[ExI] Fwd: a light in the wilderness

[William Flynn Wallace]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 1:05 PM
Subject: a light in the wilderness
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>


Where is the writing of today that can compare to this?  How modern are
these thoughts?  Who does it make you think of?

'The outlines came because a million voices called for them.  Human
knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen
more, each subtler than the rest; the telescope revealed stars and systems
beyond the mind of man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of
millions of year, where men before had thought in terms of thousands;
physics found a universe in the atom, and biology found a microcosm in the
cell; physiology discovered inexhaustible mystery in every organ, and
psychology in every dream; anthropology reconstructed the unsuspected
antiquity of man, archeology unearthed buried cities and forgotten states;
history proved all history false, and painted a canvas only a  Spengler or
an Eduard Meyer could vision as a whole; theology crumbled, and political
theory cracked; invention complicated life, and war, and economic creeds
overturned governments and inflamed the world; philosophy itself, which had
once summoned all science to its aid in making a coherent image of the
world and an alluring picture of the good, found its task of coordination
too stupendous for its courage, ran away from all these battle fronts of
truth, and hid itself in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from
the issues and responsibilities of life. Human knowledge had become too
great for the human mind.

All that remained was the scientific specialist, who knew "more and more
about less and less", and the philosophical speculator,  who knew "less and
less about more and more".  The  specialist put on blinders in order to
shut out from his vision all the world but one little spot, to which he
glued his nose.  Perspective was lost.  "Facts" replaced understanding; and
knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer generated
wisdom.  Every science, and every branch of philosophy, developed a
technical terminology intelligible only to its exclusive devotees; as men
learned more about the world, they found themselves ever less capable of
expressing to their educated fellow-men what it was that they had learned.
The gap between life and knowledge grew wider and wider; those who governed
could not understand those who thought, and those who wanted to know could
not understand those who knew.  In the midst of unprecedented learning
popular ignorance flourished, and chose it exemplars to rule the great
cities of the world; in the midst of sciences endowed and enthroned as
never before, new religions were born every day, and old superstitions
recaptured the ground they had lost.  The common man found himself forced
to choose between a scientific priesthood mumbling unintelligible
pessimism, and a theological priesthood mumbling incredible hopes.

In this situation the function of the professional teacher was clear.  It
should have been to mediate between the specialist and the nation; to learn
the specialist's language, as the specialist had learned nature's, in order
to break down the barriers between knowledge and need, and find for new
truths old terms that all literate people might understand.  For if
knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into
scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of authority; mankind would slip
into a new age of faith, worshiping at a respectful distance its new
priests; and civilization, which had hoped to raise itself upon education
disseminated far and wide, would be left precariously based upon a
technical erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class
monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology."

Written nearly one hundred years ago by:

Will Durant - from the introduction to the second edition of The Story of
Philosophy
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