The Slenderest Knowledge by E.F. Schumacher
Post
On a visit to Leningrad some years ago, I consulted a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. From where I stood, I could see several enormous churches, yet there was no trace of them on my map. When finally an interpreter came to help me, he said: "We don't show churches on our maps." Contradicting him, I pointed to one that was very clearly marked. "That is a museum," he said, "not what we call a 'living church.' It is only the 'living churches' we don't show."
It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps.
The maps I was given advised me that virtually all my ancestors, until quite recently, had been rather pathetic illusionists who conducted their lives on the basis of irrational beliefs and absurd superstitions. Even illustrious scientists, like Johannes Kepler or Isaac Newton, apparently spent most of their time and energy on nonsensical studies of nonexisting things. These philosophical maps also conveyed that enormous amounts of hard-earned wealth had been squandered throughout history to the honor and glory of imaginary deities, not only by my European forebears, but by all peoples, in all parts of the world, at all times. Everywhere thousands of seemingly healthy men and women had wasted their time on pilgrimages, fantastic rituals, reiterated prayers, and so forth; turning their backs on reality—and some do it even in this enlightened age—all for nothing, all out of ignorance and stupidity; none of it to be taken seriously today, except of course as museum pieces. From what a history of error we had emerged! What a history of taking for real what every modern child knew to be totally unreal and imaginary! Our entire past, until quite recently, was today only fit for museums, where people could satisfy their curiosity about the oddity and incompetence of earlier generations. What our ancestors had written, also, was in the main fit only for storage in libraries, the knowledge of the past being considered interesting and occasionally thrilling but of no particular value for learning to cope with the problems of the present.
All this and many other similar things I was taught at school and university. It was still permissible, on suitable occasions, to refer to God the Creator, although every educated person knew that there was not really a God, certainly not one capable of creating anything, and that the things around us had come into existence by a process of mindless evolution, that is, by chance and natural selection. Our ancestors, unfortunately, did not know about evolution, and so they invented all these fanciful myths.
The maps of real knowledge, designed for real life, showed nothing except things which allegedly could be proved to exist. The first principle of the philosophical mapmakers seemed to be, "If in doubt, leave it out," or put it into a museum. It occurred to me, however, that the question of what constitutes proof was a very subtle and difficult one. Would it not be wiser to turn the principle into its opposite and say: "If in doubt, show it prominently"? After all, matters that are beyond doubt are, in a sense, dead; they constitute no challenge to the living.
To accept anything as true means to incur the risk of error. If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error, but at the same time I maximize the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life. Saint Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, taught that "The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things." "Slender" knowledge is here put in opposition to "certain" knowledge, and indicates uncertainty. Maybe it is necessarily so that the higher things cannot be known with the same degree of certainty as can the lesser things, in which case it would be a very great loss indeed if knowledge were limited to things beyond the possibility of doubt.
The philosophical maps with which I was supplied at school and university did not merely, like the map of Leningrad, fail to show "living churches"; they also failed to show large "unorthodox" sections of both theory and practice in many fields of knowledge. In fact, apart from "museums," the entire map from right to left and from top to bottom was drawn in utilitarian colors: hardly anything was shown as existing unless it could be interpreted as profitable for man's comfort or useful in the universal battle for survival.
Not surprisingly, the more thoroughly acquainted we became with the details of the map, the more we absorbed what it showed and got used to the absence of the things it did not show, the more perplexed, unhappy, and cynical we became. The maps produced by modern materialistic Scientism leave all the questions that really matter unanswered; more than that, they deny the validity of the questions. The situation was desperate enough in my youth half a century ago; it is even worse now because the ever more rigorous application of the scientific method to all subjects and disciplines has destroyed even the last remnants of ancient wisdom—at least in the Western world. It is being loudly proclaimed in the name of scientific objectivity that "values and meanings are nothing but defense mechanisms and reaction formations"; that man is "nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism."
After many centuries of theological imperialism, we have now had three centuries of "scientific imperialism," and the result is a degree of bewilderment and disorientation, particularly among the young, which can at any moment lead to the collapse of our civilization. "The true nihilism of today," says psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl, "is reductionism. . . . Contemporary nihilism no longer brandishes the word nothingness; today nihilism is camouflaged as nothing-but-ness. Human phenomena are thus turned into mere epiphenomena."
