Monthly Archives: July 2011

I want to begin this post with a caveat: my wife and I are in the process of moving this week, so the near 50 wine boxes containing our library are sealed and ready to be moved to the quaint two-story house in Lawrence, KS, a town that I have fallen in love with. At any rate, I won’t be able to post next week. So for any of my devoted weekly readers, I promise to make up for missing next week’s post. (Also, send us some good moving karma given that we might very well be moving in 100+ degree temperatures!)

For this week’s post, I thought I would write about technology and the 17^th century, specially the microscope. Allow me to make a generalization about our own culture: we are technophiles! We consume technology almost without after-thought. Lines wrap around Apple stores when Steve Jobs launches a slightly upgraded version of the I-Pad, I-Phone, or I-Pod.

Yay, I spent nearly a whole pay check on an I-Pad! But now I can fill that gaping hole in my life with something shiny!

 One of my favorite writing assignments to give my Comp I students is to have them identify and argue for an unintended consequence of a recent piece of technology. (I love to watch my students’ confusion when I define for them the word, luddite – the very concept that someone could be against technological advancement is so unrealizable for them.) A rather thought-provoking essay that I have my students read is Nicolas G. Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. Carr’s main argument is that with every technological advancement in the dissemination of information – writing (Carr cites Plato’s Phaedrus), Guttenberg’s printing press, the type writer, and the internet(s) – the way we think actually changes. One of Carr’s points that I stress for my students is that technology is not simply tool through which express ourselves but alters our very thought processes.

I bring this point up because it is fascinating to see the concerns that pieces of technology, which seem so innocuous to us, provoked for peoples who were experiencing them for the first time. Consider the microscope, probably the quintessential piece of technology of the Scientific Revolution.

Developed by two Dutch eye glass makers, Zaccaharias and Hans Janssens, the microscope was popularized in England by Robert Hooke. (You might remember him from your middle school biology classes for being the first who look at a slice of cork and notice the “cells” that composed it.)  In 1665, Hooke published an account/promotion of his work with the microscope, entitled Micrographia.

Robert Hooke

Hooke prefaces the work by arguing that the microscope is actually going to help humanity to regain the knowledge of nature that Adam possessed before being expelled from the Garden of Eden. As Hooke claims, humanity’s sense are in an imperfect state to what they use to be prior to the Fall and it is only through technology that they can be restored to their original condition: “The first thing to be undertaken in this weighty work, is a watchfulness over the failing and an inlargement of the dominion, of the Senses. . . The next care to be taken, in respect of the Senses, is supplying of their infirmities with Instruments, and as it were, the adding of artificial Organs to the natural. . .” In other words, the microscope was not meant to so much for advancement but rather restoration.

Frontispiece to Micrographia (1665)

Yet not all accepted Hooke’s argument for the restorative potential of the microscope. Particularly, Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle, expressed serious epistemological reservations about the microscope.

". . . though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavor to be Margaret the First"

First off, who was Margaret Cavendish: a lady-in-waiting to Charles I’s wife, Henrietta Maria, Cavendish went into exile in Belgium and France during the English Civil War and the Cromwellian regime. She returned to England in 1660 with the restoration of Charles II. Now the intellectual atmosphere of London was full of talk of the new science: university clubs devoted to experimental philosophy were very popular. In 1662, Charles II granted the charter for what would become the preeminent scientific association, the Royal Society.  Margaret was incredibly aware of the scientific/ intellectual conversations of her day: she knew René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes personally, as well as being the first woman invited to visit the Royal Society on May 23, 1667. An excellent study of Margaret Cavendish’s life and thought is Anna Battigelli’s Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind (1998).

Cavendish’s most well-known work is The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), a allegorical tale in which the protagonist, the Lady, is transported to fantastical world of which she becomes Empress.

