Guiding Question: Could reason have helped Lancelot?
In the Quest we see Lancelot fighting Galahad
without knowing that Galahad is his more worthy son. In the context
of this discussion we may see Lancelot representing those who have presumed
to live by faith who discriminate against those who have developed new
ideas through reason. Faith, the father of Reason, has turned against
his child who may be the more sincere seeker of truth.
As we have seen, the gap between revelation and
reason is not as wide in the development of reason as is often supposed.
It was the revelation of symmetries and patterns in the world that revealed
reason, and those who employed reason as an explication of these natural
laws by no means abandoned contemplation of what stood at the heart of
the mystery of the cosmos. Both metaphysics and ontology, however,
in formal philosophy became more identified with the domains of religious
contemplation, and, as such, both of these Greek forums of inquiry found
a happy complement in the Hebraic religious conceptions.
In fact in the New Testament of the Bible,
which is written in Greek, the divine principle which brings the universe
into existence is referred to as Logos, which originally in Greek
had meant "divine reason," but was, particularly after Aristotle, more
and more identified with "language." This is because the formulae of logic
were a form of language as both literal and symbolic categories, as were
the categories of phenomenon and reason that logic created. Thus often
the Logos of the Christian Bible is identified with God's
word in Genesis (for in Genesis God speaks the cosmos
into existence by saying "Let there Be Light" and afterwards the physical
properties of light occur). Thus, just as in Plato’s Doctrine, physical
reality was preceded by a principle, and just as in Aristotle, this principle
is expressed as a kind of language, and just as in Parmenides, this principle
was ultimate Being, or the Supreme Being of the Hebraic God whose nature
was expressed in Exodus as "I AM, that I AM" (Jaweh). The Greek traditions
of reason and the Hebraic conceptions of faith shared much in common, and
it is little wonder that the champions of reason would turn their attentions
inevitably toward the contemplation of divine principles, and in fact search
for proofs for the existence of God that could be concluded through reason,
as well as intuitively grasped through faith.
As mentioned earlier, the Hebraic word for faith
is trust, and thus faith in God means trust in God. Even the name "God"
does not necessarily reveal what this faith may entail, for the English
word "God" comes from Gotu, which in Proto Indo-European meant roughly
"Lord of the Bright Sky." Gotu becomes Got in German and
God in English. The Divine in the Bible is referred to by several
names, although the ultimate true name of God is so sacred as not to be
uttered, and is only implied by Jahweh as a Supreme Being. Still, faith
in God is trust in ultimate Being, out of which all that IS, is brought
into existence.
The essence of the trust, or faith, in a Supreme
Being was to be founded through a relationship with God, and as in all
relationships, the integrity of this relationship was to be founded in
trust. Because the cosmos comes into existence out of God’s Logos
(his word and his reason), to keep faith, one must keep the divine word,
its Logos, just as in any relationship one must not break one’s
word to keep this relationship intact.
Thus there is a logic to trust and relationship
out of word which is part of the Bible’s heritage in the West. In
practical application, much of this logic shows up in the evolution of
legal systems in the West in that in the Bible there is initially
creation out Word (Logos), a series of covenants, or the giving
of one’s word as sacred trust, finally evolving into the writing of covenants
into contract law, so that whether word has been broken can be judged by
law and the letter (the written contract) of the law itself. Thus the sophistication
of legal systems, and legal thinking, is part of the heritage of early
theologians, or those who look to the Logos, reason, of divine nature.
Another legacy of theology is in fact the sophistication of scientific
methodology, although the political controversies between the political
church and early Western scientists have served to often disguise this
fact. Yet many early inquiries into the nature of scientific reason grew
out of those who were searching for ontological proofs for the existence
of God. It is to some degree ironic that the division between faith and
reason in its contemporary form is somewhat the result of initial efforts
taken by individuals to prove precisely the opposite.
