Galen Strawson is a philosopher famous for his espousal of panpsychism. This is a spirited attempt (pun intended) to answer the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem, of course, is the need to explain how we can have subjective experience in an objective world. In fact, there are many other formulations, but they all ask effectively the same thing – what is consciousness?
Strawson takes the hard problem seriously. For good, but not quite watertight, reasons, he rejects most common attempts at an explanation. Consciousness is real, he says, and cannot be written off as an illusion. He also rejects the idea of consciousness ‘emerging’ from unconscious matter by some mysterious process. Finally, he rejects dualism. All matter is the same and there is no special spiritual substance from which conscious minds can be constructed.
His solution is simply stated: everything is conscious. Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter which makes itself felt when it is combined in certain ways. Thus each of the atoms that make up our brains brings a little bit of mind to the party. With enough atoms interacting in the right way, the party turns into an orgy of consciousness.
The obvious rejoinder to this would be if atoms are conscious, what are they thinking about? More seriously, is panpsychism plausible at all? Most people would say not, but actually nailing Strawson’s arguments is rather more difficult than you might suppose. A recent book, Consciousness and Its Place in Nature, contains an essay by Strawson, lots of comments by unconvinced philosophers and responses by Strawson to the comments. It is sympathetically reviewed by Jerry Fodor for the London Review of Books. Fodor is no more convinced than most other people but can see that the hard problem does things to our assumptions such that categories like ‘plausible’ don’t really apply to suggested solutions.
I find Strawson’s ideas have some merit. Although I am not a physicialist, I do think that the physical is an essential prerequisite to the mental. Brains seem to be doing something very obscure to generate conscious experience and I think it is something rather more basic than just producing epiphenomena. Atoms may not be conscious, but they must have some property that allows them to combine into things that are.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Some personal notes
Last week I handed in my PhD thesis and I am now waiting nervously to find out when the viva examination will be. I know who the examiners are so at least that won’t be a surprise. I still haven’t found a publisher for my book. My agent, Andrew Lownie, is now pitching to American publishing houses where I think my sympathy towards Christianity’s contributions to the history of science are likely to play rather better than in the UK.
Despite all the rejections, I have learnt a great deal about the process of getting a book out. Enough people have said that my work is good enough to be published for me to feel comfortable on that front. More worrying is my lack of a profile. Most popular history is written by journalists or novelists because they have name recognition and plenty of friends in the media to ensure exposure for their work. Academics also write for the trade but their books tend to have one eye on the textbook market. Penguin’s various recent heavyweight tomes, such as Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Reformation, all sell primarily to students and are expected to have a long shelf life to make up for their lack of up-front sales. Neither can exactly be called popular. Hawkwood by Frances Stonor Saunders (New Statesman arts correspondent); The Devil’s Doctor by Phillip Ball (New Scientist); History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr (BBC); and Persian Fire by Tom Holland (novelist) are more typical of popular history.
As for me, with neither a professorship nor a job in journalism, getting a book out is a struggle. Even Bede’s Library, which gets over 30,000 visitors a month, doesn’t seem to help (although the publishing industry has been notoriously slow to catch on to the internet and it may get them into trouble quite soon). As ever, I’ll keep you all posted.
At least handing in the PhD has meant I can now read what I like. I’m not really a fiction reader but I do like to be entertained. Of course, most academic books are rather turgid, but hopefully they are informative enough to make the effort worthwhile. If a book neither teaches me anything nor has any literary merit then I would rarely finish it. Recent examples of stuff not worth slogging through include Piers Paul Reid’s The Templars (another novelist turned amateur historian) and the derisory Human Touch by Michael Frayn (novelists turned philosopher). I will usually finish something that is easy reading even if it contains nothing new. Dawkin’s God Delusion and Bill Bryson’s History of Nearly Everything are good examples. Although I’ll finish them, I do tend to find them intensely annoying. The Holy Grail of the book world is something that both tells me a lot I didn’t know and keeps the pages turning at the same time. My current read, The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (FT journalist) and Jonathan Sumption’s Albigensian Crusade fall into this category.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Despite all the rejections, I have learnt a great deal about the process of getting a book out. Enough people have said that my work is good enough to be published for me to feel comfortable on that front. More worrying is my lack of a profile. Most popular history is written by journalists or novelists because they have name recognition and plenty of friends in the media to ensure exposure for their work. Academics also write for the trade but their books tend to have one eye on the textbook market. Penguin’s various recent heavyweight tomes, such as Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World and Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Reformation, all sell primarily to students and are expected to have a long shelf life to make up for their lack of up-front sales. Neither can exactly be called popular. Hawkwood by Frances Stonor Saunders (New Statesman arts correspondent); The Devil’s Doctor by Phillip Ball (New Scientist); History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr (BBC); and Persian Fire by Tom Holland (novelist) are more typical of popular history.
As for me, with neither a professorship nor a job in journalism, getting a book out is a struggle. Even Bede’s Library, which gets over 30,000 visitors a month, doesn’t seem to help (although the publishing industry has been notoriously slow to catch on to the internet and it may get them into trouble quite soon). As ever, I’ll keep you all posted.
At least handing in the PhD has meant I can now read what I like. I’m not really a fiction reader but I do like to be entertained. Of course, most academic books are rather turgid, but hopefully they are informative enough to make the effort worthwhile. If a book neither teaches me anything nor has any literary merit then I would rarely finish it. Recent examples of stuff not worth slogging through include Piers Paul Reid’s The Templars (another novelist turned amateur historian) and the derisory Human Touch by Michael Frayn (novelists turned philosopher). I will usually finish something that is easy reading even if it contains nothing new. Dawkin’s God Delusion and Bill Bryson’s History of Nearly Everything are good examples. Although I’ll finish them, I do tend to find them intensely annoying. The Holy Grail of the book world is something that both tells me a lot I didn’t know and keeps the pages turning at the same time. My current read, The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford (FT journalist) and Jonathan Sumption’s Albigensian Crusade fall into this category.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Back Early from Holidays....
...we got fed up with the rain.
I see that Karen Armstrong is up to her old tricks again. The excellent Damian Thompson is having another go at her on his Telegraph blog. As I’ve previously said, I feel uneasy about some of the attacks on Islam but Armstrong badly needs to learn some facts and stop playing to the Muslim gallery. Her comment that Islamaphobia started with the crusades is especially cringe-worthy. I presume that the fear felt by Christians in eighth century Spain at the advance of the Islamic armies into Iberia wasn’t a phobia because it was completely justified. I wonder how Armstrong would classify the fear felt by those affected by the recent spate of bombings here in the UK. The UK media are being criticised by in the Guardian's CiF blog for reporting that these awful events are being perpetrated by “Asian-looking men” and elsewhere for not being open to the possibility of the bombers being Buddhists!
On the subject of blogs, Daniel Hannan, also over at the Telegraph is always enlightening. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that he is a close friend in real life. Once upon a time I was in favour of the European Union that Dan campaigns so vehemently against. I saw it as the modern reflection of medieval Catholic Christendom (whose borders it matches almost perfectly, aside from Greece and Romania), an alliance of civilised peoples united by a shared history and culture. Over the years I’ve become steadily more disillusioned and have now reached the point where, if our political masters ever deigned to ask us, I would vote for Britain’s withdrawal.
The problem is that the European Union is run as not a union of high culture and historical bonds, which are predominantly Christian. Rather it is run by an international elite of bureaucrats. Like everything else these meddlers touch, such as education or the BBC, the EU has become a complicated nightmare of political correctness and tribalism. On top of that, it is manifestly corrupt. Actually, if truth be told, the EU was always like this, but if there is one thing bureaucrats are good at, it is maintaining grand illusions and shouting down anyone who tries to puncture them.
Finally, if anyone is interested in the workings of UK politics, the best blog by far is Ben Brogan’s. He is the political editor of the Daily Mail, a paper for which I have a near pathological dislike. I’ve even trained my mother (a regular reader) to call it the Daily Bigot. Brogan’s blog, however, is essential reading (if wholly irrelevant to the normal subject matter of this Bede’s Library).
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
I see that Karen Armstrong is up to her old tricks again. The excellent Damian Thompson is having another go at her on his Telegraph blog. As I’ve previously said, I feel uneasy about some of the attacks on Islam but Armstrong badly needs to learn some facts and stop playing to the Muslim gallery. Her comment that Islamaphobia started with the crusades is especially cringe-worthy. I presume that the fear felt by Christians in eighth century Spain at the advance of the Islamic armies into Iberia wasn’t a phobia because it was completely justified. I wonder how Armstrong would classify the fear felt by those affected by the recent spate of bombings here in the UK. The UK media are being criticised by in the Guardian's CiF blog for reporting that these awful events are being perpetrated by “Asian-looking men” and elsewhere for not being open to the possibility of the bombers being Buddhists!
On the subject of blogs, Daniel Hannan, also over at the Telegraph is always enlightening. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that he is a close friend in real life. Once upon a time I was in favour of the European Union that Dan campaigns so vehemently against. I saw it as the modern reflection of medieval Catholic Christendom (whose borders it matches almost perfectly, aside from Greece and Romania), an alliance of civilised peoples united by a shared history and culture. Over the years I’ve become steadily more disillusioned and have now reached the point where, if our political masters ever deigned to ask us, I would vote for Britain’s withdrawal.
The problem is that the European Union is run as not a union of high culture and historical bonds, which are predominantly Christian. Rather it is run by an international elite of bureaucrats. Like everything else these meddlers touch, such as education or the BBC, the EU has become a complicated nightmare of political correctness and tribalism. On top of that, it is manifestly corrupt. Actually, if truth be told, the EU was always like this, but if there is one thing bureaucrats are good at, it is maintaining grand illusions and shouting down anyone who tries to puncture them.
Finally, if anyone is interested in the workings of UK politics, the best blog by far is Ben Brogan’s. He is the political editor of the Daily Mail, a paper for which I have a near pathological dislike. I’ve even trained my mother (a regular reader) to call it the Daily Bigot. Brogan’s blog, however, is essential reading (if wholly irrelevant to the normal subject matter of this Bede’s Library).
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Holiday
Off on holiday for the next fortnight. Posts will begin again as usual in the second week of July.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Game Theory
The rules of medieval warfare that I was talking about on Monday are an example of game theory. I used a similar system when playing a board game called Britannica at university. The game was for four players who each took control of some of the tribes who invaded Britain during the Early Middle Ages. It began with the Romans and ended with the Normans. My long term strategy was to make sure that if anyone backstabbed me, I would do everything I could to destroy their chances in that game. I’d even throw away my own chance of winning to get revenge. Now in the short term, this was a silly idea because it meant I was more likely to lose the game. But my betrayer had no chance either so in the long term (we played each week) people stopped backstabbing me even if I left my troops in a vulnerable position.
Much later, I found out that my strategy had been discovered by game theorists and is known as tit-for-tat. Ethologists (who study animal behaviour) have detected a very similar strategy being used by non-humans and have noted that it is so successful that it confers an evolutionary advantage on organisms that use it.
In the idealised surroundings of playing Britannica tit-for-tat works well but in the real world it suffers from a serious problem. When we played our game, each week was a blank slate and I never carried my vendettas over (largely because I couldn’t remember who backstabbed me the week before). In reality, tit-for-tat can often descend into cycles of violence where retaliation leads to another counterattack which can carry on through generations. The obvious contemporary example is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians where each Hamas suicide attack inevitably leads to a violent response by the IDF, which in turn leads to more attacks by the militants. Because there is no overarching authority, there is no way to end the cycle of violence and vendetta until one side or the other is defeated.
