A Contemplation of Nature Andrew Kern Circe Institute 2009 Conference, A Contemplation of Nature Plenary II Exordium I ©CIRCE Institute 2009 Transcription Track 1 Around 1916 William Butler Yates wrote a poem that s ince has become very famous. It’s called “The Second Coming.” And in that poem h e said these words: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot h ear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The b lood-­‐dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The b est lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. S urely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of S piritus Mundi Troubles my s ight: a waste of d esert sand; A shape with lion body and the h ead of a man, A gaze b lank and p itiless as the sun, Is moving its s low thighs, while a ll about it Wind shadows of the indignant d esert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony s leep Were vexed to nightmare b y a rocking cradle, And what rough b east, its hour come round at last, S louches towards Bethlehem to be born? Very famous lines in the first half, the second part gets a little complicated and mysterious, but very famous lines -­‐ and maybe that’s b ecause they were written during World War I. But I bet you’ve a ll heard a t some point: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The b lood-­‐dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; Then – especially famous – often p laced in front of books about the way things are going: The b est lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Well what on earth would make p eople quote that? Why would a poem like that b e so widely read in an age like ours? It’s a lmost a cliché now. It’s to the point that some p eople when they h ear it go, “Oh, there we go a gain!” And who is h e to say “the b est lack all conviction” after all? Who’s judging who the b est and the worst are? “Mere anarchy,” h e says, “ is loosed upon the world.” So let me read something a little more pleasant to you. This is from a chapter called “A Long Expected Party.” It goes like this: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that h e would shortly b e celebrating his eleventy-­‐first birthday with a party of special magnificence, [sort of like our conference] there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. “Bilbo was very rich and very p eculiar, and had b een the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, ever s ince his remarkable disappearance and unexpected return. The riches he had brought back from his travels had now b ecome a local legend, and it was popularly b elieved, whatever the old folk might say, that the Hill a t Bag End was full of tunnels stuffed with treasure. And if that was not enough for fame, there was also h is prolonged vigour to marvel at. Time wore on, but it s eemed to have little effect on Mr. Baggins. At n inety h e was much the same as a t fifty. At ninety-­‐nine they b egan to call him well-­‐preserved; but unchanged would have b een n earer the mark. There were some that shook their heads and thought this was too much of a good thing; it s eemed unfair that anyone should p ossess (apparently) p erpetual youth as well as (reputedly) inexhaustible wealth. “‘It will have to b e paid for,’ they said. ‘It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!’” I think in order to understand the significance of these words b y J.R.R. Tolkien, you have to understand the deep affection that h e held for h is Hobbits. He loved the Shire, Tolkien did. His d esire was to preserve it. In fact, if I may digress – which I’ve b een known to d o occasionally, only briefly – I would suggest that the movies as splendid as they were, were fatally flawed b y not ending with the s couring of the Shire. Because the Shire is what the story is about. And it’s the Hobbits in the Shire that drive the story. And he loves, Tolkien does, the simplicity of the Hobbits. He loves that down-­‐to-­‐earth life style. He loves the “wisdom of the a ges,” embodied in the folklore of the Hobbit p eople. And the essence of that wisdom of the ages is embodied in what s eems like a throw-­‐away line at the end of the first section in chapter one: “It will have to be paid for. It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!” I don’t know, maybe those words are particularly relevant in our culture today, I’m not sure. But I want you to think about this – this is not a throw-­‐away line – this line: “It isn’t natural, and trouble will come of it!” This is a t the very h eart and soul of what Tolkien and his allies, The Inklings, C.S Lewis, and Dorothy Sayers were about; because they had a project in mind. And that project was n othing less than to save Western civilization. They understood p erfectly that the West was built on the Christian classical tradition and they were determined to preserve it. We can disagree on any number of p oints with them, but we can’t d eny that we are h ere b ecause of the work that they d id. Their voices are popular now, but they’re also very limited. They’re popular but they don’t s eem to b e allowed into reflection on things like politics, education, science, and medicine. In fact, just as an aside again, “That Hideous Strength” b y C.S. Lewis is a story of this principle b eing p layed out, in shall we say, the “ technopoly” of our era. And in it he creates an institution called NICE. I can’t remember exactly what that stands for but it’s a n acronym for the institution that is going to bring in that “beast s louching towards Gomorrah”, I mean towards Bethlehem, -­‐ sorry I got Gomorrah mixed up in there. And h e d escribes this institution that will d ecide who’s going to live and who’s going to d ie – and how p eople are going to live and h ow they’re going to die. And I was stunned recently to read that ever s ince, I think it’s 1999, in England, there is in fact an Institution in England that d etermines the use of h ealth care monies – and it is called – you b et – NICE. Nice…the irony is b eautiful, I think? You know if we d idn’t b elieve in life after d eath, I’d b e worried about this age. But politics, education, science and medicine are four areas – about which they were profoundly concerned. Lewis and Tolkien had fought in WWI. The three of them, Dorothy Sayers, also Charles Williams and the rest that sat around and talked with them in the room at Oxford had lived through two wars. In fact, when Lewis wrote a book I’ll b e referring to later called The Abolition of Man – which if you haven’t read I’d b eg you to read-­‐-­‐ they have a couple of copies at least in one of the bookstores h ere. That was 1943. It was WWII. They had watched the Fascists, the Nazis, and the Communists establish totalitarian rule in dozens of countries around the world. They had in fact watched as their b eloved Britain abandoned itself and its yeoman-­‐like freedom. They watched these transitions firsthand from almost the center of the thought that was guiding it at Oxford University and Cambridge. In The C hronicles of Narnia and The Lord of The Rings, even the Lord Peter Wimsey s eries, and in essay after essay, and speech after speech – Lewis and Tolkien and Thayer and Williams and the others