bishops from the Apostles. Christian unity cannot be regained without the proper exercise of authority. The abuse of authority illegitimates those particular uses of authority, not the authority itself.

These historical problems have been recognized by Rome and a dialogue has been opened. As Pope John Paul II observed in Ut Unum Sint, "the Catholic Church's conviction that in the ministry of the Bishop of Rome she has preserved... the visible sign and guarantor of unity, constitutes a difficulty for most other Christians, whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections. To the extent that we are responsible for these, I join my Predecessor Paul VI in asking forgiveness" (88).

Within the Catholic Church

Nevertheless not yet widely recognized is the extent to which this imperious exercise of paternal authority has caused damage within the Catholic Church.

This damage endangers the dialogue with other Christians. In the U.S., Roman Catholic bishops were jealous of members of their flock changing to one of the Eastern Rites to be ordained, since in those rites they could be married. They petitioned the Roman Pontiff to forbid Eastern-rite Catholics from ordaining married men in the U.S. This was a clear overextension of Pope's power as Patriarch of the West to the Eastern Rite. If we Catholics can't treat our own well, why would the Orthodox ever trust us to treat them well?

Furthermore, it cannot help the dialogue with the Orthodox, who rightly prize Tradition, to show a cavalier attitude toward Tradition. Unfortunately the Roman authority has at times been exercise at the expense of Tradition, instead of in service to it. The First Vatican Council's decree of "Ex Cathedra" papal pronouncements is an obvious (though commonly misunderstood and exaggerated) continuation of the centralization of power in Rome. Ironically, it is the Second Vatican Council, the supposed council of openness and democracy, that most centralized power. Following the Council (but not actually mandated by its documents), Pope Paul VI unilaterally forbade the traditional liturgy that dated from the Apostles and was codified at Trent—the so-called Tridentine Rite—to institute what is called the "Novus Ordo" or new order of Mass. The effect was to create a rift between tradition and authority that persists to the present.

Adherence to the new rite and the authority on which it rests, instead of adherence to the Faith, has become the de facto litmus test of Catholic belief. Not long ago, for example, the U.S. Bishops mandated standing to receive communion (a practice Cranmer first instituted in the English Reformation to destroy Eucharistic piety) as the norm, and required special episcopal permission for a congregation to receive communion kneeling. (And then they wonder at the faithful's failure to believe in the Real Presence!) It's as if they wanted to flatter their narcissism by distinguishing the power of their own offices from the power of tradition.⁴ The great concentration of power in Rome has prevented the other bishops from having to "grow up." They still act like children shielded from responsibility—and they have not comported themselves well in bearing increased responsibility. Witness the recent highly publicized scandals of the American Church.

With such juvenile behavior, it can be no surprise when Catholics fail to take their pastors seriously, even when they try to lead their flock to Christ. In Braveheart, the nobles of Scottland have sold out to the English king. William Wallace rises to its defence, but he still sees the need for the nobles, and in particular for Robert the Bruce, to whom he says:

Now tell me, what does that mean to be noble? Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country, but men don't follow titles, they follow courage. Now our people know you. Noble, and common, they respect you. And if you would just lead them to freedom, they'd follow you. And so would I.

Similarly, certain segments of the Church hierarchy seem to have abandoned their flocks to the wolves. This doesn't necessitate dispensing with the hierarchy, but in recalling them to their charge.

The crisis in the Church is a crisis of fatherhood. Fatherhood is the proper use of God-given power. St. Paul sets forth the proper use of husbandly authority in chapter 5 of his letter to the Ephesians.:

Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.... (Eph 5:22-25)

Fathers, like husbands, must sacrifice their own interests for the good of those they rule. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (Jn 10:11).

The Church has taken concrete steps to heal the rift with the Eastern Churches and with the separated brethren of the West. For example, Pope John Paul II's year-2000 apologies, and his overtures to the Orthodox hierarchy, including offering monetary support, no strings attached, to Orthodox clergy in spreading the Gospel.

We need to pray that Rome and the Western hierarchy will one day see in the same light their responsibilities to the faithful who have remained loyal to Rome. We need obedience to appropriate authority to achieve unity, but this unity can only be in the Apostolic Tradition.

