Abstract
This chapter places spirituality and the scientific enterprise historically. Enlightenment and science as the heritage of enlightenment was born out of the struggle against doctrine and religion. Historically, modern Western science grew out of the original scholarly activities of monasteries, and the first universities came into being. Originally spirituality and the quest for knowledge were rather similar, and in the very first attempts at formulating a new theory of science by Roger Bacon, spirituality and empirical science were one. Natural science was developed and the notion of experience evolved from Bacon onwards. The movement of mystical theology outsourced the notion of inner experience from theology into personal piety, excluding spirituality and spiritual experience from European academia. The process of enlightenment was mainly directed against the dogmatism coming from the Church, and hence spirituality, linked with the dogmatic strivings for power of religious institutions, was simultaneously excluded. Science has received its freedom through this process of emancipation, but has left out the important questions that are relevant for people, such as the purpose of life, task in life, and values, ethics, and morals. The notion of scientism as a religious form of believing in science is explained and shown to be the main opponent of a liberal and non-dogmatic search for truth, both in science and in religion.
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- 1.
Translation mine; in his essay “Beantwortung der Frage Was ist Aufklärung? – Answer to the question What is enlightenment?” (Kant 1968, p. 6).
- 2.
A fascinating, popular account of that era between antiquity and the middle ages is given by Thomas Cahill (1995) in How the Irish Saved Civilization. The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, and the complexities and vagaries of the tradition of antiquity is well described by Panofsky (1960) in Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art.
- 3.
Paris and Oxford Universities in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. An Institutional and Intellectual History (Leff 1968) gives a good introduction to the subject. Good general historical accounts of that time can also be found in Crombie 1953; Southern 1986; Gilson 1955; Le Goff 1985; Rashdall 1936.
- 4.
Note that this has recently been debated by Gouguenheim (2008) in Aristote au Mont-Saint-Michel: Les racines grecques de l’Europe chrétienne, which was, however, heavily criticized for belittling the role of Islam in the tradition of antique texts into medieval Europe. To me it seems that this critique is a reaction to an honest, albeit politically incorrect opinion, which is very well supported by the historical evidence. According to Gouguenheim there was much more knowledge or Aristotelian and classical texts around in Europe than is normally thought, especially in some centres of learning such as the Mont-Saint-Michel. The point, however, is: it was not taken up until later, when through new Greek manuscripts becoming available through the contact with the East during the crusades new translations were produced.
- 5.
Notably William Ockham a generation later: See McCord Adams 1987.
- 6.
Statements like those paraphrased above were among the 219 theses that were condemned by the Parisian bishop Tempier on March 7th 1277, following a commission of theologians that had prepared the collection. The collection of the theses can be found in Enquete sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277. (Hissette 1977). Flasch (1989) provides a good popular account.
- 7.
A very good new monograph on Bacon and on how to understand his ideas is provided in Roger Bacon and the Defence of Christendom (Power 2012). I have elaborated on the issues sketched in the following in more detail in Notitia Experimentalis Dei – Experiential Knowledge of God: Hugh of Balma’s Mystical Epistemology of Inner Experience – A Hermeneutic Reconstruction (Walach 2010). His work in the natural sciences in particular is well covered by Hackett (1983, 1995, 1997a, b) and by Lindberg (1997).
- 8.
The Latin original is as follows; the translation is mine
p. 169: Sed duplex est experientia; una est per sensus exteriores, et sic experimenta ea, quae in coelo sunt… et haec inferiora… experimur.... Et haec experientia est humana et philosophica, quantum homo potest facere secundum gratiam ei datam; sed haec experientia non sufficit homini, quia non plene certificat de corporalibus propter sui difficultatem, et de spiritualibus nihil attingit. Ergo oportet quod intellectus hominis aliter juvetur, et ideo sancti patriarchae et prophetae, qui primo dederunt scientias mundo, receperunt illuminationes interiores et non solum stabant in sensu… Nam gratia fidei illuminat multum… secundum quod Ptolemaeus dicit in Centilogio quod duplex est via deveniendi ad notitiam rerum, una per experientiam philosohiae, alia per divinam inspirationem quae longe melior est, ut dicit. Et sunt septem gradus hujus scientiae interioris, unus per illuminationes pure scientiales. Alius gradus consistit in virtutibus…
p. 171: Virtus ergo clarificat mentem ut non solum moralia sed etiam scientialia homo facilius comprehendat…
Tertius gradus est in septem donis Spiritus Sancti… Quartus est in beatitudinis, quas Dominus in evangeliis determinat. Quintus est in sensibus spiritualibus. Sextus est in fructibus, de quibus est pax Domini quae exsuperat omnem sensum. Septimus consistit in raptibus et modis eorum secundum quod diversi diversismode capiuntur, ut videant multa, quae non licet homini loqui. Et qui in his experientiis vel in pluribus eorum est diligenter exercitatus, ipse potest certificare se et alios non solum de spiritualibus, sed omnibus scientiis humanis.... necessaria est nobis scientia, quae experimentalis vocatur. Et volo eam explanare, non solum ut utilis est philosophiae, sed sapientiae Dei, et totius mundi regimini.
I have translated the Latin notion of “raptus”, italicised in the text, with “spiritual experience of spiritual ecstasy”. The notion “raptus” is a technical term of mystical theology and means that the human mind is being taken into a special state, out of its normal connectedness to the world into a spiritual world. The authors of the antique and medieval tradition frequently discuss whether being taken into an ecstasy actually means being taken out of the body into the “seventh heaven”, i.e. as far as to God himself, or whether the experience stops shortly before that. Be that as is it may, the notion “raptus” means an experience of spiritual enlightenment by absolute being which conveys knowledge and wisdom. I therefore chose a somewhat free and descriptive translation.
- 9.
Amanda Power (2012) thinks that there is little historical evidence for Bacon’s opinions being among the theses that were condemned in 1277 and for an incarceration or house arrest. Pierre Mandonnet (1910) surmises that Bacon’s opinions on astrology may have been the reason and that some sort of restriction is likely: Be that as it may, Bacon seems to not have had a direct influence on his contemporaries, and certainly did not change, as he had hoped, the whole syllabus of academic teaching. It was only later, through Pico della Mirandola in the 15th and Francis Bacon in the sixteenth/seventeenth century who both knew Bacon and used him freely, that Roger Bacon’s ideas found some influence.
- 10.
Carthusians are a particular type of Christian contemplative and eremitic monastic order founded at the end of the eleventh century by Saint Bruno of Cologne. They take their name from the valley of the founding house – Le Chartreuse near Grenoble in France. They live in small houses as hermits, joined together in a community of 13 people with a lot of solitude and roughly 8 h of prayer a day, two meals of vegetarian diet a day, some manual labor and some community elements. They come closest to the ancient hermitic orders of the desert. In those days they spread out a lot and even went to cities, such as Paris, where a Charterhouse was founded in 1257; the development of the order and its expansion is well described in Hogg (1987) Die Ausbreitung der Kartäuser.
- 11.
