A Theory of the Two Cultures

A home, while we wander

“Remember”, Nicholas Roerich

What is this work supposed to be?

Well, for the long, polemical answer I’ll direct you to the introduction,¹ published what feels like ages ago now, in which I laid out the basic issue of the Two Cultures, as well as some reasons to seek a peace between them. But it may also be worth making a meta-point about how I see a project like this developing. The description I give here has two faces to it.

The humble first description is that this is where I’ll pre-register certain hypotheses about the topics under discussion, listed below. They may not always be framed as hypotheses, since I find saying things without qualification invites quick and passionate pushback; but they are, at the end of the day, only hypotheses. Their testing phase will take place over the next few years as I read and observe more widely and deeply than I have now.

The aspirational take on this series is as a polished collection of notes for some future treatise. This hypothetical treatise will undoubtedly take longer to complete than these essays, and its sheer written verbiage, in our increasingly “oral” culture, will likely render it more stillborn than Hume’s own first work of relevance. Still, I feel I need to write something, if only for my own “private exercise and satisfaction”, as a young Thomas Browne put his own reasons for writing Religio Medici. If this exercise manages to coalesce into a codex I’ll count myself satisfied; if not, then at least I had the exercise.

As I write this little note, most of the work of the Series is complete-ish in my head, and much of that is now on the page; what’s missing now is mainly polish.

Of course for writers it isn't so easy to part polish from substance. Our problem isn’t unlike that facing sculptors— there is so much negative work involved in chipping and sanding our way to a buried form. Writers and sculptors both often seem to be doing little of value until just before the work is over.

There are also other troubles. Cudgeled by Agnes Callard’s most recent book, I was made to concede the enormous difficulty (and danger) of solitary thinking; and so making my work public is partly an admission that I can’t go it alone.

So here’s a kind of central collection for the project, presented for an onlooker’s ease of access and reference. Ideally I expect my readers to be more than onlookers. It’s my hope that people dial in to this work-in-progress at its various stages and help with the sanding, the chipping—the negative work—with myself as commander of this quarry of text serving mainly to streamline the mining.

I would also very much encourage others to take on their own projects in response (or repudiation) of this one; and if any do I ask that they keep me apprised of their progress. If it isn't yet obvious, I’m quite interested in the questions.

So without further ado, here’s the current plan for the series (which is very much subject to change). As each essay is completed, links to them will be embedded in the list below, as well as published on Sic Vita.

*

Introduction

The Fellowship of the Cave: a mytho-historical journey through past, present, and a possible future, rearranging elements of Plato’s Cave and Ovid’s Ages

Naturalizing the Mind: A Primer

The Descent of the Soul, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5: A grammar of assent on the subject of personhood proposed—concepts of selfhood and personhood clarified—space of possible persons briefly explored—original image of humanity discussed—early theories which mentalized the universe considered— formative history of manifest image from original outlined—some hypotheses offered to explain removal of personality from models of nature

Some Analogies Revised: Moving beyond “lateralized” models of thinking and culture, including McGilchrist-ian hemisphericism and Sellars’ stereoscopic analogy—earlier comments on manifest and scientific images extended— alternate top-down representational model expounded—“personal height” and “natural height” proposed to replace original/manifest and scientific images.

A Matter of Perception: In which the picture of sensation and imagination in the previous piece is complicated by prediction—sensation and imagination shown to be different rungs for ladder of predictive perception—implications for intellection discussed

Borrowed Inspirations: Small literary detour into cases in which poets “borrowed inspiration” from natural philosophers, with a special focus on Milton and Galileo, plus discussion of Dante and other medievals—examination of whether mixing natural philosophy with poetry hurts or helps, with concepts from Aristotle’s Poetics.

Sewell’s Question: A question once asked by Elizabeth Sewell, on “the role of poetry in the natural history of the human organism”, is explored— a new-ish definition of poetry is reworked from Horace and Samuel Johnson—poetry’s influences on various aspects of mind raised—commonalities and differences between music and poetry, and poetry and regular speech, discussed

Rules of the Dream: On language’s role in structuring imagination and reality, continued from last piece, this time also discussing mathematics—the suitability of different kinds of languages for different regions of reality—the ongoing recalcitrance of biological and psychological phenomena to formalism and prediction discussed

The Place for Wonder: How do we unite the natural and personal height?—they are already present in the mind; they must simply be properly integrated— poetry’s role in scientific world

1. As meek defense for readers curious about this delayed follow up to the now-distant intro, I’ll offer this bit of personal news— these past months were spent securing my near term future in the halls of scholarship. The applications and interviews are all done now, thank goodness, and with graduate school secured I now have the prospect of a few clear months of writing and thinking ahead of me. So expect more from me soon.