Introduction to the Works of Robert Channon Pollock
By Tom Davis
The work of Robert C. Pollock spanned a career of fifty years. Born Jewish in Glasgow, Scotland, he emigrated early to Chicago and did his undergraduate work at Harvard, studying with Alfred North Whitehead and William McDougall and completing a M.A. in psychology and philosophy. It was there at Harvard that Pollock converted from Judaism to Catholicism and then moved to Toronto’s Medieval Institute where he completed his Ph.d. under the eminent Medieval scholar Etienne Gilson. After a brief time teaching at Notre Dame, Pollock began teaching at Fordham University where he remained in the graduate philosophy department for thirty years. Here he developed his unique interpretation of Medieval and American philosophy and inspired many generations of graduate students. According to Father David Toolan, Dr. Pollock’s work focused on the continuity between the Medieval experience and the American experience. Writes Toolan:
There was a line of descent, he argued, from Christian naturalism of Scotus Erigena and Bernard of Clairvaux’s individualism down to Jonathan Edwards and Emerson, up through C. S. Pierce, James and Dewey. This puts poetry at the heart of things and demands that scientists be mystics. Pollock’s thesis here is still largely unexplored and vastly significant. . . .
The legacy of Dr. Pollock’s unexplored thesis, after his death in 1978, has been primarily confined to a series of tape recorded lectures made by his graduate students at Fordham during the 19601s. Pollock chose to work in the oral tradition, and the originality of his work has to be deciphered necessarily from the lectures which have been preserved. It has been the purpose of this project to research a portion of these lectures so as to represent one of the main themes of Dr. Pollock’s work. It represents a preliminary study that will serve as a beginning for the remainder of Dr. Pollock’s philosophy.
I. INTRODUCTION
A major theme in Dr. Pollock’s work is the contention that the Medieval experience, stemming from a cosmological outlook that is primarily theophanic, prepared and inspired men emotionally and intellectually for the Scientific Renaissance which began to take place at the end of the Middle Ages and climaxed in the 15th through 17th centuries. According to Pollock, “The theophanic God expressed universe was dominant among those who fashioned modern science.” This contention leads to a series of provocative conclusions:
1. The Christian theophanic experience provided a major impetus to the Scientific Revolution.
2. The scientists (Copernicus, Gallileo, Kepler and Newton) who fashioned modern science were mystics (or had mystical tendencies) and the mystics (Cusa, Bruno) were scientists (or had “scientific intuitions,” i.e., the infinite universe).
3. There is an intimate relationship between science and mysticism. In fact, the history of science bears testimony to the extraordinary possibility that science is “a chapter in the history of mysticism.”
These conclusions give testimony to the originality and significance of Dr. Pollock’s work. Each can stimulate us to further analysis and possibly several other important considerations. First, if Christianity can be shown to be a major impetus behind the Scientific Revolution, then an important clarification can be established in the historical development between science and religion. It would seem that the belief in the “warfare between science and theology” is largely a distorted and simplistic view. It would be more correct if we establish a dialectical relationship between science and religion, one that postulates that throughout history each has served to stimulate the other. Second, the notion that science develops unconnected to the culture which surrounds it is equally false. Dr. Pollock’s thesis sheds important light on the history and nature of scientific discovery and creativity. It enables us to show that science is born out of a variety of “extra-scientific” factors and that these factors cannot be separated from the genesis of scientific creativity. Lastly, the importance of clarifying the nature and history of science is, as Dr. Pollock himself vehemently argued, perhaps the most crucial of all endeavors. Citing those sentiments once expressed by the historian of science Herbert Butterfield, Dr. Pollock argues that the history of science is going to acquire an importance unbeknown so far. According to Pollock, “It will be as important to us as the Greco-Hebraic experience was for European man during a period of over a thousand years.” If we are truly entering into a postmodern era, the impact of science and technology may be for 21st century man what Christianity was for Medieval man. These considerations, as well as others, argue significantly for the importance of an exploration and collaboration of Professor Pollock’s work.
II. THE FRAMEWORK
Only a Jamesian/Whiteheadean framework makes our experiences intelligible. This is based on
A) a becoming of experience
B) a becoming of consciousness
C) a community of experience.
D) Cosmology
These lead to a sensibility that creates a cosmology or world picture.
A. Becoming of Experience
1. Man is driven by forces (thought, will, emotion, bodily, etc.) embedded deep in his consciousness.
2. These forces push man outward into making contact with his world and setting up relationships.
3. According to Pollock, “We need to understand the ‘becoming of experience’ for we are interested in seeing how man in history has experienced himself, other, nature and God. This is our Framework.” (.ยท. Pollock is interested in man as a dynamic, processive being.)
B. Becoming-of Consciousness
1. Consciousness is an actualization of the “becoming of experience” in the sense that as we experience we bring the world more and more into our awareness. In a convergence of self and the world, man makes “present” to his consciousness all the realities, outer and inner, that he experiences.
2. Says Pollock, “We make present the mysterious depths of our nature as well as the dazzling qualities of the world around us, the wonders of all that we survey.”
3. From the dialectic between experience and consciousness come the source of our aesthetic and value judgments. Man is continually given “new eyes” from whence to see presences in himself and the world. He can respond in wonder and gratitude. According to Pollock, one way in which to view our Western development is to see it as “the continual process of making Plato’s ‘really real’ terrestrialized in time.” (This is the core of the theophanic experience Truth, Beauty, Goodness manifesting in time and on earth.) Such visions shed new light on man and his history.