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Notes

1. The concrete reasons for this difference are pretty plain: the East needs more props for liturgy, and has married priests. Plus I think the emphasis on the restfulness of the resurrection, as opposed to the striving of our Lord's passion is an additional reason.

2. I see The Dark Crystal as an allegory of the Schism, written from (possibly) an Anglican point of view. "Many ages ago in our arrogance and delusion, we shattered the pure Crystal, and our world split apart."

3. He inexplicably dropped this title in the last couple years, and it has the Orthodox (and the historically conscious) in a quandry.

4. One might wonder if this narcissism bears any relation to the infiltration of homosexuals into the ranks of the clergy.

Aristotle's Atoms

The conventional wisdom in science is that the modern atomic theory, first formulated by John Dalton in the 19th century, comes from the tradition of ancient philosophical atomists like Democritus and Epicurus. Countless textbooks repeat this as a truism and blame the influence of Aristotle's philosophy for suppressing atomism, and with it scientific knowledge and human progress.¹

But the story is vastly oversimplified.

For one thing, modern atomic theory rejects many central ideas of ancient atomism. For another, Aristotle himself believed there were indivisible parts of matter, termed minima.² Medieval commentators developed the idea within Aristotle's system and important features of their thought found their way into modern atomic theory.

As one history of the concept "atom" puts it,

Dalton conceived the union of the atoms in the compound as a simple juxtaposition. The atoms lie against each other without undergoing any internal change. In this point the founder of the chemical atomic theory did not differ from the philosophic atomists, but simply continued as something quite natural the tradition of the preceding centuries. There is, however, a remarkable point of difference from the ancient philosophical atomism. Dalton's atoms are specifically different for every kind of substance. Even this is nothing new, for the prevailing medieval theory of smallest particles, the minima theory, knew minima of a specific nature, and it was in the circles of its supporters that the first efforts were made towards the more scientifically oriented corpuscular theories of the seventeenth century. The idea of specifically different smallest particles was already so firmly established that the official supporters of Democritus and Epicurus in the seventeenth century had made room for it in their atomic theory.³

The history of the atom, like many of the stories we scientists tell ourselves, is not so much true as a useful abstraction. The problem comes when the usefulness serves not to open us to reality, but to provide an anodyne against "details" that don't quite fit the way we like to see things.

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More historical myth busting here: Flat Earth Flat Wrong in which we see that the big lie is not so much the idea of a flat earth, but the idea that anyone believed in a flat earth.

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Notes

1. E.g., Silberberg, Chemistry, 4e (McGraw-Hill), p. 39. Of course for secularists Aristotle is a convenient whipping-boy for Medieval Christianity.

2. E.g., Physics I, 4, 187b 28-34. See Van Melsen, p. 42.

3. Van Melsen, p. 139.

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Andrew G. Van Melsen, From Atomos to Atom: The History of the Concept ATOM, trans. Henry J. Koren, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960).

Twelfth Day

Today is the traditional date for the Feast of the Epiphany, the celebration of the Incarnate God revealing himself not only to Jews, but to all nations, as represented in the Magi.¹ While the secular world dropped Christmas like a rock on the 26th (for Valentine's Day), some of us still remember that there are twelve days of Christmas, with the final one being Epiphany. In some cultures this is actually the the day for giving gifts!²

Speaking of gifts, what about that crazy "Twelve Days of Christmas" song? John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak write in The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living:

In the mid-90s we began to hear about a hidden meaning that underlay the charmingly nonsensical song “The 12 Days of Christmas.” According to Fr. Hal Stockert of the Catholic Information Network, the song was a coded catechism, used by persecuted English Catholics to pass on the faith to their children.

For those who haven't seen the claim, here's Fr. Stockert's CIN article:

The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The "true love" mentioned in the song doesn't refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The "me" who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, much in memory of the expression of Christ's sadness over the fate of Jerusalem: "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have sheltered thee under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but thou wouldst not have it so..."

The other symbols mean the following:

2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.
6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments
11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

John and Denise continue:

The author didn’t provide his source for this information, and a number of critics have raised objections—for instance, the fact that Anglicans, too, believe in each of the things enumerated above (except for seven sacraments; they’ve slimmed down to three). A more obvious point: Would using such a song really help kids remember all those complex, sometimes abstruse theological points?

