Breathtaking Modesty
I’ve been reading the Introduction to Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon, by Roy Willis and Patrick Curry. Patrick Curry teaches in the astrology programme at Bath Spa University College which you may have noticed in Flashback. The introduction is truly fascinating, in the way a gangrenous wound might be fascinating to its owner. I’ll quote from it a little, so that you can see what I mean.
Very little in the debate about astrology is entirely new. The word itself means the ‘word’ (logos) or ‘language’ of the stars, and is now customarily
contrasted, as a pathetic remnant of primitive superstition, with the academically respectable science of astronomy. This latter term means
‘measurement of the stars’, and accurately reflects Galileo’s famous contention that only that which can be measured is truly real. Quantity is primary, quality secondary. This book maintains the converse proposition, daring to privilege sensory quality over a row of digits, and is devoted to investigating and recovering a stellar language of apparently immemorial antiquity; a mode of communication that is part of our common heritage as human beings..This is a primal faculty that seems to be embedded in our genes, ironically the very entities now commonly presented, in the current version of reductive materialism, as the sole and invisible masters of our personal and collective destinies (cf. Dawkins 1989).
That’s in the first paragraph, and it’s admirably representative of what the introduction is like. The self-attribution of ‘daring’ for instance. Always check your wallet when academics start telling you how brave and daring and bold and fearless they are. The chances are good that that’s the preface to a piece of nonsense. And then that ‘row of digits’ – oh that’s clever. Original, too. I used to say things like that in the 4th grade (and the 7th, and the 10th, and the 12th) to explain why I was so stupid at math. I didn’t want to think it was just because I was stupid at math, now did I.
And then the absurdity about this ‘primal faculty’ that seems to be embedded in our genes. Eh? It does? It ‘seems’? To whom? You? And anyone else? You just made it up, that’s all. So where does the ‘ironically’ come in? First you invent the idea that chatting with the stars is ’embedded’ in our genes, then you say how ironic when genes are usually such a horrid reductivematerialist item on the scientistic agenda. And then what do you mean ‘sole’? And what’s ‘invisible’ got to do with anything? And what do you mean ‘destinies’? Nothing; you don’t mean anything; you just want to take a very hackneyed slap at a usual suspect.
Another bit. I’ll leave you to ponder its wonders for yourselves.
Here let us note certain fundamental consequences of our dialogical
reading of human nature. In its essential, necessary openness – the
inherent duality of dialogue which is also, and most fundamentally, a
many-voiced plurality – this reading permanently guarantees us against
any possibility of collapse into monolithic solipsism. However, it also
means we must perforce abandon for ever all ambition to theoretical
closure, the dream – or nightmare – of a final, all-embracing theory of
everything, the breathtakingly arrogant project so dear to materialist
and reductionist science.
Openness and many-voiced plurality, hurrah; materialist and reductionist science, boo. Isn’t rhetoric great?
Bath Spa has a University College? Who knew?
No, I’m not about to rush out and get me a copy of “…Pulling Down the Moon”- (does that translate from American into British?)-, but, still, the idea of furnishing a veneer of post-modernist sophistication to an apologetics for astrology is actually pretty funny, in the manner of spoofy hijinks. But I’m not quite sure you nailed down the sheer intellectual hypocrisy of the thing- (and postmodernism is nothing but intellectual hypocrisy, in the way one once spoke of “intellectual honesty”, an endless “play” of performative contradictions)-, since the citation in question simultaneously denigrates and appropriates on form of reductive determinism to “underwrite” another form of reductive determinism. (Indeed, it even seems to equate genes with that old rationalist chestnut “innate ideas”.) The conjuring trick of pulling the wool over one’s own eyes is something even sheep are unable to do, however innately endowed to do so.
Still, the “critical” method of simply separating sense from nonsense won’t do and is question begging, as if the world itself were sheer transparent intelligibility, as if sense were on one side and nonsense on the other side of a chasm in the world, as if one were necessarily securely in possession of sense and knew precisely the limits of sense, its history and future. “Making sense” requires sorting out sense from nonsense to the point of “recuperating” sense from nonsense. (It is this hermeneutical task that postmodernist styles of thought so sadly disparage and eschew.) For surely the critical point to be made about the cited passages is that they dislocate and misapply intelligible, potentially valid ideas to defend errant nonsense in a way that can only be fraudulent in intent- (and that this is so obvious is funny.) So, e.g., that astrological thinking is “innate”, (which actually says nothing about causal or predictive power), says nothing more than that it is a species of archaic analog thinking, (Benjamin’s “nonsensuous correspondances”), and that brains are analog pattern recognition devices- rather than digital computational devices- for good biological reasons and that this mode of thinking comes “naturally” to creatures endowed with such brains. Similarly, whatever “destiny” may mean, its association with the stars or more generally the heavens is an ancient one and speaks to a very old insight that we are not completely masters of our own fate, which no amount of technological prowess can invalidate, lest our technology become the master of our fate. Finally, the last passage contains a basic philosophical problem concerning the idea of a whole or totality: can one know of such a thing if one is within and a part of that same totality? Heidegger’s conception of human existence as being-in-the-world was designed precisely to deal with that conundrum and led to the conclusion of our radical finitude. The dialogic “solution”, with its attractively pluralistic implications, to such finitude unfortunately was not a path that he took.
