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Remarks on the structure of ancient wisdom
J. Social Biol. Struct. 1983 6,169-171
R e m a r k s on the structure of ancient w i s d o m Sal Restivo Science and Technology Studies Division, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N Y 12181, USA
The contributors to the symposium on the structure of ancient wisdom (5: 223-288) have taken an immense step forward in the study of music, mathematics, and numerology as reciprocally-animating knowledge systems. My commentary stresses 'reflexivity' and 'sociological perspective' as bases for complementing and criticizing the authors' essentially cognitive approaches. McClain and others have given substance to the conjectures of thinkers from Archytas to Leibniz and Spengler on audial cultures and mathematical musicology. Spengler's views are especially interesting. He pointed out the centrality of music in ancient culture, suggested that Pythagorean numerology was derived from music, and noted that the music of the ch'in was a 'path to wisdom'. But he also stressed that ancient music was linked to morals, religion, and other areas of social life. The significance of Spengler's remarks on the relationship between mathematics and religion (cf. Stieglitz's comments on numbers and gods)has yet to be fully appreciated in scholarly and lay circles. Studies of music and culture in China provide additional materials for a 'political economy of music'. Musical notes were connected with directions for ritual dancing and military activity; magic squares were correlated with musical symbols; and mathematical harmonics was linked to dynastic legitimacy. If Platonic wisdom cannot be understood apart from the audial and mathematical musicology conjectures, neither can it be understood by removing it from its elitist and oligarchic contexts. Benjamin Farrington illustrates the importance of social and political contexts for understanding Greek thought in his studies of science and mathematics in Greek society. More generally, the theme of harmony and order that links those who composed the ancient texts and those who now analyze them is often associated with conservative responses to the problem of evil, social disorder, and threats to political legitimacy. In its extreme form, the theme is an outgrowth and a component of law and order political economies. Similarly, some forms of holism are associated with totalitarian policies. It is also important to consider the social significance of the algorithmic imperative in the wisdom texts, especially in relation to issues of social power and social control. Pribram, for example, seems to accept the machine-like qualities of logarithms and Fourier transforms uncritically. Are these mathematical devices simply neutral tools for dealing imaginatively with complexity? The 'journey eastward' and the glorification of ancient wisdom as the source, the pure form, or the salvation of modern knowledge and culture are not unique features of the current epistemic climate. In the Weimar period, Richard yon Mises defended 'Speculative 0140-1750/83]020169 + 03 $03.00]0
© 1983 Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited
170
S. Restivo
natural science', and argued that relativity and atomic physics recalled the ideas of the Pythagoreans and Cabbalists. The Cambridge Platonist More contended that Moses had Cartesian mechanics. In the wake of the Hermetic tradition, Newton described himself as a 'rediscoverer' rather than an 'innovator'. Campanella wrote a letter to Galileo in. which he claimed that heliocentricity is 'a return to ancient truth' and portends 'a new age'. Medieval scholars searching for a prisca theologia 'discovered' Pythagorean and Platonic anticipations in Moses and the Biblical prophets. The nineteenth century did not produce a 'tao of physics', but it did produce a 'religion of geology'. The description of Bohmian physics as 'mystical science' echoes Sommerfeld's concept of 'Atomystik', the eighteenth century idea of physica sacra (which expressed the belief that Newtonian physics and Genesis are in 'perfect harmony'), and various systems of physiktheologie. I rehearse these near and far antiquities because they suggest that the 'return' and the 'harmony and holism' of today's so-called 'mystical sciences' are stock features of an intellectual strategy that gains strength and prominence recurrently when one or more of the following situations arise: (1) prevailing, established, and more or less rationalized modes of thought lose their potency; (2) prevailing modes provoke attacks from intellectuals who feel that the modes' unqualified successes or massive failures threaten to subordinate or suffocate alternatives; (3) a favorable shift in the opportunity structure and newly available resources for intellectual activity improve the position of peripheral modes of thought, more or less independently of the power and status of prevailing modes (Restivo, 1983). Haunted by the Holocaust and in the shadow of the Bomb, it is not surprising that people turn to ancient wisdom and the 'east' for solace and renewal, to escape from science as well as to save it. I put 'east' in quotation marks because once someone settles on an 'alternatives' or 'parallels' strategy, he or she can discover alternatives to Western science in Jesus as well as Lao Tze, or Fred quantum and relativistic parallels in Aristotle as readily