Of course, in nature, there is no overarching authority and so tit-for-tat is the best that evolution can come up with. We humans can make a better job of things because we use two additional tools. The first is empathy, which causes us to be nice to other people because we feel their pain. The second is the government has a monopoly on retribution that prevents us from taking matters into our own hands. Of course, this means that teaching children to respect authority is every bit as important as encouraging them to emphasise. We reap the benefits of living in a society much less violent than our ancestors. It is worth asking, as I will be in the next few weeks, how we got here.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Much later, I found out that my strategy had been discovered by game theorists and is known as tit-for-tat. Ethologists (who study animal behaviour) have detected a very similar strategy being used by non-humans and have noted that it is so successful that it confers an evolutionary advantage on organisms that use it.
In the idealised surroundings of playing Britannica tit-for-tat works well but in the real world it suffers from a serious problem. When we played our game, each week was a blank slate and I never carried my vendettas over (largely because I couldn’t remember who backstabbed me the week before). In reality, tit-for-tat can often descend into cycles of violence where retaliation leads to another counterattack which can carry on through generations. The obvious contemporary example is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians where each Hamas suicide attack inevitably leads to a violent response by the IDF, which in turn leads to more attacks by the militants. Because there is no overarching authority, there is no way to end the cycle of violence and vendetta until one side or the other is defeated.
Of course, in nature, there is no overarching authority and so tit-for-tat is the best that evolution can come up with. We humans can make a better job of things because we use two additional tools. The first is empathy, which causes us to be nice to other people because we feel their pain. The second is the government has a monopoly on retribution that prevents us from taking matters into our own hands. Of course, this means that teaching children to respect authority is every bit as important as encouraging them to emphasise. We reap the benefits of living in a society much less violent than our ancestors. It is worth asking, as I will be in the next few weeks, how we got here.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Monday, June 18, 2007
"Kill Them All!"
The most notorious aphorism of the Middle Ages is probably the comment of the papal legate Arnauld-Amaury during the sack of Beziers in July 1209, “God will know his own. Kill them all.” This was the first city to fall to the Albigensian crusaders and it certainly contained many more Catholics than it did Cathars. There has been some debate as to whether Arnauld-Amaury actually said the famous words, but general agreement that he would not have disagreed with the sentiment. After all, the Catholics had been sheltering the heretics, which was quite bad enough.
There is one important point to grasp about the remark, however. Arnauld-Amaury was not issuing an order. Beziers had fallen by storm and its population were going to get slaughtered as surely as night follows day. The papal legate was merely giving his stamp of approval to something that was going to happen anyway. Why would he do that? Partly, it was because he had to keep the army on side. He couldn’t afford to deny the crusaders, who were a volunteer force, the spoils of war. But mainly, I think, it was because he understood and approved of the medieval rules of war.
The rules were really quite simple. If a town or castle surrendered, then the terms of their surrender would be regarded as sacrosanct. If, however, the attacking army took their target by assault, then there would be no mercy. Again and again, even during the Albigensian Crusade, garrisons could march out of a castle that they surrendered while anywhere that refused to capitulate would, when it eventually fell, be reduced to a smoking ruin. Clearly, in the long term, this worked to everyone’s advantage. If you want your opponents to surrender, then you have to ensure that the pay off for doing so is as great as possible. Thus, you cannot trick them into surrendering and then slaughter them, because no one would ever believe you again. You would have to besiege or assault every village you came to and thus never get very far. Likewise, if you let the population be after they have held out against you with all their might, you send out the message that others have nothing to loose by resisting.
This is why the slaughter after the fall of Jerusalem was not the great atrocity that we commonly believe, but simply par for the medieval course. Even then, the Arab garrison who shut themselves in the castle were able to negotiate their safe surrender. In fact, what I find so surprising was how often medieval garrisons were allowed to retire unmolested and how completely safe conduct was respected.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
There is one important point to grasp about the remark, however. Arnauld-Amaury was not issuing an order. Beziers had fallen by storm and its population were going to get slaughtered as surely as night follows day. The papal legate was merely giving his stamp of approval to something that was going to happen anyway. Why would he do that? Partly, it was because he had to keep the army on side. He couldn’t afford to deny the crusaders, who were a volunteer force, the spoils of war. But mainly, I think, it was because he understood and approved of the medieval rules of war.
