676 lines
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676 lines
50 KiB
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<head><title>Can art instruct science? William Blake as biological visionary</title></head>
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<body>
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<h1>
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Can art instruct science? William Blake as biological visionary
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</h1>
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<p>
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<strong><em>"As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty
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which experiences."</em></strong>
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</p>
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<p>
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<strong><em>"Seest thou the little winged fly, smaller than a grain of sand? It has a heart like thee; a
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brain open to heaven & hell...."</em></strong>
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</p>
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<p><strong><em>"Energy is the only life, and is from the Body.... Energy is eternal delight."</em></strong></p>
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<p>
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<strong><em>"Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?" He, laughing. answer'd: "I will
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write a book on leaves of flowers, if you will feed me on love thoughts & give me now and then A
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cup of sparkling poetic fancies; so, when I am tipsie, I'll sing to you to this soft lute, and shew
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you all alive The world, where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy." (1794)</em></strong>
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</p>
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<hr />
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<p>
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When I started studying William Blake in the 1950s, it seemed that only English majors knew who he was, but
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today, I think more people might recognize The Tyger as Blake"s than would be able to identify poems by
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Keats, Byron, Shelley, or Wordsworth. After 200 years, his writing seems contemporary, while other poets"
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works have become dated, and are valued mostly as cultural background. But I don"t think this means that his
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work is any easier to understand than it was when he wrote it. It means that other poets tied their writing
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to frameworks which have receded into the background, while Blake"s words were chosen in a way that allowed
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them to travel across the centuries without loss. Even though such universality is a goal of science as well
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as of art, most of what passed for science in the 18<sup>th</sup> century is today of only historical
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interest.
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</p>
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<p>
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Everywhere in our culture, authoritarian ignorance has disproportionate influence. Most of the published
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work in our culture treats the succession of authoritarian academic/scien- tific/political cults as if this
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were simply the way history and human nature work, and must work. But this mechanical historical process is
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only superficial, and below this surface, individuals and groups have always lived as though time behaved
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very differently for them. William Blake was a person who investigated this discrepancy between official
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cultural progression, and real human possibility, and his ideas might be able to do essentially what he
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suggested they could do<strong>:</strong> Provide a way to by-pass the officially established mechanistic
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view of reality, into a more fully human reality. Since Blake ridiculed established doctrines in medicine,
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chemistry, mathematics, and Newtonian physics, many people have dismissed him as a religious nut, but the
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way in which he criticized them indicates that he simply believed that they were bad science<strong
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>;</strong> he also criticized conventional art and morality, because he believed that they were destroying
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art and morality.
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</p>
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<p>
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A group that was active in the 1950s, called Synectics, developed several mental procedures that they found
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to be useful in teaching people to solve problems creatively. These included ways to improve thinking by
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analogy, to get people out of the ruts of conventional thinking. Personification, fantasy, biological
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imagery, "making the familiar strange," they found, seemed to tap into natural biological and mental
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processes to increase the ability to direct energy toward valid solutions to practical or artistic problems.
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They found that experts had to overcome their special knowledge before they could usefully solve problems in
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"their field," and they showed that much of the mystery could be removed from the creative process. Simply
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putting aside dogmatic mental frameworks was crucial.
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</p>
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<p>
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When you believe that you have adequate, expert knowledge, a passive, logical, deductive form of mental
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activity seems appropriate. Deduction always goes from a higher level of generality to a lower level of
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generality. Mental passivity therefore is likely to be associated with the belief that we have the decisive
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knowledge already stored in memory. If we believe that we <em>create</em> higher degrees of generality, as
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appropriate solutions to novel problems, then we are committed to an active mental life. Perception,
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combined with the discovery and invention of new patterns in the world, will be actively oriented toward the
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future, while the deductive, merely analytical, manner of thought will be tied to the past.
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</p>
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<p>
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Blake"s work, I think, is of continued and increased interest because he discovered something of great
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importance, namely, how to avoid dogmatisms of all sorts. Many students who are assigned to write about a
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poem of Blake"s are puzzled, and ask what it means. When they find out that they understand the words and
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the syntax, it turns out that the only problem was that they were taught that they had to "interpret"
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poetry. And that they don"t think he could have meant what he said. Most twentieth century students are too
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stodgy to accept Blake"s writing easily. In the 1950s, some people couldn"t understand Alan Ginsberg"s
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poetry, because they didn"t think anyone was allowed to say such things. That is the kind of problem
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students have with Blake.