as in Buddha. I consider the argument that the ancient (and especially the eastern) mystics had, in some sense, modern science or privileged access to the nature of reality to be unwarranted. However, the argument has historically been and may stiU be a useful strategy for challenging and rejuvenating routinized and rigid rationalities. Historical sociology adds a reflexive dimension to arguments that link knowledge systems across time and space through analogies or homologies. Reflexivity is not a central feature of the symposium arguments. As a result, the arguments tend to fit the 'swing of the pendulum' model suggested by Pribram in his remarks on the need to provide a 'counterweight' to offset the 'current overweighting of one mode of thought'. This model may describe movements between opposing cognitive themes; but it offers no pathways to new cognitive themes. For that, to pursue the metaphor, we would have to think in terms of swings through a wider then normal arc, and swings in a different plane of thought. The use of analogies to establish parallels between ancient and modern knowledge systems is subject to a variety of semantic, ideological, and sociological pitfalls. Homological analysis is a more sophisticated enterprise. But homological studies can become quests for the least interesting universal structures, or for elusive 'essences', 'foundations', or 'grounds'. In the former case, the danger is that we will identify structures whose very universality makes them useless as frameworks for constructing radically innovative patterns of culture and cognition. In the latter case, structural analysis can align itself with such intellectual strategies as Platonism, Kantianism, positivism, and phenomenology. This set of Godsurrogate strategies tends to close off what Richard Rorty (1979) calls the 'conversations' of humankind (thought, criticism, curiosity) at the thresholds of Truth, Objectivity, and Reality, transformed into altars of Faith. I cannot say for certain that this orientation motivates some or all of the symposium arguments. My feeling that it does play a part in
Remarks on the structure o f ancient wisdom
1 71
the arguments stems from the rhetoric of mystery, glory, spirituality, and holism the authors use. This is not the path to wisdom I recommend we follow. I prefer Rorty's notion of wisdom as 'the ability to sustain a conversation'; this means viewing humans 'as generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to describe accurately'. This orientation is not entirely absent from the symposium analysis; it tends to be overshadowed, however, by a more orthodox posture about which I have reservations. Structural parallels are not surprising in ancient cultures which were still relatively undifferentiated and culturally intimate with highly undifferentiated prehistoric and contemporary societies. In a structurally undifferentiated society, parts and wholes tend to interpenetrate with little or no mediation. This situation is not clarified by invoking holographic metaphors or the holistic paradigm as much as by examining available resources, communications networks, the social practices of everyday life, and the distribution of power. Perception and cognition are multi-modal; they are simultaneously visual, aural, emotional, and more. More importantly, they cannot be separated from social relations. This is probably the single most important conclusion to emerge from the empirical sociology of knowledge and science during the past decade. Once we recognize that knowledge is socially constructed in the radical sense that all forms of knowledge are constitutively social - it becomes easier to root ideas in social contexts. There is no romance and nothing to glorify, for example, in Farrington's analysis of the social function of the Noble Lie. A sociological perspective can help us avoid the danger of viewing history as the province of heroes and elites; historical figures (Plato, for example) who do stand out are more likely to appear as exemplars of cultural patterns to someone studying history with a sociological eye than as minds for all seasons and arbiters of all future modes of thought and discourse. Wheeler views the mathematical musicology conjecture as part of the explanation for the 'sudden' emergence or invention of 'the sciential animal'. In my view, the sciential animal was a social product, and the 'suddenness' was a social-cognitive and not a purely cognitive revolution. That is, certain 'sciential' intellectual strategies that had already crystallized came into prominence as social institutions. In the Greek case, this process is rooted in the Ionian commercial revolution, the emergence of a slave-based economy, and other social developments. One problem with telling the sciential animal story in purely cognitive terms is that legacies such as 'Platonic wisdom' are stripped of their social trappings, and the representations of social institutions are disguised as free-floating mental constructs. The hermeneutic strategy exhibited in the symposium should be generalized methodologically and theoretically. This will, for one thing, allow us to see science for the hermeneutic strategy it is and make us more effective in addressing the abuses of science and creating humane alternative forms of inquiry and culture. It will also make it easier for us to abandon the quest for Essentials and privileged representations.
