Nature, Scientific Discipline In Addition To The Give-Up The Ghost Of Pan

A summary of:
Szerszynski, B. (2005). Nature, Technology in addition to the Sacred: Religion in addition to Spirituality inwards the Modern World. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.
Chapter 3: Nature, Science in addition to the Death of Pan

One of Szeryszynski’s missions is to fence against a functionalist agreement of history; that, for example, “the course of report of history from the nascency of Christianity to modern technology in addition to widespread environmental problems proceeds amongst an inexorable logic” (31). On the contrary, our basis is a confluence of forces which when combined create results that no i could predict inwards advance. “I argued,” he writes, “that scientific ideas of nature are a production of the contingent, branching trajectory of the Western sacred, rather than a timeless laid of truths which were only waiting inwards the wings of history for cultural weather conducive to their discovery” (51). And this is crucial for debunking the myth of disenchantment, because it’s non every bit if nosotros direct maintain ‘arrived’ at roughly neat climax; nosotros are continuing to evolve… so let’s non live so arrogant to retrieve that we’ve move got it ‘right.’

Let’s also non celebrate peculiarly if nosotros direct maintain succeeded inwards murdering Pan, the God of nature! Not that nosotros necessarily have, every bit the writer argues that if Pan is dead at all, he died a real irksome death; he was non killed inwards roughly epiphanic bolt of lightning. In a weird way, inwards fact, “the ‘disenchantment of nature’ is also the emergence of nature inwards the modern sense (see Scott, 2003: 8-16)…. Nature every bit understood past times scientific discipline thence has its ain hidden theology. And the ‘disenchantment’ of nature is thence itself a aeroplane of enchantment” (47). So the result, inwards the end, of the schism betwixt modern scientific discipline in addition to religion, “constituted an intensification of theological reflection inwards relation to the natural world” (48). But is this ‘nature’ Pan? Not really: “Modernity is thence constituted past times a ‘religion of nature’ that changes both faith in addition to nature” (49).

We may live able to run into the decease of Pan inwards the movement to a monotheistic sacred, but Szerszynski argues that this is only “a shift inside a larger frame, inside what mightiness live called the social or personal agreement of nature” (32). To empathise this, nosotros direct maintain to grasp that “pre-modern nature is best conceived non every bit divine but every bit social (Kelsen, 1946; Descola, 1994; Descola in addition to Pálsson, 1996)” (33).

The author’s fundamental declaration is that “the transformation of ideas of nature from pre-modern to modern societies is best understood non every bit dedivinization, disenchantment or secularization but desocializing or depersonalization” (42). The key is inwards recognizing that pre-modern societies did non run into nature every bit a “separate category of technological relations distinct aeroplane the social in addition to the cultural; they were understood using categories in addition to concepts that today nosotros would largely reserve for social relationships, such every bit reciprocity, intention, activity in addition to meaning” (42). What does this imply for my PhD, then? Can nosotros always reunite these worlds inwards our heads? Can nosotros set Humpty Dumpty together i time to a greater extent than afterwards he has broken to bits? Is this, effectively, the scale of what I’m proposing to do?

I retrieve roughly other of import takeaway from this chapter has to arrive at amongst the evolution of ‘meaning’ inwards our world. Consider that, “Rather than only existence experienced every bit a wild realm of blind forces indifferent to humans in addition to their concerns, pre-modern cultures sense the basis every bit an already meaningful abode house (Ingold, 2000, share 2)” (34). And, every bit Wertheim also pointed out, at that topographic point was a shift somewhere along the draw of piece of job where people institute pregnant inwards projecting God’s intent or purpose onto nature: “the linguistic communication of God every bit “lawgiver” gave agency to the see that the basis was ordered, that at that topographic point were “laws” to live discovered, which motivated scientists “from Descartes to Newton” to pursue the uncovering of those laws every bit show of the heed of God” (44).

How unlike both must direct maintain been compared to now, where nosotros appear to quest the manufacturing of meaning, near clearly evidenced past times our obsessive consumerism in addition to the ‘progress’ of step-wise technological development.