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</p>
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<p>
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But it"s not just high school and college students who can"t believe that Blake meant what he said. I
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recently reviewed the comments on The Tyger that have been published in the forty years since I wrote my MA
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thesis on Blake, and it seems that these academic experts are having the same kind of problem. Dostoyevsky
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wrote about this problem in The Double"it is the problem of self-assertion, of seeing oneself reflected
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everywhere in the world. In Dostoyevsky"s story, Dream of an Odd Fellow, the theme is stated even more
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clearly"the world is very boring, and <strong><em>everything seems the same as everything else,</em></strong
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> until you can escape from a certain interpretive framework, to see what is really present to you. In
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Blake"s phrase, if the many become the same as the few when possessed<strong>,</strong> "more, more," is the
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cry of a mistaken soul<strong>;</strong> Blake said, over and over, that the many do not become the same as
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the few, that we are always moving into a new world as we learn more, except when we find ourselves in the
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mental manacles of interpretation.
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</p>
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<p>
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It"s easy to forget how pervasive philosophical interpretation is in everyday life and in the so-called
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sciences, and how much the sciences owe to long-standing theological commitments. Within the last
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generation, many influential people have said that facts don"t matter (and I suspect that their favorable
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reception has owed everything to that attitude.) In the early 1960s, there was a controversy going on
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between two schools of thought in linguistics and the philosophy of science, the Katz and Fodor controversy.
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I think Fodor was in the minority at that time, at least among the most prestigious professors in the United
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States. Fodor said that if we wanted to know about language, we should find out how the language is used, by
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watching a variety of people using it. His opponents said that, if they were competent to speak the
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language, they didn"t need to do anything except to think, to understand everything about the language.
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Fodor was an empiricist, his opponents were rationalists. In mathematics, most people are still
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rationalists. A large school of contemporary thought about computers, called "Artificial Intelligence," is
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operating within a rationalistic framework. Chomsky"s "generative grammar" was ultra-rationalistic, and was
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easy to set up in computers, though it was perfectly useless in itself. Some physicists hold a philosophy of
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science that is essentially rationalistic. In Plato"s time, <em>
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all knowledge</em> could supposedly be derived by introspection and the analysis of innate ideas, and
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education consisted in "drawing out" the knowledge that was innate. (Aristotle, who didn"t subscribe to
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Plato"s rationalism, has nevertheless been blamed for holding opinions that weren"t sufficiently supported
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by observation. This was probably because he occasionally relied on the opinions of others, rather than
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because of any serious defect in his philosophical-scientific method.)
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</p>
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<p>
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It"s important to remember that Rationalism, as used here, isn"t simply a "love of reason," which is what is
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often meant when people speak of "rationalism." In its historical use among philosophers, rather than being
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just a devotion to rationality, it is a specific doctrine which denies that experience is the source of
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knowledge. Historically, Rationalism has been closely allied with mysticism, as an affirmation that
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knowledge comes from a source beyond the ordinary world of experience and beyond the individual. At the
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present time, it serves authoritarian science rather than authoritarian theology, though the basic doctrine
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is the same.
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</p>
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<p>
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Several contemporary schools of literary theory, sociology, anthropology, even biology, trace their ideas
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back to Ferdinand de Saussure"s analysis of language, reading into it a highly rationalistic doctrine for
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which there is no actual basis. Saussure"s most important idea was that it is impossible to analyze language
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into its structural units without simultaneously seeing its use in relation to the world of meanings.
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Without its meanings, it just isn"t language. This is a profoundly anti-rationalist insight, since it shows
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that symbols take their existence from the experience of communication. But once the symbols exist, they
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function by the ways they establish distinctions, "this" being defined by the ways it has been used in
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distinction to "those," "that," etc. Every time a word is used, its meaning changes a little, since every
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use occurs in a new communicative situation. The contemporary rationalistic academic trends prefer to
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isolate only the principle of "meaning through opposition," since it supports the rationalistic illusion of
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operating strictly on the symbolic level. The "symbolic level" is only an abstraction, and doesn"t exist
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independently.
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</p>
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<p>
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A few decades ago, there was a movement called General Semantics that tried to make people more conscious of
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the way symbols relate to reality. Their ideas were based on a distinction between the "concrete" use of
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symbols, and the various levels of abstraction. These distinctions, however, made sense only within a
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certain theory of how language works, which I think was wrong<strong>: </strong>It asserted that, if time
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and space were divided into sufficiently small units, symbols and language could be precise and factual. It
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ignored the distinction between reality as experienced, and reality as represented in theory. If you keep
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subdividing a person, John Smith, into smaller moments, you find that there is nothing that represents the
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known person. The person that you are really referring to is actually a summation of many moments"the
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summation is the only "concreteness." The person you know is a synthesis, and it is that imaginative
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synthesis of facts to which the concrete symbol refers. Generality exists in our knowledge of the world, and
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the distinction between concrete and abstract is likely to create confusion, and reinforces a specific
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ideological system. Incidentally, the word "concrete" derives from the roots "grown" and "together," so it
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is very close in its core meaning to "synthesis." A well constructed generalization can be concrete, and a
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seemingly simple term, such as "electron," can be "abstract." (Blake said that a line, no matter how finely
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divided, was still a line; a line exists in our imaginative synthesis of the world, and it is only a denial
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of that synthesis that can divide its unity into "infinitesimals.")