With the rise of materialistic Scientism the soul disappeared from the description of man—how could it exist when it could be neither weighed nor measured?—except as one of the many strange attributes of complex arrangements of atoms and molecules. Why not accept the so-called "soul" as an epiphenomenon of matter, just as, say, magnetism has been accepted as such? The Universe was seen simply as an accidental collocation of atoms. If the great Cosmos is seen as nothing but a chaos of particles without purpose or meaning, so man must be seen as nothing but a chaos of particles without purpose and meaning—a sensitive chaos perhaps, capable of suffering pain, anguish and despair, but a chaos all the same—a rather unfortunate cosmic accident of no consequence whatever.
It is obvious that a mathematical model of the world—which is what Descartes dreamed about—can deal only with factors that can be expressed as interrelated quantities. It is equally obvious that (while pure quantity cannot exist) the quantitative factor is of preponderant weight at the lowest Level of Being. As we move up the Chain of Being, the importance of quantity recedes while that of quality increases, and the price of mathematical model-building is the loss of the qualitative factor, the very thing that matters most.
The change of Western man's interest from "the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things" to mathematically precise knowledge of lesser things marks a shift from what we might call "science for understanding" to "science for manipulation." When "science for manipulation" is subordinated to wisdom, i.e., "science for understanding," it is a most valuable tool, and no harm can come of it. But it cannot be so subordinated when wisdom disappears because people cease to be interested in its pursuit. This has been the history of Western thought since Descartes. The old science—"wisdom" or "science for understanding"—was directed primarily "towards the sovereign good," i.e., the True, the Good and the Beautiful, knowledge of which would bring both happiness and salvation. The new science was mainly directed toward material power, a tendency which has meanwhile developed to such lengths that the enhancement of political and economic power is now generally taken as the first purpose of, and main justification for, expenditure on scientific work. The old science looked upon nature as God's handiwork and man's mother; the new science tends to look upon nature as an adversary to be conquered or a resource to be quarried and exploited.
The progressive elimination of "science for understanding"—or "wisdom"—from Western civilization turns the rapid and ever-accelerating accumulation of "knowledge for manipulation" into a most serious threat. We are now far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom, and further expansion of our cleverness can be of no benefit whatever. The steadily advancing concentration of man's scientific interest on "sciences of manipulation" has at least three very serious consequences.
First, in the absence of sustained study of such "unscientific" questions as "What is the meaning and purpose of man's existence?" and "What is good and what is evil?" and "What are man's absolute rights and duties?" a civilization will necessarily and inescapably sink ever more deeply into anguish, despair and loss of freedom. Its people will suffer a steady decline in health and happiness, no matter how high may be their standard of living or how successful their "health service" in prolonging their lives. It is nothing more nor less than a matter of "Man cannot live by bread alone."
Second, the methodical restriction of scientific effort to the most external and material aspects of the Universe makes the world look so empty and meaningless that even those people who recognize the value and necessity of a "science of understanding" cannot resist the hypnotic power of the allegedly scientific picture presented to them and lose the courage as well as the inclination to consult, and profit from, the "wisdom tradition of mankind." Since the findings of science, on account of its methodical restriction and its systematic disregard of higher levels, never contain any evidence of the existence of such levels, the process is self-reinforcing: faith, instead of being taken as a guide leading the intellect to an understanding of the higher levels, is seen as opposing and rejecting the intellect and is therefore itself rejected. Thus all roads to recovery are barred.
Third, the higher powers of man, no longer being brought into play to produce the knowledge of wisdom, tend to atrophy and even disappear altogether. As a result, all the problems which society or individuals are called upon to tackle become insoluble. Efforts grow ever more frantic, while unsolved and seemingly insoluble problems accumulate. While wealth may continue to increase, the quality of man himself declines.
More and more people are beginning to realize that "the modern experiment" has failed. It received its early impetus from what I have called the Cartesian revolution, which, with implacable logic, separated man from those higher levels that alone can maintain his humanity. Man closed the gates of Heaven against himself and tried, with immense energy and ingenuity, to confine himself to the Earth. He is now discovering that the Earth is but a transitory state, so that a refusal to reach for Heaven means an involuntary descent into Hell.
It may conceivably be possible to live without churches; but it is not possible to live without religion, that is, without systematic work to keep in contact with, and develop toward, higher levels than those of "ordinary life" with all its pleasure or pain, sensation, gratification, refinement or crudity—whatever it may be. The modern experiment to live without religion has failed, and once we have understood this, we know what our "postmodern" tasks really are.