presented the Christian classical tradition for a ll who cared about the human spirit. And please don’t make this mistake – they knew perfectly well that a part from the Christian classical tradition it was human b eings who were going to suffer. It was man who would be abolished. In p erhaps, p erhaps his most important book, “The Abolition of Man,” Lewis expressed it this way: “Man’s conquest of himself means… the world of post-­‐humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, n early all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.” Let me read that again because if you don’t listen to this carefully and assess the a ge carefully you will think this man is hysterical – in fact, if I read these words to you and you didn’t know it was Lewis you might think it was just some conservative idiot writing for the National Review or s omething. But this is what Lewis says: “Man’s conquest of himself means… the world of post-­‐humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, n early all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.” What he’s saying to you and me is that you and I, knowing or unknowingly, might well be laboring to produce the world of post-­‐humanity. And this is an extraordinarily sobering thought to me. I b elieve that mankind was created in the image of God. I believe that mankind is eternal. I b elieve that you and I have a d ignity that is unmatched b y anything else in all the creation. I b elieve that human nature was taken b y our Lord Jesus into the Trinity. And I believe that our a ge is trying to b e Post Human. It isn’t just a question of b eing Post-­‐Modern. Our world is trying to b e Post Human. And you and I are implicit in that effort if we d on’t fight against it. Track 2 Sir Isaac Newton sat on the shore of the s ea, building castles in the sand. The castles are gone. Now we crawl about on the p icnic baskets d efying the h urricane—I hope. I hope we’re d efying the hurricane. Because if we’re not, we’re blowing with it. I think in the last year many of us in America—many of us who value the h uman spirit, have been d eeply sobered by political d evelopments. I think many of us have b een—even p erhaps—I think some p eople have been, well I know of some p eople that have b een quite shaken up b y political d evelopments. Because you read some of the blogs and you read some of the forums, and you listen to what some of these people are saying; and, I mean it’s bad enough, and then they push it off the cliff! It’s good that we’ve b een shaken up. It’s about time. I don’t think that we’ve b een taking seriously enough the trouble that we are in as a p eople. I d on’t think that we’ve b een taking s eriously enough the trouble that are children are in, having to walk in a world that is in—well, h ow did Yates p ut it? “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The b lood-­‐dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;” “The blood-­‐dimmed tide is loosed…” He could b e referring to WWI; h e could have b een prophetically referring to WWII; h e could have b een referring to the communist tyranny—the totalitarian b loodshed in Nazi Germany; the martyrdom of millions of Christians—millions of Christians in the 20th century. He could have been referring to the abortion mills that have killed the entire—practically, the whole generation that would b e sustaining our economy if they weren’t a ll d ead right now. He could have been referring, he could have b een referring to so much that is happening that is “the bloodshed.” He just knew—he just knew it was coming. And we have been living and s wimming in that blood. These are n ot the h ysterical ravings of a lunatic—although more and more p eople do ascribe that condition to Lewis. These words are written in 1943 when Lewis was at the h eight of his p owers. In fact, he was my a ge! Which is kind of d epressing, but then I feel b etter when I think, “At least h e is younger than Martin.” [laughter] When the world was arguing about whether to b e fascist, communist, or capitalist, Lewis was refusing to reduce himself to any sort of materialist. Instead, h e s aw and diagnosed the disease of the a ge. And in his book Miracles, which I highly recommend, too, h e called it Naturalism. Naturalism… there’s our word a gain. Not “nature” this time—but nature transformed into a ll there is. Nature b eing reduced to the entirety of the universe. To the entirety of all b eing. Naturalism, the b elief that there is nothing outside of nature. Perhaps b est expressed b y that famous mini-­‐series and book by that “deep philosopher” Carl Sagan: “The cosmos is a ll there is, a ll there ever was, and a ll there ever will b e.” For those of you who recall h im you know that I was tongue-­‐in-­‐cheek on calling h im a d eep philosopher; h e was an empiricist, h e hated philosophy. He d espised the idea of doing metaphysics; only I thought h e was supposed to b e a scientist and here he is making a deep philosophical statement that has no grounding in any reality. “The cosmos is a ll there is, all there ever was, and a ll there ever will b e.” I cannot measure up to Dorothy Sayers, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis—I d idn’t get the education—
the classical education they each received and promoted. But I cannot, standing before you today, shirk my duty. I stand b efore you with fear and trembling. And I’ve only got about three hours to speak. [Laughter] What are you shaking your h ead about? [Laughter] This talk yearns to b e a book, but it will have to b e p leased to b e an icon pointing you to an idea. Hoping you can get enough out of it to feel its power and to chase it with something b etween eagerness and desperation. It’s been an obsession of mine for a long time—and I think that this is therefore, the most important conference we’ve ever had, certainly. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say I think this is the most important conference on education in the last 50 years. That d oesn’t mean it will b e good. We will see if we execute. But it’s a h eavy responsibility. I am h ere to discuss with you the most important idea you will ever think about. An idea you will need to learn to think with. An idea that makes knowledge possible—that makes education meaningful, and that makes life worth living. But an idea that the modern world doesn’t b elieve in. An idea that the entire modernist experiment—the entire modernist experience—is an attempt to ignore. An idea that our parents consciously rejected and our children have forgotten. Today I want to call you to take on the mantle of the Inklings and to understand and a ct on this u tterly central idea. Because as we look around we s ee a world of which and to which we can only say, “It will have to b e paid for. It isn’t natural and trouble will come of it.” In this talk I s imply want to show you how u tterly important the idea is—and I might have a word or two to say about assessment, too. In the rest of this conference we’re going to learn how to apply the idea of nature. So I’ll give you one application for this talk up front instead of waiting for the conclusion. Pay attention. Think. Because I promise you to the extent that you