Start and end dates for things are always discretionary. When does red end and orange begin in a rainbow? Time flows, so picking a point in it is a fallacy, and is only needed if useful in some way, like if you want to blame something for the shit we're in.
I can't remember the publication but there is an essay by Bernard Charbonnau on the Ellul forum about the Christian roots of modernity. Just replaced Christ with The Science as redeemer, with hilarous consequences all around. I reckon it's black magic, myself. Newton and all those cool kids back in the day were alchemists and sorcerers.
I don't think it's wrong to compare science and religion but I do think you are being a bit unfair here. I think that a council voting in this way is silly but understandable. I don't think it's fair to suggest it's the same as a council voting on whether the Son is of the same essence as the Father, or on whether fossil fuels really do come from fossils. Because, as Benn says below, the boundary between Holocene and Anthropocene is like the boundary between red and orange and that's the only reason scientists feel they can vote on it. They aren't quite claiming the authority that bishops claim. It's more a liturgical than a theological point, I think.
That said, AFAIK we only think red and orange are different colours because Newton wanted there to be seven colours for alchemical reasons. Although he failed to get 'indigo' and 'violet' separated for anything other than the spectrum itself; you don't get indigo and violet crayons - just purple.
In that context, setting 1950 as the start date is definitely going to cause problems; although probably less than if we set it to 'dawn of agriculture' or 'start of colonial expansion' because a lot of people actually do believe that those points mark 'when it all went wrong'; whereas nobody can seriously believe 1950 was when the Beast suddenly popped out of the sea.
Personally, I'm very much in the holocene = anthropocene camp; as I work on large mammal conservation, I kind of have to see it that way. But I suppose we can just start talking about 'the long Anthropocene,' like people do with centuries.
I suppose it might be possible to argue that the IPCC marked a sort of 'council of Nicea' moment; though without a single emperor who was very obviously on side. I think the IPCC has done a lot to introduce the dangerous idea of 'scientific consensus', which could be considered an oxymoron.
I should clarify that I see both the scientific councils and religious councils from a perspective of neutral curiosity, rather than judgment. What's particularly interesting to me is how the very same forms of truth consensus persist regardless of cosmological system ("history doesn't repeat itself, but it's full of repeating forms ...").
That's the point of political theology: noticing how the theological forms create, shape, and constrain the "secular" political forms.
So by a 'theological form', you don't mean so much something like 'the idea of the Fall of Man'- which secular authors constantly accuse each other of subconsciously repackaging - but more like 'the Council of Nicea' - bunch of experts are called together to give a consensus that is required by political powers? Am I understanding you correctly - that it's a form for how theology is done, not of what the theology says?
Yes. And there's an extra degree to this, which is that they both attempt to explain the current situation of the world through frameworks shaped by that world. One place you can see this more recently is the question of genetic determinism (which is in some ways "the problem of evil" or "the fall of man") or, back a few centuries, the way that race science developed along initially judeo-Christian frameworks (three main branches, following the three sons of Noah ...) and as a response to, not a cause of, slavery regimes. I'll cover that one in particular in a future installment of this series.
But do you think that having a bunch of experts called together by political powers to vote on something is an outcome of a particular cosmology? Or is that likely to happen with any cosmology, in a society that has political powers and at least the idea of multiple experts?
btw, I don't think I know any biologists who believe that human behaviour is genetically determined. And I think that to suggest human behaviour isn't genetically *influenced* is kind of meaningless - unless you don't believe DNA exists or something.
Oh I absolutely think it’s a form that recurs throughout societies. Chiefs asking shamans, kings and emperors asking oracles, druids, or priests, and politicians asking the WHO or any other scientific body: the difference seems only in the knowledge means used by those consulted and how seriously the political powers take the information.
OK this is weird. I am in Waterstones and, thinking about things unrelated to this post and this conversation, I picked up Helen Gordon's Notes from Deep Time. I turned for chapter 5, also for no particular reason, and found that it's about exactly this. In fact a participant in the submcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy specifically says that it's 'like being in the College of Cardinals.' The author comments that "One thing that pleases [her] about stratigraphy is the strange collision between the human impulse towards bureaucratic procedure [...] and the very inhuman weirdness of Deep Time."
Possibly you have read the book. Even so it was a striking thing. It was one of only 3 books I looked at.
Thanks for linking to the Extinct blog. I was just rereading Rhyd’s essay here and thought I’d scroll the comments. I’m glad I did! There’s some thought-provoking stuff over at Extinct.
already really enjoying this series, rhyd. i've got to get caught up on The Mysteria in the meantime!
Thanks!!! Glad you are enjoying them!