The rules were really quite simple. If a town or castle surrendered, then the terms of their surrender would be regarded as sacrosanct. If, however, the attacking army took their target by assault, then there would be no mercy. Again and again, even during the Albigensian Crusade, garrisons could march out of a castle that they surrendered while anywhere that refused to capitulate would, when it eventually fell, be reduced to a smoking ruin. Clearly, in the long term, this worked to everyone’s advantage. If you want your opponents to surrender, then you have to ensure that the pay off for doing so is as great as possible. Thus, you cannot trick them into surrendering and then slaughter them, because no one would ever believe you again. You would have to besiege or assault every village you came to and thus never get very far. Likewise, if you let the population be after they have held out against you with all their might, you send out the message that others have nothing to loose by resisting.
This is why the slaughter after the fall of Jerusalem was not the great atrocity that we commonly believe, but simply par for the medieval course. Even then, the Arab garrison who shut themselves in the castle were able to negotiate their safe surrender. In fact, what I find so surprising was how often medieval garrisons were allowed to retire unmolested and how completely safe conduct was respected.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Friday, June 15, 2007
The Albigensian Crusade
I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Sumption’s The Albigensian Crusade. It is a good bit of popular history, told at a cracking pace from the original sources, in the tradition of Steven Runciman and John Julius Norwich. Sumption is an interesting character because he manages to combine his role as historian with being one of the highest paid QCs (a senior barrister) on the London legal scene. He is currently working his way through the Hundred Years War (two volumes out at the rate of about one a decade). When the last volume came out he admitted he never saw his children as he was either in court or in his private library. Despite his wealth and reputation, I felt rather sorry for him.
Still, The Albigensian Crusade is excellent. I mentioned the Cathars a couple of weeks ago and had always believed that the crusade had been what wiped them out. Apparently not. The crusade was defeated and when its leader, Simon de Montford, was killed at Toulouse in 1218, it fell apart. His son, to whom leadership had passed, had to return to Northern France. Eventually, it was the French monarchy who gained the County of Toulouse, not by conquest but by an advantageous marriage. The Cathars were destroyed after the crusade when Raymond, Count of Toulouse, allowed papal inquisitors to operate in his territory. They went after the Cathars lay protectors and slowly, over the next century, managed to dismantle the whole edifice. The last remaining remnants of Catharism were the villagers of Montaillou captured in 1326.
What was odd about the Albigensian Crusade was how little it seemed to differ from the internecine conflict that had characterised life in Languedoc before the crusaders even turned up. The region was a patchwork of petty lords and nobles who spent most of their time and energy fighting each other. You can romanticise that kind of manly culture, but it must have been a hellish place to live. The crusaders were simply another army added to the mix. The region did not finally know peace until it was absorbed by the French. The result was a century of unprecedented wealth and growth before the Black Death and the Hundred Years War devastated the entire region in the fourteenth century.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Still, The Albigensian Crusade is excellent. I mentioned the Cathars a couple of weeks ago and had always believed that the crusade had been what wiped them out. Apparently not. The crusade was defeated and when its leader, Simon de Montford, was killed at Toulouse in 1218, it fell apart. His son, to whom leadership had passed, had to return to Northern France. Eventually, it was the French monarchy who gained the County of Toulouse, not by conquest but by an advantageous marriage. The Cathars were destroyed after the crusade when Raymond, Count of Toulouse, allowed papal inquisitors to operate in his territory. They went after the Cathars lay protectors and slowly, over the next century, managed to dismantle the whole edifice. The last remaining remnants of Catharism were the villagers of Montaillou captured in 1326.
What was odd about the Albigensian Crusade was how little it seemed to differ from the internecine conflict that had characterised life in Languedoc before the crusaders even turned up. The region was a patchwork of petty lords and nobles who spent most of their time and energy fighting each other. You can romanticise that kind of manly culture, but it must have been a hellish place to live. The crusaders were simply another army added to the mix. The region did not finally know peace until it was absorbed by the French. The result was a century of unprecedented wealth and growth before the Black Death and the Hundred Years War devastated the entire region in the fourteenth century.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Moving house.....
