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Rediscovering the Sense of Wonder: Reason and Revelation in the Baroque period and after

There are moments of transformation and change in the course of human history, when new discoveries force of human beings in reassessing their model of the world to change their point of view, often a drastic and painful. Finally, what seemed to be incredible and shocking at first, years later became part knowledge commonly accepted, and a new model is gradually taking hold, promising to solve all the riddles of our existence. This process took place more once, and when people have to adapt to changes in their worldview, it becomes clear how the voltage and difficulty is involved in adaptation to new information. Sometimes the spirit of man finds it easier simply to deny the existence of facts that do not fit the image created, sometimes he chooses to discard "old" knowledge altogether: it is more convenient to divide our point of view of the world in true and false, outdated and modern, to attempt a synthesis more complex. The Baroque period is often considered today as the time of transition from dinosaurs to medieval view more "correct" vision of secular modernity. However, the thinkers Baroque themselves, no doubt, disagree with this interpretation, and it can be argued that even from the modern perspective, the division between the spiritual religious and secular, and equipment, intuitive and rational is not as clear as it is often presented.
The discoveries of Galileo, Pascal, Descartes, Newton and others are now regarded as revolutionary developments that shattered the world view of medieval based on the astronomy of Ptolemy, – and in some respects, they did. New causal relationships, now understood as natural laws, have been discovered. We could not think of the Earth being the center of all creation, and motionless, immutable, static universe, where everyone's place was set in a strict hierarchical order. For those whose religious beliefs were based on these assumptions, new knowledge must have been deeply troubling. To the great minds of the time, whose work on these changes, trying to establish new connections between human and God has been a large part of their quest for knowledge. Some looked within themselves, turning to the orientation of the field of emotional and intuitive, some have tried to use the new tool of rational discourse.
Pascal in the beginning of his Thoughts recognizes the existence two types of perception: Intuitive and mathematics. Mathematicians, he argues, "do not see what is before them … accustomed to the accurate and clear principles mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost on intuition where the principles do no arrangement. "Moreover," those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the reasoning process, so they understand at first sight, and are not devoted to the search for principles. "As a mathematician, Pascal was evidently accustomed to think in terms of logical reasoning, but it was also painfully aware of the limitations of the human spirit, her usual tendency to build walls of protection around her, which inevitably crumble: "We are sailing in a vast field, still drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end. When is believed to join at any time and to attach to him, he hesitates and leaves us, and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, is slides in front of us, and disappears forever. Nothing stays with us. It's more our natural condition, and yet contrary to our inclination; we burn desire to find solid ground and an ultimate foundation on which you build a tower to reach to infinity. But our crack field together, and the earth opens abyss. "Pascal speaks of a human being lost and confused" Man does not know how to rank up. He obviously lost, and fallen its rightful place without being able to find. He looks anxiously and unsuccessfully everywhere in impenetrable darkness. " Maybe so more poignantly than any other contemporary thinker, Pascal expressed the feeling of loneliness overcome a human being to achieve the infinite nature of the universe: "When I think of the short duration of my life, absorbed in the eternity before and after, the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces that I am ignorant, and do not know me, I fear, and am astonished at being here rather there, because there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who put me here? By the order and direction this place and time have been assigned to me? "
The question "why" often appears in the pages of the Pensees, Pascal and concludes that the reason we can not provide all the answers: "The last proceeding of reason to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond. It is small, but if she does not see as far as knowing what. " However, he rejects any role of reason altogether: he criticizes the Quran for placing too much stress on seeing the signs of God in the natural world and too little mental reflection. Christianity, in his view, has great potential for the year of faith in both one and the reason: a synthesis he considers crucial to our understanding of the world: "We need to know where to doubt, where to be sure where to submit. He who does not, does not include the force of reason. There are some who have offered these three rules, either by the assertion all that demonstrative, from want of knowing what demonstration is, or by doubting everything, not knowing where to submit, or submit to everything, not knowing where they must judge. "When we learn to recognize the limits of time and intellect to submit to the power of revelation," the immensity infinite spaces "inspire not only fear but a sense of wonder, described by Pascal in one of the most poetic passages of thought" Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in its majesty and great, and turn his vision of the objects that surround low. That look on the light brilliant, set like an eternal lamp to illuminate the universe, Let the earth seemed a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun, and let him wonder at the fact that this large circle is itself but a very fine point compared to the one described by the stars in their revolution around the firmament. But if our point of view it may be discontinued, our imagination goes beyond, it will sooner exhaust the power to design the nature of the provision material for design. The visible world is an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We broaden our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, we only produce atoms in comparison to the reality of things. Is a sphere infinite, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. In short, he is the greatest sensible mark of the omnipotence of God that imagination loses itself in this thought.