are s chooling after the pattern and Spirit of the Age you are contributing to the Post-­‐Human Era. So maybe you’re asking why on earth is this idea so important? Let me suggest three reasons—Oh, I think four: F irst of a ll, it’s the lever b y which the world has b een moved. S econd of all, b ecause it affects literally everything. Third, b ecause it’s the core idea of the so-­‐called Christian World View. Fourth, because education can b e rightly done only if we understand its nature and the nature of the things we are talking about. So I want to present those four reasons why it is so important and then I want to give you three case s tudies. We’ll talk about S cience, we’ll talk about Language, and we will talk about… Language, Science and… Theology! Language, Science and Theology First of all, why is it s o important? It’s so important b ecause it’s the lever b y which the world has b een moved. Make no mistake: the world has b een moved. Think about how p eople thought in 1776. Or 1789, say, compared with how p eople think today in 2009. The world has b een moved. And the lever on which that world has b een moved was built—well, you could go back to Ockham, but I won’t h ere, but the lever was built first and foremost, or b eginning-­‐ly, consciously, b y Francis Bacon and René Descartes. Track 3 Francis Bacon made a statement that—I think these are h is words, but it might b e Lewis paraphrasing them—but Francis Bacon said that, “To seek knowledge for its own sake is,” and I love this, “is to use as a mistress for p leasure what ought to b e used as a spouse for fruit.” I’d love to know how women feel about that. [Laughter] “To s eek knowledge for its own sake is to use as a mistress for pleasure, what ought to b e used as a spouse for fruit.” In other words, knowledge isn’t something you’re supposed to get for the joy of it, because it’s good, you’re supposed to get it only so you can use it! You’re supposed to get knowledge only b ecause there might b e practical applications. When you go to an education conference you shouldn’t b e asked to think about ideas, you should b e asking, “Can you give me something practical that I can use in my classroom tomorrow.” You shouldn’t b e thinking about the nature of things, that’s a d istraction. You should b e thinking about techniques and methods. It’s all u tility. Bacon lays d own the whole modern experiment, and lays down the whole modern mindset in this vile metaphor; that knowledge for “its own sake is to use a s a mistress for pleasure what ought to b e used as a spouse for fruit.” And René Descartes right around the same, h e was a little b it younger than Bacon but around the same time, René Descartes writes h is Discourse on Method. And you a ll probably know his famous line “Cogito ergo sum” or in French “Je suis donc” …what is it? How do you say, “I a m” in French? [Comment] That’s what I said isn’t it? How do you say, “I think” [Comment] “Je p ense d onc je suis.” I love goofing up French—they d eserve that—No! I’m just kidding! Just kidding! I’m just kidding! [Laughter] I actually have to confess to you that I love the French language. I’ve always wanted to learn it. But, “Je p ense, donc je suis.” “I think, therefore, I a m.” I don’t have time to get into this but fundamentally what Descartes is doing there is replacing Exodus 3:14 with h imself. He is moving “I Am” from the Divine God of Heaven, from b eing Himself, to “himself.” He is moving the foundation for existence from the Divine Trinity to the inferiority of his own intellect. And what h e does there is create a new form, a n ew d efinition of rational thought. This is vitally important. Please, understand this. Prior to the Enlightenment, certainly prior to Scholasticism, but I think even in Scholasticism they understood this—but certainly prior to Descartes and Bacon—when p eople spoke about “reason” they didn’t mean anything like Mr. Spock on Star Trek. The idea of cold reason was totally inconceivable to Plato or Aristotle. I mean read Plato; h e’s in love with reason. On page 73 in my book of The Republic, which is the Dover edition, h e describes h ow you prepare a child for the coming of reason by having them listen to beautiful music. Because b eautiful music is rational. Notice what h e is talking—this is crucial—please h ear this—“reason” to the ancient, to the classical mind, and to the Christian mind, reason was the principle of harmony. It was the attempt to bring everything into a harmony. Understand—Everything! That means you can’t exclude anything, no matter h ow much you dislike it, you can’t exclude it. But when we get to Empiricism you start lopping off limbs, you s tart—well David Hicks has a b eautiful metaphor: “If you can’t d etect it with your Geiger counter it d oesn’t exist.” OK, so empirical science, when it b ecomes the whole ground of thought, empirical s cience creates a rationalism that now isn’t the attempt to harmonize everything but it’s the a ttempt to limit the knowable to only that which your mind can understand; or to even limit the p otentially knowable to only that to which your mind can enter. It’s rational only if your intellect can get control over it. Oh, my goodness! Great God! I’d rather b e a pagan suckled in the creed outworn. My favorite story—two s tories—about how stupid this is. Frankly, how childish it is. When Karen and I were—I don’t know (blurred)—we went to friend’s house, the librarian at our college, David Courtney, and at the time h e had a little four year-­‐old boy. And he wanted to show off two things to us. One was his books, and one was his children—two things I d eeply love. So that was pretty cool. So he calls out his little b oy—into the living room where h is books are—and h e says, “Watch this….” And h is boy comes out, I think it was David Jr., he calls h im out and says, “David, how much do you love me?” And h is boy looks at him and says “A thousand seventeen.” [Laughter] Now Wittgenstein would call that a signifier without a signified—I think…. No, this is funny and cute in a four year old. But then you read National Geographic and they have an article about the chemistry of love, and they d escribe how we evolved our capacity to love, and now it’s a naturalistic thing that can b e measured chemically, and as you age, that chemical that enables you to love another p erson gets stronger and less d isparate so that it’s easier to be faithful as you get older, which I confess to be a relief—[Laughter]—but my goodness…. [Laughter] “A thousand s eventeen” —it’s funny in a kid’s mouth, but it’s ridiculous in an adult’s mouth! But that’s what they try to do. If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist! Scientific management tells us—What gets measured gets done. Well, I think I’m going to have more to say about measurement in the course of this conference. What Bacon has done, is h e has replaced—and please, hear this—if all this is confusing and irrelevant, please hear this—what Bacon has done, and what Descartes h elped him do, is to replace truth with utility. And one of the things that drives me batty! It doesn’t bother me when state educators do this, but when public, wait s orry, when Christian teachers do this