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</p>
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<p>
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Mathematics has its value in representing certain relationships or patterns, but the rationalistic illusion
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that the meaning is independently contained and fulfilled by the "algorithm," has led many people into
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dogmatisms and serious errors. "Coefficients of reality" are often neglected. In practice, you are not very
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likely to be mistaken if you assume that mathematical descriptions of physical states are always erroneous.
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</p>
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<p>
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In the 17<sup>th</sup> and 18<sup>th</sup> centuries, progress in technology and industry was already making
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rationalism seem inadequate, but it still served the social purpose of allowing the ruling class to claim
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that the doctrines it wished to enforce had the support of timeless, innate and universal principles. There
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was supposed to be a Great Chain of Being, a hierarchy in which the king and the lords were just below the
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angels, and Reason was a mathematically clear description of the way things were, and should be. As the
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chain of being finally broke up at the end of the 18<sup>th</sup> century, the king brought in the Rev.
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Malthus to explain how war, poverty, and disease served the divine, or kingly, purpose, by controlling
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population growth, justifying misery and social antagonism in a new way.
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</p>
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<p>
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There were philosophers, such as John Locke and David Hume, who argued that much of our knowledge is gained
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through the senses, and there were satirists, such as Henry Fielding, who ridiculed the supposedly divinely
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sanctioned class system, but Blake took a much simpler, but more radical position, in saying that "Reason
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isn"t the same that it will be when we know more," and that reason is only the ratio of things that are
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presently known, and not the source of new knowledge. Blake kept the idea that experience is the source of
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knowledge, without reducing "experience" to the "senses." Blake didn"t deny the existence of some innate
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ideas<strong>;</strong> he didn"t think we were born as a "blank slate," but there is more to the mind than
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what we are born with. Imagination and invention and mental striving were able to generate new forms. This
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commitment to experience as the source of knowledge, rather than just analyzing a stock of "innate ideas,"
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made Blake"s world one that was oriented toward the future, toward invention and discovery, rather than to
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memory, established knowledge, and tradition. In its essence, it was antidogmatic.
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</p>
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<p>
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Rationalism is a system of symbols, in which each symbol is demonstrated to have its own proper place and
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status. To the extent that reason is held to be "innate," the system will be prescriptive and judgmental,
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rather than simply descriptive, explanatory, and illuminating. When an alternative system is proposed, it
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may be considered a "heresy," if the system from which it dissents is both rationalistic and authoritarian.
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</p>
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<p>
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Except for the dangers involved in committing a heresy, it is very easy to follow the implications of the
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system that one finds in one"s own mind, since self-assertion contains no principle of corrective
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contradiction. Essentially, <strong>rationalism consists of thinking something is true because you thought
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of it.
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</strong>
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</p>
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<p>
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I think of the philosophical Rationalists as being the bureaucrats of the mind, making everything tedious
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and boring and repetitive. Eliminating Rationalism, then actual individualized full mental life can begin.
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</p>
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<p>
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Even a heresy, if it is based on rationalism, is past-oriented, and dogmatic. Over the years, scholars have
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ascribed most of the important heresies, as well as mainstream religious ideas, to Blake. Whatever
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interpretive system the scholars favor, they are able to find it in Blake"s work. Calling Blake "a mystic"
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is especially useful when the goal is to claim that the critic is getting at the deepest levels of meaning
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in Blake, even though there is no clear meaning for the word in contemporary English, and Blake didn"t use
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the term in a way that suggested he would approve of having the word applied to himself.
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</p>
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<p>
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Blake"s notes written in the margins of books make it clear that he wasn"t simply adopting anyone"s
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doctrinaire opinions, and that he was able to find useful ideas in the thoughts of others even when he
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disagreed with them on important issues. Blake was not a rationalist, but he agreed with Bishop Berkeley"s
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understanding of the importance of distinguishing thought from language. He recognized that Descartes,
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Locke, Hume, Newton, had inadequate ideas about the nature of "matter," but he didn"t accept the simplistic
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doctrine of extreme rationalism that matter doesn"t exist.
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</p>
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<p>
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When people consider Leonardo de Vinci, they usually make the point that he had mastered every field of
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knowledge, and so the question of "sources" and "influences" doesn"t come up. In the 18<sup>th</sup>
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century, London was the cultural center of the world<strong>; </strong>
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European, Asian, and ancient cultures and ideas were discussed in books, magazines, and conversations. Being
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an engraver, a painter, a poet, and a political activist, Blake"s circle of acquaintances was as wide as
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anyone"s could be. England has had, probably since the 17<sup>th</sup> century or earlier, a counter-culture
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of opinionated dissenters. I suspect that the people who spent several years studying the classics for a
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university education were somewhat culturally deprived, relative to the people who participated in the rich
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unofficial culture, where new ideas in art, science, and philosophy were being discussed. London was also
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the center of a world-spanning empire, a tyrannical class-system, and an industrial-commercial revolution.