This is not a good place to elaborate on Hugh of Balma, the author and its text. I have done that elsewhere in an extensive study (Walach 2010). I have tried to show there that Hugh of Balma likely was either part of or sympathetic towards the radical Franciscan movement of the Spirituals. He mainly argued against Bonaventure and his interpretation of mystical theology, but also against other authors. I have also tried to show that the author likely was not originally a prior of the Carthusian order, as implied by traditional teaching, but rather a Franciscan who only later joined the Carthusian order. The time and place of flourishing was likely Paris around the time when the Paris charterhouse was founded, i.e. after 1260. It is difficult, however, to prove this, and I can only argue from internal textual evidence for this thesis. However, this book does not depend in any way on the accuracy of this historical argument, and hence I will not deal further with it. Dennis Martin (1997) offers an English translation of the text and a historical introduction that contains the received view and some standard arguments against my own position. Incidentally, it might easily be possible that some of the teachings condemned in 1277 were actually directed against some of Hugh’s radical theses. One of these condemned theses reads: “That one can have eternal life already here, in this life.” Normally scholarly wisdom attributes this sentence rather vaguely to generic Epicurean teachings. Hugh of Balma also taught that spiritual experiences would allow us to taste heavenly joy even here on earth. Another of the condemned theses says that spiritual experiences (“raptus et visisiones”) occur only naturally. (For the original text of the condemned theses see Hissette 1977). Normally scholars assume that this was targeted against some Arab teachings of Algazel or Ibn Sina and their Latin follower Boethius of Dacia. They might also have been intended to mean Hugh’s teaching, which state that whoever had some practice could attain spiritual experiences quite naturally, “hundred, even thousand times a day”. I mention these points briefly to illustrate what I have argued for extensively, namely that Hugh’s teaching was so radical and at the outer margins of what was acceptable these days that it is quite understandable that both his person and his thinking went under for some time. The tradition of his text starts re-emerging roughly 100 years after his death. We don’t know anything about the person, apart from what I have indirectly deduced from his texts. All standard sources report inconsistently and, in my view, wrongly.
- 12.
I have elaborated on the history and meaning of the notion of “experiential knowledge of God” elsewhere (Walach 1996, 2010). Briefly, Hugh of Balma follows a certain tradition that can be traced back to Ps. Denys the Areopagite in the fifth century and his translator and commentator Thomas Gallus of St. Victor at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In this tradition the summit of the mind (“apex mentis”) or the spark of the soul (“scintilla synderesis”) which resurfaces in Meister Eckhart is the place of the spiritual experience of unification. It belongs to the part of the mind called the “affect” (affectus). This is the part oriented towards the Good and can be interpreted as an inner organ of pure receptivity. The thought is the following: The summit of the mind as part of the affect is entirely directed towards the pure and perfect Good. This is God himself. That means the mind is being touched by God himself, receives him and is unified with him. This is what we call experiential knowledge. It happens through an interior sense (sensus interior).
- 13.
If my assumption that Hugh was originally a Franciscan in the Oxford and later in the Paris study house of the Franciscans who tried to influence academic discourse on how to arrive at divine knowledge is correct (which I have tried to argue for and give some textual evidence of in my 1996 book on Hugh), then it would be not only likely but logical that Hugh and Bacon were living in the same house. I have produced some further textual evidence that Hugh likely was hinting at Bacon in some of his criticisms, and thus knew him, in my 2010 monograph (Experiential Knowledge of God).
- 14.
Hugh’s text “Mystical Theology – Viae Sion Lugent” contains various text elements that have been later edited into one volume, probably by the author himself. The final part – and earliest in terms of composition – is a “Quaestio”, i.e. an academic disputation. While, in principle, everyone could have composed such a text, it makes sense to assume that the form of an academic disputation also has some meaning, and this is why I take it to have been intended as an academic disputation. Such a disputation would have to be given by a young master or professor of theology before he could start teaching. I therefore assume that Hugh’s intention was academic teaching and his “Quaestio” the reflex of this plan. The only direct resonance that Hugh’s text seems to have had was in Ramon Llull’s “Contemplatio Raimundi” (Lullus 1989). This book was composed in the Paris Charterhouse between 1297 and 1299. It is a rather straightforward cognitive approach to contemplation, but contains a post-scriptum that seems out of place: “Quomodo contemplatio transit in raptum – How contemplation leads to ecstasy”. In this section Llull answers real or imaginary arguments, and widens his concept towards a more affective interpretation of mysticism. That led me to assume that here we can see a direct mirroring of a debate between Llull and Hugh or one of his later followers. I have pointed out all the parallels and particular texts in Walach, Notitia experimenalis, 1996.
- 15.
The earliest textual witness, to my knowledge, is dated 1370, is anonymous, and stems from the Charterhouse in Trier, Germany. Again about 100 years later the author is mentioned by name for the first time in a manuscript that comes from the Grand Chartreuse. Thus his name started to circulate with an eclipse of 200 years after writing.