Can we rely on it that a "turning around" will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but no matter what the answer, it will mislead. The answer "Yes" would lead to complacency, the answer "No" to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work.
It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps.
The maps I was given advised me that virtually all my ancestors, until quite recently, had been rather pathetic illusionists who conducted their lives on the basis of irrational beliefs and absurd superstitions. Even illustrious scientists, like Johannes Kepler or Isaac Newton, apparently spent most of their time and energy on nonsensical studies of nonexisting things. These philosophical maps also conveyed that enormous amounts of hard-earned wealth had been squandered throughout history to the honor and glory of imaginary deities, not only by my European forebears, but by all peoples, in all parts of the world, at all times. Everywhere thousands of seemingly healthy men and women had wasted their time on pilgrimages, fantastic rituals, reiterated prayers, and so forth; turning their backs on reality—and some do it even in this enlightened age—all for nothing, all out of ignorance and stupidity; none of it to be taken seriously today, except of course as museum pieces. From what a history of error we had emerged! What a history of taking for real what every modern child knew to be totally unreal and imaginary! Our entire past, until quite recently, was today only fit for museums, where people could satisfy their curiosity about the oddity and incompetence of earlier generations. What our ancestors had written, also, was in the main fit only for storage in libraries, the knowledge of the past being considered interesting and occasionally thrilling but of no particular value for learning to cope with the problems of the present.
All this and many other similar things I was taught at school and university. It was still permissible, on suitable occasions, to refer to God the Creator, although every educated person knew that there was not really a God, certainly not one capable of creating anything, and that the things around us had come into existence by a process of mindless evolution, that is, by chance and natural selection. Our ancestors, unfortunately, did not know about evolution, and so they invented all these fanciful myths.
The maps of real knowledge, designed for real life, showed nothing except things which allegedly could be proved to exist. The first principle of the philosophical mapmakers seemed to be, "If in doubt, leave it out," or put it into a museum. It occurred to me, however, that the question of what constitutes proof was a very subtle and difficult one. Would it not be wiser to turn the principle into its opposite and say: "If in doubt, show it prominently"? After all, matters that are beyond doubt are, in a sense, dead; they constitute no challenge to the living.
To accept anything as true means to incur the risk of error. If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error, but at the same time I maximize the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life. Saint Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, taught that "The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things." "Slender" knowledge is here put in opposition to "certain" knowledge, and indicates uncertainty. Maybe it is necessarily so that the higher things cannot be known with the same degree of certainty as can the lesser things, in which case it would be a very great loss indeed if knowledge were limited to things beyond the possibility of doubt.
The philosophical maps with which I was supplied at school and university did not merely, like the map of Leningrad, fail to show "living churches"; they also failed to show large "unorthodox" sections of both theory and practice in many fields of knowledge. In fact, apart from "museums," the entire map from right to left and from top to bottom was drawn in utilitarian colors: hardly anything was shown as existing unless it could be interpreted as profitable for man's comfort or useful in the universal battle for survival.
Not surprisingly, the more thoroughly acquainted we became with the details of the map, the more we absorbed what it showed and got used to the absence of the things it did not show, the more perplexed, unhappy, and cynical we became. The maps produced by modern materialistic Scientism leave all the questions that really matter unanswered; more than that, they deny the validity of the questions. The situation was desperate enough in my youth half a century ago; it is even worse now because the ever more rigorous application of the scientific method to all subjects and disciplines has destroyed even the last remnants of ancient wisdom—at least in the Western world. It is being loudly proclaimed in the name of scientific objectivity that "values and meanings are nothing but defense mechanisms and reaction formations"; that man is "nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism."
After many centuries of theological imperialism, we have now had three centuries of "scientific imperialism," and the result is a degree of bewilderment and disorientation, particularly among the young, which can at any moment lead to the collapse of our civilization. "The true nihilism of today," says psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl, "is reductionism. . . . Contemporary nihilism no longer brandishes the word nothingness; today nihilism is camouflaged as nothing-but-ness. Human phenomena are thus turned into mere epiphenomena."
