A Mouse in Wolf's Clothing (Part IV)
It may not be true that modern science started with Copernicus’s “simple” leap, but without going into unnecessary detail, I’m going to say that it did. In the next half-century, Tycho Brahe observed and recorded the seasonal movements of the planets. Johannes Kepler, using Brahe’s numbers, developed a mathematical equation describing the orbits of the planets. Galileo defended the Copernican system, and for doing it, got in trouble with the church. The fact that he yielded in the face of a death threat from the Pope did not, and could never have impeded the growth of the scientific spirit. After Copernicus, Aquinas’s diligent knitting together of science and religion started to unravel.
Spinoza to the rescue. To understand Spinoza, one must first understand Descartes. Like Aristotle, the inquisitive Frenchman, Descartes, was also a beast with more than one head. Today, he is more famous as a mathematician than as a philosopher. His Cartesian coordinates still drive fledgling algebraists up the wall with their clever plotting of positive and negative numbers and plain old “signless” zeroes. Also like Aristotle, Descartes’ reputation as a philosopher rests more upon the method of his inquiry than upon its product. Aristotle had his logic, Descartes his doubts. Both are also remembered for the importance of their mistakes. We have more or less outgrown the errors embodied in Aristotle’s metaphysics, but Descartes’ blunder is still with us.
Descartes grounded his philosophy in the notion that only those things that present themselves to us clearly and distinctly can be treated as facts. No problem, but the Christian religion included several fundamental beliefs that were clearly and distinctly not clear and distinct. No one claimed to understand the mystery of redemption, the arithmetic of the trinity, or the miracle of the Eucharist. Descartes saw where his demand for clarity might lead. He believed, as did most everyone else, that people conducted themselves in a moral way only because they feared hell’s fires and/or desired to live in heaven’s eternal peace. He thus believed that if the common people ever came to doubt their religion or the authority of the church, all hell would break loose. Descartes saw a way to resolve the problem. His “clear and distinct” philosophy included the assumption that mind and matter (Thought and Extension) were two fundamentally different substances. With a mere twist of his philosophical wrist, Descartes negotiated a compromise between religion and science. He delegated governance of the spirit (a mind thing) to religion, while reserving for science the study of the material world – a Cartesian rendering of Caesar from God, and God from Caesar.
Since some elements in the church hierarchy (the power in those days) regarded “the flesh” (the physical world) as evil, Descartes’ compromise caught on almost immediately. The church considered itself privileged to be left in charge of the immortal souls of men, “clearly and distinctly” their better part, with scientists free to make what they could of the corrupt and despicable “flesh.” So the compromise looked like a great idea. Unfortunately, it rested upon the mistaken belief that mind and body could be separated.
The excommunicate Jew, Baruch Spinoza, immediately saw the mistake. Well schooled in Descartes’ philosophy and the Hebrew religion, and self-taught in the philosophy of the school men (Aquinas & Co), Spinoza was convinced that only one true substance could possibly exist. Common sense told him that material things could cause effects in other material things, and that mind things (ideas) could lead to (or cause) other ideas. But no material thing could cause an effect in a mind thing, nor a mind thing in a material thing. Descartes had also seen this problem and had insisted that the mind and the body were two different substances but that they interacted at the pineal gland, a place in the brain. Spinoza – stuck on common sense – realized that the pineal gland, though small, was still physical and the mind still incorporeal, so it didn’t much matter that Descartes had a name for the interacting place. A spiritual mind and a physical body would still have to interact.
But if Spinoza’s commonsensical idea was correct – that body and soul could not interact – Descartes’ division of body and soul into two separate regimes would imply that the soul could in no way participate in the day-to-day activities of the body. Even if we imagined the reality of something like human Will, it would still be a mind thing with no means available to it to control or even to participate in the life lived by the body. We might have a soul, but it would do us no good whatsoever.
What’s a poor mouse to do? Well, as I said, “Spinoza to the rescue.”
[To be continued]
Spinoza to the rescue. To understand Spinoza, one must first understand Descartes. Like Aristotle, the inquisitive Frenchman, Descartes, was also a beast with more than one head. Today, he is more famous as a mathematician than as a philosopher. His Cartesian coordinates still drive fledgling algebraists up the wall with their clever plotting of positive and negative numbers and plain old “signless” zeroes. Also like Aristotle, Descartes’ reputation as a philosopher rests more upon the method of his inquiry than upon its product. Aristotle had his logic, Descartes his doubts. Both are also remembered for the importance of their mistakes. We have more or less outgrown the errors embodied in Aristotle’s metaphysics, but Descartes’ blunder is still with us.
Descartes grounded his philosophy in the notion that only those things that present themselves to us clearly and distinctly can be treated as facts. No problem, but the Christian religion included several fundamental beliefs that were clearly and distinctly not clear and distinct. No one claimed to understand the mystery of redemption, the arithmetic of the trinity, or the miracle of the Eucharist. Descartes saw where his demand for clarity might lead. He believed, as did most everyone else, that people conducted themselves in a moral way only because they feared hell’s fires and/or desired to live in heaven’s eternal peace. He thus believed that if the common people ever came to doubt their religion or the authority of the church, all hell would break loose. Descartes saw a way to resolve the problem. His “clear and distinct” philosophy included the assumption that mind and matter (Thought and Extension) were two fundamentally different substances. With a mere twist of his philosophical wrist, Descartes negotiated a compromise between religion and science. He delegated governance of the spirit (a mind thing) to religion, while reserving for science the study of the material world – a Cartesian rendering of Caesar from God, and God from Caesar.
Since some elements in the church hierarchy (the power in those days) regarded “the flesh” (the physical world) as evil, Descartes’ compromise caught on almost immediately. The church considered itself privileged to be left in charge of the immortal souls of men, “clearly and distinctly” their better part, with scientists free to make what they could of the corrupt and despicable “flesh.” So the compromise looked like a great idea. Unfortunately, it rested upon the mistaken belief that mind and body could be separated.
The excommunicate Jew, Baruch Spinoza, immediately saw the mistake. Well schooled in Descartes’ philosophy and the Hebrew religion, and self-taught in the philosophy of the school men (Aquinas & Co), Spinoza was convinced that only one true substance could possibly exist. Common sense told him that material things could cause effects in other material things, and that mind things (ideas) could lead to (or cause) other ideas. But no material thing could cause an effect in a mind thing, nor a mind thing in a material thing. Descartes had also seen this problem and had insisted that the mind and the body were two different substances but that they interacted at the pineal gland, a place in the brain. Spinoza – stuck on common sense – realized that the pineal gland, though small, was still physical and the mind still incorporeal, so it didn’t much matter that Descartes had a name for the interacting place. A spiritual mind and a physical body would still have to interact.
But if Spinoza’s commonsensical idea was correct – that body and soul could not interact – Descartes’ division of body and soul into two separate regimes would imply that the soul could in no way participate in the day-to-day activities of the body. Even if we imagined the reality of something like human Will, it would still be a mind thing with no means available to it to control or even to participate in the life lived by the body. We might have a soul, but it would do us no good whatsoever.
What’s a poor mouse to do? Well, as I said, “Spinoza to the rescue.”
[To be continued]
posted by Benedict S. at 8:40 PM
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