- 16.
It is quite deliberately in a polemic tone that I say Thomas prepared himself or was prepared for an experience that he had at the end of his life and that this was reflected in those texts he wrote at the very end and shortly before he actually had this experience, in the second book of the second part of his Sum of Theology. These texts are among the very last he produced. Shortly afterwards he stopped writing altogether. His earlier texts about epistemology, for instance, his Disputed Questions, his Commentary on Ps.-Denys’ Divine Names, his Sum against the Gentiles, do not contain, to my knowledge, anything regarding experiential knowledge of God that goes beyond what we know from traditional Augustinian teaching. I am quite aware of the fact that we find a lot of elements in Thomas’ biography that would count as what we have called spiritual experiences here. However, looking at how he worked it seems to be the case that a thought found shape in him mostly when actively engaging in a real discussion with a living author or an opponent. This is well known for his texts that can be seen as an answer to Siger of Brabantium or William of Saint-Amour. It is therefore quite plausible to assume that those questions and answers regarding experiential knowledge of God in the final part of his Sum, apart from the fact that this is the systematic place for them, were fuelled by real discussions and actual discourses he referred to. Thomas would have had many occasions in earlier parts of his Sum to talk about this issue. He actually does so, but there he always confines himself to rendering the traditional perspective and giving his own opinion that the essence of God is unknowable. Only in those very late parts he seems to step beyond the territory he chartered earlier. I have argued for this position in an article which will appear soon (Affection – affectus) in the Encyclopedia of Carthusian Spirituality to be edited by the Centre du Recherche de Spiritualité Cartusienne. Some of the important texts are contained in Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica, Sec. Sec. Q 175, art. 1–5; Q 180, art. 5 ff. (Thomas 1980).
- 17.
I will have to delay a full set of evidential textual parallels to a later study. Suffice it here to mention just one striking parallel: In Eckhart’s “Reden der Unterweisung – Speeches of Teaching, No. 20, we find the following passage (translation mine):” Dieses Empfangen und selige Geniessen… liegt auch im geistigen Genuss mit begehrendem Gemüt und in andachtsvoller Einung. Dies kann der Mensch so vertrauensvoll empfangen, dass er reicher an Gnaden wird… dies kann der Mensch tausendmal am Tag und öfter vollziehen, er sei, wo er wolle, ob krank oder gesund… – This receiving and blissful enjoyment … is part of our mental enjoyment with desiring affect and devote unification. This an individual may receive faithfully such that he becomes richer in grace … this an individual can receive thousand times a day and even more frequent, wherever he may be, whether healthy or sick…“ (Meister Eckhart 1963, p. 86, 26ff). (An English edition is available as Meister Eckhart German Sermons and Treatises (Walshe 2008) Both, receiving god in the affect (“affectus”) and with desire (“desiderium”), and the provocative talk about the possibility of having this experience more than thousand times a day are topical phrases that can only be found in Hugh of Balma in this clarity. In his Prologus to his text “Mystical Theology” we read (translation mine): “he will be moved, more quickly than we can think, without any previous or concomitant thinking into God, hundred or thousand times a day, or in the night, such that he might possess him alone in the striving of unspeakable desire. (Viae Sion, I.5).
- 18.
This radical extinction of cognitive acts is not new, of course. It is part and parcel of the Ps.-Dionysian tradition which in its super-rational act of going beyond cognition has already brought it to the discussion. But the methodological interpretation of how to actually do it, provided by Thomas Gallus and following him Hugh of Balma, this is quite new, and Meister Eckhart is to be seen in this straight methodological line of contemplation. All these authors interpret Ps.-Denys to the effect that this super-rational act means leaving aside all cognition and entering a state of pure receptivity and striving at the same time. It would be worthwhile to follow this line of reasoning deeper into the textual evidence in Eckhart than I can do here.
- 19.
This was done by S. Ueda (1965) in, for example, his Der Zen-Buddhismus als ‘Nicht-Mystik’ unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Vergleichs zur Mystik Meister Eckharts.