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The past and the possible futures could be seen from Blake"s vantage point.
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</p>
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<p>
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Among all the published opinions about things that influenced Blake, I have seen only a few discussions of
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his treatment of scientific ideas, mainly his rejections of Newton"s mathematical and physical assumptions,
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and very few comments on Blake"s position on the major philosophical controversies of his time. A biologist,
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Jacob Bronowsky, wrote a book about Blake, but Bronowsky"s own biological, historical, and linguistic ideas
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were relatively conventional. Even though Blake"s work is full of images from biology, the critics ignore
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the fact that Emanuel Swedenborg published very advanced biological research in the middle of the 18<sup
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>th</sup> century, and that Erasmus Darwin was known for presenting his ideas on biological evolution in
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poetry (especially Zoonomia). The title of Blake"s book, The Four Zoas, has apparently never led scholars to
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ask whether it had anything in common with Zoonomia. Even though Blake made many disparaging remarks about
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Swedenborg"s religious books, many people have claimed that Blake was influenced by Swedenborg"s religious
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doctrines, while ignoring the possible influence of the scientific work.
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</p>
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<p>
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Although the idea that "contradiction produces change" is associated with Hegel"s "Dialectic," it was an old
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and well known theme in philosophy. When Blake"s idea, that "without Contraries there is no progression," is
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seen in context, I think it is appropriate to think that to a great extent, Blake derived the idea from a
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consideration of the sexes. "Generation," so often discussed in relation to the biblical "fall of man,"
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always leads to the issue of the productive interaction of the sexual contraries. The issue of sexual love
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permeates Blake"s work. I suspect that Blake produced even more explicitly sexual work, but since most of
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his work wasn"t really published, when his wife died in 1831, the bulk of his manuscripts and paintings were
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subject to the whims of their unsophisticated owners. But on the basis of his existing work, it is
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reasonable to say that sexual and imaginative energy was the motor that Blake saw producing intellectual
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advancement. This male-female principle of change was more fully explored by Blake than by anyone
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previously, since he made it concrete and personal, rather than abstract. Working in history, human energy
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ran into the constrictive, limiting elements, the tyrannies of policy, philosophy, and commerce. For Blake,
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the interaction of energy with those limits became a philosophy of freedom and revolution.
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</p>
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<p>
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While Blake discussed the importance of perception in understanding the world, he was remarkable in the care
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he took to make it clear that he saw the world "all alive," in which grains of dust or sand, birds, worms,
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ants, flies, etc., perceived and experienced in ways that were not different from those of human life.
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Bishop Berkeley, who said that the material world outside the philosopher"s mind doesn"t exist, added as an
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afterthought that it exists in the mind of God. If consciousness is the only guarantee of existence, there
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was no problem in the existence of Blake"s world, in which everything was alive and conscious.
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</p>
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<p>
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Everyone finds it almost obligatory to describe The Lamb as a symbol for Jesus, but then they find the
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Tyger"s symbolic meaning more problematic, and"from Coleridge in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century down to
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the newest publications at the end of the 20<sup>th</sup> century"people are boggled by the "obscurity" of
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The Fly. But in that poem, Blake makes it clear that there is no obscure symbolism, when he says "then am I
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a happy fly, if I live or if I die," etc. The animal poems are expressions of Blake"s evolutionary,
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vitalistic, cosmology. The tyger, at least, would be too much for a creationist doctrine to handle. If worms
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and flies and ants are conscious and in the same situation as human beings, the bonds of sympathy and
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forgiveness are universal.
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</p>
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<p>
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In a world that"s alive and developing, new knowledge is always possible, and imagination has the prophetic
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function of reporting the trends and processes of development, illuminating the paths toward the future.
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Reason is subordinate to invention and discovery.
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</p>
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<p>
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The dualistic conception of matter as distinct from energy and consciousness is a constrictive illusion put
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in place by the forces of empire, and the living reality would be freed from the inert husks of the wrongly
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conceived natural world, when in the future the world was freed of tyranny. After Blake, it would be nearly
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another century before others would see that the crude materialism of Newton and the Natural Philosophers
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was essentially a life-denying culmination of the worst trends of official religious dogma.
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</p>
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<p>
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A complete survey of Blake"s references to Christianity would be voluminous, and not all of them are
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immediately clear<strong>, </strong>
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and require a careful placing in the context of the ideas that were being discussed in London at that time.
