The Suicide of Thought (Part Two)
Part Two: the Treason of the Clerks
To recapitulate, we are contemplating a smaller mystery within a larger.
The smaller has to do with why several educated men of passing acquaintance would all just to happen to believe the same self-evidently false proposition that geometry is empirical. The topic of geometry came up when we were discussing some other topic entirely, by way of example, but all of them, independently, voiced the same opinion.
This is a rather odd belief to have any opinion about one way or the other. It never comes up in normal conversation.
Empirical means truth learned, not through abstract reasoning, but through repeated observation, that is, those things conditionally known via sense impressions.
Geometry is the study of abstract reasoning about points, lines, figures, volumes and ratios, their construction and deduction. The truths of geometry are unconditional. Plane figures are without width, lines are without breadth, points are dimensionless, and ratios are abstractions. Obvious no sense impression can observe these things.
The dots of ink and diagrams of geometer (which do not appear in Euclid’s original manuscript, by the way) are symbols used to represent invisible realities, in the same way words are symbols used to represent thoughts.
The proposition that geometry is empirical is self-evidently false because, with no further evidence or proof, merely the understanding of the words in the statement is sufficient to disprove it. It disproves itself.
So it is odd, to say the least, to find anyone who would believe such nonsense, much less several people.
The only common factor, if it is one, the educated men had with one another is twofold: first, all were educated in the modern fashion; and, second, all where one sort or another of reductionist, either reductionist materialists, or genetic fatalists, or something of the sort.
All prided themselves on their hardheaded, practical reasoning and all but one expressed indifference or contempt for philosophical reasoning. It is noteworthy that this pride is itself part of, or a product of, a modern education.
The smaller mystery of who killed Euclid has, as it turns out, a simple answer: educated men who are prone to believe what they are educated to believe.
This leads to the first step of the greater mystery. The natural question to ask is why the teachers and professors charged with passing along the Western canon of thought and knowledge to the young have failed their charge, if not betrayed it?
Let us return for a moment on the educated men with whom I spoke, because the best way to understand the teacher is to see his handiwork in the student. I mean not to mock these educated men, but to point out to the reader how often you, also, have run across such men, perhaps unawares. Perhaps you thought such behavior was normal in educated men. Indeed it is not, not what education was before modernism took hold.
They believe simple nonsense because, first, they were taught it, and, second, they were trained and indoctrinated to avoid ever questioning what they were taught. I have never come across minds so dull, so devoid of curiosity, so fearful of confronting contradiction, so unable to explain themselves, as these.
None of them, as far I can could tell, had actually ever read Euclid. When I would make references to his famous postulates or proofs, they seemed baffled. It was as if they had been taught the Pythagorean Theorem in the same fashion Moses was taught the Ten Commandments: by a divine voice uttering dictation.
They could recite that A^2+B^2=C^2, but, unlike me, they could not prove that this was the case, they did not know how to construct a right angle and the squares on the legs and drop lines to the opposing angles and show the areas under the same parallels were the same. They do not actually know what it means. They certainly did not how it is known to be true.
All of them said Pythagoras observed triangles and performed experiments on them. No doubt this experiment was done in a lightning storm atop an empty castle. The triangles were seen galumphing in the wild about the wabes of sundials, walking on their toeless square feet, until the square footage of the dorsal fins erected on the hypotenuse became equal to those of the creatures other two legs.
None of them seemed to realize that Euclid’s deductive proof of Pythagoras was how we know the theorem is true and why we believe it true. To them, the statements of geometry are merely a given, taken on faith. Or, at least, that was the impression I took away from how they acted: certainly each one attempted to impersonate a divine voice when speaking to me.
They merely made pronouncements and scorned me if I doubted, as if to doubt were sin. It was as if they expected me to believe for the sake of obedience to a sound authority, as if I were a supplicant devotee asking a sage for secret lore, not as if I were a juror whose skepticism their skill at presenting proof had to overcome. I saw the ghosts of their teachers. By that I mean I presume they assumed an air of condescending authority that brooked no questions because their teachers brooked no questions. They were taught by the anti-Socratic method.