- 20.
Both authors were very important and influential in their time (Pohlen 1941; Stelzenberger 1928). Denys the Carthusian was extremely productive, writing 40 folio volumes. He functioned as friend, secretary, and adviser to Nicolaus Cusanus and accompanied him on most of his journeys. He might have been another source of Cusanus’ leaning towards mystical theology, although he had his own share in studying Meister Eckhart carefully. The volumes of Eckhart in Cusanus’ possession form the basis of today’s critical edition, and his annotations show how carefully he must have studied him.
- 21.
“The definition of psychology may be best given in the words of Professor Ladd as the description and explanation of states of consciousness as such. By states of consciousness are meant such things as sensations, desires, emotions, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, volitions, and the like. Their ‘explanation’ must of course include the study of their causes, conditions, and immediate consequences, so far as these can be ascertained.” (James 1984, p. 9).
- 22.
See Origins of the modern concept of “Neuroscience”. Wilhelm Wundt between empiricism and idealism: Implications for contemporary neuroethics. (Kohls and Benedikter 2010). Here the authors show how Wundt, by being unwittingly drawn into research around the medium Slade, became scared of any non-standard type of research and decreed this type of work unprofessional.
- 23.
At least that is what he said openly. Privately and in letters he expressed great interest in telepathy, believing that transferences were some kind of telepathy and such non-ordinary states of consciousness were part and parcel of the work of a psychoanalyst. However, he was quite aware, like Wundt, that this must not become public. (Simmonds 2006).
- 24.
- 25.
The farewell lecture by Brentano- Meine letzten Wünsche für Österreich (Brentano 1895) is actually a rare piece in the libraries of Europe. The library of Vienna is supposed to have a copy, which, however, cannot be found so I had to go for a distant loan. Such is the aftermath of Brentano’s leave!
- 26.
He said himself that he did not achieve writing his “magnum opus” in which he had meant to outline such a psychology. There is no full biography of Brentano’s, so what we know about his life stems from his students who report it (Stumpf 1919; Husserl 1919; Steiner 1921; Kraus 1919; Tiefensee 1998). Franz Brentano und die Zukunft der Philosophie. Studien zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftssystematik im 19. Jahrhundert (Franckegg, and Wehrle 1989) contain a lot of unpublished material. Apart from Immanent Realism: An Introduction to Brentano (Albertazzi 2006) there is as yet no authoritative biographical and systematic monograph in English dedicated to Brentano’s life and work.
- 27.
This influence happened via his direct students Karl Stumpf and Alexius Meinong. See Albertazzi et al. 1996.
- 28.
- 29.
To my knowledge Varela et al. (1991) were the first to postulate this in their book The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience.
- 30.
Things are, of course, always a bit more complex, and I am trying to simplify. To do justice: Theology itself can be seen as a kind of enlightenment movement within limits, using reason, logic and argument against simplistic faith and unsound reasoning. This can be seen as early as the arguments between Abelard and Saint Bernard, and also in modern theological disputes, for instance, between Leonardo Boff and the Congregation of Faith. Theology has always been on the side of reason when it was pitched, for instance, against magic (Heimbrock 1994). It seems to me that the problem of modern day theology is that it has bought into the general positivist mainstream too much and is also losing its spiritual core, a situation that the well known German theologian Karl Rahner surmised in the adage “The person of the future will either be a mystic or he won’t be at all.”
- 31.
The tradition calls this tempter by his Hebrew name “Satanas – satan” and thus treats it as something coming from outside. This gives rise to misunderstandings. In fact I think it is more useful to understand this experience as a projection of inner states into the outer world. In that case the “tempter” would be our human nature itself which tempts us to seek out shortcuts or leads us on detours. Since whoever experiences this will experience it as alien to his or her own nature, guiding one away from one’s original path, we tend to use a name that suggests this is something coming from outside. This has given rise to grave misunderstandings.
- 32.
Is 45.5.
- 33.