4. What is Man? Wishing for a “totality of presences,” man is the agent of evolution, unprecedented and not bound by any antecedent state of affairs. He is a mode of infinity, made in the image of the Infinite God, whose possibility it is to epistemologically and ontologically make the world more Godlike. (This is Pollock’s Catholicism.)
5. What is history? History is man’s emergence into the cosmos to have more and more a place in the totality of things. His spirit is Abrahamic, and his destiny is to “penetrate deeper into the Godhead.11 Man’s history is a pattern of moving from one state of consciousness to another with climactic moments leading to the birth of a “new” man (Archaic, Greek, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern, Postmodern). (The purpose of philosophy is to record and reflect on man’s self surpassing efforts in his odyssey toward new worlds.)
C. Community of Experience
1. Experience and emerging consciousness are interpreted inside the community of man (sociologically, culturally, psychologically, philosophically, theologically, scientifically, etc.). It is the “atmosphere” and “sensibility” of an age and is created by the entire community of artists, philosophers, scientists, mystics, men of commerce, etc.
2. In this community of experience, certain types have come into ascendancy at different times in history, i.e., Middle Ages: the mystic; Renaissance: the artist; Modern: the scientist. At certain moments, there is an emergence of a certain sensibility, but this grows out of the entire community in a “tissue of experience.”
Summary: The becoming of experience and consciousness inside the community of man creates a “sensibility.” The sensibility is the physiological, emotional, intellectual and spiritual orientation of any age. It gives birth to cosmologies or world pictures of the universe through which man must live.
D. Cosmology
1. “The cosmological outlook is the basic thing in any age.” It is basic because it gives order, coherence to our experience and consciousness within the community of man. “Man must live in a cosmos.”
2. Man is a “cosmic animal” who chooses his universe from his own depths. In this sense, cosmology is anthropology since behind “the selection of a cosmos is centuries of desire on the part of man for a world which will fit the type of being that man is.”
3. This is especially true of Western man whose unquiet soul has been seeking an outward image of itself, a mirror in the cosmos from which to see who he is and why he is. This is the “cosmogonic destiny of Western man.”
4. The history of man takes on the shape of an evolution of cosmologies (Archaic, Greek, Medieval, Renaissance, Modern). (The 16-17th century scientific revolution is one such cosmological revolution.)
III. THESIS (CONCLUSIONS)
The above framework of experience, consciousness, community and evolving cosmologies provides the context from which to understand our thesis: the emergence of the Scientific Revolution from the Medieval theophanic universe. The Medieval experience prepared the consciousness for the Scientific Revolution by providing the necessary emotional, intellectual and mythological sensibility. According to Pollock, in the 16th and 17th centuries, “the theophanic sensibility is now receiving a scientific expression.” From this we will be able to draw our three conclusions:
1) The Christian theophanic experience provided a major impetus to the Scientific Revolution.
2) The scientists (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, etc.) who fashioned the revolution were mystics (or had mystical tendencies) and the mystics (Cusa, Bruno) were scientists (or had scientific intuitions).
3) There is an intimate relationship between science and mysticism. In fact, “The history of science can be shown to be a chapter in the history of mysticism.”
To establish this thesis and conclusions, we should proceed through 1) an analysis of the theophanic sensibility as it expressed itself in the Middle Ages and 2) a history of the subsequent emergence of the Scientific Renaissance as it developed from the end of the Middle Ages through the 16-17th centuries.
IV. THE THEOPHANIC SENSIBILITY
A. Definition:
The theophanic is the notion of a God expressed and God filled world. It is a mystical cosmos in which “God is present in all things and all things are present in God.” Nature is the stamp of the divine.
B. Pre-Medieval History
1. Primal: The theophanic world view is the flowering of an experience that goes all the way back to proto-history. Its primal roots are in the first men who experienced nature as a focal point for divine power and presence. Man’s initial response is in the experience of sacredness. (Pollock states the “remarkable parallel” between Greek mythological consciousness inspiring Greek philosophy and the Medieval theophanic sensibility inspiring modern science.)
2. Biblical: The theophanic view is given a “deeper expression” through the Hebraic experience. The Hebrew Bible declares the glory of God and His handiwork. “God made all things, He is present in all things, and He is expressed through all things.” There are “burning bushes everywhere,” and for the first time God is singularly addressed as a WHO not a WHAT. (The Hebraic word dabhar is the personal Thou.)
C. Medieval History
The theophanic of the ancient and Biblical experience is extended into the Medieval experience built upon St. Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scotus Erigena. “It is the Augustinian-Neo-Platonic cosmology that dominates the Medieval experience until the 13th century.”
1. St. Augustine
a. For Augustine, the world is a theophany: “the Thou of the Living God.” However, men are without “enlightened faces” and easily seduced by the darkness in the world. (Pollock argues against those, like Gilson, who say Augustine turned his back on the world. On the contrary, Augustine loved the world but warned of its dangers.)
b. Augustine’s love for the world inspires him to interrogate nature and set up a “dialogical” attitude which Christianity will preserve and deepen throughout the Middle Ages. Man should ask things what they are, be patient for their answers, and never impose his will upon them. Nature is holy and reveals the Thou of God. (This, for Pollock, is a new epistemology which is not present in the Greek experience.)
c. St. Augustine keeps alive the notion of a “Pythagorean harmony” and creates a scientific philosophy which emerges to dominate in both the 13th and the 17th centuries, both Augustinian centuries. (Again Pollock argues against those who say Augustine held back scientific development in his emphasis on the introspection of the soul.)
