More on Chemical Civilization

The ideas that I’ve outlined briefly in the last post (in the narrow compass of the brain’s function) will strike some positively because they suggest a naturalistic (meaning “scientific” or “secular”) approach to reality—while holding on to the meaning of existence. Others will shy from such an approach because it seems to ignore God’s presence and providence. The truth of the matter is that I’m temperamentally more of a medieval than a modern man, but medieval man was far from stupid and much more comprehensive in his world view than modern man for all of the latter’s minute explorations of the Big Bang theory one nanosecond at a time. The naturalistic does not deny the transcendental unless the focus is too narrow. Let me give an example.

The most divine musical composition reaching us, say, by public television broadcast from Vienna, producing sublime shivers in us as we listen in rapt attention while our eyes are focused on the interior grandeur of some great basilica—that experience has a quite mundane and naturalistic underpinning which, at that moment, we are altogether unaware of. To pluck some examples at random: The piano we hear produces its sounds by small hammers hitting wires, the sounds coming from strings made of hexagonally shaped steel cores wound tightly round with copper wire. The winding is one layer of copper at the beginning and at the end of the string (“start of winding,” “end of winding”) and multilayered in the working area where the hammers hit. Every other instrument we hear is a manufactured or crafted product of great precision. The music is printed on paper that comes from paper mills that reduce trees to pulp and then to paper in massive and malodorous processes. The music reaches us from Vienna by means of electronic equipment arrays, not least those on satellites, the transmitted signal, reaching us through air or cable, is transformed into sound and pixels in our television set, the colors of which are in part produced by rare earth elements the names of which virtually nobody knows.

Does the “mechanical civilization” that transmits the beauty of a composition in any way deny the inspired composer, his great work, the talents of the musicians, the guiding skill of the conductor, the reality of the architects who designed the basilica? No. We’re looking at different ranges of reality as we experience a fusion of them in a moment of perception—a moment that is itself produced by chemical machinery serving the needs of a spiritual agent.

In computer and engineering lingo, people speak of “black boxing” something—thus ignoring some aspect of complexity, at least for the time being, by putting it mentally into a black box. The same thing happens in the cultural sphere but, often, with less awareness. Some people “black box” the higher ranges of human experience and dismiss them as epiphenomena. Others black box the infrastructural elements as if those needed no explanation at all beyond the poetical symbols derived from myths or revelations.

My impulse is to open black boxes to see if I can link their contents with those of others without using magical gestures. I’m sincerely persuaded that no structure of human thought (here I really mean religions, world views, philosophies, metaphysics) is absolutely wrong, none is without some level of divine inspiration, but none is absolutely on the mark. The best that we can achieve, it seems to me, is to achieve approximations to a clear view of things. What I say about chemical civilization, therefore, must be seen in proper perspective. The idea is intended to enlarge rather than to narrow our view. In no way do I intend to question other people’s visions of how the reality is organized and wither God’s providence points.

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Illustrations courtesy of Balaams, a piano servicing company, taken from here.