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But it"s hard to reconcile the common description of him as a mystic with his reference to "Old Nobodaddy
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aloft," or with his comment that Jehovah gives us a knock on the head, and Jesus soothes it. He always
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defines god in human terms, so from the conventional viewpoint, he would probably be considered as an
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atheist or pantheist, but he didn"t describe himself or his friends as atheists. When people called Tom
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Paine an atheist, Blake defended him against the charge. Other friends, Mary Wollstonecraft and William
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Godwin, were sometimes called atheists, but in their writings, they never expressed very unconventional
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religious ideas. When we recall that in the early 1990s, George Bush expressed the idea that atheism should
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be illegal, it is easy to imagine that people in 18<sup>th</sup> century England wouldn"t have felt that it
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was safe to be called atheists.
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</p>
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<p>
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In 1803, Blake apparently said something like "damn the king," while getting a drunk soldier out of his
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yard, and was tried for sedition or treason. He was acquitted, because his far more scurrilous written
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comments hadn"t been published, and it didn"t occur to the government to look for documentary evidence to
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support their case. The fact that he printed his own work, and sold only a few copies of his books to
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affluent friends, probably saved his life, but it accounts for his obscurity during his own lifetime.
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</p>
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<p>
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Tom Paine"s writing was published and widely read in prerevolutionary America, but he was considered a
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criminal in England, and Blake was credited with saving his life by helping him escape to France.
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Politically and ethically, Blake"s writing is similar to that of Paine, Godwin, and Wollstonecraft (often
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called the "first feminist"), but his language is usually more vivid. It was probably the clarity of his
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political opposition that made his work unpublishable during his lifetime. The first "complete" collection
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of his work was published in 1927, and until that year, very few people had seen more than a few of his most
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famous poems.
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</p>
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<p>
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Blake printed his work by hand, without a press, by writing the text backwards on copper plates, surrounded
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by his drawings, and then etching away the surrounding copper, so that the image remained elevated, and
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could be inked and printed as if it were a wood-block. If he hadn"t devised this method for printing a few
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copies of his books, it isn"t likely that much of the work would have survived.
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</p>
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<p>
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Shortly after the French Revolution, William Wordsworth was associated with the Blake-Wollstonecraft-Godwin
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|
group"s defense of the revolution, but he moved away from the ideals of that group, and adopted more
|
|
socially acceptable ideas. He finally became England"s poet laureate. Liberty, equality, and brotherhood
|
|
were replaced by blandly conformist ideas.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
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|
The type of individualism that Wordsworth came to advocate was interesting because it was a rejection of
|
|
exactly that part of Blake"s belief that Blake considered to be the essence of Christianity, namely,
|
|
forgiveness, brotherhood, and bonds of sympathy connecting all beings. In its place, Wordsworth adopted a
|
|
memory-centered doctrine. During Wordsworth"s lifetime, his ideology was exceedingly successful, but its
|
|
rationalistic overtones have kept it tied to the past<strong>;</strong> it had nothing to offer the future.
|
|
I think we can get some insight into Wordsworth"s mind by considering that, on the basis of reading Blake"s
|
|
<em>Songs of Innocence and Experience,</em> he decided that they were written by an insane person. (Blake
|
|
was aware that slow-witted people, who couldn"t follow unconventional thoughts, often considered him to be
|
|
crazy.}
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|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
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|
Everywhere in Blake"s work, it is clear that he never underestimated the possibilities of the future, and
|
|
never imposed false limits onto anything, but he didn"t tolerate vagueness or empty abstraction. Sharp
|
|
definition was essential, and unique particulars were the basis for beauty and knowledge.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
For Blake, the dialectical principal was a feature of the world itself, but it also informed his method, his
|
|
technique, and his "rhetoric." One of Blake"s powerful insights was that intellectual clarity is achieved by
|
|
contradiction, opposition, contrast, making distinctions as well as comparisons. The principle of
|
|
intensification through opposition had special features when it was developed in his painting and writing.
