Oh how I wish I could sit under the teaching of Leithart

Since God has called me (a rash being) into a life of patience, I must be content to merely fulfill my current calling as Electrician and wait until or if God will permit me to study full time without regard to employment for money.

I would immediately move to easy driving distance of New St. Andrews and the church where Peter Leithart teaches and preaches. Even if I am no genius (and I most definitely am not), I would seriously study all of Theology, Philosophy (especially Natural Philosophy), and History that my average brain and short life-span could handle.

To illustrate how fun it would be to learn in the Leithart environment let me here quote a number of his entries in the last week or so:

Science: Real time
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KG Denbigh wrote in 1981 that physics treats time as a simple continuum: “It knows of no means of picking out a unique moment, the now or the present. The t-coordinate is an undifferentiated continuum, and, if this coordinate is ‘taken for real’ as has been the tendency among many scientists and philosophers, the familiar distinction between past, present and future, so important in human affairs, comes to be regarded as a mere peculiarity of consciousness. It is as if every event along the coordinate is, in some sense, ‘equally real’ even those events which (to us) ‘have not yet happened.’ On this view of matter it is a function of consciousness that we ‘come across’ those events, experiencing the formality, as it has been said, of the events ‘taking place.’”

But of course, a time in which every time is equally present is fundamentally a-temporal, which is precisely what Newtonian absolute time is.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:23 pm
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Science: Dance of life
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Summarizing findings in physics and biology that should inform social science, Barbara Adam writes, “All organisms, from single cells to human beings and even ecosystems, display rhythmic behaviour. Rhythmicity is a universal phenomenon. Scientists conceptualise atoms as probability waves, molecules as vibrating structures, and organisms as symphonies. Living beings, they suggest, are permeated by rhythmic cycles which range from the very fast chemical and neuron oscillations, via the slower ones of heartbeat, respiration, menstruation, and reproduction to the very long range ones of climactic changes. Their activity and rest alternations, their cyclical exchanges and transformations, and their seasonal and diurnal sensitivity form nature’s silent pulse. Some of this rhythmicity constitutes the organisms unique identity; some relates to its life cycle; some binds the organism to the rhythms of the universe; and some functions as a physiological clock by which living beings ‘tell’ cosmic time.”

Adam uses this evidence to cleverly deconstruct the dualism of natural/social time that is a foundational structure of much social science. The notion that human rhythms respond to astronomical ones makes the point vividly: “All the varied cycles of physiological activity - temperature, blood pressure, respiration, pulse, haemoglobin and amino acid levels, hormone production, organ function, cell division - rise and fall within [circadian rhythms of light and darkness] and are synchronised into a cohesive temporal whole. The image of a symphony is frequently used to stress the complexity, the interdependence, and the fine-tuning involved. This bodily symphony, however, is not placed in isolation. It is performed in synchrony with all the earth’s other symphonies.”

Obviously, these rhythms are integrated with, adjusted and adapted to, suppressed by artificial organizations of time - whether technological (clock, bell, whistle, electric lights) or social (holiday, festival). And the various artificial forms of time-formation take their rise from, and symbolize, these natural rhythms.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:36 pm
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Science: Replaceable parts
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Behind much of today’s biotechnology is the (Newtonian?) notion that living organisms are machine-like. And living organisms can look like machines in some respects. But they aren’t. Barbara Adam points out that the cells of our bodies are incessantly self-renewing - our limbs aren’t like gears that stay the same over time. Nor do the regularities of living organism meet the mechanical ideal of invariant repetition. Living organisms constantly balance decay and renewal, so that their stability is “fundamentally dynamic.” Very un-machine-like.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:42 pm
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History: Freud and the Steam Engine
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Barbara Adam points out that the leading metaphors for nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were mechanical. Creation was a clock. By the nineteenth century, though, steam technology had taken over the European imagination, and metaphors of “letting off steam” and “safety valve” were applied to social and psychological realities, not least by Freud.