In summary, St. Augustine contributes the importance of a dialogical attitude and Pythagorean harmony. Both are an impetus to the scientific frame of mind.
2. Pseudo-Dionysius
a. His cosmology is the main cosmology of the Middle Ages. He deepens Augustine’s theophany. In St. Augustine, God “others” Himself for the sake of the finite. In the Pseudo-Dionysius, God others Himself for His own sake. The world is inside God’s subjective experience. (For Pollock, this view is so pervasive that Augustinianism must be fitted inside this scheme.)
b. For the Pseudo-Dionysius, God is the Divine Nothing, beyond Being and form, who creates the world in order to know Himself. Thus the world is “God’s inner life,” more than an epiphany.
c. God radiates into the world as divine energy. The world is an image of God, permeated and omnipresent with His energies.
d. “The Pseudo-Dionysius’ cosmology allows Christianity to take in a tremendous amount of the personal and ontological. He provides a home for Medieval man to live emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.”
3. John Scotus Erigena
a. He owes his cosmology to the Pseudo-Dionysius, but he brings God more into the world. For Erigena, God is love, holds all opposites together and harmonizes the world “all things are in God and God is in all things.”
b. Christ: Erigena brings a new Pseudo-Dionysianism based on the Christ experience. His work is Christological: The Cosmic Christ is the Logos, the fountainhead of creation. His incarnation symbolizes the God who in His love and goodness wants to express and communicate by moving into the lower levels of Being in order to clarify Himself.
c. Trinity: Because Erigena’s Trinity is relational, the notion of multiplicity as divine is carried through him. “Fertile multiplicity” views the many as the ‘really real’. Relationships within unity take on a new importance within the scheme of man’s experiences.
d. John Scotus Erigena evolves the cosmology of the Pseudo-Dionysius. He is a representative man and not, as is often believed, a lonely figure. For Pollock, Erigena is “the Pythagoras of the Medieval vision,” in which “there is no better expression of the Medieval mind and its world.”
Summary:
The evolution from St. Augustine through the Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scotus Erigena is one of a deepening theophanic experience. Together they set the context for the Medieval world. They provide the “intestinal” symbolism for Medieval man. (It can be mentioned here that this tradition of Augustinianism - Pseudo-Dionysianism (Erigena) follows down through the ages. Along this line of descent, Pollock puts Bonaventure, Eckhart, Cusa, Bruno, the Renaissance-17th century scientists, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. All carry the 11theophanic torch that lights the path to man’s understanding of the divine.")
D. The Medieval World
The Medieval world is a “fusion of energies.” Its cosmos is at once mythological (Gothic), Biblical (personal), and Greek (intellectual). The dialectic between these sets the sensibility for the Scientific Revolution. Let us then examine this Medieval world through its cosmology so as to understand how it functions in the life of Medieval man and leads to the birth of modern science.
1. Cosmological: The theophanic sensibility which grows out of Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius and Erigena to provide the context for the Medieval experience can be summarized:
a. God as “non-ends” (no-thing). He is irresistible Goodness who wants (desires) to “other” Himself in a “sheer frenzy of creativity and ecstasy.”
b. So He creates the universe out of goodness and plenitude. He is the divine artist who “thirsts” to share, as a quest for His “self identity” and “to enlighten Himself.” Nature is God creating Himself, involved in His self evolution.
c. His desire (love) is before His Ideas, so ecstatic energy is primary; essences, forms, categories are secondary.
d. God is a creator of novelty, his forms modes of infinity, for there is an infinite power driving all creation beyond itself. All being is Dionysian becoming.
e. Man is in this image, a “little Deos” who partakes of God’s divine energy to create. For Pollock, “The theophanic offers us a view of man partaking of the image of God’s creativity, bringing God’s presence down to earth through a domestication of infinity.”
The two main cosmological facts to support this experience is the Trinity and the Incarnation.
a. Trinity: After John Scotus Erigena’s work, the Trinitarian cosmos is relational, and multiplicity takes on a new reality. It assumes the status of the ‘really real’ as divine and fruitful. The world in all its diversity is an image of the Living God. “The Medieval stresses the primitive unity of the world, but through the images of the Trinity ventures forth into multiplicity as the radical manifestation of divinity.” (This will become a predominant characteristic of the Renaissance philosophy of Nature.)
b. Incarnation: The “Word made flesh” is the cosmological experience of the Middle Ages. It is a tremendous advance over Platonic metaphysics, a second hand world of shadows. It crystallizes itself in the Christ experience. For Pollock, “Christ is the cosmic force of Christian cosmology.” As the Creator Logos, he is the Word which connects all things. As the personal Jesus, he is the flesh and blood of God who walks the earth giving sanctity to life and man. Through Christ there is a 1) unity of opposites, 2) infinite-finite 3) finite as divine.
1) Unity of Opposites: Christ is the bringing together of the omnipotent and the weak, the Almighty and the small, the infinite and the finite. “He is thundering Yahwah in the child in a manger.” This is paradoxical, yet reveals the mystery of God.
2) Infinite-finite: The Incarnation is the mystery that though God is Infinite yet he has to manifest Himself in the finite. For Pollock, “This is about the most tremendous thing that man has ever discovered,” for it will lead to the notion of the finite as containing God’s infinite energy, thus pointing beyond itself. The Infinite compresses into finite form so that the finite will bear infinite meaning. (In the Renaissance, this will come to mean that the measured and limited contains the divine. This will have a tremendous impact leading down the road to science.)
