“The great masters do not take any model, or any theory, quite so seriously as the rest of us. They know that it is, after all, only a model, only a theory, and as such possibly replacable.”

From the masters to the masses

On the highest level, then, the model or theory, is recognised as provisional. The real question is how far down the intellectual scale this cautious view of the nature of theory extends.

In our age I think it would be fair to say that the ease with which a scientific theory assumes the dignity and rigidity of fact varies inversely with the individual’s scientific education. In discussion with wholly uneducated audiences one will sometimes find matter which real scientists would regard as highly speculative more firmly believed than many things within our real knowledge; the popular imago of the Cave Man rank as hard fact, and the life of Caesar or Napoleon or Jesus as doubtful rumour.

We must not, however, hastily assume that the situation was quite the same in other ages. The mass media which have in our time created a popular scientism, a caricature of the true sciences, did not exist, say, in the Middle Ages. The igorant were more aware of their ignorance then than now.

“The great masters do not take any model, or any theory, quite so seriously as the rest of us. They know that it is, after all, only a model, only a theory, and as such possibly replaceable.”

Theories - provisional and progressive

It is not in the nature of things that great thinkers should take much interest in models. They have more difficult and more controversial matters in hand. Every model, we said, is a contruct of answered questions. The expert is engaged either in raising new questions or in giving new answers to old ones. When (s)he is doing the first, the old, agreed model is of no interest to him or her; when (s)he is doing the second, (s)he is beginning an operation which will finally destroy the old model altogether.

The history of though as such deals chiefly with the influence of great experts upon great experts.

Briefly noted

One particular class of experts, the great spirtitual writers, ignore models and theories almost completely. This is partly because the spiritual books are entirely practical - like medical books. A man concerned about the state of his soul will not usually be much helped by thinking about the spheres or the structure of the atom.

In saying thus, I am not suggesting a direct ‘conflict between religion and science’ of, for instance, of the nineteenth-century typ. But there often is an incompatibility of temperament. Delighted contemplation of the predominant model of a particular age and intense religious feeling (of a specifically Christian character) are seldom fused - except perhaps in the work of Dante.

[This four-part series on the nature of theory is based on a reading of C.S. Lewis' The Discarded Image. An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.]

“The great masters do not take any model, or any theory, quite so seriously as the rest of us. They know that it is, after all, only a model, only a theory, and as such possibly replaceable.”

What then is a theory?

First principle
The business of a natural philosopher, or scientist, is to construct theories which will ’save appearances’. A scientific theory, according to Aristotle [De Caelo], must ’save’ or ‘preserve’ the appearances, the phenomena, it deals with, in the sense of getting them all in, doing justice to them.

Thus, for example, your phenomena are luminous points in the night sky which exhibit such and such movements in relation to one another and in relation to an observer at a particular point, or various chosen points, on the surface of the Earth. Your astronomical theory will be a supposal such that, if it were true, the apparent motions from the points of observation would be those you have actually observed. The theory will then have ‘got in’ or ’saved’ the appearances.

Second principle
But if we demanded no more than that from a theory, science would be impossible, for a lively inventive intellect could devise a good many different supposals which would equally save the phenomena. We therefore have to supplement the first principle of saving the phenomena by another principle - first, perhaps, formulated with full clarity by Occam. According to this second principle we must accept (provisionally) not any theory which saves the phenomena but that theory which does so with the fewest possible assumptions.

Thus, for example, the two theories a) that the bad bits in Shakespeare were all put in by adapters, and b) that Shakespeare wrote them when he was not at his best, will equally ’save’ the appearances. But we already know that there was such a person as Shakespeare and that writers are not always at their best. If literary scholarship hopes ever to achieve the steady progress of the sciences, we must therefore (provisionally) accept the second theory. If we can explain the bad bits without the assumption of an adapter, we must.

To conclude
In every age it will be apparent to accurate thinkers that scientific theories, being arrived at in the way I have described, are never statements of fact. That stars appear to move in such and such ways, or that substances behaved thus and thus in the laboratory - these are statements of fact. The astronomical or chemical theory can never be more than provisional. It will have to be abandoned if a more ingenious person thinks of a supposal which would ’save’ the observed phenomena with still fewer assumptions, or if we discover new phenomena which it cannot save at all.

This would, I believe, be recognised by all thoughtful scientists today. It was recognized, for instance, by Newton if, as I am told, he wrote not ‘the attraction varies inversely as the square of the distance’, but ‘all happens as if’ it so varied. It was certainly recognised in the Middle Ages. ‘In astronomy’, says Aquinas, ‘an account is given of eccentrics and epicycles on the ground that if their assumption is made the sensible appearances as regards celestial motions can be saved. But this is not a strict proof since for all we know they could also be saved by some different assumption’.