Been moving house this week so very little time for blogging. Here’s a couple of articles to fill the gap.
Firstly, a P.S. to my rant on Monday against content-free education. It’s an open letter from a physics teacher and well worth reading. I suspect the problems he rages against are common to both the UK and the US. Physics was my first degree and I actually interviewed for several jobs as a physics teacher. Glad I didn’t get offered anything, judging from this.
Secondly, the usually excellent David Aaronvitch proves Pinker’s Law. This law, regular readers will know, states that any analysis of human behaviour or development that takes no account of genetics will be worthless. Aaronvitch’s vacuous article demonstrates this by concluding the reason for differences in attainment by toddlers is about culture. Rubbish David, it’s about genetics. You can easily figure out my own comment among the responses to the article.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Firstly, a P.S. to my rant on Monday against content-free education. It’s an open letter from a physics teacher and well worth reading. I suspect the problems he rages against are common to both the UK and the US. Physics was my first degree and I actually interviewed for several jobs as a physics teacher. Glad I didn’t get offered anything, judging from this.
Secondly, the usually excellent David Aaronvitch proves Pinker’s Law. This law, regular readers will know, states that any analysis of human behaviour or development that takes no account of genetics will be worthless. Aaronvitch’s vacuous article demonstrates this by concluding the reason for differences in attainment by toddlers is about culture. Rubbish David, it’s about genetics. You can easily figure out my own comment among the responses to the article.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Monday, June 11, 2007
I was wrong about the new science syllabus
Actually, I’m wrong quite a lot but I’m usually clueless as to what the problem was. In this case, I can see how I went astray.
In October last year, I blogged with some approval on a new science syllabus. It seemed to me that it addressed many of the issues that concern me about how science is viewed by the public. Students would be taught to think about science in a critical way, covering related ethical issues rather than being spoon fed raw facts. Big mistake. I should have known that it was foolishness to agree with Simon Jenkins.
The new syllabus turns out to be rubbish in practice. With history teaching, the problems are the same. Students cannot be expected to think critically about a subject until they have a sufficient grounding in the facts to make sense of them. Otherwise, they are doing nothing more than training to be pub bores. My mistake was to think that what interests me, now, when I have had the privilege to pass through the very finest establishments that English education has to offer, can be applied to students who are still at the start of their journeys. Without a solid grounding in facts, you cannot have a conversation about values.
Academics have long been guilty of getting this wrong. When theory was all the rage, university undergraduates rapidly got the impression that they could put the theoretical cart before the factual horse. Their tutors never realised that when they dissed the greats of English literature as dead white men, their students would actually believe this meant they didn’t have to read them. It may be fair to take a PhD student’s factual knowledge for granted, but you can’t do this with undergraduates, let alone school children.
When my children reach 16, I no longer want them to be able to emphasise with a plantation slave, I want them to know the kings and queens of England in order and the salient facts about each reign. I don’t want them to explain why global warming is a bad thing (if that is still the trendy issue in fifteen years time). I want them to understand the chemical reactions behind the carbon cycle, the periodic table and the properties of most of the common elements. Only then will then be in the position to debate the finer of points of whether we can trust science and who it was who wrote the history.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
In October last year, I blogged with some approval on a new science syllabus. It seemed to me that it addressed many of the issues that concern me about how science is viewed by the public. Students would be taught to think about science in a critical way, covering related ethical issues rather than being spoon fed raw facts. Big mistake. I should have known that it was foolishness to agree with Simon Jenkins.
The new syllabus turns out to be rubbish in practice. With history teaching, the problems are the same. Students cannot be expected to think critically about a subject until they have a sufficient grounding in the facts to make sense of them. Otherwise, they are doing nothing more than training to be pub bores. My mistake was to think that what interests me, now, when I have had the privilege to pass through the very finest establishments that English education has to offer, can be applied to students who are still at the start of their journeys. Without a solid grounding in facts, you cannot have a conversation about values.