The upshot is that the problem with Dawkins-style propaganda for the reductionism of “hard” science, regardless of whether it is an accurate report of scientific conduct and ideas, is that the narrowness of its own approach provokes and inadvertently “underwrites” irrationalistic reactions.
No, I’m sure I didn’t nail down the hypocrisy of the thing: I was well aware that I was leaving much undiscussed.
“as if the world itself were sheer transparent intelligibility”
Yeah, we’ve had this conversation before – some fifty times, I think. “as if” nothing – I make and imply no such claim. I simply pointed out certain bits of rhetoric, that’s all. Saying a given phrase or word is being used rhetorically hardly implies that the world itself is sheer transparent intelligibility – why would it? As for what the critical point is, sure, your point is more interesting and far-reaching than the one I made. But I didn’t want or have time to write a book on the subject, and I don’t know enough, either.
“whatever “destiny” may mean, its association with the stars or more generally the heavens is an ancient one and speaks to a very old insight”
Wait – how can it do that if we don’t even know what it means? If it means ‘whatever’ how can it do anything at all? What is an ‘insight’ if it refers to something so vague and amorphous that it means ‘whatever’? And then, just because an ‘insight’ is very old, that doesn’t mean it’s particularly profound or non-obvious. We’re not completely the masters of our own fate – you mean stuff happens to us without our consent? Gee, really? Who knew? So, okay, a ‘very old’ insight from before telescopes were invented and improved suggested that the stars dictated what happens to us. Since then, a little more has been learned about the stars, and that idea doesn’t seem very probable. The antiquity of the idea doesn’t particularly make it seem more so.
I know, I’m being reductionist and narrow. But that’s how I get when people talk guff about very old insights.
I’m not a big fan of Dawkins genecentric reductionism, but your last paragraph makes no sense. You can’t dismiss a successful (if limited) research program as mere propaganda, and you certainly can’t blame it for astro-babble — do you really think that required the example of a scientist to occur?
I loved this bit: “In its essential, necessary openness – the inherent duality of dialogue which is also, and most fundamentally, a many-voiced plurality – this reading permanently guarantees us against any possibility of collapse into monolithic solipsism”.
In the real world, astrology is very close to solipsism. How often do astrologers check the validity of their predictions, even against those made by their colleagues? Or take the problem faced by western astrologers, that the periods in which their constellations are actually overhead today are not the same as they were over 2000 years ago when the zodiacal periods were devised. Do they say, well what matters is what constellation is overhead at the moment of birth, so we have to revise the zodiacal periods? Of course not: that would invalidate all the anecdotal supporting evidence they claim to have for horoscopes they have themselves done using the incorrect periods. A perfect example of solipsism, as meant by Willis and Curry: only paying attention to what we want to.
OB:
I did not question what “destiny” meant-
John, you’re probably aware that in Patrick Curry’s book, a predominant concept is the concept of pretextual language. As you seem to suggest, he promotes the use of modern ‘astrological’ theory to attack the status quo. Thus, subdialectic astrological theory implies that the goal of the astrologist is social comment.
If one examines postcapitalist cultural theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept subdialectic textual theory or conclude that culture serves to marginalize the astrologist, but only if consciousness is interchangeable with culture; otherwise, the significance of the observer is deconstruction and particularly in the context of reflections on the historiography of ‘superstition’. Therefore, the ‘astrological’ subject is contextualised into a subcultural modern theory that includes truth as a totality.
My own suspicion is that Curry uses the term ‘subdialectic astrological theory’ to denote a self-falsifying paradox, as Horkheimer would put it. Therefore, the main focus at Bath Spa is the genre, and thus the defining characteristic, of conceptualist identity…. zzzzzzzz
.. sorry, John, but your shoehorning in of Heidegger, Aristotle, Plato and Adorno in a single paragraph of remarkable obscurity did provoke me to having a bash at the Postmodern Generator:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern
That (“shoehorning obscurity”) being as it may, to say:
“However, it also means we must perforce abandon for ever all ambition to theoretical closure, the dream – or nightmare – of a final, all-embracing theory of everything, the breathtakingly arrogant project so dear to materialist and reductionist science.”
One need not invoke Heidegger et al. One can limit oneself to such people as Kant and Montaigne and Popper.
The issue is that this guy caricatures materialism in order to comfortably go after a straw man. Much like others do with postmodernism (or everything that comes close enough in their view to be painted over with the same caricature).
Cathal, thanks for the link, nearly as funny as 25 years of the Comedy Store last night…
Adorno was by no means a postmodernist;
John, on the off-chance that the last one was intended for me, I hate to tell you I lost you quite early on in your comment.
My earlier remark merely was meant to the effect that other philosophers would be a bit at odds with a sometimes reactionary, or at least overly naïve, rationalism, as sometimes practised here.
That being said, the fact I’m “over here” at all should be enough indication to you that I have very little sympathy for most of the people you have quoted.