|
|
Blake gave much of the credit for his style of thinking to the process of spending thousands of hours in the
|
|
practice of etching. The image you create in the conventional etching technique is made when acid "bites"
|
|
into the lines that will be inked<strong>;</strong>
|
|
in Blake"s new technique, the image is made permanent by the acid"s corroding away of everything except the
|
|
sharply defined image. The decisive, dividing, line is essential. Anyone who has spent even a few hours of
|
|
intense effort working in dry-point or etching understands that, when you stop, the appearance of the world
|
|
is altered by changes that have taken place in your eyes and brain. Often, his "metaphors" are literal
|
|
imaginative insights that have great generality. This kind of knowledge distinguishes the work of a
|
|
craftsman from that of an academic. The probability is that Blake"s art led him to appreciate compatible
|
|
ideas when he found them, and it doesn"t seem likely that he was "influenced" by them the way an academic is
|
|
influenced by books, since Blake had his own "sources" that are generally neglected by intellectuals.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Blake found that contrasts made meanings clear, and made language vivid. Heaven and Hell, Clod and Pebble,
|
|
Lamb and Tyger, Angel and Devil, Greek and Jew, Innocence and Experience, presented contrasts that
|
|
encouraged the reader to think about the range of possibilities Blake had in mind. He was always consciously
|
|
trying to energize the reader"s mind to get out of dogmatic ruts, to look at things freshly, so he often
|
|
used the polarities in ways that would surprise the reader, ironically reversing familiar references. A
|
|
pious commonplace would be contrasted with the disturbing realities that it normally hid. Both in his
|
|
writing and in conversation, Blake was often playful and teasing, and over-serious people have usually taken
|
|
him too literally.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Academic commentators are so often attached to their erudite pieties that it seems that they can"t read
|
|
English. In the 18<sup>th</sup> century, a clod meant just what it means in the 20<sup>th</sup> century,
|
|
either a lump of dirt, or a lunkhead. In the Clod and the Pebble, when the Clod speaks the properly
|
|
sanctimonious phrases, justifying its oppressed misery with a dogma, we have a clue regarding Blake"s
|
|
attitude, but then he makes it perfectly clear by speaking of Heaven"s despite, literally, Heaven"s malice
|
|
(a concept that appears many times in different forms in other parts of his work). Either the commentators
|
|
assume that the word "despite" had a different meaning in the 18<sup>th</sup>
|
|
|
|
century (it didn"t), or they assume that Blake made an error of diction, because they choose to alter the
|
|
meaning to "despite Heaven." Just as judges aren"t allowed to change the wording of the laws that they
|
|
interpret, literary experts aren"t allowed to rewrite texts to make them better suit their interpretation.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
The same insensitivity to the world of concrete experience that has allowed so many commentators to read
|
|
their own ideas into Blake, ignoring what he said in plain English, makes satire and irony and sarcasm
|
|
inaccessible to many people who otherwise seem intelligent<strong>;</strong> this is especially apparent
|
|
when scientists comment on literature. Forming an imaginative synthesis of the writer and his meaning
|
|
requires mental flexibility and energy, rather than just analytical acuity.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Everyone who described Blake"s physical appearance remarked on his large head. Blake commented that he
|
|
didn"t like to travel or undergo physical strain, because of its effects on his health. The brain is an
|
|
energetically expensive organ, which consumes large amounts of glucose. A very large brain puts a special
|
|
burden on the liver"s ability to store energy, and is likely to make a person conscious of physiological
|
|
processes. Blake"s descriptions of the process of seeing show that he was integrating his experience into
|
|
his knowledge, describing brain physiology, incorporating his perceptions and the best scientific knowledge
|
|
that was available to him, into a philosophical description of the place of conscious life in the world. The
|
|
pulsation of an artery was the unit of time, a red blood corpuscle was the unit of space, enclosing eternity
|
|
and infinity, eliminating arbitrary and abstract entities, and placing human life within cosmic life, while
|
|
revealing cosmic life within the individual.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
The idea of a "biological cosmos" seems strange only when it is considered against an ideology which
|
|
maintains that life is alone in an immense dead universe. The assumption of a dead, unintelligent, randomly
|
|
moving physical world is the creation of a series of theological ideas, which Blake perceived as essentially
|
|
Satanic. Blake used the language of these theologies, but inverted them, showing the ways they were used to
|
|
obscure reality, and to impose a perverse way of life onto the living world.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Fred Hoyle, the astronomer, said "If this were an entirely scientific matter, there is little doubt from the
|
|
evidence that the case for a fundamentally biological universe would be regarded as substantially proven."
|
|
(1989)
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Over the last few decades, biologists feel that they have established the "biochemical unity of life," in
|
|
which biochemical cycles and genetic codes are widely shared. The idea of ecological interdependence has
|
|
come to be recognized as an essential part of life, or (as demonstrated by Vernadsky, and suggested by
|
|
Hoyle) a cosmic principle. Blake often called himself a Christian, and defined Christianity in many novel
|
|
ways, as art, love, politics, science, but specifically, in his version of Christianity, forgiveness was an
|
|
essential idea, and nothing lives for itself only. Blake"s Christianity as Art was a concrete part of
|
|
living, and he ridiculed some of the abstract theosophical definitions of god that were common in his time.