Academics have long been guilty of getting this wrong. When theory was all the rage, university undergraduates rapidly got the impression that they could put the theoretical cart before the factual horse. Their tutors never realised that when they dissed the greats of English literature as dead white men, their students would actually believe this meant they didn’t have to read them. It may be fair to take a PhD student’s factual knowledge for granted, but you can’t do this with undergraduates, let alone school children.
When my children reach 16, I no longer want them to be able to emphasise with a plantation slave, I want them to know the kings and queens of England in order and the salient facts about each reign. I don’t want them to explain why global warming is a bad thing (if that is still the trendy issue in fifteen years time). I want them to understand the chemical reactions behind the carbon cycle, the periodic table and the properties of most of the common elements. Only then will then be in the position to debate the finer of points of whether we can trust science and who it was who wrote the history.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
Friday, June 08, 2007
The Bible and Historical Writing
In 1099, Jerusalem fell to the First Crusade and the ensuing carnage has never been forgotten. The words of Raymond d'Aguiliers are probably the most famous excerpt from a medieval chronicle:
The image of the horses died red with blood sticks in the mind of all who read the passage. It is quoted in every book on the crusades and almost every book on how horrible Christians are. There is a reason, which might not be immediately obvious, why this single anecdote stands as the reference point for the entire massacre. Raymond was making a conscious attempt to tie the fall of Jerusalem in with the apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible. Here is Revelation 6:4 which Raymond clearly has in mind when he describes the blood-drenched horses.
The question I want to ask is, did the scene described by Raymond actually happen? After all, it is clearly derived from a biblical passage. I ask this, because many scholars and amateurs seem to believe that if an event in the New Testament can be linguistically linked to an event in the Old Testament, then it didn’t happen. Jesus Mythers go further and try to find parallels to everything in the Gospels so that they can declare the whole thing fiction, which is a bit like saying the crusades didn’t happen. They are, after all, wildly implausible ventures.
I would like to make another suggestion. Both the Gospel authors and the crusade chroniclers thought they were writing sacred history. It is natural, therefore, that they were always on the look out for biblical parallels that could hammer the point home. The Bible is a long book and these authors new it very well, so finding these points of reference was not very difficult. I think Raymond did see the blood-drenched horses and it reminded him of the red horse of war from Revelation. Likewise, just because the Gospel writers can link their narrative to the Old Testament is not, in itself, good evidence for ahistoricity.
Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.
In the Temple and porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and
bridle reins. Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God that this place
should be filled with the blood of the unbelievers, since it had suffered so
long from their blasphemies.
The image of the horses died red with blood sticks in the mind of all who read the passage. It is quoted in every book on the crusades and almost every book on how horrible Christians are. There is a reason, which might not be immediately obvious, why this single anecdote stands as the reference point for the entire massacre. Raymond was making a conscious attempt to tie the fall of Jerusalem in with the apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible. Here is Revelation 6:4 which Raymond clearly has in mind when he describes the blood-drenched horses.
And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that
sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another:
and there was given unto him a great sword.
The question I want to ask is, did the scene described by Raymond actually happen? After all, it is clearly derived from a biblical passage. I ask this, because many scholars and amateurs seem to believe that if an event in the New Testament can be linguistically linked to an event in the Old Testament, then it didn’t happen. Jesus Mythers go further and try to find parallels to everything in the Gospels so that they can declare the whole thing fiction, which is a bit like saying the crusades didn’t happen. They are, after all, wildly implausible ventures.
I would like to make another suggestion. Both the Gospel authors and the crusade chroniclers thought they were writing sacred history. It is natural, therefore, that they were always on the look out for biblical parallels that could hammer the point home. The Bible is a long book and these authors new it very well, so finding these points of reference was not very difficult. I think Raymond did see the blood-drenched horses and it reminded him of the red horse of war from Revelation. Likewise, just because the Gospel writers can link their narrative to the Old Testament is not, in itself, good evidence for ahistoricity.
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