it drives me over the edge. I love the fact that they want practical applications. What gets me edgy is how little they care about the truth. How little they care about knowing what the nature of a child is. See, utility ignores nature. It doesn’t matter what that child is. What matters is whether I can fulfill my objectives, my management b y objectives. It doesn’t matter what nature is, it doesn’t matter what that thing in its essence is, what matters is whether I can produce. So not only is truth replaced b y utility, b ut b eauty is replaced b y production. Now let me rephrase that—contemplation is replaced b y production. Because there’s nothing to know!! If things don’t have a nature you can’t know them. That breaks down—I’ll get to this—I mentioned case s tudies—that breaks down everything. In particular, it breaks down human communication. We live in the age of parallel monologues. Darwin then becomes—if Bacon and Descartes built the lever itself, Darwin inserted the fulcrum. Darwinism is the capstone and chief corner-­‐stone of n aturalism. I won’t go into that now because of time, but I do want to talk about Dewey who b ecomes, through Nietzsche, Darwin’s most faithful applier, although it’s questionable whether Dewey actually applied what Darwin b elieved. Track 4 Dewey wrote an essay, and I want to urge this on you – it’s hard reading, as is everything b y Dewey—
but this was a little easier and happily, shorter than almost everything else h e wrote. It is called “On the Impact of Darwinism on Philosophy.” You can find this online. [Editor n ote, here is one: http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/aboutcsp/dewey/darwin.htm ] I would guess it’s 10 pages in a Word d ocument. It opens like this: When Charles Darwin wrote his book on The Origin of Species, everybody knew that a scientific revolution had taken p lace, or had occurred, probably. But what even the experts failed to see—that’s Dewey’s haughtiness coming up—but what even the experts failed to s ee—but that I d id—
[Laughter] is that it was an intellectual revolt which introduced a n ew intellectual temper. Now, if Darwin’s b ook was, as Dewey applied it, an intellectual revolt, let me ask you this—against what was it revolting? The answer’s quite simple, b ecause Dewey explains over the n ext 10 pages: the Christian classical tradition. It was a conscious—Dewey’s application was a conscious revolt against the Christian classical tradition. As was Nietzsche’s philosophy/anti-­‐philosophy. In what way? Because Dewey tells us—the Western—well first of a ll, he would say, religion never does anything creative. Religion is useless and h elpless. “But happily there are philosophers.” And what will happen is that philosophers will think of something and then a long time later some religious p erson will h ear it and give it a great religious embodiment and then it will p ermeate a culture. So what h e says is that Aristotle, following on Plato, following on Socrates, d eveloped this idea of the “species.” The species. Which is the specific thing. And the species in Aristotle’s philosophy is eternal. Ok, now h old on to that—the species is eternal. Now in Plato the species is eternal but it exists in a non-­‐physical realm. It exists in the realm of ideas. Later on when we get to Thomas Aquinas the species is eternal b ut it exists in the mind of God. But for Aristotle the species is eternal and it exists in nature, therefore, nature, the cosmos nature, is itself eternal. Now obviously we Christians b elieve that it was created. So where d id “species” come from? Well they came from the mind of God, right? So I think it’s fair to say that they’re eternal. Ideas are eternal. Ideas don’t change. But we can’t know ideas—you and I can’t know ideas -­‐-­‐ unless they are embodied, unless they’re incarnated. There’s a number of Greek words that can b e translated “idea,” the most common one is probably idea, I don’t know why they don’t just keep it that way in Latinate form, but idea is a Greek word. But a nother one though is—often “species” is used for an idea. Idon is another one. But logos is another one. A logos is an idea. It’s a pretty big idea. It’s sort of the unifying principle of a thing. So unless a logos is incarnated we can’t know it. That’s the way God made us. But what if there is no logos? There’s nothing to incarnate. There’s nothing p ermanent. And when, forgive me if all these words are just a waste of time for you, but this is the point—when Darwin and Dewey, h is would b e d isciple, argue that “species” have an origin, they are arguing that for twenty-­‐five hundred years, everything p eople have b elieved in the west has b een based on a faulty foundation. In other words, everything the west has done till this point was wrong. This Christian classical tradition is something we n eed to get rid of. Now how do you suppose, if you wanted to get rid of a really bad idea, how do you suppose you could most effectively d o that? Schools! Absolutely. The post-­‐human s chools that make up our culture are the most phenomenally successful tool for changing a civilization’s foundation in the h istory of mankind. Much more effective than guns a nd tanks. The post-­‐human s chools I want to emphasize h ere are not only the S tate s chools. Oh how I wish I could attack the public schools n ow. But it breaks my heart to say that it’s the Christian s chools that are most guilty on this. Most Christian schools are practical Darwinists. You get Ken Ham to come into your schools, you know, and h e gives this kind of edgy talk about how evil Darwinism is, and how it breaks down the Christian worldview. And everybody applauds and thinks what a h ero Ken Ham is to stand up and make a ll this money “spitting into a hurricane.” You know what a great man this guy is. And then he walks out the door and h e’s just talked about this concept of a Christian worldview—and they don’t reassess anything they’re doing. They add something to their science class—you know about how evil evolution is. And they might have an apologetics class for twelfth graders that talks about the Christian worldview and how evil evolution is, but then they do everything just like the schools around them. ‘Cause they know who butters their bread. And b ecause they insist on two things-­‐-­‐ h ere comes assessment—they insist on two things that are the major fundamental tools, I’m tempted to say of the Devil, but certainly of the controllers of the American mind, and those two fundamental tools are: Accreditation and Certification. If you are a certified teacher, I pray for your soul, [laughter] and I wish you the best. But I want you to understand something, you n eed to b e a ware of something—I pray for everybody’s soul—I didn’t mean that in a ‘slam’ sort of way. If you are a certified teacher you are certified b y a school that was accredited by the NCATE. They can’t certify teachers without them b eing a ccredited b y NCATE. Oh, there might b e about 5% of teachers’ colleges [that don’t]. NCATE is absolutely the strong-­‐hold, the stranglehold institution of progressive educational theory. They will not a llow you to think about the nature of a child, in anything other than in