This is not to say that the great era of theology
in the West held that reason and revelation were the same, but rather that
they were paths that could, and did, lead to similar conclusions, and that
one needed both to acquire a full sense of understanding. The legacy they
left behind regarding church law and rational methodology has had great
secular influence, while their approach to reason directly lead to the
advent of much of modern scientific method.
Augustine (354-430) to a great extent Christianized
Platonic thought, converting the realm of Platonic ideas into the spiritual
realm of God, and in the process modeled the political structure of the
church after Plato’s Republic. Anselm’s (1023-1109) Ontological
proofs for the Divine closely resembled the origins of ontology in Parmenides
holding that nothing could exist beyond ultimate Being. Aquinas (1225 ?
1274) major works concerned demonstrating that Aristotle could be understood
in a Christian context and that Aristotelian observations were not based
on sense perception alone. By elaborating this thesis, Aquinas took an
antithetical position to that of Averoes, the great Islamic scholar, and
his followers, and was precocious in introducing the debate between two
types of knowledge: that which is based on sense data, later understood
as empirical knowledge, and that which is based on pure reason, such as
propositional logic and mathematics. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) introduced
the doctrine held today in the sciences that both the intellect and direct
perception constitute knowledge, and further asserted that philosophy as
reason could never grasp the whole of a proposition from analyzing its
parts. Duns Scotus thus revived inquiry into a "First Cause" as greater
than any of its manifestations, and which was intuitively grasped through
faith. Thus faith and reason complimented each other. Nicholas of Cusa
(1401-1464) introduced one of the founding premises of skepticism as the
foundation of wisdom which is sustained in contemporary scientific methodology.
As a major theologian, he believed the intuition of faith higher than any
other form of intelligence, but that reason could reveal the outlines of
the whole. Applying this methodology, he developed a theory of the rotation
of the earth that predates Copernicus by nearly a century, and was a champion
of scientific experimentation, diagnostic medicine and botany.
It was perhaps Nicholas of Cusa’s skepticism that
lead directly to the thinker who is still recognized as the founder of
Modern Philosophy, and one of the great contributors to the formal construction
of contemporary scientific method: Rene Desecrate (1596- 1650). Descartes
famous Meditations were initially a quest for a founding principle
of certainty that could be used as the foundation for all systems of knowledge.
In this attempt, Descartes was searching as well for the rational proof
for the existence of God that had been the preoccupation of his predecessors.
Applying a skeptical approach to this problem, he subjected all that we
assume as certain to radical doubt. In the process, he established the
primacy of skepticism which still lies at the root of contemporary scientific
method.
After doubting sense perception, everyday experience,
and finally his own existence, Descartes demonstrated that everyday events
and observations were anything but certain, and could not serve as the
founding premise for a rigorous systemic approach to knowledge. Although
Descartes used the uncertainty of dreams to demonstrate the nebulous nature
of what we call the "real," even a casual observation of the world of sense
experience illustrates the validity of his skeptical approach. On the surface,
it is clear that the sun is smaller than the earth, and the earth is relatively
flat, but one would hesitate to make such everyday perceptions the foundation
for a system of knowledge. Descartes concluded that even the self could
be doubted. The only aspect of reality, in fact, that could not be doubted
was doubt itself. One could doubt that one doubts, and then doubt that
one doubts one is doubting, ad infinitum, but the act of doubting
still remained. This resolution, known as the Cartesian Cogito,
is phrased in Latin as "Cogito ergo sum" and is translated
as "I think therefore I am." This is perhaps not the best of translations
for Descartes "Cogito" refers to the process of pure skeptical thought
in meditation: or thinking about thinking itself. Just as one cannot doubt
that one doubts without asserting the act of doubting, one cannot think
about thinking, without thinking about one’s own thinking until only pure
thought remains—beyond doubt and perpetually transcendent. For Descartes,
only the act of thought itself remains free of doubt, and even in its contemplation,
reasserts itself.