3) Finite as divine: The core of the theophanic which arises out of the Incarnation can then be summarized: Nature is a way in which man experiences God, for Nature is “saturated and soaked with divinity.” The world really is an image of God, and each finite form is a eucharistic experience.
c. Descriptions of the Cosmological-Theophanic World The Medieval world is a world given from God’s plenitude and symbolizes His Infinite creativity. The Trinity and the Incarnation reveal this world permeated with God, signifying His “fertile multiplicity.” From this, we may add the following descriptions:
1) Practicality: The Medieval world is where God acts in all the interacting forces and energies of Nature. It is a divine process. It is not simply a theoretical or contemplative reality but an energy system capable of unlimited manifestations and boundless transformations. Man’s purpose is to come into the process of nature, for “there is no other way to have a vision of God.” Man knows and understands God in the divine process of His creation.
2) Harmony: As the world is a practical reality revealing God’s energies, it is also mathematically structured through a type of Pythagorean harmony. The world is order and symmetry, and God is a geometer whose creation can be rendered through “measure, weight, and number.” The Medievalist experiences the ancient Pythagorean “ecstatic contemplation” at a higher level.
The practical (energies) and theoretical (mathematical) display the “machina mundi” but in a mystical sense. The Medieval machina is under the auspices of the theophanic. It is a theological machine. For Pollock, this will hold true from Nicholas of Cusa all the way through Isaac Newton. “The motivation behind the mechanists is the belief that the world is God’s substance.” (Only later during the Enlightenment will the machina mundi lose its theophanic orientation.)
3) Image and Symbol: The Medieval world is imagistic and symbolic. Since the “finite is a concentration of the Infinite,” everything is an image of the divine and pointing beyond itself. For Pollock, it is the Medieval mystics who are most concerned with the symbolic. Everything is a signature of God. He commends Josiah Royce’s statement that the “mystics were the first empiricists” and deepens it by arguing that their imagining and symbolism is a “material symbolisa,” expressing “the earthy, emotional, physiological ties to the world where God is bound.” The Machina mundi “points” to the divine.
4) Ultimacy: As the world is the ‘really real’, revealing God’s energies and design, and everywhere pointing to the divine, so we are led to the sense of ultimacy. God is in the details, and all physical facts are now important, for they shine with the sacred. This is no where better exemplified than in the “metaphysics of light” that permeated the Medieval world.
a) Light Metaphysics - In the Medieval world, the tiniest and most humble thing is warmed by the divine light. Everything is in someway the contracted light of God, converging with one another to recreate the one light from which all is expressed. All objects are meaningful and nothing is left out. Man understands that he can only move towards God through the lights of Mature, by weaving them together to reflect the Divine light. (For Pollock, this is the meaning of Roger Bacon’s work, where “every truth gleamed from the study of created things adds to the knowledge of God.” It is also the experiential motivation leading to much of the Scientific Renaissance.)
2. Medieval Man
The Medieval cosmology fashioned by Augustine, Pseudo Dionysius, and Erigena is then expressed in a world with a variety of descriptions: unity of opposites, “fertile multiplicity,” Infinite within the finite, finite as divine, image and symbol, practicality and harmony, sense of ultimacy, a metaphysics of light, etc. It is all held together by the theophanic experience that acts as “the stream of fire throughout the Middle Ages.” Medieval man responds to this world through a “sensibility” (beliefs, attitudes, values) that later makes possible the birth of the Scientific Revolution. This can be summarized in his a) love of experience, b) passion for observation, and c) desire for dialogue.
a. Love of Experience: For Pollock, “The genius of the Medieval man is experience. (The love of experience in the Middle Ages is no where duplicated in history except in America.) Experience here attains authority. It gels in the mystics who experience the theophanic, and it metamorphosizes into an empiricism which will take root as early as the 11th century but which will become predominant in 13th century experimentalism. For Pollock, “The Medieval world is the incubation of the experimental spirit,” and it is the Oxford Franciscans who best exemplify the spirit.
b. Passion for Observation: For Medieval man, observation in a world which reveals God is not for mere curiosity. Rather, it is a religious obligation and duty. The world is holy, and “every object is eucharistic.” Medieval man thus develops a passion for seeing. According to Pollock, “so far from blinding men to the world around them, so far from making them lose contact, the theophanic outlook gives them a burning desire and appetite to turn towards the world.”
c. Desire for Dialogue: The “love of experience” and “passion for observation” which characterizes Medieval man is best expressed in St. Augustine’s dialogical attitude. Men experience the world as a divine magnet, drawn to inquire into her nature by asking questions and listening patiently for the answers. In this we are given to learn from all of God’s creation. This is best understood through the two holy books, the Bible and Nature, which dominate Medieval man.
1) The Two Books: Both the Book of Revelation (Bible) and the book of Nature are Holy Scriptures. They represent the spiritual and the cosmogonic together in a dialectic which believes that the more we probe the one side, the more we probe the other side. The Bible invokes experience as “the mysterious communication of Christ himself”; the Book of Nature invokes contact with the “living concrete,” the luminosity of God in the world. Together they join the inner and the outer and, according to Pollock, “explain fully why you have the type of person appearing in the West who is at once both mystical and scientific.”