With the rise of materialistic Scientism the soul disappeared from the description of man—how could it exist when it could be neither weighed nor measured?—except as one of the many strange attributes of complex arrangements of atoms and molecules. Why not accept the so-called "soul" as an epiphenomenon of matter, just as, say, magnetism has been accepted as such? The Universe was seen simply as an accidental collocation of atoms. If the great Cosmos is seen as nothing but a chaos of particles without purpose or meaning, so man must be seen as nothing but a chaos of particles without purpose and meaning—a sensitive chaos perhaps, capable of suffering pain, anguish and despair, but a chaos all the same—a rather unfortunate cosmic accident of no consequence whatever.
It is obvious that a mathematical model of the world—which is what Descartes dreamed about—can deal only with factors that can be expressed as interrelated quantities. It is equally obvious that (while pure quantity cannot exist) the quantitative factor is of preponderant weight at the lowest Level of Being. As we move up the Chain of Being, the importance of quantity recedes while that of quality increases, and the price of mathematical model-building is the loss of the qualitative factor, the very thing that matters most.
The change of Western man's interest from "the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things" to mathematically precise knowledge of lesser things marks a shift from what we might call "science for understanding" to "science for manipulation." When "science for manipulation" is subordinated to wisdom, i.e., "science for understanding," it is a most valuable tool, and no harm can come of it. But it cannot be so subordinated when wisdom disappears because people cease to be interested in its pursuit. This has been the history of Western thought since Descartes. The old science—"wisdom" or "science for understanding"—was directed primarily "towards the sovereign good," i.e., the True, the Good and the Beautiful, knowledge of which would bring both happiness and salvation. The new science was mainly directed toward material power, a tendency which has meanwhile developed to such lengths that the enhancement of political and economic power is now generally taken as the first purpose of, and main justification for, expenditure on scientific work. The old science looked upon nature as God's handiwork and man's mother; the new science tends to look upon nature as an adversary to be conquered or a resource to be quarried and exploited.
The progressive elimination of "science for understanding"—or "wisdom"—from Western civilization turns the rapid and ever-accelerating accumulation of "knowledge for manipulation" into a most serious threat. We are now far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom, and further expansion of our cleverness can be of no benefit whatever. The steadily advancing concentration of man's scientific interest on "sciences of manipulation" has at least three very serious consequences.
First, in the absence of sustained study of such "unscientific" questions as "What is the meaning and purpose of man's existence?" and "What is good and what is evil?" and "What are man's absolute rights and duties?" a civilization will necessarily and inescapably sink ever more deeply into anguish, despair and loss of freedom. Its people will suffer a steady decline in health and happiness, no matter how high may be their standard of living or how successful their "health service" in prolonging their lives. It is nothing more nor less than a matter of "Man cannot live by bread alone."
Second, the methodical restriction of scientific effort to the most external and material aspects of the Universe makes the world look so empty and meaningless that even those people who recognize the value and necessity of a "science of understanding" cannot resist the hypnotic power of the allegedly scientific picture presented to them and lose the courage as well as the inclination to consult, and profit from, the "wisdom tradition of mankind." Since the findings of science, on account of its methodical restriction and its systematic disregard of higher levels, never contain any evidence of the existence of such levels, the process is self-reinforcing: faith, instead of being taken as a guide leading the intellect to an understanding of the higher levels, is seen as opposing and rejecting the intellect and is therefore itself rejected. Thus all roads to recovery are barred.
Third, the higher powers of man, no longer being brought into play to produce the knowledge of wisdom, tend to atrophy and even disappear altogether. As a result, all the problems which society or individuals are called upon to tackle become insoluble. Efforts grow ever more frantic, while unsolved and seemingly insoluble problems accumulate. While wealth may continue to increase, the quality of man himself declines.
More and more people are beginning to realize that "the modern experiment" has failed. It received its early impetus from what I have called the Cartesian revolution, which, with implacable logic, separated man from those higher levels that alone can maintain his humanity. Man closed the gates of Heaven against himself and tried, with immense energy and ingenuity, to confine himself to the Earth. He is now discovering that the Earth is but a transitory state, so that a refusal to reach for Heaven means an involuntary descent into Hell.
It may conceivably be possible to live without churches; but it is not possible to live without religion, that is, without systematic work to keep in contact with, and develop toward, higher levels than those of "ordinary life" with all its pleasure or pain, sensation, gratification, refinement or crudity—whatever it may be. The modern experiment to live without religion has failed, and once we have understood this, we know what our "postmodern" tasks really are.
Can we rely on it that a "turning around" will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but no matter what the answer, it will mislead. The answer "Yes" would lead to complacency, the answer "No" to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work.
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