That is our first clue.
The anti-Socratic method is meant for a purpose, but is also the end result of a long corruption of the mind of the West.
Over and over again, all five educated men made the same mistake: they mistook the symbol for the thing the symbol represented. Each insisted that the dots and streaks of chalk on the blackboard used by geometers to give a visual representation to their slower students was the point, line or figure being discussed. Each insisted that the chemical brain operations the allegedly accompany thoughts about geometry, or any topic of abstract thought, were themselves the abstract thoughts. And if I said the word ‘elephant’ there was actually an elephant in my throat.
Confusing symbol for object is called semiotic confusion. It is the core component of all magical thinking, where, for example, the witch doctor’s wax doll is held to be the same as the target.
It was like talking to a child who cannot tell real from make believe, or, more to the point, like talking to a fish who cannot tell his image in a mirror is not a rival fish.
That is our second clue.
Semiotic confusion is a necessary component for any anti-philosophical philosophy: all questions of logic, epistemology and metaphysics are abolished without being answered if words are ultimately meaningless and concepts are ultimately non-existent or arbitrary entities.
It is not normal for men of above average intelligence to say things stupider than what a child or a fish would say.
It is not normal that, upon the error being pointed out to them, they would not react with gratitude and correct the error, because instead would cling more fiercely to it, and scorn the correction as the drooling of a dunce or the raving of a heretic.
It is not normal that men would be gripped by odium theologicum, the hatred of theologians for rival opinions, on a non-theological matter.
That is our third clue.
Theological odium, however, is normal when dealing with theological matters.
Let us turn away from these educated men of my particular acquaintance and talk instead about a certain strain of education in general. Here the reader is thrown onto his own experience for testimony: if you have met such men, you will recognize the description.
I make no attempt to prove to the skeptic what the diseased state of modern education is, for I hold that to be a matter of common knowledge. If you are convinced that modern education and modern intellectual life is not diseased, then go your way, my words will not address your doubts. My attempt is to explain to those who see the disease from what influences, damps, and vapors it was contracted.
The students, or, rather, the unwitting victims of modern education are intellectuals rather than intelligent. They are men who are proud of their learning rather than humbled by it. The word sophomores, wise fools, was coined to describe them. They are the men who have a little learning but not enough know how little they know. They have just enough learning to allow them to look scornfully on men who are less bookish but better in all other ways, more honest, hardworking, and decent; but, again, not enough learning to make them wise. The sadness, kindness, and sobriety wisdom brings, and above all the deep humility wisdom brings is notoriously absent from sophomores. Sophomores are as stubborn as jackasses, but bray louder.
The question, once again, is how and why their teacher took the minds of intelligent students and turned them into permanent sophomores.
Well, despite what they say about poets, philosophers are the unelected legislators of mankind. What we say as alarming innovation in one generation is accepted as the unquestioned verity in the next, and the laws and customs arise from the values and virtues of the generation, but those virtues come from their worldview, their belief in what is or is not true, what is or is not a valid argument, what is or is not blameworthy or praiseworthy. This in turn is based on the based unspoken axioms about the nature of reality, which is metaphysical belief.
The reason why the teacher in the modern day teach nonsense is because the philosophers in a prior age taught nonsense.
From are first clue, we know that the student is being taught, not a science, but a dogma to be taken on faith. From the second, we know that the words and concepts are subject to a confusion of symbol and object which makes literal language impossible. As in a mystical religion, the words are meant to express wonder and thanksgiving, not to convey information. From the third clue, we know the hatred is akin to a man whose most sacred beliefs are questioned.
The conclusion: this is not a philosophy, nor is it a rational religion like Christianity. It is a mystical cult belief, no more, and no less. This is the final product of a long line of accumulated errors and lapses in logic of generations of philosophers. It is the death of the mind of the West.
Where and what was the error?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