3. Examples of the Cosmological-Theophanic
Many examples of the cosmological-theophanic world view illustrate Medieval man’s response to his world. Dr. Pollock cites three (Medieval art, alchemy, technology) which are pushing man’s experience and consciousness toward the Scientific Revolution.
a. Medieval art: Gothic art, as well as the Medieval ballads, has an earthy side which reveals the theophanic and foreshadows the Renaissance artistic sensibility. It emphasizes the “super sensible,” a mode of perception carried from St. Anselm through St. Bernard. God is thus “seen” in the world and in man’s images of the world.
b. Alchemy: The philosophical basis of alchemy is in the mystical transformation of the world so as to let God operate inside of matter. It is a descent of the Holy Spirit right down into the darkness of inanimate matter, so as to transubstantiate both the world and man. For Pollock, “The world groans for liberation to become a vessel for infinity, and man has to cooperate to regenerate matter to bring God within.” This experience foreshadows the scientific sensibility as it manifests itself in technology.
c. Technology: The Medieval world gives birth to the technological, for the Medieval man is interested in innovation and invention. His Machina mundi is a practical universe, and he is marked by a desire to make and build things with a passion for machines (DaVinci is in this tradition). This explains the alliance between experimentation and technology. In the image of the creator God, man experiments and builds so as to make God ever more present in His world. Thus we are given Chartres Cathedral, “a restatement of the Incarnation.”
Summary: The theophanic sensibility then creates the Medieval experience which “explodes in the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.” For Pollock, “The theophanic universe is the universe that allows us to see more than any other possible concept or picture the absolute unity of the Medieval and the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. It is the cosmology that slowly prepares for the scientific embodiment that began to take place at the end of the Middle Ages and finds its climax in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.”
(For Professor Pollock, most historians do not see the true importance of the Medieval theophanic experience. Thus, they miss the “secret” to the Middle Ages. They interpret Medieval world as a continuation of the classical endeavor and therefore miss the genius and originality of the Medieval mind. The result is a backward view which doesn’t give us a “useable past.” According to Pollock, “We don’t have a good history of the Medieval world, and this is sad because without it we cannot understand the Renaissance or our own modern world.")
V. THE HISTORICAL: TOWARD THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
The historical drama leading from the 12th century Medieval Renaissance through the “clash of cosmos” in the 13th century and finally the explosion of the theophanic sensibility in the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution is an apt illustration of Dr. Pollock’s contention that the history of man is his “becoming of experience and consciousness” inside a community of development. In the wider context of Professor Pollock’s philosophy, it represents one chapter in “man’s emergence into the cosmos.” (The latest chapter in this historical process is the quantum-relativistic cosmology and, in Dr. Pollock’s view, the beginning of a new theophanic sensibility which will deepen in the 21st century as science and mysticism, after a brief split in the 18th and 19th centuries, continue to draw together.)
A. 12th Century Medieval Renaissance:
Two movements solidly underlie the theophanic cosmology that has evolved through Augustinianism and Neo-Platonism (Pseudo-Dionysius and Erigena). These are the School of Chartres and the earthy mysticism of St. Bernard.
1. The School of Chartres: It is in the Augustinian - Pseudo-Dionysian tradition and reaffirms the theophanic experience. For Tierry and William of Conches, as well as others, nature takes on a power of its own, a divine creation unified in God and with man at the heart of the creative process. All of this is embodied in Chartres cathedral, a “restatement of the Incarnation.” It is also amenable to the Pythagorean harmony expressed in St. Augustine’s Divine Wisdom as impressed in the mathematical structure of things. The Chartreans are seeking a mathematical and scientific expression through re-establishing the old cosmology of the Pseudo-Dionysius. (They are the first to meet the crisis which is beginning to be provoked through the introduction of the Aristotelian cosmology.)
2. St. Bernard: He is the major figure of the 12th century. (Pollock chooses him in importance over Abelard.) Bernard speaks for the “heart” and the importance of the “humanity of Christ.” His theology is a “bending down to the earth,” for through the Christ experience we are led to worshipping the flesh and the earth. It is one world with no split between the natural and the supernatural. (This is post-Tridentine.) St. Bernard’s love of the flesh and earth will lead all the way to the Renaissance love of nature and matter.
B. 13th Century: “A Clash of Cosmos”
Contrary to what is often argued by scholars, Pollock contends that the 13th century is not a period of Thomistic synthesis. Rather it is a time of confusion which leads to the 14th century’s explosions and breakdowns. It is marked by the acceptance of the new Aristotelian cosmos and also the renewal of the theophanic through the Franciscans.
1. The Aristotelian Cosmos
a. Introduced by the Arabs in the late 12th century, the Aristotelian (Ptolemaic) cosmos answers the call for a more defined cosmology and physics. (Pollock argues that the old theophanic is still primarily a mythological-mystical view. There is a need at this time for a more distinct view to satisfy the spirit of Abelard (rational abstractions) that is emerging.)
b. The impact of this new cosmos is to give Medieval man a cosmos that is finite, closed and circular. God is placed in the outer crystalline spheres, as “unmoved mover” and finally “absentee landlord.” St. Thomas uses Aristotle to rectify Arabanism and to decipher the “laws of Being.” However, for Pollock, St. Thomas’ philosophy is yet a “minority report” in the 13th century.
c. Although at first swamped and flooded by the Aristotelian cosmos, Medieval man is uncomfortable with its finite and closed structure. Aristotelianism is alien and suffocating to the Medieval sensibility, and so after a brief interlude of ascendency and acceptance in the 13-14th centuries, it is progressively moved into the background. The Medievals select what they can use to structure their experience, like Aristotle’s physics and empiricism, but they reject his major themes.
d. For Pollock, Aristotle’s value in the mainstream of the Augustinian/Pseudo-Dionysian cosmology, which will triumph in the Renaissance, is to measure the reactions against him. Aristotle oddly stimulates concreteness. Also, his stuffiness causes a “clash of cosmos,” a moral urgency on the part of mystics like Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno to “break the circle” and push toward an infinite cosmos in which “man can once again breathe infinity.”
2. Renewal of the Theophanic
a. The 13th century is also a renewal of the theophanic in a new sensibility (a continuation of St. Bernard’s earthy mysticism) which is forming the main thread leading to the Renaissance and onward to the Scientific Revolution. This sensibility embodied in St. Francis’ “fresh contact with the earth” provides a necessary antidote to the rationalism of the 13th century.
b. The Franciscan spirit, as represented in the work of St. Bonaventure, Groseteste, and Roger Bacon, is the sense of a direct approach to nature based on close observation, not books. It reaffirms that the Gospels stood for the “love of experience” and preaches a world of God’s plenitude, in whom we live, move and have our being. Thus we are led to a “physiological” experience of God in the world and ourselves. This sensibility becomes a part of man’s experience of God, giving everything an ultimate value as a signature of the divine.
c. For Pollock, “It is generally acknowledged by scholars that the development of empirical science in the Renaissance was first cultivated by the Franciscans.” The experimental attitude and method first flourishes at Oxford, a center of Augustinian philosophy, among the Franciscans who give impetus for studying the world as a religious obligation. Roger Bacon thinks of his experiments in optics as investigating God’s nature. It is here at Oxford that the remarkable scientific developments in France later draw their inspiration.
d. For Pollock, St. Bonaventure is the chief architect of the Franciscan spirit. He sums up the Middle Ages with originality, in its final form, and reasserts the older tradition (St. Augustine’s interiorism and Erigena’s theophany) against Aristotle. It is Bonaventure’s philosophy which allows men to conceptualize Francis’ kissing the earth, the sensibility that renews the theophanic experience for the Renaissance.
C. 14th Century
1. The 14th century is marked by a breakdown in the sociological framework, the push toward autonomy, and the “secularization of Christianity” in politics and science. On the one hand, it is a secularization in which the Catholic church is beginning to “disaxe” itself as it “walls itself in to prevent the earthquakes it had helped to start.” (For Pollock, the institutional church is beginning to turn its back on its own tradition. Over the next few centuries, it will choose to become more and more “legalistic and ahistorical, opting for power over the kings.")
2. On the other hand, the secularization of the Christian cosmos is a combining of Augustinianism/Pseudo-Dionysianism. “The ground swell of secularization of the Christian cosmos is Augustine/Pseudo-Dionysius/Erigena.”
3. The theophanic notion is kept alive in the doctrine of plenitude and the plurality of worlds and nominalism. (Dr. Pollock argues that “Platonism comes alive with nominalism. Strangely enough, nominalism, which aims at destroying the idols of the mind, attacks the Aristotelian abstract universals to get to the concrete in front of us. This, of course, is on the road to experimentalism. It is also, for Pollock, on the road to another type of universal, namely, the Hegelian concrete universal which will come in the 19th century, stimulating a new phase to the modern theophanic experience.)
D. The Renaissance (Reformation) 15-16th Centuries
The Renaissance is “an explosion of the Middle Ages.” It represents both a further contraction of the Catholic church and the beginning of the triumph of the theophanic experience which will peak in the 17th century with the Scientific Revolution.
1. The Catholic Church
a. The continuing “secularization of Christianity” means a growing tension between the church and the theophanic. The theophanic experience is perceived as dangerous since it is much wider than the church and can not be controlled. As the church more and more contracts and opts for hierarchy and authority, the theophanic is squeezed out of its tradition. By the Council of Trent, “The church ceases to be a living organism of its own tradition (Augustinian/Pseudo- Dionysian).” Mysticism, the creative force and oxygen of the Middle Ages, is drained from the church; the Protestant Reformation is on the horizon.
b. The closing of the theophanic experience inside the church is paralleled by the replacement with the redemptive myth. After the Reformation, Christians drop the idea that Christ came because God has to have a universe where He can glory in his work (the theophanic). Instead, they emphasize Christ’s coming to redeem man’s sins. The redemptive myth largely replaces the theophanic sensibility.
2. The Renaissance Theophanic Experience
Meanwhile, the creative forces that the church had so long nurtured are bursting out in new forms. The theophanic pours forth its energies as the mythological cosmos at the Middle Ages is beginning to be made scientific in the Renaissance. This can be illustrated in both the Renaissance philosophy of nature and the birth of the Infinite cosmos.
a. Renaissance Philosophy of Nature
1) In the Renaissance, nature is no mere creation but participates in the divine essence in its creative process. It bears the stamp of the divine power through its capacity to take on form from within and embodies many of the characteristics of the Medieval theophanic world.
2) For example, the infinite embodied in the finite is now concentrated so that form, measure and order are part of God’s expression. This world has infinite possibilities, for form contains the formless, matter includes the limitless. All those energies once directed toward God are now returned to the earth in a sensibility which is astonished by the world. The “machina mundi” thus shines as all the details of nature take on a deeper sense of ultimacy. Erigena’s “fertile multiplicity,” the Medieval image of diversities as the likeness of the living God, becomes the image of the scientists in the Renaissance. The finite bears infinite meaning as man’s own creative powers imitate the divine artist.
3) According to Pollock, “The Renaissance philosophy of nature translates the psychic energies of the Medieval cosmos into the scientific images of the 17th century, a change from faith and theology to mathematics and astronomy. Men take the subtle order of the Medieval world and give it intellectual clarification.”
b. Infinite Cosmos
1) The fruition of the Renaissance philosophy of nature manifests itself in the assertion of the infinite cosmos. This cosmos is envisioned by mystical philosophers (Cusa, Bruno, Campanella) who belong to the Augustinian/Pseudo- Dionysian ancestry. It is their mystically oriented minds that first intuit the vision that is later verified and accepted by the scientists. (According to Pollock, “When the mystical vision of the infinite universe converged with the scientific vision of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, there was a tremendous explosion. The new cosmology became a question of man needing a scientific immensity without ends in which to be at home.")
2) The impact of the infinite cosmos is twofold. First, it exemplifies the Renaissance philosophy of nature as infinite-finite. “The infinite manifested in the measured is preparing for those minds (Galileo, Kepler) who will be exalted by this: God is in the measurable.” Second, the theme of the infinite universe allows man to state the theme of his own infinity more sharply than ever. Infinity without is matched by infinity within. (This is a liberating moment. Pollock interprets the disruption of the Renaissance cosmos as only a minor displacement. It is true that Pascal and Kepler are horrified by the infinite spaces. However, as man is expelled from the center into space, as also takes place in the Copernican Revolution, he is also liberated to “breathe infinity.” Man’s discovery of his own infinity, known centuries ago by the mystics, allows him to achieve a new dignity measured as “the center and circumference of his world.")
3) The two chief architects of the infinite cosmos, Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, are clearly in the theophanic tradition.
1. Nicholas of Cusa: He is heavily influenced by Erigena and St. Bonaventure and wants a universe which is a strong image of God. This world is God concretized as a “restricted maximum.” It is bursting its bounds to infinity to approximate the hidden God. Thus when Cusa envisions an infinite cosmos he helps to smash the Aristotelian cosmos by both bringing God back into the universe and liberating the earth astronomically. The earth is a star, elevated to the dignity of the celestial, and man is exalted as a “little Deos.” For Pollock, “Cusa rethinks the Augustinian/Pseudo-Dionysian tradition more deeply so that man’s dignity is in relation to the divine light which occurs only through man’s creative actions.”
2. Giordano Bruno: He preaches the “gospel of the infinite universe” in a way that staggers the imagination (the plurality of worlds). A follower of Cusa and a “descendent of John Scotus Erigena,” Bruno holds God and nature as one manifestation and annunciates more clearly than anyone else that “man has infinity written inside of him.”
Summary: The Renaissance view of nature and the mystical vision of Cusa and Bruno’s infinite Cosmos clearly exemplify the beginning of a new ascondency of the theophanic experience. It is “a movement from one kind of mysticism to another.” According to Pollock, “The mystical philosophers are the ones showing the theophanic outlook to be both radically mystical and scientific. It is a striking fact that what becomes commonplace in the 17th century is not simply the theophanic universe but more specifically an infinite universe, which is an outgrowth of the theophanic notion that God manifests Himself infinitely.”
E. The Scientific Revolution 17th Century
The theophanic experience explodes and climaxes in the 17th century. Never is there an age with a more passionate concern, on the one hand, for religious matters and yet, on the other hand, a passionate concern for scientific discovery. For Pollock, “We find no schism between religion and science in the 16-17th centuries, for the theophanic universe is prominent among those who fashioned modern science. It is the scientists mainly, like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, who are closest to the spirit of the theophanic universe.”
1. The Triumph of the Neoplatonic Cosmos:
The scientists are theophanic with a passion for nature. Inside the framework of the Neo-Platonic (Pseudo-Dionysius/Erigena) tradition that formed the Medieval cosmos, these scientists continue the work of the Renaissance mystics in smashing the Aristotelian cosmos and substituting it with the new scientific cosmos. By the end of the 17th century, the Aristotelian/Ptolemaic/Biblical universe is being replaced by the Copernican/Newtonian/Neo-Biblica1 universe. Thus an important phase in man’s becoming of experience and consciousness is now completing itself. According to Pollock, “The passion of a thousand years (the theophanic) is liberated in the direction of matter and the physical world. Man could not be satisfied until he created an infinite image of himself so that he could reach a new resting place and consolidate his strengths for a new leap into the future. Now through the scientific, and before it the Renaissance infinite cosmos, man is given with Nicholas of Cusa to marvel at the structure of the world.” Plato’s #really real’ has been concretized in the living God found in nature. (Pollock believes that the 17th century peak of the theophanic sensibility is followed by a decline in its influence in the 18th and 19th centuries and finally a reemergence of its importance once again in our time.)
2. The 17th Century Theophanic sensibility
The manner in which the theophanic expresses itself in the scientific revolution can be shown through examining the motivations of the leading scientists: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton. This can be accomplished by a) expanding our views on scientific discovery and creativity and b) citing some representative examples from the scientists themselves.
a. Scientific Discovery/Creativity:
For Pollock, it is necessary to widen our perspective on scientific discovery and creativity to show the extent to which human subjectivity plays an important role in fashioning science. “The history of science has been sterile, taking no account that human beings make up science. When we include this, the examples of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton point to the fact that the human subject is the subject that has made science.” This human subject must include the total collage of experiences and consciousness (psychologically, spiritually, psychically) that form the scientific personality inside the community of man. All the forces embedded deep in the psyches of these scientists should be probed and examined for a complete sensibility. When this is accomplished we find that the “psychological incubation” behind the scientists is precisely the theophanic experience.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Trinity and Incarnation, so precious to the Medieval world, are now being expressed through the scientific I’machina mundill as God’s immanence is worked out through mathematical and astronomical methodologies. For Pollock, “The motivation behind the mechanists is that the world is God’s substance. 17th century man realizes the Medieval cosmos on a higher level through his scientific efforts. In other words, the whole mystical development of the theophanic is now through science.”
This is illustrated in the work of the great scientists: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. Each form part of the 17th century “scientific theophany.”
b. The Scientists and the Theophanic
1) Copernicus
a) The Copernican Revolution reasserts the “metaphysics of light” that was so pervasive during the Middle Ages. As light is God’s presence, so the sun is an image of God. In desiring to establish this ancient truth, Nicholas Copernicus feels it proper that God for His glory should be returned to the center of the solar system where He belongs. The Aristotelian cosmos had placed God in the outer crystalline spheres. But now through a “metaphysics of the sun” in which it is believed the sun is a living image of the Divine Good, God can be gloriously reestablished at the center. “The sun enthroned is the lamp, mind and ruler, the foundation of light and the source of vision,” and there is a tremendous spiritual and aesthetic triumph when He is finally returned to His proper domain. For Pollock, “The sun which has exploded in Copernicus’ consciousness like a Franciscan passion is now worthy of being an image of God at the center of all things.”
b) This causes a great release of energies. Copernicus’ accomplishment is truly humanistic for it represents a new glory for man. Rather than simply displacing man from the center, the Copernican Revolution, like Cusa’s infinite cosmos, helps to destroy the dichotomies of the terrestrial and celestial, earth and stars. Man is liberated and exalted from within, for not only does he feel internally that there are no divisions between the lower and upper realms, material and spiritual, but he is also beginning to feel himself returned to the center with a whole new sense given to Protagora’s ancient utterance that “man is the measure.”
In sum, the spirit of Copernicus is theophanically based and represents a tremendous liberating moment in man’s internal imagining of the cosmos.
2) Galileo
a) The work completed by Galileo after Copernicus is an attempt “to tie into one package the theophanic universe with science and scripture.” For Pollock, the central issue at the trial of Galileo is whether or not the Book of Revelation (the Bible) and the Book of Nature are one manifestation, each manifesting the other. For Galileo, nature is a living communication of a living God. He appeals to the Pseudo-Dionysius and is within the older Neo-Platonic ancestry of Erigena and Bonaventure when he says “from a Divine Word sacred scripture and nature did proceed alike.”
b) Galileo’s efforts are thus a serious attempt to reconcile the Medieval theophanic experience with the new scientific spirit against those church theologians who are turning away from their own tradition.
3) Kepler
a) Out of all the new scientists, Johannes Kepler is probably the most mystically inclined. He is an ecstatic who goes easily from scientific concerns to prayer and rapture. His work is a curious blend of astronomy, mathematics and physics together with astrology and mysticism. The framework from which he primarily works is a Trinitarian cosmos where God is found permeating the spheres, moving the planets through the mysterious power of His Holy Spirit. Astronomers, he believes, are the new priests of the deity, deciphering the Book of Nature according to the Divine Harmony of the spheres.
b) For Kepler, where God is also in the sun so is he in our souls as the same source of our intelligence. This too is a notion that returns us back to the old Neo-Platonic tradition of Erigena and Bonaventure. Thus Kepler is easily placed, like Copernicus and Galileo, as an ancient spirit preparing the new scientific cosmos out of the old Medieval theophany.
4) Newton
a) Finally, Isaac Newton rewrites Christian theology through the new cosmological revolution. As the culmination and synthesis of the scientific spirit, Newton is a curious mixture of scientist and mystic whose spirit is closer to Nicholas of Cusa than the 18th century Deists who will later claim him. It is generally established that Newton did see himself as a theologian who after having established his mechanical philosophy set out to read the riddle of the Godhead in the riddle of heaven and earth. The universe, he thought, is God’s sensorium and all things act at a distance because they are all in God and moved by God’s power. For Pollock, “Newton would not accept gravitation without God.”
b) Newtons’ primary work is dedicated to establishing ancient truths in an experimental framework. This could be accomplished through working in the alchemical tradition, still prominent in the 17th century, and deciphering the mysterious symbolism of the Bible. In this light, Newton is not a supreme rationalist but “the last of the mythological cosmologists whose primary motivation is to understand the Incarnation in the new scientific “machina mundi.”
VI. CONCLUSION
The work of Robert C. Pollock is emphatic in the belief that the 17th century scientific revolution can be shown to be an outgrowth of the theophanic cosmos that formulated men’s experience and consciousness for over a thousand years. As Pollock comments, “And you have the most fascinating fact of all to me, that it is the scientists mainly, like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, who are closest to the spirit of the theophanic universe.”
From this the three conclusions that we stated previously may be said to follow:
1. The Christian theophanic experience provided a major impetus to the Scientific Revolution.
2. It can be shown that the scientists (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton) were mystics (or had mystical tendencies) and the mystics (Cusa, Bruno) were scientists (or had “scientific intuitions").
3. There is an intimate relationship between science and mysticism. In fact, the history of science bears testimony to the extraordinary possibility science is “a chapter in the history of mysticism.”
Each of these conclusions may be further developed to confirm or deny their truth. Each give testimony to the contention that the work of Robert C. Pollock is not only thought- provoking but worthy of further investigation.