This is a collection of Marilynne Robinson’s four Terry Lectures (Yale University), which explored the mystery of the human mind. Her lectures looked at the tension that exists between science and religion. She tends to write in long rambling sentences, sometimes difficult to follow. The text may have come over better when spoken in her lectures.
She is concerned by the rift introduced by positivism, initiated by Auguste Comte in the early nineteenth century. In later years logical positivism sought to banish metaphysics, seeing it as devoid of experimental proof and so meaningless. Now modern culture pushes science to the fore and sees it as claiming authority for its arguments. It dismisses Western Religion along with its skeleton of metaphysics. Robinson herself tends to bracket religion and metaphysics, with no regard for the acceptance of metaphysics by a number of philosophers, who see that its topics do not necessarily include discussion on whether God exists.
She finds a faulty diagnosis for the sense of emptiness in the modern world. It is not, she says, because of the death of God, or ‘the ebbing away of faith’. This notion from Dover Beach, written in 1867, was post-Darwin but pre-logical positivism. The malaise might be due, Robinson suggests, to exclusion stemming from parascience, which, in its various forms, she sees as barring the mind from accepting accounts of reality..
Turning to the topic of altruism, Robinson notes that Comte saw a selfless devotion to the welfare of others as filling the space left by a belief in God and by the triumph of scientific positivism. But this ignores the possibility that the altruist may seek not only the benefit to the recipient, but also – or even more – the favour of others who are aware his actions.
She also looked at the effects of Malthus’s Theory of Population. He suggested a formula expressing a supposed ratio of the growth of population to the increase of arable land. Population must therefore be limited. His contemporaries saw the effect this could have on social policy, and on the life of the poor.
Darwin was influenced by Malthus, and included tribal warfare in the process of evolution, a notion that accorded with colonialism, and the esteem in which the Europeans of the time held themselves. A further opinion on the distribution of natural resources was raised by Adam Smith and others, which she sees as another instance of parascientific reasoning.
Looking at Freud, Robinson quoted Jung’s criticism that a person’s works of art or expressions of spirituality were too readily accepted by Freud as repressed sexuality. He had also consistently asserted that the mind is not to be trusted. He saw the self as entrapped by an interior drama, of which the conscious mind is not aware, unless it is aided by psychoanalysis to become aware of it. In his role as a scientist (which at that time he had the right to claim) Freud attempted to bring the assumptions of rationalism to bear on the myths and frenzies that were carrying Europe towards catastrophe.
In her final – and perhaps best – essay she muses on various questions. Could there be life elsewhere in the universe? Is mind non-physical, or is it an activity of the brain? Was time created together with the universe, or is it independent of it? The present answer to these questions is mostly that we just don’t know.
She mentions in passing that she is not religious, but that if she were, she would tend towards Feuerbach’s view that it is a human projection. She might, then, find a home in SOF.
Science, she says, has a cluster of hypotheses concerning the start of the universe. Perhaps eventually one description may prove to be more likely than any of the others. Observation had led to the fact that the universe is expanding. The suggestion that gravity could slow cosmic expansion could not be reconciled with the new data, and the anti-gravitational force led to a changed conception of the universe.
Meanwhile we live largely within ourselves, assembling a narrative of past and present which, although unique and individual, gives rise to cultural aspects such as art. She ends by hoping mankind might generously acknowledge the very mystery that we humans are. Should you venture to read this book, do persevere to this fine final essay.
Christine Hacklett is interested in philosophy and is currently Secretary of the Pinner Philosophy Group. She is a member of SOF... 158 pages.