a u tilitarian way. They will not a llow you to challenge the techniques and methods that you are b eing taught against the standard of the p ermanent “species” called humanity. Because there is no such thing. There is no such thing as human nature. And only a primitive, pre-­‐scientific person would think that there is. Therefore a ll that you learned in teachers’ college -­‐-­‐ unless something accidental happened, and God bless human b eings, we usually don’t live up to our principles -­‐-­‐ unless some teacher had sound instincts and saw through some teacher in your teachers college, unless they saw through, or just had , you know a sort of rebellious spirit—what you learned was completely controlled by and dominated b y the naturalistic worldview. And the most obvious element of this is the “thousand seventeen” I referred to earlier. The quantification of the unquantifiable. The insisting on measuring the immeasurable. It doesn’t fit the nature of the educational process to a pply a number to it. It’s that simple. This is why I’m in fear and trembling, you s ee. What we are doing when we have our kids take the SAT test, unless we surround it with deep, profound prayer, and all sorts of cautions and warnings, what we are doing is we are fulfilling, embodying, and supporting b eliefs that are undercutting the human spirit. Track 5 See, if you work in a factory you can measure everything b ecause n obody cares about the nature of the thing. You’re taking p etroleum, and turning the p etroleum into p lastic, and turning the plastic into a spoon. Who cares? You know, who cares if you alter the chemical balances of p etroleum? And then you can measure it, you can use numbers, you can quantify it, you can worry about outliers, you can think outliers are a bad thing. But you know what? When it comes to b ell-­‐curves and human beings, it’s the people in the top of the bell curve that I’m most worried about. I beg you to b e an outlier. I mean the top of the bell curve—talk about conformity. Do we look at a ll these things that are pressing us into the same mold and forget all about our Lord’s words through the Apostle Paul when h e says, he says “I b eseech you therefore,” and p lease hear these words, “I b eseech you therefore, brethren, b y the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Don’t be conformed to the world. But be transformed b y the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:1). Virtually nothing that happens in education in America leads to a renewed mind. And I entreat you to not keep applying these things to the s tate schools. Virtually nothing that happens in the Christian schools in America transforms the mind. Now please understand, I know there’s exceptions. And I pray to God that you’re a mong them. I’m making s weeping generalizations, I know that. I’m not judging you. I’m asking you to do as Paul said he does to h imself and judge yourself. All I’m offering you is a standard. Because there really is a human nature. And if you disregard human nature in the way you teach and assess teaching you are disregarding the Divine Image. You are causing little ones to stumble. And it’s time to repent. And suppose that’s what this is—this is a call to repentance—because we are submitting to an intellectual revolt a gainst Christ. The second thing h e says is that Darwin introduced a n ew intellectual temper. What do you suppose that n ew intellectual temper is? Love of change. Love of change, you can b elieve in, in fact. [laughter]. Since Bill Clinton gave us p lenty of change that term got worn out. So now we didn’t n eed just change for our cliché, now we n eeded a n ew cliché—change you can b elieve in. We n eeded another meaningless phrase. But a meaningless p hrase that appeals to something we want. Change. Did you hear what I said earlier about the d ifference b etween species in the classical Christian mind and species in the modern mind? In the Christian classical mind a species is what? Eternal. It doesn’t change. In the modern mind it changes, a ll the time. You always want change. Text book publishers really value that. Yeah, there’s a lot of money in change. There’s a sort of funny bumper sticker—this is meaningless but I’ll throw it out for amusement. Somebody told me about in V irginia. I’ll keep my pickup, I’ll keep my gun, I’ll keep my… what?… What’s the third thing? Who remembers? Maybe it’s money. I’ll keep my SUV, I’ll keep my gun, and I’ll keep my—whatever the third thing is—you keep the change. [laughter] But wouldn’t it b e s weet, wouldn’t b e nice if we could say, “Those nasty Democrats.” Show me a Republican who is submitting h is political principles to nature. There might b e three or four. There’s a n ew intellectual temper and it’s the temper of change over p ermanence and it’s the temper of utility over nature. And this is what you’ve got to think about clearly, you’ve got to think about this clearly, Utility over Nature. Nature checks us, it says d on’t d o that, it says, “That Is Inappropriate! You don’t treat that kind of thing like that!” And I b elieve nature is crying out at us, “ YOU DON’T TREAT A CHILD LIKE THAT!” Sixth grade, they are so cynical! They d on’t trust anybody! Why?! Cause they live in a s ystem, in a world that doesn’t give them p eople to trust, that’s why. Because from the day they were born they’re nature has b een d isregarded. Read books about parenting n ow. How many of them really focus on the nature of a child and how many of them get it right? When you read a book about parenting are you looking for specific tips about what to d eal with today? Or are you looking for books about the nature of a child? Cause you can get all the tips in the world, but if you don’t understand the nature of the thing you’re going to ruin it. You want to teach writing? What are you going to get? Are you going to go to a text book and get some steps for today and tomorrow and the next day? Or are you going to learn about the nature of writing? As long as you get the tips, you’re a s lave. Once you u nderstand the nature you can b e free. So when we assess –if not numbers what should we be looking for? Well, we teach the liberal arts, right? Seven liberal arts, or maybe just the three—the Trivium. So how do you assess if somebody is mastering the “Liberal Arts?” Liberal—Free—right? That’s what it really means. Arts of a free p erson. What you look for is this: Is that child more free b ecause h e learned this lesson or is h e less free? I’m not sure how to measure that. You know what it takes? It takes Wisdom. And what’s wisdom? Well, it’s a number of things but one of the key principles of it is knowledge of the nature of a thing. Knowing h ow to treat something according to its nature. That’s wisdom. Track 6 Knowledge, then, under Dewey doesn’t mean what knowledge meant for the entire Christian classical tradition. You’re probably going into the school with a certain set of assumptions about knowledge. You probably think knowledge means something like, either remembering facts—we call that the grammar level of knowledge. Or maybe you’re thinking that knowledge means understanding of an idea. That’s a h igher thing. Well, Dewey would laugh at both of those. S