Unlike Pascal, Descartes faith in the ability of human intelligence and tried to get to the truth through logical reasoning. He describes in the Sermon on the method by which the rules will make his thought: "… to direct my thoughts in an orderly manner, starting with the simplest objects, the most likely to be known, and ascending gradually, in steps so to speak, to the knowledge of more complex … These long chains of reasoning is very simple and easy means of which geometers are wont to do their most difficult events had left to the imagination that anything can fall under human knowledge forms a Movie Similarly, and as long as we avoid accepting as true what is not, and still preserve the right order for the deduction of one thing another, there may be nothing too remote to be reached in the end, or too well hidden to be discovered. "The most important things that Descartes "discovered" in this way have been the existence of self, expressed in the famous maxim "I think, therefore I am" and the existence of God. The method by which he came to these statements is now known as "Cartesian doubt": let's put all opinions previously kept away from and again, to submit all opinions and creeds to doubt, until we get to the point where the truth becomes "clear" and "separate" that skepticism is not possible. To support the idea that such truths exist and can be known,
Descartes looks to prove the existence of God – a being who is perfect in us the ability perceive these truths. "… I think the fact that I doubt, and consequently my being was not totally perfect … I decided to ask where I learned to think of something more perfect than me, and I recognized it as obvious that this idea has come of any kind was really perfect. " This nature is recognized by Descartes as God.
Bertrand Russell noted that "the constructive role of Descartes' theory of knowledge is much less interesting than the first part destructive. "In the opinion of Russell, claims that Descartes put forward on the basis of his method is flawed, "When he goes on to say:" I am a thinking thing, it is already indiscriminate use of the device categories made by scholasticism. It proves that nowhere thoughts need a thinker, and there reason to believe that this exception in a grammatical sense. Russell shows that Descartes' argument for God's existence "uses all kinds of maxims education, such as the effects can never be more perfect than its cause, who somehow escaped a first critical examination. "method Descartes appears to be more influential in Western thought that made no findings on the basic rational thinking based on mental calculations began to dominate on intuition and intellect of man has begun to be perceived as an independent observer, in some so detached from the sensory perception and emotions. Fritjof Capra in his book The Tao of Physics makes the following observation: "The" Cartesian "division has enabled researchers to treat the matter as dead and completely separate themselves, and see the material world as a multitude of different objects assembled into a huge machine. Such a mechanism has been held by Isaac Newton who constructed his mechanics on its base is the foundation of classical physics. By the second half of the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, the Newtonian mechanistic model of the universe dominated all scientific thought. He has been associated with the image of a God who ruled the monarchy in the world from above by imposing his divine law on it. The fundamental laws of nature sought by the scientists were therefore regarded as the laws of God, eternal and unchanging, which the world has been subjected.
It seems that the new perspectives that have emerged in the wake of scientific discoveries in the time modern in some respects resembled the earlier Ptolemaic vision. The laws of nature replaced the divine laws, which governs the world in the Middle Ages. The universe was still, but in the new sense, regarded as a well-ordered, predictable machine where each event has its direct cause, although in the search for causes, we could turn to material rather than spiritual explanations.
Newtonian model included several concepts important the mechanistic view of the universe time largely based, as absolute, real space, absolute and linear, the existence particulate matter indestructible all objects that have been made and the force of gravity acting on them. In the early twentieth century with the advent the theory of relativity and quantum theory, these views have been significantly altered. F. Capra summarizes the essence of the new facts discovered as follows: "According to the theory of relativity, space is three dimensional and time is not a separate entity. The two are intimately linked and form a four-dimensional continuum, space-time. "By the theory of relativity, therefore, we can never talk about space without talking about the weather and vice versa. In addition, there is no universal flow of time as in the model of Newton … All measures concerning space and time lose their absolute value. In the theory of relativity, the Newtonian concept of absolute space as the stage of phenomena physical is abandoned and is therefore the notion of absolute time. Time and space become just elements of the language a particular observer uses to describe observed phenomena. "Einstein proved that space, time and material objects do not exist independently of each other: the presence of large bodies can affect the flow of time and the curvature of space. The quantum theory has revealed new information on the structure of the atom and the behavior of matter on the subatomic level. Discovery