|
|
When his remarks are considered against the background of Spinozistic pantheism, it is the intensification
|
|
and personalization, the avoidance of abstractions that could permit the attribution of passivity or
|
|
inertness to any part of reality, that stand out. When he said that the world is alive, he meant that it is
|
|
a defect of perception that makes Newton"s world seem passive, empty, and dead. A few years ago, a movement
|
|
that called itself "deep ecology" tried to absolutize the ideas of ecology<strong>;</strong>
|
|
Blake"s view of the interactive unity of life was as well thought out as any that preceded Vernadsky"s
|
|
cosmology.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Rather than elevating any of the ideas of Christianity to an absolute doctrine, Blake used them as parts of
|
|
an organic whole. The principle of forgiveness was presented as the appropriate response to a world which is
|
|
always new. The desire for vengeance comes from a delusive commitment to the world of memory. Virginity is
|
|
constantly renewed in the world of imaginative life. While Blake said that you can"t forgive someone until
|
|
they stop hurting you, the desire to be forgiven indicates that there is an opportunity to resolve the
|
|
problem.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Although most mathematicians and computer-so-called-scientists are committed to a rationalistic,
|
|
past-oriented view of their mental operations, and some scientists accept that ideology along with
|
|
mathematics, the valid, discovery-oriented sciences have to be future-oriented. A first step in avoiding
|
|
dogmatic assumptions might be phrased as "remembering what you are," a living being, and asking how you know
|
|
things<strong>: </strong>
|
|
The interaction with other beings, exchanging energy and information with the environment, experiencing
|
|
yourself in the world.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Holistic medicine and holistic psychology came into existence as attempts to overcome the dogmatic
|
|
compartmentalization of reality that is endemic. Whenever rigidity is a problem, looking for ways to create
|
|
new patterns that by-pass the petrified pattern can lead to a solution. Parkinson"s disease and other
|
|
physical problems have been approached using techniques of intensified or varied stimulation. Increased
|
|
stimulation--even electromagnetic stimulation-- appears to open alternative patterns. Music, dance, and
|
|
swimming have been used successfully to improve fluidity in various neurological diseases. Kurt Goldstein
|
|
(<em>The Organism</em>) worked with brain injuries, and found that the brain has a variety of ways to
|
|
restore a new balance. Raising the amount of energy that"s available can allow natural processes to create a
|
|
better synthesis. Political and social problems that are culturally determined may follow rules similar to
|
|
those of organic brain disease.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
Optimal assumptions, when assumptions are necessary, are those that don"t commit you to undesirable
|
|
conclusions. For example, in the 1950s, some people made the assumption that nuclear war was inevitable, and
|
|
made large investments in "fallout shelters," which were conceived in terms of world war II bomb shelters,
|
|
and so resources were diverted from other investments, such as education, which didn"t in themselves
|
|
foreclose future possibilities. Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-limiting assumptions are often built
|
|
into supposedly practical activities.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
The assumption that cancer is genetically determined, and the assumption that regeneration is impossible in
|
|
the heart or brain, are self-limiting assumptions that have been immensely destructive in biology and
|
|
medicine. There was no reason to make those assumptions, except for the rationalist culture. Physics,
|
|
biology, and cosmology are manacled by many unnecessary assumptions. The limits of adaptation, the extent of
|
|
life"s potential, can"t be discovered unless you look for them, but the sciences have built many artificial
|
|
limitations into their systems.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Avoiding unnecessarily limiting assumptions, looking for patterns rather than randomness, looking for larger
|
|
patterns rather than minimal forms, avoiding reliance on verbal and symbolic formulations, expecting the
|
|
future to be different"these are abstract ways of formulating the idea that the world should be seen with
|
|
sympathetic involvement, rather than with analytical coldness.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Almost everything which has been denounced as "teleological" has turned out to be much closer to the truth
|
|
than the mechanistic views that were promoted as "more scientific," and many horrors have been committed by
|
|
people who have said that nature shouldn"t be "anthropomorphized," that subjective feelings shouldn"t be
|
|
attributed to "the experimental material." The surgeons who operate on babies without anesthesia are
|
|
operating on the assumption that any being which can"t say "I"m going to sue you" is unable to experience
|
|
pain.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
When we analyze the ideas of chemical reaction equilibrium (burning something, for example), or biological
|
|
adaptation or growth or learning, and see that they are strictly directional in time (which is the basic
|
|
meaning of "teleological"), and consistent with Aristotle"s description of causality, we can see the
|
|
mysticism that has been imposed on our culture with the idea that "teleological explanations are
|
|
unscientific."