Frontispiece to The Blazing World (1666)

The first part of The Blazing World has the new Empress being introduced the inhabitants of her realm, bird-men, fish-men, bear-men, ape-men, and, even, lice-men. Battigelli demonstrates that Cavendish in The Blazing World is responding to Hooke’s Micrographia. In a especially germane moment, the Empress meets with the experimental philosophers of her world, the bear-men, who present to her their telescopes and microscopes. Responding to the bear-men’s claims for the power of their optics, the Empress points out that rather than enhancing or rectifying our infirmed senses their optical tools do more to distort our natural perception. As Cavendish presents the matter, the microscope does not so much correct but rather obfuscate the our perception of material reality.  The bear-men’s optical instruments are noted for being able to “make a louse as big as an elephant and a mite as big as a whale”  and ” a huge  and might whale. . . no bigger than a sprat.” Ultimately, for Cavendish, the microscope did not grant a more acute, “truer,” vision of Nature but rather gave an erroneous understanding of an object. Even after being shown a telescope by the bear-men, the Empress decides that such optical instruments do more to confuse a true perception of reality:

“. . . the Empress are angry at their telescopes, that they could give no better intelligence; for, said she, that your glasses are false informers, and instead of discovering the truth, delude our senses. . . “

While Margaret Cavendish’s criticism of something that has become so fundamental to the practice of the sciences, perhaps she still may speak to how much our understanding of reality is created mechanically rather than imaginatively.

Well, it has been just over a month since my last post. I must apologize to any regular readers of this blog for this extend period of silence, yet there is a very excusable reason. Early last month, I was sent the pageproofs for my forthcoming book, the release date for which is Oct. 11th, 2011, to read over one last time for any minor corrections that I would like to make. In addition, I had to compile my index. Now, if you have not created an index before, it actually is a fascinating intellectual exercise. A writer is forced to map the book’s discussion in such a way as to offer entrance points for readers. I think it is comparable to the connect-the-dot coloring books I use to have as a child, the ones where the picture of a dragon or whatever begins to form as one draws the individual lines.

Moreover, I received some very exciting news: Carolyn Merchant has written an endorsement for the book! Here it is:

A fascinating, well-argued comparison between Francis Bacon’s narrative of recovering human dominion over nature and 17^th century skeptics who deny its possibility. Funari draws insightful parallels with today’s proponents of technological solutions and environmental philosophers who propose new ways of living with the more-than-human world. Of interest to anyone who wishes to see how history and literature can inform the roots of today’s environmental crisis.

So my part with regards to the book is over. That is, a project that has been 4 years in the making has reached its final form. Some of my family and friends have asked how it feels to be done with this project. My honest answer to them is that I am trying not to think about it. I suppose it is comparable in a much lesser degree to sending a child out into the world, hoping that you have done everything to prepare them for the harshness they may encounter. In this way, I think that the Latin poet Catullus captures it best: “Cui dono lepidum novom libellum/ Arida modo pumice expolitum?” (“To whom do I give this new little book,/ polished by the dry pumice stone?”)

Also, I want to suggest a new blog to any readers interested in history and cinema. Gabs Roman, a close friend who was invaluable in helping me with different facets of getting my manuscript ready for the printers, has a new blog, entitled Historic Histrionics.  You’ll find here insightful, witty, and, hopefully, irreverent commentaries on Hollywood’s often inaccurate depiction of the past. This is a blog very well worth your time.  (Gabs and I are planning a live Tweeting session for Robert Emmerich’s Anonymous.)

Alright, then, now to the Renaissance in today’s culture. Some of you may know that today actually commemorates Henry VIII’s beheading of arguably the greatest intellectual figure of English history, Sir/St. Thomas More.

The portrait of More as Lord Chancellor.

In 1534 to further his attempt to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Ann Boleyn, Henry VIII pushed through Parliament the Act of Supremacy, essentially establishing the Episcopal Church and declaring himself supreme head. To add a side note here, Henry’s break with the Roman Catholic Church was partially precipitated by events happening on the Continent: Catherine’s nephew, the Emperor Charles V, was essentially holding the Pope Leo X hostage while Henry petitioned him for a divorce.

