Intro & Preface & Contents
Previous: Autumn VIII. Port-Royal and the Jansenists
It is amusing to note the superficial forms of reaction against scientific positivism. The triumph of Darwin was signalized by the invention of that happy word Agnostic, which had great vogue. But agnosticism, as a fashion, was far too reasonable to endure. There came a rumour of Oriental magic, (how the world repeats itself!) and presently everyone who had nothing better to do gossipped about “esoteric Buddhism” -- the saving adjective sounded well in a drawing-room. It did not hold very long, even with the novelists; for the English taste this esotericism was too exotic. Somebody suggested that the old table-turning and spirit-rapping, which had homely associations, might be reconsidered in a scientific light, and the idea was seized upon. Superstition pranked in the professor’s spectacles, it set up a laboratory, and printed grave reports. Day by day its sphere widened. Hypnotism brought matter for the marvel-mongers, and there followed a long procession of words in limping Greek -- a little difficult till practice had made perfect. Another fortunate terminologist hit upon the word ‘psychical’... and the fashionable children of a scientific age were thoroughly at ease. “There must be something, you know; one always felt that there must be something.” ...
... I am as indifferent to the facts or fancies of spiritualism as I am, for instance, to the latest mechanical applications of electricity. Edisons and Marconis may thrill the world with astounding novelties; they astound me, as every one else, but straightway I forget my astonishment, and am in every respect the man I was before. The thing has simply no concern for me, and I care not a volt if to-morrow the proclaimed discovery be proved a journalist’s mistake or invention.
Am I, then, a hidebound materialist? If I know myself, hardly that. Once, in conversation with G. A., I referred to his position as that of the agnostic. He corrected me. “The agnostic grants that there may be something beyond the sphere of man’s knowledge; I can make no such admission. For me, what is called the unknowable is simply the non-existent. We see what is, and we see it all.” Now this gave me a sort of shock’ it seemed incredible to me that a man of so much intelligence could hold such a view. So far am I from feeling satisfied with any explanation, scientific or other, of myself and of the world about me, that not a day goes by but I fall a-marvelling before the mystery of the universe. To trumpet the triumphs of human knowledge seems to me worse than childishness; now, as of old, we know but one thing -- that we know nothing....
Alpha.
Positivism asserts that all authentic knowledge allows verification and that all authentic knowledge assumes that the only valid knowledge is scientific. Enlightenment thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) and Auguste Comte (1798–1859) believed the scientific method, the circular dependence of theory and observation, must replace metaphysics in the history of thought. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) reformulated sociological positivism as a foundation of social research.
Here he’s addressing the same turn of the century popularity for the mysterious and spiritual, that Mann makes use of in the section of The Magic Mountain with Elly Brand. If nothing else it was of great use for a novelist.
For H.R.'s G. A. I would substitute Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, but I arrive at the same conclusion. While it amuses me to see Hitchens and Dawkins bait and torment religious fanatics, I’m not prepared to assert that we “see [and know] it all.” In a world that science currently understands as being constructed of nothing but quantum fields, what is it, exactly, that we “see,” and what can we really know about it?
I’ve thought of adding to “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name...” an Anti-Nicene Creed:
I do not believe in one Sky Fairy, the Sky Fairy Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible...
And I’ve sworn to never again attend a christening as they are just too weird. But I have no particular problem with pantheism. I’m not prepared to assert, for example, that what we call the universe is not, the dream of Devi. Which would make Devi, in fact, the maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible -- except Herself and the Universal Mind, which I understand the Hindu creation myth to suggest, she is an aspect of.
Here I am with Dawkins in insisting that claiming that “God” created everything but “God” really gets us nowhere. We are to believe that every animal and tree and star requires a creator (designer) but the most amazing thing ever -- the thing that has the ability to create all these other things -- just pops up out of nowhere like a mushroom after rain. To be fair, this is also true of science’s Big Bang theory. To me the first question you have to ask about the Big Bang is, “Why 13.8 billion years ago?” Why not 14.8 or 12.8 billion years? Why was the non-universe ripe for coming into being just then. Well, not “then” exactly since there was no space-time continuum prior to the Bang. It is wicked difficult to phrase the question, but the question still remains and neither science nor religion seems to have a clue about answering it.
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