The real reason why Copernicus raised no ripple and Galileo raised a storm, may well be that whereas the one offered a new supposal about celestial motions, the other insisted on treating this supposal as fact. If so, the real revolution, as Owen Barfield writes, consisted not in a new theory of the heavens but in ‘a new theory of the nature of theory’.

Bei vielen Worten bleibt der Wortbruch nicht aus.
&
All things are given their form by their boundaries.

The world, and human life within the world, is not so much Tragedy or Comedy as it is Drama - there is much to be won and much to be lost.

Verleger Kurt Wolff schreibt:

“[...] Beide waren sie absolute Isolationisten, die sich bewußt der geistig-literarischen Welt ihrer Zeit fern hielten. Weder Kraus noch George konnte man sich etwa als Mitglieder einer Dichter-Akademie, de Pen-Clubs oder dergleichen vorstellen. Beide forderten von sich selbst das äußerste, waren Perfektionisten. Beide würden eines sinnentstellenden Druckfehlers wegen auf dem Einstampfen eines Buches bestanden haben. Beide waren absolut gefeit gegen finanzielle Lockungen, und empfanden die Verbindung Geist-Geld als unwürdig, ja schmutzig. Beide waren kompromißlos streng in ihren Forderungen lauterster Haltung derer, die sich ihnen anzuschließen wünschten. Beide waren im Rahmen ihrer weit getrennten Welten solch eindeutig ihren Umkreis überragende Persönlichkeiten, daß ihnen der Herrscheranspruch naturgegeben anstand. Und schließlich: Beide hatten immer recht, im Geistigen wie im Menschlichen - wohlverstanden: ich spreche nicht von ‘Rechthaberei’ ich meine ernstlich, daß sie in Haltung, Handlung, Urteil, recht hatten.

[Karl Kraus] war nicht der Richter, er war das Gewissen der Zeit, und er war ein Gerechter. Was immer der Psalmist mit dem Wort vom Gerechten gemeint hat, der viel leiden muß, man kann nicht umhin, an dies Psalm-Wort hier zu denken. Ein Gerechter sein ist Schicksal, man mag auch sagen Fluch. Der als Gerechter Geborene hat keine Wahl. Er muß die Wahrheit aussprechen, wie er sie erkennt, er muß geißeln, was ihm unrecht und ungerecht erscheint. Damit verletzt er notwendig Andere und wird durch diese Notwendigkeit ebensosehr selbst leiden wie Leiden verursachen. Die ‘Anderen’, Nicht-Gerechten, die ihm begegnen, ihn erkennen, neigen zunächst zu enthusiastischer Verehrung und Hingabe - aber die Wenigsten können auf die Dauer das Bewußtsein der eigenen Allzumenschlichkeit ertragen, die der Gerechte durch Sein und Werk in Permanenz zum Bewußtsein bringt.

Gibt es eine Verteidigung gegen die Überlegenheit des Gerechten?
Don Quichotische Gegenwehr ist ganz sinnlos - resignierende Entfernung ist möglich aber traurig.

Es gibt nur eine Defensive. Goethe hat sie erkannt und empfohlen mit den Worten: Gegen große Vorzüge eines anderen gibt es kein Rettungsmittel als die Liebe”

Aber Wolff schreibt weiter:

“Mir scheint: nicht weil sie Karl Kraus dialektisch unterlegen waren - das waren sie selbstverständlich - vermochten [andere] nicht auf Kraus’ satirische oder polemische Glossen auf gleicher Ebene zu antworten. Antwort war schlechthin unmöglich, weil die Position von Kraus immer die Position des kompromißlosen Moralisten war, der ihnen keine Verteidigungslinie ließ.

[...] die Vorfälle brachten aber ein anderes Element in den Vordergrund, ein Element, das mich zeitlebens beschäftigt hat: hier war einer im Recht, hatte Recht, eindeutig und zweifelsfrei, und hier war ein Anderer, der eine Eselei begangen hatte und im Unrecht war. Man sollte wohl Stellung nehmen, man sollte natürlich auf der Seite dessen sein, der beleidigt worden und im Recht war. Aber ich hab die Recht-Habenden zwar immer bewundert und respektiert, aber eigentlich nie lieben können, hab es immer vorgezogen auf der Seite der Verlierer zu sein.”

Einen Denker ehrt man durch Denken, das zum Danken wird.

“… the abdication of so many standards and responsibilities by those in intellectual and moral authority, has made autodidacts of everyone who has gone to school …”

- Mary Eberstadt

some books you have to read to be free of. you liberate yourself from books by reading and mastering them. it is true: an unread book can bind you. most go through life quoting books and authors they have not read or if read they are slave to. I have seen it with my own eyes. it is a scary thing. most books you can ignore, you will not be the poorer for not reading them. but some will not go away until you have read them. the big books, the great ones, cannot be avoided. they are there whether you like it or not and they make a claim on you whether you like it or not. if you do not read them you will not know that they are not true.

the best, corrupted, becomes the worst: the Catholic Church