o would most educators now days. Memorizing facts? Rote memory? Come on, why would you torture a child like that? Here’s these people who don’t even think about the nature of a child, but now that they s ee something non-­‐utilitarian they say, “Why would you torture a child like that?” Children don’t mind memorizing things. Children love the sense of accomplishment they get when they memorize a long passage. I taught my third grade class Psalm 8. We memorized the whole of Psalm 8 – 31 verses. It took a long time. Tell you what, they felt a sense of accomplishment when they got to the end and could recite that. They d eserved it, too. It was a sense of accomplishment they d eserved. I didn’t have to flatter them. I d idn’t have to say, “Oh, you guys are so smart, you’re so wonderful.” And then they would look around for proof that I was telling something meaningful, fail to find it and conclude they were idiots. And that I couldn’t be trusted. Instead, I didn’t have to say anything to them, except “Well done.” Boy that feels good, doesn’t it? Doesn’t that feel good when somebody says, “well done?” Instead of, “oh, you’re so s mart?” Please, don’t tell kids they’re s mart, that’s a burden they have to carry. Just tell them when they’ve done a good job. And when they’ve done a good job they d eserve to hear you say well done because that’s practice. That’s practice for the great “Well Done.” That’s practice for that moment when they stand in the presence of the S econd Person of the Holy Trinity—Who took on human nature—and says to them, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.” You know what the joy of the Lord is? It’s an eternal “well done” just echoing around in the chambers of your soul. That’s the joy of the Lord. Imagine finding out that you were OK after all. [Laughter] Imagine finding out that you were so thoroughly redeemed that sin was washed away—really. Imagine finding out that the Divine Trinity in all its glory is p leased with you! Wants you to be with Him! Wants to spend eternity with you! And isn’t going to cast you out into outer darkness! Loves you! Ontologically—that means—having to d o with your b eing, not just your utility. Loves you not b ecause he can use you, but loves you because of what you are. Accepts you into His own presence, and d elights in who and what you are. Do you do that for your students? Let them practice that, b ecause the world moved. And that movement of the world, when the world moves, everything moves with it, right? In the interest of time, which I know you’re running out of, I just want to list a few things that kind of obviously were affected. Things that were obviously a ffected b y this change. Because it goes from the surfaces of life to the deepest ideas. See everything has a nature, that’s the point, everything has a nature. And everything should therefore, be treated according to its nature. And wise p eople a re those who b est p erceive the nature of a thing and, therefore, know how b est to treat it. I want to give you three magic words. If you can spend the rest of your life thinking about three words you will end up wise: Nature, Purpose, a nd Propriety. Spend thirteen years with your students, assuming kindergarten; spend thirteen years just talking about Nature, Purpose and Propriety. Don’t even worry about what you read, don’t even worry about what text you use, just think about Nature, Purpose and Propriety; and when they graduate from your s chool they will b e a mong the wisest p eople on earth and they will b e well educated. I guarantee it. But h ere’s some things rather obviously affected. As I go through this list just think to yourself, “What’s the nature of that thing—and what does our culture say about it?” How about this one: Marriage; Sexuality; Work; the Economy. I’ll say this much about the economy—it comes from the Greek word oekos. Compound oekos and nomos, which means the household customs. In other words, the things, the customs, that activities that keep a h ousehold healthy. How’s our economy, d oing that? Ethics. Marquis d e Sade, one of the earliest, empirical ethicists put it this way: “So-­‐called evil is the way nature works.” Politics; Law; S chool; Teaching; Assessment; Literature; Childhood; Courtship rituals; International Relations; Science; Art; Philosophy; Church; Music; Dining Rituals; Communication. That’s just a list of obvious things that are obviously affected b y the elimination of the idea of nature. Now I just want to state this n ext point, which is that n ature is the core idea of the so-­‐called Christian worldview. Perhaps I’ve got enough across there, but just to make it clear, Genesis 1—it’s very explicit. God says to each thing to reproduce after its kind. Which is to say, “Maintain your nature, there. OK, when you reproduce, don’t try to reproduce something other than what you are.” Only humans would try that. And may I say this—the Law of God—the Law of God is not the imposition of a tyrant. You know, we talk about these old covenants that were made in the ancient world on which the Old Testament covenants—the old covenants—seem to be patterned. These are often the triumph of, say, the Hittite king over a n eighboring king, and then they get together and they make a covenant together. And sometimes p eople take that to mean that God is d oing that. That God has triumphed over us and now He’s inflicting a covenant on us that we can submit to. No, it’s more like the covenant of a father bringing a rebellious son back into fellowship. The covenant law of God is entirely rooted in the nature of things. Remember I talked about propriety? Why should we worship the Lord, our God, and serve Him only? Because it’s fitting to do that. Why should we honor our fathers and our mothers? Because it’s fitting to do that—by nature. Because if we d on’t do that we d estroy our own souls. Why should we n ot s teal? Because it’s naturally fitting to honor other people’s property. Why should we not envy? Because it’s natural, it is the nature of things, pre-­‐fall, in its essential essence. It is the nature of things that some p eople have s ome things and other p eople don’t. That’s the way God wants it to b e. Here’s the thing, God wants some people to have things that you want and can’t have. Can you b e satisfied with that? When you pray, “Thy will be done” do you a ctually mean it? Do you want people to have things that you want and can’t have? ‘Cause God does. That’s the nature of the universe. I a lso said—so it’s the core idea of the Christian Worldview, both in Genesis 1 and The Law. And then Christ, of course, taking on human nature. Fourth point: Education can rightly be done only if we understand its nature a nd the nature of the things we are talking about. [note: from Track 2 – four reasons why the idea of nature is so important] Now, education—post-­‐eighteen-­‐fifty, but certainly in the twentieth century—has very little to do with education prior to the twentieth century. Education was, for twenty-­‐five hundred years in that benighted Christian classical worldview; or, Christian classical tradition was—the Formation of V irtue—
