Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Parlin, Steven" <PARLINS AT culver.org>]

Jim, 

Yeah, I thought of trying clarify my point about science before I sent that
last rant, but I thought it might be implicitly expressed. Apparently, I was
wrong about that. I never meant to indicate that science itself is evil.
Science is neutral, and can neither be good nor evil, arrogant nor humble,
in itself. It's how science is employed that is either salutary or evil.
It's the gnostic lust for knowledge and control over nature, largely
expressed in the sciences, that is evil. Knowing is only good if tempered by
humility. But its foolish to think that knowledge alone will or can heal. To
know the good does not result in doing the good. To know a map does not
necessary mean to follow a map. 

Yeah, you could look back on the last century and say that those who thought
they had revealed truth contributed to the mayhem. But, ultimately anyone
you might be referring to who might have claimed (or even might have
thought) they were obeying revealed truth were still obeying their own sense
of knowing and having control over things. The fact that some may have been
mistaken due to their own arrogant blindness doesn't mean that revealed
truth is not the order that should be followed and obeyed. You see, we can't
blame the map if people fail to read it correctly. 

Billions of people can fail to interpret and obey the map (or a compass)
correctly, but that says nothing of the correctness of the map (or compass)
itself. It just means that billions of people are "cartographically
illiterate" and don't know or care to know how to read the map (or compass).
Some reject the map outright even after seeing its truth. However, if the
illiterate choose to redesign the map (or compass) to suit their own needs,
they will find that they are not only still lost, but without any hope of
finding their way at all, for the landscape does not change (and neither do
the poles). 

Of course the rejoinder here is that we can and should alter the landscape
and shift the poles at our choosing -Gnosticism-for we are in control of our
own destiny. 

Instead of admitting we are Lost in the Cosmos and need maps and compasses
-and dare I say authorities to tell us how to read them-we either ignore the
compass or recalibrate them or redesign them according to our own desires.
And, since there are so damn many of us on this planet, our own desires are
not only going to be in conflict with the revealed landscape itself, but
with each other. If my altered compass or map is in conflict with yours,
what is left for us but war? 

So, can't blame revelation. Nope. A lot of blood has been shed by those who
have interpreted or refashioned it for themselves, but no blood has ever
been shed by those who have sincerely submitted to the established order of
the Cosmos. 

Steve 




 -----Original Message-----
From:   James Piat [mailto:piat1 AT bellsouth.net] 
Sent:   Monday, January 06, 2003 10:18 AM
To:     percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject:        Re: [percy-l] Gnosticisim, Science, and the Literary.

Dear Steve,

I am not familiar with the pros and cons of Gnosticism and have not
wittingly been part of that discussion. I say this not to criticize the
discussion but merely to clarify my role in it.   OTOH I am following and
enjoying your interesting and informative comments about literary vs
scientific approaches.  I appreciate the mere fact that you find the subject
worthy of comment.  And I agree with much of what you say about the value of
humility vs arrogance.  I think however I may be more sympathetic to the
scientific approach than you seem to be.  I think, for example, that the
scientific approach is humble.

In any case I've commented on a few places where you and I seem to see the
distinctions between the literary and the scientific somewhat
ifferently  -- not to deny the truth in what you say (as I happen to think
what you say is true) but more to further the discussion.

> So, there it is: The scientific approach is a disordered attempt at
mastery
> over Truth; The literary approach is one of obedient submission to the
order
> of Truth.

Interesting!  You seem to equate science with attempts to master the truth
and literature with attempts to understand truth.  I think science is most
scientific when its practitioners submit to the data.

I think what we know as individuals is, in a sense, self evident or
evealed  -- I take science as an attempt to collate these individual
experiences or observations in such a way so as to help determine what is
true for us all -- a bit like democracy at its best works in the political
domain.


>In fact, Percy repeatedly said that when he forced is writing,
> when he inserted himself into it and controlled it, when he was trying to
> make an argument in his fiction, he always produced garbage. He had to
> submit to the act of it and let the stories find themselves.

Yes, I find this to be true even in my own attempts to express something.
The more I try to impose my order or view of things the less satisfying the
results.  Better to submit to the data --even when all the data seems to
come from within!


>Unity in the Cosmos cannot be
> achieved through our own efforts to know things -who could look back on
the
> twentieth century and think otherwise?-- but only through submission to
the
> order that is revealed to us.
>

I think one could also make the opposite argument  -- that many of the
horrors of the twentieth century were the result of those who thought they
had the revealed truth  -- rather than by those who sought to know the
things.



> Also, one last thing, in C.S. Lewis' Abolition of Man, he outlines very
> clearly how our struggle to master the world has only resulted in the loss
> of the very things that make us human.  In the most monstrously ironic
way,
> the Gnostic drive for mastery over self and nature is the very thing that
is
> giving nature a mastery over us -though we haven't yet blown ourselves up,
> we might be slowly losing those very human attributes that keep us from
> doing it.

Sounds to me a bit like the communist argument against capitalism.   Does he
credit Marx?

Cheers,
Jim Piat

--

An archive of all list discussion is available at
http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail

Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy