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Kaalhauge Blog » Archive for January, 2008

Let me start this instalment of my essay on the industrial revolution by reminding the reader that I have suggested that the key preconditions for Europe’s historical road to the industrial revolution could be found in three distinct elements: Greek philosophy, the Germanic tribes in their function as the initiator of the spirit of the Middle ages and the concept of the metaphysical quest. In this instalment, I would like to continue the discussion of the rise of the Middle Ages and how its historical initiation changed the course of world-history for ever. The great accomplishment of the Middle Ages was the combined synthesis of Greek philosophy with the type of dynamic society that was created by the Germanic tribes as they settled after the tumultuous period surrounding the fall of Rome. What was particularly important in this new kind of medieval society was its vibrant intellectual environment, which included what I have chosen to call a metaphysical quest and by which I imply, the way in which Europe interpreted the meaning of life and regarded itself as a project in the world. This synthesis of factors, however, would first emerged bit by bit over time; in the beginning of the process, the Germanic tribes and other people of the times had certainly little time for discussing metaphysical problems, since they were struggling to survive in the plainest sense confronted with hunger, infrastructural collapse and plundering bandits of all kinds in the tumultuous period that characterized Europe in the first many centuries after year 300 AD.

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During the Greek age, the metaphysical quest was one of a general philosophical interest in reason and knowledge as basic categories. Based on actual observations, the Greek thinkers asked basic questions about the nature of the universe without predisposing any idea of some supernatural creation. What concerned them was the order of nature itself without any supernatural assumptions. The Greek approach was epistemological of orientation; the focus was rational and abstract, while at the same time based on empirical observations. They wanted to understand the very nature of knowing. The spirit of this agenda is reflected in Thales famous maxim, “Know thyself.” The key to the Greek scientific method was to look for “general principles” induced from nature itself yet on the same time understanding such principles as a part of logos, that is, the architecture of reason itself. As Frederick Klemm has argued, “the great cultural achievement of ancient Greece was undoubtedly the development of a scientific sense. The Greek was in fact the first Man of theory.” The condition for intellectual discussion in classic Greece was basically secularist, while higher knowledge in Babylonia and Egypt was in the hands of priests and entangled in religious dogma, rational thinking in Greece became a lay movement and was devoted to reason alone.

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While the study of Greek philosophy was central to the Middle Ages, the Church made its own contribution to the process. What the Church added to the metaphysical quest was mostly of psychological kind; the quest for salvation or the quest of understanding God’s plan established a special intensity in the way intellectual issues were pursued during the Middle Ages. While the Greek philosophers focused on the logical structure of a philosophical argument, the zealous agent of the Christian church was inclined to grasp intellectual problems as a matter of a personal stake in salvation. So that the metaphysical quest turned into a personal struggle of finding some mental technique in which he was able to understand Gods’ plan or perhaps even “talk to” God in some ways. Of course, the Church’s intellectual energies were factors of society’s own cognitive power and its quest for knowledge. It utilized the new source of cognitive energy that had been created after the fall of Rome. Yet the Church established a mental environment, where these tendencies were reinforced. In the Church, intellectual life became more than a neutral scholarly exercise; it became a matter of personalized understanding and salvation. The mind-boggling enquiring into the meaning of cosmos and God promoted a seeking and explorative spirit. All this gave a “push” in the way Europeans addressed metaphysical problems and indeed found their orientation in life.

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I will like to continue my discussion from the last segment of this essay, where I have argue that the Middle Ages was the place, where the knowledge of the ancient Greeks was re-vitalized after the intellectual inadequacy of the Roman Empire and that scholasticism was a much more intellectually vibrant and rationally inclined than many people have been willing to grant it. Scholasticism was by no main an obstacle on the road to science, it was to an important extent a foundation for its further development. In the following I will take a closer look at the concept of the metaphysical quest. Let me clarify a few central things. First, about the term metaphysics; the way I use this term goes along with Schopenhauer who says that man is a “metaphysical animal.” My assumption is that all searches for knowledge are inherently involved with metaphysics in some ways, because metaphysics are in principle linked to our use of “Universals” and because our inquiry for knowledge implies metaphysical assumptions and questions in many other ways. The key point I will like to stress is that metaphysics in and by itself has nothing to do with religion per se. Of course, it might take a religious form but that is a different proposition.

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