With a couple of exceptions the gifts offer little apparent connection to the things they're supposed to represent, and thus little mnemonic advantage over simply counting to twelve. Perhaps it's simply that we of the modern world don't grasp the rich symbolic of bygone ages? If so, advocates of the "catechism theory" owe some explanation.

Additionally, what's the use of simply remembering these numbers? In what way is it important to the Catholic Christian Faith to know, for example, that the Apostle's Creed has twelve points? Why not just learn the points themselves?

I've just stumbled across an article³ that includes this interesting piece of information:

However, according to A Celebration and History(ISBN 0-679-74038-4), by Leigh Grant, the written lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" first appeared in Mirth without Mischief in the early 1780s in England. Grant states that the tune to which these words are sung apparently dates back much further and came from France.

Maybe the claim gets so much play because Christians really do feel their faith under assault. The deeper story is not that Catholics were persecuted in the past, but that they are denigraded even today, largely because of widespread historical ignorance. (Ironically the claim about the song seems to represent a similar ignorance.) The celebration of Christmas didn't pop out of the sky, and it's certainly not specified in literal text of the Bible. While it's great that so many Christians want to put Christ back into Christmas, how about we put the Mass back too!

Note

1. When we still had men in the American episcopacy, the Feast was actually celebrated today, instead of being transfered to Sunday.

2. One of the advantages to being in the know about the calendrical reality of Christmas is that one can in good conscience buy Christmas gifts at the "after Christmas" sales. Holy timewarp!

3. The Snopes article also contains some interesting background on Fr. Stockert's claims. The Snopes site is known for its liberal anti-religious bias, the information (updated Dec. 20) is still interesting.

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John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak, The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2005).

Smithsonian Archives Show Trial Photos

The Smithsonian has recently discovered some previously unpublished photos of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" (Tennessee vs. John Scopes, 1925). They're worth a gander:

Unpublished Photographs from 1925 Tennessee vs. John Scopes "Monkey Trial" Found in Smithsonian Archives

John Scopes, Dayton, Tennessee, June 1925

Clarence Darrow interrogating William Jennings Bryan (seated, left), July 20, 1925

(HT: Washington Times, USA Today)

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Posts on Smithsonian's role in the evolution controvery:

• Smithsonian Compromised
• Thank God for the Darwinian Inquisition
• Review of The Privileged Planet

All the Newspeak That's Fit to Print

Editorial Note: The present post is another political one. If you don't like politics, or my take on it, my next post will be more philosophical in nature.) People I respect, like Denyse O'Leary, don't seem to understand how politics and policy fit into the ostensible subject of this forum. Unfortunately I failed in my explanation of the blog's title to expand adequately on the meaning of "physics." I owe you an explanation. Please be patient.

As we saw in "Why Real Physics?, the de-anchoring of purpose from nature not only destroys nature, but also subverts language, making it an instrument for devaluing human life. Following tonight's rhetoric¹ in response to the President's announcement of his nomination of Judge Roberts, it is fitting to reflect on the abuse of language.

Phrases like "a voice of reason and moderation" and "embodies the fundamental American values of freedom, equality and fairness" apply only to supporters of legal abortion. While any opponent of abortion "threatens to roll back the rights and freedoms of the American people." These examples are from the New York Times, which, as we saw with regard to Tom Woods, is unabashed in its role of liberal advocacy.

Those with a less antipodean native tongue may find helpful this list of futher translations: Democrat Nomination Translation Table (Hat tip to Tim Carney)

Garbage flows downhill. The Times' misuse of language was first perfected in the academy.² Compare to the classic Frequently Used Words and Phrases of the PC Lexicon from Harvard's Penninsula.

The co-opting of language for political power is precisely the kind George Orwell epitomizsed in 1984 as Newspeak:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [the totalitarian Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever....

It would have been quite impossible to render [the Declaration of Independence] into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government.

The moral of the story: the man who says language has no meaning and is only an instrument for power speaks meaningfully only about himself.