See The Gnostic Gospels (Pagels 1979) for a good introduction to the antique sources and The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Lerner 1972) and Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical foundations of Germans Mysticism. (Grundmann 1995) for later situations.
- 34.
The notion is derived from the Greek “katharos” meaning pure. The cathars saw themselves as the pure ones, as compared to the official church and the clergy.
- 35.
Does that sound familiar? Some of today’s political talk is closer to the heretic teachings of those days and can certainly not recur to any God in the sense taught by the Judeo-Christian tradition.
- 36.
It is interesting to note that the term “heretic” is derived from the Greek “hairein” meaning “to take something out”. It denotes the fact that the typical heretic takes what he or she likes out of the whole and makes it a teaching (Hinnebusch 1966).
- 37.
Very good accounts of this time with all original references can be found in Ad Capiendas Vulpes. Die Ketzerbekämpfung in Südfrankreich in der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts und die Ausbildung des Inquisitionsverfahrens, (Kolmer 1982) and Die grobe Ketzerei. Verfolgung und Ausrottung der Katharer durch Kirche und Wissenschaft (Baier 1984).
- 38.
In that respect we should be quite critical about our own educational processes in the West as they seem to produce more and more reproductive and procedural knowledge and less and less the capacity to think critically, to analyse, and to question. In the same vein: what does it tell us to learn that on the Arabic Peninsula over the last 100 years roughly the same number of books were printed as are printed in Spain in one year? On the other hand, what do we make of the fact that a staggering percentage of Americans are analphabets and incapable of reading, relying solely on TV for their general information?
- 39.
I have written a sketchy account of this in Hurra – wir haben eine neue Religion! Über Qualitätssicherung (Walach 2009).
- 40.
I have elaborated on this in my textbook on theory of science for psychology (Walach 2013).
- 41.
The term “scientism” was coined by William James who was the first to use it (he was first in many things!), apparently in letters since 1890 (Andreas Sommer, personal communication, 2013). It was made popular by Edmund Husserl who used it in his critique of a narrow minded scientific outlook described in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Husserl 1970, orig. 1909).
- 42.
Particularly Emil du Bois-Reymond, a physiologist in Berlin, who became very influential. He formed a secret pact together with Brücke, the later physiologist in Vienna and teacher of Freud, and with others to explore the materialist foundations of consciousness, as he said. Thirty years later he declared that this program was not successful and will never be. Nevertheless the stance is typical for the up-beat natural scientists of the nineteenth century. See the original document in Jugendbriefe von Emile DuBois-Reymond an Eduard Hallmann (Du Bois-Reymond 1918, p. 108): “Brücke und ich, wir haben uns verschworen, die Wahrheit geltend zu machen, dass im Organismus keine anderen Kräfte wirksam sind, als die gemeinen physikalisch-chemischen; dass, wo diese bislang nicht zur Erklärung ausreichen, mittels der physikalisch-mathematischen Methode entweder nach ihrer Art und Weise der Wirksamkeit im konkreten Falle gesucht werden muss, oder dass neue Kräfte angenommen werden müssen, welche, von gleicher Dignität mit den physikalisch-chemischen, der Materie inhärent, stets auf nur abstossende oder anziehende Componenten zurückzuführen sind – Brücke and myself, we formed a pact to make known the truth that no other forces are operative in our organism than the common physical-chemical ones; and that, where those are not sufficient for an explanation so far, they will have to be sought after by the physical–mathematical method in the concrete case, or that new forces will have to be assumed, of the same dignity as the physical-chemical ones, inherent in matter, always reducible to attractive and repulsive components”. Nowadays, the leading scientists are also in the majority of the cases anti- or a-religious, according to Larson and Witham (1998). Whether this also means they are materialists we don’t know for sure, but can assume.
- 43.
- 44.
Which is in fact scientifically, properly speaking, quite problematic because it contributes to our growing problem of resistant germs See, for instance, Foxman 2010.
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Walach, H. (2015). The Historical Framework: Enlightenment, Science, and the Difficulties with the Notion of God. In: Secular Spirituality. Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09345-1_3
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