of subatomic units that can exist as both particles and waves led to significant development of quantum theory: the idea that units of matter can exist as probabilities rather that actual events. This meant that the universe is not static and predictable, but was in constant motion and change, all interrelated elements: "Quantum theory thus reveals a fundamental unity of the universe. It shows that we can not decompose world independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated 'basic building blocks ", but appears rather as a complex network of relationships between different parts of the whole. " Another myth shattered was that of an observer independent. As Capra explains: "The essential feature of atomic physics, the observer is that the man is not only necessary observe the properties of an object, but it is necessary even to define these properties. In atomic physics, we can not talk properties of an object as such. They are only meaningful in the context of the interaction of the object with the observer … Observer decides how it will implement the measure and this agreement will determine, to some extent, the properties of an object observed. Capra quotes words of physicist John Wheeler: "… changes to measure the state of the electron. The universe will never be the same again. To describe what happened, it has to cross the old word "observer" and put in its place the new word "actor".
As the quantum theory developed, the understanding of causal relationships should be extended more than once. Einstein, who believed deeply in the inherent harmony of the universe, wrote in his ideas and opinions that "the scientist is possessed by the sense of causality Universal. The future, it is all of Pentecost as necessary and determined as the past. " Other studies (in particular, experience Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen with two particles moving in opposite directions spinning) showed that causation is not limited to local variables, but, in fact, could be called universal. John Horgan has summarized the basic principles of the EPR experiment in his book End of science: "The standard model of quantum mechanics, neither particle has a definite position or momentum before it is measured, but by measuring the dynamics of a particle physicist instantly forces the other particle to assume a fixed position – even if it is on the other side of the galaxy. Einstein himself doubted the possibility of non-local causation proposed by this experience, but more Research supported by the theorem of Bell, said he is, after all, a valid conclusion.
The major implication of these findings is, in Capra words, that "the universe is fundamentally interconnected, interdependent and indivisible", he is alive and constantly evolving: In a sense, it created more and more with our active participation. This effort is a new sense of wonder that Einstein said, is comparable to the religious sentiment: "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which is cradle of true art and true science. He who knows not and can not ask, do not wonder, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It has been the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of some something we can not penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our mind – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. "In a passage of ideas and views titled religious spirit of the science of Einstein described a feeling religious experience as a scientist: "His religious feeling takes the form a rapturous wonder at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared to her all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. " Einstein speaks repeatedly of "intelligence" "Cosmic religious" feeling "the Reason that manifests itself in nature", and it is clear that for him the spiritual and rational knowledge are closely related.
In the book The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra argues that modern science, quantum physics in particular, presents a vision of the world which is in many respects similar to those traditions of Eastern religious thought as Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism. He explains: "The characteristic The most important of the worldview of the East – one might almost say the essence of it – is the awareness of the unity and interrelatedness Mutual of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic unit. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole, as different manifestations of the same coin ultimate. Capra draws detailed parallel between the facts of modern science and the revelations of the mystics of the East. To reject his conception as constructed an argument by analogy and, therefore, invalid, means to deny any value to this kind of intuitive knowledge of Pascal, who spoke at the beginning of his thoughts, and confine ourselves to the rationalization, the linear form of reasoning proclaimed by Descartes. Science itself proved to the world be infinitely richer and more complex schemes that humans create for themselves, however sophisticated these schemes appear to be yet. Perhaps, rather than continue to divide and compartmentalize the way we understand it is time to seek common ground between perspectives: religious or secular, logical or intuitive.

bibliography

1). Capra, Fritjof. Tao physics. Shambhala Publications: Boulder, 1983.

2). Descartes, Rene. Philosophical Writings. Bobbs-Merrill Company: New York, 1971.

3). Einstein, Albert. Ideas and opinions. Crown publishers: New York, 1954.

4). Horgan, John. The end of science. Broadway books: New York, 1997.

5). Pascal, Blaise. Thoughts. Collier and Son: New York, copyright 1910.

6). Russell, Bertrand. A history of Western philosophy. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1972.

About the author

I was born and grew up in Russia. At the age of 20 I had to unexpectedly move to the USA where I spent 6 years. That was when I wrote this and other English-language articles. Now I’m living again in Russia. I teach English and also do web design. Here is my site: www.kotausi.com There you can see some of my works, photographs and other articles.

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