Perhaps: No steam, no Freud.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 6:09 am
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Science: Sentient plants
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R. Fischer says, “The relativity of our reference point can be demonstrated by taking a moving picture of a plant at one frame a minute and then speeding it up to thirty frames a second. The plant will appear to behave like an animal, clearly perceiving stimuli and reacting to them. Why, then, do we call it unconscious? To organisms which react 1800 times as quickly as we react, we might appear to be unconscious. They would in fact be justified in calling us unconscious, since we would not normally be conscious of their behavior.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 6:13 am
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History: January 1
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Norbert Elias (An Essay on Time) writes that “for a long time . . . there were, even within one and the same state, traditional local diversities with regard to the beginning of a year, and thus to its end. As far as one can see, it was Charles IX, king of France, who, after some discussion, decided in 1563 to impose on French society a uniform date for the beginning of the year, setting it at 1 January. His edict, put into practice in 1566, broke with a more or less official tradition which linked the beginnings of the year to the Easter festival. Accordingly, the year 1566, beginning on 14 April and ending on 31 December, had only eight months and 17 days. . . . At the time this change aroused strong opposition.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 8:37 am
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Philosophy: Trained Ego
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Elias challenges the Cartesian method of doubt, arguing that Descartes scrums around to get beneath all he’s picked up and finds, at bottom, things he’s picked up: “he is supposed to penetrate in his meditation, all on his own, to a layer of his own intellect believed, in accordance with the unexamined dogma of the time, to be unlearned and independent of his own or anyone’s experience. In trying to do so he deploys an immense arsenal of learned knowledge, including learned concepts. What he encounters in his descent into the transcendental depths of his own thought and what he brings to light is, in other words, the very conceptual apparatus that has been passed on to him by others, that he uses on his ‘journey into the interior.’ That is, he interprets as unlearned property of his own thinking, and that of all others, concepts which are part of the establishes repertoire of the language and knowledge of his time - but certainly not of all times.” Then, he proceeds to universalize this trained ego as if it were human nature as such.

And, further: Descartes’s case was argued “in languages such as Latin and French and thought out with the help of the tradition of knowledge handed on to Descartes together with these languages. He thus derived from what he had learned from others the very means of discovering something ‘within himself’ which, as he saw it, did not come from ‘outside’ and could not, therefore, be a possible illusion. If, however, everything that is learned from others and is therefore an experience from ‘outside’ can be doubted as a possible illusion, may not the language which one has learned from others also be an illusion and the others from whom one has learned it, too? Descartes’ doubt, as one can see, did not go far enough. It came to a half precisely at the point where it might have jolted the philosopher’s axiomatic belief in the absolute independence and autonomy of ‘reason’ as the seemingly ultimate proof of his existence.”

Elias echoes Hamann’s critique of Kant here, perhaps unwittingly.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 9:00 am
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History: Masks and clocks
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Elias wryly comments that in urban societies the manufacture and use of clocks is similar to the use of masks in tribal cultures: “one knows they are made by people but they are experienced as if they represented an extra-human existence. Masks appear as embodiments of spirits. Clocks appear as embodiments of ‘time.’”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 2:08 pm
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Theology: Angels and progress
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Thoughts from what Jim Jordan calls the “deep weird”:In Revelation, the angelic elders give up their crowns at the outset, and at the end of the book the saints are enthroned for a thousand years. Revelation depicts a transition from angelic to human government.

Angels, Scripture tells us, are somehow related to physical processes - winds and storms and so on.

What if the transition from angelic to human government of creation didn’t happen all at once? What if it’s still going on?

Maybe magic worked up to the sixteenth century because certain spheres of creation were still under angelic control, and humans had ways of accessing their powers; maybe medievals saw “fairies” (= angels) in the woods; maybe astrology had something to them for a time. Maybe the universe actually “worked” differently under angelic command than it does now.

Over time, more and more of creation is being handed to human beings. Once, we needed angels to send instantaneous messages across the globe. Now we can do it ourselves, and the angels kick back for a well-deserved rest. Once, we needed black or white magic (demons/angels) to levitate, but now O’Hara launches thousands into space every hour, and the market in flying broomsticks has accordingly collapsed.

Weber would be right: The world has been disenchanted. Perhaps that’s nothing to mourn. Perhaps that’s the way things ought to be.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 2:22 pm
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End of Quote

Well, if you made it this far you can see the breathtaking scope of the man's contemplation. I used to speculate about many things like what Peter has written here except that Science Fiction authors at that time were what informed my interstellar flight of mind. This is delicious wondering about God's intricate universe (or would it be a multiverse due to the transcendent immensity of time?).

Thanks be to God for the glorious works He has wrought.

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