that what it was. That’s what everybody said it was. That’s what nobody ever considered it n ot b eing. It’s the formation of virtue. I don’t know if you learned much about that in teachers’ college. I’ve never asked a group of teachers if they learned about that and found that they did. I hope you learned something about that, b ecause nothing else is worthy of your students and nothing else is education. It was the formation of virtue; now it’s utility. Now it’s the preparation for an economy, or sometimes they’ll talk about preparation for leadership—which is a very scary term. When u tilitarians take leadership, I’d rather leave. The elements of education are teaching, learning a student knowledge, the idea, and assessment. Don’t worry about those d etails; you think about them a ll the time anyway. But in the elements of education—Teaching—what is it? It used to be the communication of an idea. What did learning used to be? It used to b e the contemplation of an idea. What did a student used to b e? The contemplator of a n idea. What was knowledge? The apprehension of an idea. What was a n idea? The essence of a thing. What was assessment? Well you tried to judge, bad word that, you tried to judge whether or not the student was comprehending and apprehending the idea! In other words it was a ll about ideas, it revolved around ideas, a nd it d elighted in ideas, b ecause it felt that knowledge was a good thing! You didn’t n eed to go to your mistress for knowledge; you could go to your wife! ‘Cause please remember, it doesn’t say Adam knew h is mistress; it says Adam knew h is wife! And yes she bore fruit b ecause true knowledge is amazingly fruitful. Unlike u tilitarianism. Track 7 What are we talking about? Wisdom and V irtue, Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Learning, Ideas, Language, Mathematics, Arts and Sciences. All of those things are what make up education. All of those things are what have b een goofed up and contorted and some d estroyed b y the way the modern tries to think and finds h e can’t do it. What happens when we do a way with nature? What I just said—we try to think and we can’t do it. Here’s an application: One thing I don’t want you to conclude from this is that once you absorb and understand the concept of nature—the idea of nature—all of a sudden thinking will b ecome easy. It won’t. It will b ecome extremely d ifficult. However, it will b e now p ossible. And that’s kind of n ice. You will now b e able to play the game, as it were. Not just sit on the s ide dreaming about it. Every now and again rushing in with your own ball to p lay a game that nobody else is p laying. What happens when we do a way with nature? Theology was my first case study, and I understand I’m out of time so I’ll b e very brief here. Theology is my first case study and the thing I want to conclude about this point is that, b izarrely, Christians don’t think about the nature of things in light of the p erson of Christ. I find Christian curriculum in the modern world an embarrassment. I find that the tendency to mention God on every third page of a s cience textbook is h umiliating. I find that it’s d isgraceful, b ecause you don’t need to. OK, you study the nature of a thing. That’s what the Christian worldview does. It s tudies the nature of the rock. It studies the nature of the bios, bio-­‐logy. It studies the nature of the s cience it is studying. And of course eventually you conclude that you can’t look at Jupiter unless the sun shines on it. But you are still s tudying Jupiter. And bizarrely, you can s tudy a Christian s cience textbook and n ever really think hard about the concept, the metaphysical concept of the nature of things. And think about this – who is Christ? One person with two what? Natures. Now watch this, pay attention to this, this is amazing to me. The h eresies continually d eny one or the other natures of Christ. Either he’s God and not man or man a nd not God. But so do our textbooks – practically. They’re practically h eretical. When you s tudy chemistry are you studying God? Well, think about it, what’s chemistry? It’s chemicals. When God became man what kind of body did h e take from the V irgin? A human body. One like yours and mine. Glorified—now—but one like yours and mine. A h uman body. What’s our body made out of? Mostly water, right? And then a whole bunch of other chemicals. That means that the body of God is made out of water and chemicals. It means that when you study water and chemicals you are studying the properties and elements of the body of God. That’s kind of cool. I know you’re just wondering if I just slipped into h eresy. [Laughter] I am absolutely holding firmly to the h umanity of Christ. And we have such Gnostic tendencies in the American Church that we’re continually letting go of these implications of the b ody and nature of Christ—as fully God and fully man. “Fairest Lord Jesus,” we sing: “ Ruler of all Nature, Son of God and Son of Man, Thee d o we honor, Thee do we cherish, Thou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown.“ (“Fairest Lord Jesus”) And then we ignore everything about what that means. We leave it in the abstract. I’m a lways accused of being impractical, you know. I’m a lways accused of being the philosophical type. I deny that. I just like to think about my Lord’s body a lot. I really love h im. I love my Husband, I like to just think about His b ody. I wanted to get into the Tome of Leo. Since I don’t have time I’ll just recommend it to you. It’s about 5 pages long; it’s from the 4th Ecumenical Council. The Tome of Leo is a d escription of Christ and how He’s one p erson and two natures, absolutely wonderful. In other words, if you do a way with the concept of nature you can’t know Christ anymore—OK? Christians get very confused over this issue largely b ecause of bad translation; namely, I’m talking about when Paul says that the natural man can’t s ee the things of God. The word there is not natural, it’s “the psychic man,” psukaikon, not phsuis. It shouldn’t b e translated, “the natural man,” it’s an abomination—that translation—but anyway, I’ll go on. Language is a case study, I wish I could go into this—you all want me to stop, I know, I have to say things very quickly h ere—please h ear this. Language has three parts to it. When we study it, there’s three elements of language. There’s—I think there might b e more—but there’s these three things: Semantics, there’s Syntax, and there’s Pragmatics. The semantics of language is the meaning of the words. So a b ig argument in s emantics n ow is: Does a signifier a ctually s ignify anything? Is there anything it corresponds to? Or do we just p lay word games with each other? OK, that’s s emantics. And you don’t want to b e anti-­‐semantic [laughter]. The second thing is –funny how language gives us games, isn’t it? The second thing is s yntax. That is not an oppression of the child or of drinkers of alcohol. That is grammar; OK, usage—syntax—the s tructure of a s entence. And third is pragmatics, and that is communication. Now h ere’s the thing, in our age, language has b ecome utilitarian. Language has b ecome, not something that we use to build relationships with other people, but s omething we use to get our way with other p eople. It’s b ecome