Upholding a Grand Tradition

The paradigmatic example New York Times newspeak was its cover-up of the famine from Stalin's forced agricultural collectivization of the Ukraine. Millions starved to death while correspondent Walter Duranty decried the reports as fallacious.

In 1933, at the height of the famine, Duranty wrote that "village markets [were] flowing with eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter. ... A child can see this is not famine but abundance." (Berlau)

It was Duranty who knowingly denied the famine in dispatches to The New York Times with descriptive euphemisms such as "serious food shortage," "mismanagement of collective farming," a conspiracy of "wreckers" and "spoilers" who had "made a mess of Soviet food production" (i.e. poor Ukrainian peasants who resisted collectivization) and the like. "There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation," he wrote, "but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." There was suffering, Duranty admitted but "to put it brutally - you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs..." (Kuropas)

No longer are they sons and daughters, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters. They are raw materials indifferently to be used or crushed.

(Further Duranty quotations collected here.)

As Myron Kuropas describes, the Times continued its tradition with its justifications of the wholesale slaughter conducted by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in 1975. But Pol Pot's two million is hardly an itchy nose compared to 70 million famine-stricken Ukrainians.

The Times has yet to admit any fault. After all, how can one sin if one acts in the name of The Revolution?

If the Times doesn't blush at covering up mass genocide, we can hardly expect it to suffer pangs of conscience over the 34 million children of the post-Roe generation (a third) who will never see the light of day.

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More recent Times shananigans here:

Flunking Journalism Ethics 101: NYT Allows News Reporter to Write Op-Ed on Evolution Controversy

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Notes

1. Transcript of Leahy and Schumer remarks: [FoxNews] [WaPo?] [NYTimes?] Doubtless largely crafted long before the identity of the nominee was clear. Being a speech-writer for such single-note clients must be a boring job: perhaps an industrious programmer could train his computer to do the job at the push of a button. On the other hand, it might be fun to push the limit for the number of histrionic proclamations of imminent apocalyse can one string together in a paragraph without evoking unbridled laughter. More reaction quotations: [AP-NYT]

2. Cf. Thucydides' description of tha Athenian plague as beginning in the head (History of the Peloponnesian War, 49).

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David Stout, "Democrats Warn Bush on Choosing Successor to O'Connor," New York Times (July 1, 2005). ["Warn"! O my!]

George Orwell, 1984 (1949),Pt. III, ch. 6.

John Berlau, "Duranty's Deception" Insight (July 7, 2003).

Myron B. Kuropas, "Making omelets at The New York Times," The Ukrainian Weekly 71:10 (March 9, 2003).

Arnold Beichman, "Pulitzer-Winning Lies," The Daily Stardard (June 12, 2003).

"Flat Earth" Flat Wrong

Tom Woods¹ has written a great article debunking the myth that anyone ever thought the Earth flat:

The Flat Earth Myth

Interesting excerpts:

European monarchs’ initial hesitation to support Columbus’s proposed expedition had nothing to do with the idea that the world was flat and Columbus might fall off the edge. It was precisely the accuracy of their knowledge of the earth that made them skeptical: they correctly concluded that Columbus had drastically underestimated the size of the earth, and that therefore he and his men would starve to death before they made it to the Indies. (Thankfully for them, of course, the Americas, which no one knew about, fortuitously appeared in between.)

...

Uncritical acceptance of the myth was too tempting for many scholars, since it fit in so well with the caricature of Christianity they were already inclined to draw. "If Christians had for centuries insisted that the earth was flat against clear and available evidence," explains Russell, "they must be not only enemies of scientific truth, but contemptible and pitiful enemies."

Take that, Jacobins: happy Bastille Day!

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1. Tom's most recent claim to fame is The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, which on top of being a New York Times bestseller, was roundly denounced as dangerous by the Times's editors. (The Times wouldn't promote censorship, now would it?) If that's not enough recommendation for the book, please take my word that it's well worth reading. Even the most wary are surrounded by so many liberal lies that we can't help but believe at least some of them; this book is the red pill.

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Jeffrey Burton Russell Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (New York: Praeger, 1991).

For completeness: Flat Earth Society (their custom URL no longer works; perhaps lack of interest and funding?)