References
Restivo, S. (1983). The Social Relations o f Physics, Mysticism, and Mathematics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror o f Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
R e m a r k s on the structure of ancient w i s d o m Sal Restivo Science and Technology Studies Division, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N Y 12181, USA
The contributors to the symposium on the structure of ancient wisdom (5: 223-288) have taken an immense step forward in the study of music, mathematics, and numerology as reciprocally-animating knowledge systems. My commentary stresses 'reflexivity' and 'sociological perspective' as bases for complementing and criticizing the authors' essentially cognitive approaches. McClain and others have given substance to the conjectures of thinkers from Archytas to Leibniz and Spengler on audial cultures and mathematical musicology. Spengler's views are especially interesting. He pointed out the centrality of music in ancient culture, suggested that Pythagorean numerology was derived from music, and noted that the music of the ch'in was a 'path to wisdom'. But he also stressed that ancient music was linked to morals, religion, and other areas of social life. The significance of Spengler's remarks on the relationship between mathematics and religion (cf. Stieglitz's comments on numbers and gods)has yet to be fully appreciated in scholarly and lay circles. Studies of music and culture in China provide additional materials for a 'political economy of music'. Musical notes were connected with directions for ritual dancing and military activity; magic squares were correlated with musical symbols; and mathematical harmonics was linked to dynastic legitimacy. If Platonic wisdom cannot be understood apart from the audial and mathematical musicology conjectures, neither can it be understood by removing it from its elitist and oligarchic contexts. Benjamin Farrington illustrates the importance of social and political contexts for understanding Greek thought in his studies of science and mathematics in Greek society. More generally, the theme of harmony and order that links those who composed the ancient texts and those who now analyze them is often associated with conservative responses to the problem of evil, social disorder, and threats to political legitimacy. In its extreme form, the theme is an outgrowth and a component of law and order political economies. Similarly, some forms of holism are associated with totalitarian policies. It is also important to consider the social significance of the algorithmic imperative in the wisdom texts, especially in relation to issues of social power and social control. Pribram, for example, seems to accept the machine-like qualities of logarithms and Fourier transforms uncritically. Are these mathematical devices simply neutral tools for dealing imaginatively with complexity? The 'journey eastward' and the glorification of ancient wisdom as the source, the pure form, or the salvation of modern knowledge and culture are not unique features of the current epistemic climate. In the Weimar period, Richard yon Mises defended 'Speculative 0140-1750/83]020169 + 03 $03.00]0
© 1983 Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited
170
S. Restivo
natural science', and argued that relativity and atomic physics recalled the ideas of the Pythagoreans and Cabbalists. The Cambridge Platonist More contended that Moses had Cartesian mechanics. In the wake of the Hermetic tradition, Newton described himself as a 'rediscoverer' rather than an 'innovator'. Campanella wrote a letter to Galileo in. which he claimed that heliocentricity is 'a return to ancient truth' and portends 'a new age'. Medieval scholars searching for a prisca theologia 'discovered' Pythagorean and Platonic anticipations in Moses and the Biblical prophets. The nineteenth century did not produce a 'tao of physics', but it did produce a 'religion of geology'. The description of Bohmian physics as 'mystical science' echoes Sommerfeld's concept of 'Atomystik', the eighteenth century idea of physica sacra (which expressed the belief that Newtonian physics and Genesis are in 'perfect harmony'), and various systems of physiktheologie. I rehearse these near and far antiquities because they suggest that the 'return' and the 'harmony and holism' of today's so-called 'mystical sciences' are stock features of an intellectual strategy that gains strength and prominence recurrently when one or more of the following situations arise: (1) prevailing, established, and more or less rationalized modes of thought lose their potency; (2) prevailing modes provoke attacks from intellectuals who feel that the modes' unqualified successes or massive failures threaten to subordinate or suffocate alternatives; (3) a favorable shift in the opportunity structure and newly available resources for intellectual activity improve the position of peripheral modes of thought, more or less independently of the power and status of prevailing modes (Restivo, 1983). Haunted by the Holocaust and in the shadow of the Bomb, it is not surprising that people turn to ancient wisdom and the 'east' for solace and renewal, to escape from science as well as to save it. I put 'east' in quotation marks because once someone settles on an 'alternatives' or 'parallels' strategy, he or she can discover alternatives to Western science in Jesus as well as Lao Tze, or Fred quantum and relativistic parallels in Aristotle as readily as in Buddha. I consider the argument that the ancient (and especially the