Back to More. Having resigned his position as Henry’s Lord Chancellor in 1532, a position that he had held since 1529, More tried to escape from public view and quietly retire away from a political scene that was increasingly become hostile to him. Unfortunately this did not work out. More was the intellectual figure of Henry’s England: he had an international reputation as a scholar and corresponded with much of the European intelligentsia. (Erasmus was a close personal friend of More, but more on that in a bit.) So when More remained silent when asked to take the Oath of Supremacy, much was made of it. (More’s strategy was that as long as he remained silent on the question of the King’s Supremacy over the Church, he was not committing high treason.) When brought to trial, Henry’s Solicitor General, Sir Richard Rich, claimed that More had told him in prison that Parliament did not have the legal authority to declare the King the Head of the Church. Though no other evidence was offered against More, the verdict was pretty much a forgone conclusion. Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Season (1966), portrays More as struggling to hold onto his convictions while seeking the safety of his family.  Here’s a clip from the film adaptation of Bolt’s play, starring Paul Scofield as More and Robert Shaw as Henry VIII. In this clip More has just been convicted of high treason  and at last speaks his conscious:

And just because I thought that Jeremy Northam did a superb job portraying More, here is a clip from the Tudors, season 2:

In the image of the martyr who died resisting Henry VIII’s tyranny, I think an important facet of More’s character is often overlooked – his sense of humor. (Erasmus, the European intellectual of the early 16th c., dedicated his most well-known book, The Praise of Folly (1509), to More. The Latin title of The Praise of Folly  [Moriae Econium] is actually a pun on More’s name.) The work of More that best conveys his sardonic wit is Utopia (1519).

This is the frontispiece for the 1516 edition. It is a map of the fictional Isle of Utopia.

Begun while on a diplomatic mission in Antwerp, Utopia is fictional account of a supposedly ideal society that has been isolated from the rest of the world for centuries. From the beginning of the book, More demands a very attentive reader. The text this layered: it appears as More’s letter to Peter Giles which includes More’s transcription of Raphael Hythlodeaus’s description of his travels in Utopia that does not begin until the second part. More removes the reader thrice textually from Utopia itself. Moreover, More gives a few puns, often lost in translation, that signal to the reader the irony of the text. Hythlodeaus’s name is an amalgamation of two Greek words, hythlas that translates to “non-sense” and daiein, “to distribute.” So the person offering an account of a utopian society is a peddler of non-sense. Furthermore, utopia, a word which More himself originated from Greek, can be translated one of two ways, either as eu-topia, essentially a “good” place, or as ou-topos, “no place.”

Rather than summarize the entire window into Utopian civilization that More creates via Hythlodeaus, here are just some highlights:

1) Utopians have a communist economy: there is no conception of private ownership, nor is there any monetary system. While there is an abundance of precious metals and gems, these are used to pay foreign mercenaries to fight their wars. Hythlodeaus notes how the wearing of gold actually marks one as a slave, while citizens wear leather jerkins of the craftsmen. (You can see why More’s text appealed so much to Marxist scholars of the 1960s.)

2) In his description of the cultural rituals, Hythlodeaus recounts the custom of the betrothed couple having the opportunity to see each other naked prior to being wedded. If we take More as being sincere here, he is being incredibly progressive, suggesting the importance of sexual compatibility for a successful marriage.

3) The Utopians live in a rigid society, that constantly polices its citizens. For example, the size of the households, of which there are sixteen in each of the fifty-four cities that make up Utopia, is strictly maintained between ten and sixteen adults. Or in order to travel between the different cities, one must gain the permission of the local magistrate, or in Utopian language, the syphogrant. Idleness is not tolerated. As Hythlodeaus claims, “So you see that nowhere is there any chance to be idle; there is no excuse for laziness, no wine taverns, no alehouses, no brothels . . . no hangouts.”

Before delving into his account of Utopia, Hythlodeaus tells More that had he seen Utopia firsthand like he himself had and live there for five and half years, “then doubtless you would grant that you never saw people well ordered, but only there.” Here Hythlodeaus voices the irony that pervades More’s text: unless you have actually lived in Utopia you will never be able to live in Utopia. Or as Clarence H. Miller states in his introduction to the Yale University Press edition: “We are always being brought back to the basic paradox: the institutions cannot be introduced unless they have already been introduced” (xvi).