Re: Guest comments

Asst Prof Clarence F Sills Jr (sills@nadn.navy.mil)
Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:03:22 -0400 (EDT)

I am very happy to read Pete Powers' comments, although I would be even
happier to see whether any of the "professionally scientific"
reflectorites have considered the differences it would make if the
category of "appearance" is taken more seriously. This was my hope in
raising the issue of Barfield's work in the first place.
In the interest of further expanding the discussion, in addition
to Barfield there is the work of the late novelist Walker Percy, in
particular Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self-Help Book, which has a
section, entitled "Semiotic Intermezzo," which lucidly and provocatively
lays out the reasons for arguing that only a TRIADIC as opposed to DYADIC
modeling can deal adequately with the issues raised in consideration of
what makes a human, "human." Percy in particular deals with various claims
that certain animals have been taught to use "language" in a way once
thought only available to humans. Percy is sensitive to the way the
issues involved relate to the language of theology.
It seems to me that the category of appearance, if taken
seriously, requires a triadic modeling as well: the triad in this case
would be observer, appearance, and reality (or some variant). This is the
triad exploited by classical skepticism. Percy's triad is sign-user,
sign and thing signified. In general, especially in the past few
centuries, we have come (says Percy) to view only DYADIC transactions as
"scientific." This has created enormous confusion. Chip Sills

On Mon, 28 Aug 1995, Gordon Simons wrote:

> Abstract: I first describe an attempt I made to convey to my church forum
> what is happening on the reflector forum. Secondly, I share - for your
> possible comments - a response made by one of our church forum members to
> what they were posted. - Gordie
>
> First part: my attempt to explain the reflector to my church forum
> ==================================================================
>
> With the cooperation of Loren Haarsma, I wrote the following to my
> church's forum:
>
> >> For several months, I have been a member of a discussion forum -
> composed mostly of Christians - which discusses questions linked to
> creation - with particular, but not exclusive, emphasis on origin-of-life
> issues. Few in that forum are up to speed on most of the topics discussed.
> This is part of the fun. But the activity is more than fun. I believe it
> is one of the many ways Christians can attempt to develop what Mark Noll
> calls the "evangelical mind."
>
> In trying to bring to the Blacknall forum something of what is going on, I
> have waited for a subject that I think many of us can understand without
> very much background information - and waited for a posting that seems to
> capture the essence of what is going on. The posting I've chosen is by a
> Christian at Tufts University by the name of Loren Haarsma.
>
> Besides letting us use his posting, Loren has graciously provided us with a
> "quick glossary" of terminology used in his posting.
>
> He writes, "Please also mention that it [his posting] was part of an
> ongoing discussion, composed in less than a day, and not intended to be
> 'publication quality.' "
>
> The subject of the discussion is made clear in Loren's abstract:
>
> ABSTRACT: Did the Bible's authors believe a flat-earth/"sky sandwich"
> cosmology, or does the language just "appear" that way? I think the
> ordering of the days in Genesis 1 suggests actual belief, rather than mere
> appearance.
>
> My plan is to post Loren's glossary now, and, in a day or two, repost his
> actual posting - as the second and last part of this posting. <<
>
>
> Second part: response of a church forum member to what was posted
> =================================================================
>
> The following are comments made by Pete Powers, a member of our church
> forum. Pete has a recently received PhD in English, from Duke University,
> and is currently teaching at George Mason University. With a bit of
> unease, he welcomes comments from folks on the reflector (which I will
> pass along to him). In this regard, he writes:
>
> "Sure, of course, I expect to be crucified, but that's Ok."
>
> Pete's comments follow:
>
> >> I'm not a scientist and generally view these arguments with some sense
> that I am glad someone else is concerned about it. The thing that keeps
> cropping up in these various postings that I am interested in is the
> notion of "the language of appearances" as if this somehow explained what
> was going on in Biblical discourse as opposed to scientific discourse.
> The problem with it, as I see it, is that the assumption seems to be that
> scientific discourse is not also a "language of appearances," as if
> somehow science can deliver to us the way things "really" are.
>
> I'm not sure this is so self-evident. The various scientific revolutions
> themselves suggest that science works within what could be described as
> kinds of faith assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Of course,
> the scientific community narrates these changes along almost exclusively
> technical lines: that is, "of course, now we have better mathematical
> calculations, better instruments, more money, more scientists, more
> knowledge." Changes in science are then just a matter of better and more
> science. Again, I would say it's not clear that this is the case--one
> could look to Thomas Kuhn (although he is somewhat controversial) and
> other historians of science to see that scientific revolutions aren't
> usually based on new and better instruments, but on dramatic shifts in the
> ways in which particular kinds of problems are approached, even shifts in
> the nature of problems themselves. The "new" calculations are often,
> even usually, attendant upon these philosophical shifts rather than
> causing them through the objective nature of science.
>
> It's therefore possible to imagine a world several hundred years from now
> in which people like us sit around and say, "Yeah, people used to think
> the earth was approximately spherical in shape." We would then proceed to
> cackle hysterically among ourselves at how ludicrous an idea this really
> was. Of course, imagining this statement as a hysterical joke requires a
> world with a significantly different understanding of physics, geometry,
> the nature of matter, time, and so forth, but I would hesitate to say that
> such a world couldn't exist. We may already be on the brink of radically
> altering our notions of geometry and shape through our attention to
> subatomic physics, and our notion of the nature of matter through
> attention to mathematical ideas such as dark matter, and so forth.
>
> None of this suggests that we can by some willful act of imagination go
> back to a flat earth cosmology that seems to me to be clearly in place in
> the bible. All I'm suggesting is that the language of appearances
> argument is a red herring since both scientists and theologians do their
> investigations within a hermeneutical circle created by the language of
> appearances. Theologians may be on firmer ground here since they are
> aware of it.
>
> This is why I think the creationists are misguided, because they think
> somehow that they can achieve some "truly objective" measurement that
> will show the "historical accuracy" of the biblical accounts. As long as
> they proceed in this manner they will be fighting a losing battle since
> this is the very ideology by which a scientific dogmatism has managed to
> be triumphant in the West for the past two hundred years or so. The task
> of the church might be--rather than seeking this spurious language beyond
> appearances--to seek to "save the appearances," that is, discover those
> forms of life within which the church can remain faithful to an earlier
> language of appearances within a newly developed language of appearances.
>
> My phrase "save the appearances" comes from Owen Barfield's book SAVING
> THE APPEARANCES, which I highly recommend for people concerned about these
> issues. I would go so far as to say that the effort to save the
> appearances has always been a primary task of the church, and is even
> discoverable within the bible itself. I would use the more common
> expression interpretation. Within the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, for
> instance, we see the people of Israel grappling with radically altered and
> changing historical circumstance, most particular in trying to relate the
> theological experience of the Davidic Kingdom with that of the Babylonian
> exile. The Exile seemed to call into question the purposes of God as
> revealed to the Davidic Kingdom, and much of the prophetic scriptures can
> be seen as grappling with this apparent division. Similarly, In the New
> Testament, particularly in Hebrews and in Romans but elsewhere as well, we
> see the writers seeking to "save the appearances" by explaining how the
> new reality of the church is continuous with God's purposes for Israel
> despite what many took to be its radical break.
>
> These are not "cosmological" issues in the sense of the flat earth
> controversy, but they are similar since in both cases we are seeking a
> language that relates a radically new appearance in the world to the
> language of appearances by which we had previously understood God to work.
> On this score, interpretation is a fundamental act of faith since it is
> only through interpretation rather than through "objective measurement"
> that we are able to secure a meaningful continuity of our own experience
> with the purposes of God in history.
>
> As I said, I don't worry about these issues too much in a concrete way,
> but I do think the notion that the scriptures are using a more
> metaphorical and somehow less objective language will always be
> problematic since it lets the scientist assume that he has arrived at a
> truth without metaphor. This assumption is, I think, probably one of the
> metaphysical bases of idolatry.
>
> Peter Powers
> George Mason U <<
>
>
>