eastern) mystics had, in some sense, modern science or privileged access to the nature of reality to be unwarranted. However, the argument has historically been and may stiU be a useful strategy for challenging and rejuvenating routinized and rigid rationalities. Historical sociology adds a reflexive dimension to arguments that link knowledge systems across time and space through analogies or homologies. Reflexivity is not a central feature of the symposium arguments. As a result, the arguments tend to fit the 'swing of the pendulum' model suggested by Pribram in his remarks on the need to provide a 'counterweight' to offset the 'current overweighting of one mode of thought'. This model may describe movements between opposing cognitive themes; but it offers no pathways to new cognitive themes. For that, to pursue the metaphor, we would have to think in terms of swings through a wider then normal arc, and swings in a different plane of thought. The use of analogies to establish parallels between ancient and modern knowledge systems is subject to a variety of semantic, ideological, and sociological pitfalls. Homological analysis is a more sophisticated enterprise. But homological studies can become quests for the least interesting universal structures, or for elusive 'essences', 'foundations', or 'grounds'. In the former case, the danger is that we will identify structures whose very universality makes them useless as frameworks for constructing radically innovative patterns of culture and cognition. In the latter case, structural analysis can align itself with such intellectual strategies as Platonism, Kantianism, positivism, and phenomenology. This set of Godsurrogate strategies tends to close off what Richard Rorty (1979) calls the 'conversations' of humankind (thought, criticism, curiosity) at the thresholds of Truth, Objectivity, and Reality, transformed into altars of Faith. I cannot say for certain that this orientation motivates some or all of the symposium arguments. My feeling that it does play a part in
Remarks on the structure o f ancient wisdom
1 71
the arguments stems from the rhetoric of mystery, glory, spirituality, and holism the authors use. This is not the path to wisdom I recommend we follow. I prefer Rorty's notion of wisdom as 'the ability to sustain a conversation'; this means viewing humans 'as generators of new descriptions rather than beings one hopes to be able to describe accurately'. This orientation is not entirely absent from the symposium analysis; it tends to be overshadowed, however, by a more orthodox posture about which I have reservations. Structural parallels are not surprising in ancient cultures which were still relatively undifferentiated and culturally intimate with highly undifferentiated prehistoric and contemporary societies. In a structurally undifferentiated society, parts and wholes tend to interpenetrate with little or no mediation. This situation is not clarified by invoking holographic metaphors or the holistic paradigm as much as by examining available resources, communications networks, the social practices of everyday life, and the distribution of power. Perception and cognition are multi-modal; they are simultaneously visual, aural, emotional, and more. More importantly, they cannot be separated from social relations. This is probably the single most important conclusion to emerge from the empirical sociology of knowledge and science during the past decade. Once we recognize that knowledge is socially constructed in the radical sense that all forms of knowledge are constitutively social - it becomes easier to root ideas in social contexts. There is no romance and nothing to glorify, for example, in Farrington's analysis of the social function of the Noble Lie. A sociological perspective can help us avoid the danger of viewing history as the province of heroes and elites; historical figures (Plato, for example) who do stand out are more likely to appear as exemplars of cultural patterns to someone studying history with a sociological eye than as minds for all seasons and arbiters of all future modes of thought and discourse. Wheeler views the mathematical musicology conjecture as part of the explanation for the 'sudden' emergence or invention of 'the sciential animal'. In my view, the sciential animal was a social product, and the 'suddenness' was a social-cognitive and not a purely cognitive revolution. That is, certain 'sciential' intellectual strategies that had already crystallized came into prominence as social institutions. In the Greek case, this process is rooted in the Ionian commercial revolution, the emergence of a slave-based economy, and other social developments. One problem with telling the sciential animal story in purely cognitive terms is that legacies such as 'Platonic wisdom' are stripped of their social trappings, and the representations of social institutions are disguised as free-floating mental constructs. The hermeneutic strategy exhibited in the symposium should be generalized methodologically and theoretically. This will, for one thing, allow us to see science for the hermeneutic strategy it is and make us more effective in addressing the abuses of science and creating humane alternative forms of inquiry and culture. It will also make it easier for us to abandon the quest for Essentials and privileged representations.
References
Restivo, S. (1983). The Social Relations o f Physics, Mysticism, and Mathematics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror o f Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.