Descartes concluded from this that pure reason was
the only certain approach to knowledge, and that the existence of the Divine
was as well seated in pure reason. As he put it, ". . . Certainly I discover
within me an idea of God. . . no less than the idea of some figure or number.
And I understand clearly and distinctly that it pertains to his nature
that he always exists, no less than whatever has been demonstrated about
some figure or number. . . .Thus . . .I ought to be at least as certain
of the existence of God as I have hitherto been about truths of mathematics."
Descartes' likening of divine contemplation with
mathematics reveals that analytical mathematics for Descartes was the seat
of certainty for knowledge in that it was pure logic, "pure reason." This
method adapted in the sciences is still known as "rationalism," and still
credits Descartes as the founder of its scientific method. By doing so,
some of the character of the manner in which we believe in reason today
is established, for despite whether Descartes had intended it or not, the
mathematical model was to look to quantitative criteria for certainty,
and thus the formulation of trustworthy or certain knowledge (or that which
we can have faith in and therefore trust) was that which can be measured.
This conception that quantitative analysis took precedence over qualities
as the measure of all things was decisive. Qualities such as love or courage
or even spiritual faith, could not be measured and therefore were not the
stuff of rational analysis. This is not to say that Descartes believed
that such qualities did not exist, but that rather they could only exist
under a kind of duality. Because they could not be quantified, they could
not be ascertained as rationally certain. Only matters of pure reason were
certain, and other qualities remained, in terms of pure reason, always
up for doubt. This starts to lend a certain character to what is to be
considered knowledge in the West, and this characteristic remains today
in the faith we often have in statistics, measurable phenomena, and quantification
as what can be considered knowledge. We see this asserted in the enumeration
of IQ scores as criteria of intelligence, to pie charts and percentages
as the means by which we measure data. Faith, as pure trust in qualities
such as bravery, beauty or courage, will, after Descartes, fall more and
more into the hands of the emotionally charged romantics.
Lest we forget that the roots of quantitative analysis
often owe a great debt to religious intuition, however, perhaps it is best
we remember that it was Hindu mystics, meditating on a mysterious void
at the center of the cosmos (which they termed thero), that
would later be incorporated into the Arabic numeral system as zero; an
addition to calculation that gave birth to the numeric conception of an
infinity without beginning or end. Of course, such a notion had occurred
to the world’s great religions before it was a mathematical principle.
Indeed, Newton, who is credited with founding differential calculus, as
well as his revolutionary insights into the nature of gravity and light,
wrote more tracts on interpretations of the prophesies of the Book of
Daniel than he did on physics. Leibniz, who may have in fact invented
differential calculus, turned his metaphysical speculations towards the
investigation of the universe into "monads," in which there "must be a
necessary substance . . . as in the fountain-head, and this substance we
call God." Perhaps this may be why, too, that contemporary physicists,
reasoning only with pure mathematical equations and arriving at the conclusion
that black holes in the universe were indeed possible, said they felt it
a "religious experience" after finding some evidence that implied that
such phenomenon in fact existed. If the mind, working through the abstraction
of mathematics alone could uncover physical facts about the universe itself,
it also meant that the mind was engaged though its logos to the
universe, and that the mind belonged to this universe—just as the Greeks
had suspected.
Required Reading: "Week 4" in the Study Guide; The Quest of the Holy Grail, pp. 80-94; Augustine: Selections from Confessions (397-398 CE); Nicholas of Cusa: On Learned Ignorance; Rene Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy (1641).
Homework:
Compare and contrast Descartes' thought experiment with his demon in
Meditations
on First Philosophy and Lancelot's difficulties in the Quest.
Write your thoughts in your online journal.
(Note: Sections of the Study Guide for Week 4 are paraphrases or excerpts from a manuscript by Laurence L. Murphy and Dominick A. Iorio, both of whom are amongst the Authors of the general MAPS Curriculum.)