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| Thomas Browne: religion as passion and pastime, part 6: Vulgar Errors I | Thomas Browne: religion as passion and pastime, part 6: Vulgar Errors I |
| (3 months later) | |
| Much of which we are most proud is our greatest weakness; the mistakes that we make often derive in large part not from casual intellectual vices but from habits of thought central to our identity. When we are torn between two great passions, those errors will come like as not from the places where they combine or conflict. One of the great ironies of Thomas Browne's life and work is that nowhere does this apply more, in his case, than in the book in which he aimed to debunk and discredit received opinions of all kinds. | Much of which we are most proud is our greatest weakness; the mistakes that we make often derive in large part not from casual intellectual vices but from habits of thought central to our identity. When we are torn between two great passions, those errors will come like as not from the places where they combine or conflict. One of the great ironies of Thomas Browne's life and work is that nowhere does this apply more, in his case, than in the book in which he aimed to debunk and discredit received opinions of all kinds. |
| Vulgar Errors (aka Pseudodoxia Epidemica) is a book we still read for its collection of the weird and wonderful – Browne takes apart with a forensic enthusiasm often not merited by the absurdity of the opinions he is confuting a variety of superstitions which by now would otherwise be long forgotten. It is a book full of much that is wonderful, charming and quirky – at the same time, the parts of it which Browne took most seriously are ones which have worn least well, and show him in a least favourable light. The trouble is that Browne was so keen to dissect obvious absurdity that it becomes ever more glaring when there are thoughts he does not dare let himself think, ideas that he dare not dissect. At precisely that point, his habit of rigorous thought becomes pettifogging support for ideas that will not – from our perspective – hold up; his taste for an aestheticised total view of the universe comes to seem most like whistling in the dark, or ignoring the wind blowing from Enlightenment. | Vulgar Errors (aka Pseudodoxia Epidemica) is a book we still read for its collection of the weird and wonderful – Browne takes apart with a forensic enthusiasm often not merited by the absurdity of the opinions he is confuting a variety of superstitions which by now would otherwise be long forgotten. It is a book full of much that is wonderful, charming and quirky – at the same time, the parts of it which Browne took most seriously are ones which have worn least well, and show him in a least favourable light. The trouble is that Browne was so keen to dissect obvious absurdity that it becomes ever more glaring when there are thoughts he does not dare let himself think, ideas that he dare not dissect. At precisely that point, his habit of rigorous thought becomes pettifogging support for ideas that will not – from our perspective – hold up; his taste for an aestheticised total view of the universe comes to seem most like whistling in the dark, or ignoring the wind blowing from Enlightenment. |
| It is so obviously ironic, in a book that devotes so much attention to the intellectual consequences of over-reliance on earlier writers as authorities, and on traditional beliefs handed down as wisdom, that Browne is incapable of applying the same rigour to the question of scriptural inerrancy. As far as he is concerned, there are several modes of getting things right, and one of the major ones is empirical observation, and another is common sense and rational inquiry – and a third is the word of God as delivered through revelation. And of these, the latter is the most important, even though in small things he will do his best to reconcile it with the others. | It is so obviously ironic, in a book that devotes so much attention to the intellectual consequences of over-reliance on earlier writers as authorities, and on traditional beliefs handed down as wisdom, that Browne is incapable of applying the same rigour to the question of scriptural inerrancy. As far as he is concerned, there are several modes of getting things right, and one of the major ones is empirical observation, and another is common sense and rational inquiry – and a third is the word of God as delivered through revelation. And of these, the latter is the most important, even though in small things he will do his best to reconcile it with the others. |
| Though he almost never addresses it here, and we know that he had volumes of Galileo in his library, Browne's reluctance to accept the Copernican theory is almost certainly based on this problem. Like other contemporaries – Milton for example – he did not want to accept that something could be demonstrated by observation that rendered one of the miracles of scripture impossible – the sun could not stand still for Joshua if the Earth moved round it rather than the other way around. As it is, he offers the feeblest of doubts against it – suggesting that if the Earth moved, things would not fall in a straight line. Some commenters on these pieces have been voluble in their attacks on Browne's intellectual integrity – in this respect, clearly, they have a point. | Though he almost never addresses it here, and we know that he had volumes of Galileo in his library, Browne's reluctance to accept the Copernican theory is almost certainly based on this problem. Like other contemporaries – Milton for example – he did not want to accept that something could be demonstrated by observation that rendered one of the miracles of scripture impossible – the sun could not stand still for Joshua if the Earth moved round it rather than the other way around. As it is, he offers the feeblest of doubts against it – suggesting that if the Earth moved, things would not fall in a straight line. Some commenters on these pieces have been voluble in their attacks on Browne's intellectual integrity – in this respect, clearly, they have a point. |
| More worryingly, he is far too prone to use the temptations of Satan as an explanation for any ideas he does not like. Again, scripture gives him an excuse to believe this – thus all the shades of Christian belief that wander from orthodoxy are down to the devil as is the atheism which he hardly believes anyone could really hold as a position. (In fairness, it does help that we have available to us mechanisms for a lot of observable phenomena which Browne's age thought needed a divine clockmaker to set in motion). Of course, in order to accept what the Bible said about the devil, Browne had to accept the existence of witchcraft, even if he thought that what the Witch of Endor summoned was a deceit rather than a dead prophet. This of course meant in turn that Browne had – in order to have his neat, tidy, God-filled universe – to be prepared to be the accomplice in the judicial murder of two old women. | More worryingly, he is far too prone to use the temptations of Satan as an explanation for any ideas he does not like. Again, scripture gives him an excuse to believe this – thus all the shades of Christian belief that wander from orthodoxy are down to the devil as is the atheism which he hardly believes anyone could really hold as a position. (In fairness, it does help that we have available to us mechanisms for a lot of observable phenomena which Browne's age thought needed a divine clockmaker to set in motion). Of course, in order to accept what the Bible said about the devil, Browne had to accept the existence of witchcraft, even if he thought that what the Witch of Endor summoned was a deceit rather than a dead prophet. This of course meant in turn that Browne had – in order to have his neat, tidy, God-filled universe – to be prepared to be the accomplice in the judicial murder of two old women. |
| I've harped on about this before, because it is important, and one of the areas in which we can learn from Browne to examine our own bad intellectual habits. If our ideas are going to lead to the shedding of blood, or the starvation of thousands in another country, we need to be pretty certain that we know what we are doing and that we are not sacrificing other people on the altar of our own desire for simple certainties. Perhaps, above all, we need to do this when we are, like Browne, setting ourselves up as arbiters of sense and nonsense. | I've harped on about this before, because it is important, and one of the areas in which we can learn from Browne to examine our own bad intellectual habits. If our ideas are going to lead to the shedding of blood, or the starvation of thousands in another country, we need to be pretty certain that we know what we are doing and that we are not sacrificing other people on the altar of our own desire for simple certainties. Perhaps, above all, we need to do this when we are, like Browne, setting ourselves up as arbiters of sense and nonsense. |
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