a rhetorical exercise. And if we look at those three elements: s emantics—modern theory tends to say that language d oesn’t signify real things. Oh boy, get this book and drive yourself batty, Postmodern Metaphysics b y Christos Yannaras. It’s an incredibly painful read, but every now and again h e writes a clear s entence, and I wanted to read s ome of them to you. But I don’t have time. Track 8 Words d on’t have meaning to the modern, or if they d o they’re in a very tight circle of meaning—a professional circle or a gang. Secondly, when we talked a bout grammar—grammar doesn’t correspond to the structure of reality anymore. In modern theory, grammar doesn’t correspond to the structure of reality. This p oint is so important that I’m going to take you a couple of minutes over on this. Forgive me—please. Are you guys—are you OK? OK, throw things at me when it’s time to really get off. It’s Martin’s fault, he s tarted me late—hold on! I’ve got to stop worrying about 9:45—we started late—I’ve got another 20 minutes, don’t I? There you go. OK… I want you to think about reality for a moment. Since you can’t think about reality as a whole, I want you to think about a specific part of it. It d oesn’t matter what you think about very much—so let’s just make it a horse. Everybody think about a horse. OK, can any of you think about that horse without giving it any properties—without it doing anything? Well there’s a reason for that. The reason for that is b ecause a horse can’t exist without any properties and without doing anything. But there’s another reason for it. The s econd reason is b ecause your mind can’t think about a horse without giving it properties or having it do s omething. You know what that means? Your mind is a ttuned to reality. We’re in tune with it. When we think about nature. But when language is only u tilitarian you start to say grammar doesn’t matter. There’s a book I have in my office, another one I highly recommend to you, I forget the name of the author, b ut the book is called The War on Grammar. “The War on Grammar,” just the title’s worth it. But the modern mind, the modernist utilitarian mind, doesn’t value grammar because it’s some kind of English imposition on them. Like the French—they have their Academie—they’re going to impose grammar. You know what? It’s not an imposition—just like we’re not doing an experiment in classical education. I’ve h eard Christian classical schools say, “We’re experimenting with this.” No we’re not. It’s not an experiment when you simply h onor the nature of a thing. It’s an experiment when you’re testing to see if some things will work. Well, we already know what works! We’re just going to treat human nature with respect! That’s not an experiment! Right? So with language when they started to say that it’s just a functional thing, it’s just something we use, as opposed to it’s something that enables us to know. S ee the difference? We use it to get our way—but not so we can know things. Well, when we d o that, the connection between language and reality is broken, and the subject and the predicate—which are the foundation of reality and of thought—the subject and the predicate are broken apart; and now you can have s entence fragments and use punctuation, p er s entence fragments that indicate that you’ve just expressed a complete thought. In other words, it’s part of the Christian worldview that you don’t put a p eriod unless you’ve expressed a complete thought. Language is n ot s trictly rhetorical. It’s a lso logical, it’s rooted in reality. And it’s rooted in—I hope you got this point—it’s rooted in the fact that we are made to know reality. The structure of the human mind, b y nature, is d esigned b y God to fulfill our stewardship and you cannot b e a steward over something you don’t know and love. And if you love it you will try to get to know it according to its nature. Not according to your use for it. Because we are stewards, we reject Bacon’s nonsensical—I’m trying to think of a nasty enough word, and I can’t -­‐-­‐ “vile” is good—Bacon’s vile premise. And note, we’ve a ll h eard and many times even colleges put it on their door sometime, “Knowledge is power.” You know what? There are things you shouldn’t say. There are bad words—supposedly—there aren’t really—there are words used inappropriately. There are things that just common s ense and courtesies indicate “You shouldn’t say that.” Everybody knows it, but you shouldn’t come right out and say it. And one of those things is “Knowledge is power.” And you sure shouldn’t say that to people n ot grounded in a moral tradition that’s derived from the nature of things. Because as s oon as they h ear that, they’re going to want that knowledge so they can have that power. And that’s what we’re talking about with u tility. Power. Sure, knowledge is power. That’s not what we n eed though. What we need is virtue. Now, you can’t have virtue without p ower because you have to d iscipline your power to b ecome virtuous. OK, I understand. So we’re giving our kids the abilities to do things—that’s power. But why are we wasting our time on knowledge and p ower when we can have wisdom and virtue? And when you have a ruler who’s got a ll sorts of knowledge and power but lacks wisdom and virtue, how do you feel? God save us from modern s yntax. Finally, there’s the pragmatics of language, which leads us to communication. And h ere I want to quote Christos Yannaras who wrote this: “Writing is d etached from the n eed to communicate, locating the social function of language in the process of instinctual, collective, self-­‐preservation.” How do you like that line? “Instinctual, collective, self-­‐preservation” that’s what the u tilitarian argues. What we as human b eings do is we s eek self-­‐preservation. But b ecause we’re a species, b ecause we’re a group of people; we want our community to survive so we have an ‘instinctual,’ ‘collective,’ ‘self-­‐preservation,’ and that to the utilitarian is what language is for. Here’s what Yannaras suggested it should b e for: “rather than the experience and the struggle to participate in life” through language. “To participate in life,” talk about a loaded word. Language is about communication. Language is about you and me loving each other. About affirming and accepting each other ontologically. About me embracing your b eing. And you accepting mine. And when we look at those d iscordant a ctions that undercut us, love says stop. I suppose I’ve said enough about science as a case s tudy. So I won’t go into it I’ll just summarize and end my talk. If you do a way with nature, as the controlling idea—and a “controlling idea”—a guide for a ll your activities, a principle of contemplation, a standard against which you compare all your a ctions; if you d o away with nature, all you are left with is utilitarianism. Utility. Love of power. Self-­‐preservation. “Only,“ as Chesterton p ut it, “The tough trouble with p ragmatism is that it doesn’t work.” It doesn’t work. If you want to see your children become educated, I b eg you, I fall on my knees b efore you, and I say please remember Tolkien’s h obbits, “That will have to be paid for, it isn’t natural.” “Trouble will come of it.” Thank you.