One of the best books I have recently read is The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler – "A history of man’s changing vision of the universe." It is a fascinating look, both biographical and philosophical-scientific, at the history of astronomy and especially of the fate and fortunes of the heliocentric theory. First published in 1959, it therefore makes a close companion in time to Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances, (also published that year) which examines a similar set of circumstances (the rise of science) without as much biographical detail but with a more nuanced and coherent understanding of the evolution of consciousness.

It is interesting to see Koestler circling around the concept of the evolution of consciousness, but without quite hitting it, whereas Barfield’s account leads quite naturally to it because he is intent upon exploring the concept of participation. In terms of a schematic understanding, participation is the umbrella-concept under which we would fit the heliocentric hypothesis as a particular idea of science, which in itself is a particular mentality that arose in the West after ages of Aristotelian ferment, Judeo-Christian ideas about Creation, and the nurturance of Christianity with respect to issues of intellect and faith, not to mention the other aspects of life.

Because Koestler lacks this over-arching vision, he is not quite able to project himself into the ancient Greek mind without making it sound somewhat like a modern mind that has somehow made a mistake. Thus he exhibits the tendency of modern commentators to "surreptitiously substitute our own phenemena for those which [the Greeks] were in fact dealing with," (Barfield, p. 44) Barfield stresses that the ‘phenomena’ of the ancient Greeks were participated – that is, "It never would have occurred to an ancient Greek to doubt that the heavenly bodies and their spheres were in one way or another representations of divine beings." The perpetual dogma of Greek science was that the heavenly bodies move in perfect circles in uniform speed. Rather, this was no "dogma" but simply self-evident, in something of the same way that "evolution" has become self-evident to the modern mind. And there are as many inconsistencies with the notion of circular motion as there are with the idea of evolution, for which scientists are busy, then as now, with "saving the appearances." This, to Koestler, is an ‘ominous phrase,’ showing a ‘split world reflected in the split mind.’ But before the Scientific Revolution, it was simply a given that the heavenly worlds and the earthly world wholly different and disjunct. It cannot therefore be framed in the modernist, post-psychiatric terminology of ‘split-mindedness.’

Since we no longer view the world in this manner, it is unthinkable that the celestial and the terrestrial worlds would represent anything other than a common cosmological history. Our world view is unitary, but it is flat; the ancient view was disjunct, but it was marked by differentia of all kinds. One could say that the planets were ‘personalities’ – this is an instance of participated consciousness. But even as late as Copernicus, Koestler notes, "gravity… is the nostalgia of things to become spheres." The idea of moral perfection was perhaps the last to go in cosmology.

Because Koestler lacks a concept of participation, he can only speculate that the reason the ancient Greeks, who first came up with the heliocentric notion but then "turned their backs on it," was because of a deep-seated "fear of change." He blames Plato and Aristotle in particular for this state of affairs, saying that their views of the cosmos were motivated by "the craving for stability in a disintegrating culture." In this respect Koestler may be revealing the particular blind spot in his Jewish heritage – a heritage which is characterized above all by an antipathy to participation – dare one call it paganism? – in all its forms. Koestler, although not hostile to the Christian Church, likewise shows an inability to understand the inspiration of Christianity in civilization in his descriptions of medieval life – "emotions required a rigid system of conventional forms… chronic and insoluable mental conflicts… mass hysteria…compulsive ritual," etc.

I am reminded of a passage in John Murray Cuddihy’s book, The Ordeal of Civility, in which he discusses the "value-package of Western civilization" – charity feudalized to chivalry, later animated to courtesy and finally modernized to civility. Cuddihy’s book is a study of the emancipation of the Jews in 19^th century Europe, and he comments that this Western value-package was "the collective representation of Western culture which "rubbed emerging Jewry the wrong way.’" Some of Koestler's pronouncements on the Middle Ages reveal some of this historic Jewish antipathy. Koestler’s best pages come after his medieval commentary.

His portraits of Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho de Brahe and Galileo are richly drawn and profound. Although lacking full understanding of the medieval world, he is nevertheless in sympathy with its "mystic sap" which inspired Copernicus, Kepler and Tycho. It was Galileo who "precipitated the divorce of science from faith," and with that, a new fragmentation of experience set in: science is divorced from religion, religion from art, substance from form, matter from mind.

Where Koestler’s Jewish heritage may prevent him from seeing the true dimensions of participation and imagination, on the other hand it gives him a deeper understanding of the moral gravitational sphere. Commenting on the paradox of intellectual advancement and "moral dwarfism," he says: "It may be thought unfair to judge a man’s character by the standard of his intellectual achievements, but the great civilizations of the past did precisely this; the divorce of moral from intellectual values is itself a characteristic development of the last few centuries." This banishment of the moral – and the emotional, and the esthetic – aspects of life from thinking and science gives him the greatest anxiety for our future. "The basic novelty of our age is the combination of this sudden unique interest in physical power with an equally unprecedented spiritual ebb-tide."

This depth of understanding gives Koestler’s account of science and scientists its real moral gravity. Although he doesn’t understand why the appearances need to be saved in terms of morality, he does see how the ever-widening rift between a science and moral awareness is leading to ever more serious consequences for humanity and the earth.

August 19, 2006