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Blake was clearly aware that the reason for making limiting assumptions was to maintain control, and to
|
|
profit from another"s suffering. Seeing that the sadistic assumptions that were put in place to regulate
|
|
human life rested on a dichotomizing of soul from body, Blake"s correction was to replace them with a unity
|
|
of consciousness and substance, a living world rather than a dead world.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
An imaginative study of his work has the potential to rouse one"s abilities and to open an unlimited world
|
|
of possibilities. "I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at
|
|
Heaven"s gate, Built in Jerusalem"s wall." Blake knew that his work, like anything new in the world, could
|
|
be understood only by an active mental process.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Every communicative act is original, and understanding it is an invention, a projection, <strong><em>an
|
|
imaginative synthesis.</em></strong> We can sometimes finish another person"s sentence, the way we
|
|
anticipate the notes in a melody<strong>;</strong> we predict the intended meaning. If the symbols carried
|
|
the meaning in a passive rationalistic way, the person receiving the symbols would receive nothing new. <em
|
|
>Intellect is a process of imaginative synthesis, or it is nothing.</em>
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Blake devised "a system" that would make it possible to think about the world without unconsciously making a
|
|
commitment to the false limits. He showed, by working within this new philosophical synthesis, that Art,
|
|
Science, and Politics are structurally and substantially interdependent. The question I asked in the title,
|
|
"can art instruct science?" isn"t the right question once you see the world from Blake"s perspective, since
|
|
Science is Art, and both must be based on experience and imagination.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Blake used, in a new way, the things that were available in his culture, to reveal the process of creation,
|
|
on all its levels. He consciously used language in a new way, to free the reader from the stereotypes of
|
|
conventional language. His methods are relevant, as he knew they would be, for other times and situations.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p></p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
<strong>
|
|
NOTES AND QUOTATIONS</strong>
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
I happened to read Swedenborg's scientific work just as I was getting interested in concentrating on
|
|
becoming a biologist, and I realized that it was his scientific knowledge that shows up in Blake's imagery,
|
|
far more than his theology, which Blake obviously despised. By chance, just after I finished my master's
|
|
thesis on Blake, I got a job at a Swedenborgian college (Urbana University), where I saw in traditional form
|
|
the small minded theologism that Blake had seen in Swedenborg. As a result of those experiences, I greatly
|
|
appreciated the book, <em>
|
|
The Heaven and Hell of William Blake,</em> by Gholam-Reza Sabri-Tabrizi, which apparently hasn't been
|
|
very well received academically.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Blake"s imagery indicates that he had a great interest in the physical and biological sciences, and he
|
|
apparently had some direct contacts with the leading scientists in London, some of whom are lampooned in <em
|
|
>Island in the Moon.
|
|
</em>Some of Swedenborg"s discoveries were probably discussed in these groups.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
Although Swedenborg"s original works in anatomy and physiology were probably his most impressive
|
|
contributions, he was also a pioneer in paleontology, cosmology (the nebular hypothesis, in particular),
|
|
magnetism, crystallography, metallurgy, and endocrinology.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
E. P. Thompson"s <em>Witness against the Beast</em> is an extremely valuable source for clarifying Blake"s
|
|
vocabulary.
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
<em>Synectics,</em>
|
|
W. J. J. Gordon, Harper & Row, 1961. Describes how metaphorical thinking was used for solving practical
|
|
problems, in the Synectics Research Group in Cambridge, Mass.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
In the "scientific" philosophies of Blake"s time, it was common to speak of matter and its primary and
|
|
secondary qualities. Blake understood that this view of matter was a derivative of awful theologies<strong
|
|
>:</strong>
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
"And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
They take the Two Contraries which are calld Qualities, with which
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Every Substance is clothed, they name them Good & Evil
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Not only of the Substance from which it is derived
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
A murderer of its own Body: but also a murderer
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Of every Divine Member: it is the Reasoning Power
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
An Abstract objecting power, that Negatives every thing
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
This is the Spectre of Man: the Holy Reasoning Power
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
And in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of Desolation"
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
[Jerusalem, 10]
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
What is a Church and What Is a Theatre? are they Two & not One? can they Exist Separate?
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
Are not Religion & Politics the Same Thing? Brotherhood is Religion
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
O Demonstrations of Reason Dividing Families in Cruelty & Pride! [Jerusalem plate 57]
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
And he who takes vengeance alone is the criminal of Providence;
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
If I should dare to lay my finger on a grain of sand
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
In way of vengeance; I punish the already punishd: O whom
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
Should I pity if I pity not the sinner who is gone astray! [Jerusalem plate 45]
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
<strong>"Imagination has nothing to do with memory."</strong> (comment on Wordsworth). <strong>"Knowledge is
|
|
not by deduction, but Immediate by Perception or Sense at once."</strong>
|
|
(comment on Berkely).
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
With Demonstrative Science piercing Apollyon with his own bow! J12.14; E155
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
Generalizing Art & Science till Art & Science is lost. J38.54; E185
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>
|
|
"For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars"
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
Since the difference between a Rationalistic view of the world and a creative view is largely a question of
|
|
the reality of time, it"s worth mentioning the work of an astronomer whose cosmological view was based on
|
|
the reality of time:"Possibility of experimental study of properties of time," N. A. Kozyrev, Russian,
|
|
September 1967, USIA document in English, 49 pages, 1971. J. Narlikar more recently did similar work,
|
|
including his collaboration with H. Arp, described in Arp"s<em>
|
|
Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology, and Academic Science,</em> Apeiron, Montreal, 1998.
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
<p>
|
|
© Ray Peat 2006. All Rights Reserved. www.RayPeat.com
|
|
</p>
|
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