Start and end dates for things are always discretionary. When does red end and orange begin in a rainbow? Time flows, so picking a point in it is a fallacy, and is only needed if useful in some way, like if you want to blame something for the shit we're in.
I can't remember the publication but there is an essay by Bernard Charbonnau on the Ellul forum about the Christian roots of modernity. Just replaced Christ with The Science as redeemer, with hilarous consequences all around. I reckon it's black magic, myself. Newton and all those cool kids back in the day were alchemists and sorcerers.
If you remember the essay's title, I'd be interested in reading it!
I don't think it's wrong to compare science and religion but I do think you are being a bit unfair here. I think that a council voting in this way is silly but understandable. I don't think it's fair to suggest it's the same as a council voting on whether the Son is of the same essence as the Father, or on whether fossil fuels really do come from fossils. Because, as Benn says below, the boundary between Holocene and Anthropocene is like the boundary between red and orange and that's the only reason scientists feel they can vote on it. They aren't quite claiming the authority that bishops claim. It's more a liturgical than a theological point, I think.
That said, AFAIK we only think red and orange are different colours because Newton wanted there to be seven colours for alchemical reasons. Although he failed to get 'indigo' and 'violet' separated for anything other than the spectrum itself; you don't get indigo and violet crayons - just purple.
In that context, setting 1950 as the start date is definitely going to cause problems; although probably less than if we set it to 'dawn of agriculture' or 'start of colonial expansion' because a lot of people actually do believe that those points mark 'when it all went wrong'; whereas nobody can seriously believe 1950 was when the Beast suddenly popped out of the sea.
Personally, I'm very much in the holocene = anthropocene camp; as I work on large mammal conservation, I kind of have to see it that way. But I suppose we can just start talking about 'the long Anthropocene,' like people do with centuries.
I suppose it might be possible to argue that the IPCC marked a sort of 'council of Nicea' moment; though without a single emperor who was very obviously on side. I think the IPCC has done a lot to introduce the dangerous idea of 'scientific consensus', which could be considered an oxymoron.
I should clarify that I see both the scientific councils and religious councils from a perspective of neutral curiosity, rather than judgment. What's particularly interesting to me is how the very same forms of truth consensus persist regardless of cosmological system ("history doesn't repeat itself, but it's full of repeating forms ...").
That's the point of political theology: noticing how the theological forms create, shape, and constrain the "secular" political forms.
So by a 'theological form', you don't mean so much something like 'the idea of the Fall of Man'- which secular authors constantly accuse each other of subconsciously repackaging - but more like 'the Council of Nicea' - bunch of experts are called together to give a consensus that is required by political powers? Am I understanding you correctly - that it's a form for how theology is done, not of what the theology says?
Yes. And there's an extra degree to this, which is that they both attempt to explain the current situation of the world through frameworks shaped by that world. One place you can see this more recently is the question of genetic determinism (which is in some ways "the problem of evil" or "the fall of man") or, back a few centuries, the way that race science developed along initially judeo-Christian frameworks (three main branches, following the three sons of Noah ...) and as a response to, not a cause of, slavery regimes. I'll cover that one in particular in a future installment of this series.
But do you think that having a bunch of experts called together by political powers to vote on something is an outcome of a particular cosmology? Or is that likely to happen with any cosmology, in a society that has political powers and at least the idea of multiple experts?
btw, I don't think I know any biologists who believe that human behaviour is genetically determined. And I think that to suggest human behaviour isn't genetically *influenced* is kind of meaningless - unless you don't believe DNA exists or something.
Oh I absolutely think it’s a form that recurs throughout societies. Chiefs asking shamans, kings and emperors asking oracles, druids, or priests, and politicians asking the WHO or any other scientific body: the difference seems only in the knowledge means used by those consulted and how seriously the political powers take the information.
OK this is weird. I am in Waterstones and, thinking about things unrelated to this post and this conversation, I picked up Helen Gordon's Notes from Deep Time. I turned for chapter 5, also for no particular reason, and found that it's about exactly this. In fact a participant in the submcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy specifically says that it's 'like being in the College of Cardinals.' The author comments that "One thing that pleases [her] about stratigraphy is the strange collision between the human impulse towards bureaucratic procedure [...] and the very inhuman weirdness of Deep Time."
Possibly you have read the book. Even so it was a striking thing. It was one of only 3 books I looked at.
http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2019/7/30/the-future-geologist-and-the-anthropocene
I read this thing a couple years ago, it might interest you Rhyd.
Thanks for linking to the Extinct blog. I was just rereading Rhyd’s essay here and thought I’d scroll the comments. I’m glad I did! There’s some thought-provoking stuff over at Extinct.