Science, race, religion, witch
hunts, and the difference between East and West: Interview with Eric Vandenbroeck
Webmaster of World
News Research: On July
20, 1998, the cover of Newsweek was titled, "Science Finds God." Is there a relationship between western science
as it came to be and religious belief?
Eric Vandenbroeck:
Using historical evidence the "origins" of modern science can
often be seen to lay in theology.
To give one example, in the latter
decades of the nineteenth century, the intellectual leadership of the
Presbyterian citadels of Edinburgh, Belfast, and Princeton were involved in the
production and reproduction of cultural space that played a crucial role
in the ways evolutionary science was encountered in these regions.
Religious machinations, of course, were
not the only conditioning factors in the regional rendezvous with evolutionary
biology. In the American South, the anti-evolution sentiments of the Charleston
circle of naturalists owed a good deal to southern racial ideology. The mono
genetic implications of Darwin's understanding of human origins did not sit
comfortably with the idea that the human race was composed of entirely
different species, each of separate origin. Moreover, the enthusiasm of many
southern naturalists for Darwin's most outspoken critic in America, the Swiss
savant Louis Agassiz, who argued for a range of racial centers
of creation, had an important influence.
This is not to say that mono genists were never implicated in racial politics. In the
case of the Charleston clergyman-naturalist John Bachman, a staunch adherence
to the biblical unity of the human race did nothing to dilute his belief in
racial hierarchy. But the willingness of the Charleston scientists to use
natural history for racial purposes discloses the relevance of regional
politics to the encounter with Darwinian theory. It was precisely because the
racial obsessions of the Old South had secured the antebellum benediction of
science that Darwin's account could now seem so threatening. Where southern
opposition to Darwin did most forcefully surface was in matters to do with
human origins. When Alexander Winchell lost his position at the University of
Vanderbilt in 1878 over his suggestion that Adam had been preceded by pre-adamite humans, it was the implication that those
forebears might have been black that contributed most to the furor. If that was where evolution led, the South
definitely did not want to follow.
In New Zealand, by contrast, racial
politics tended in a different direction. There Darwinism was espoused because
it was seen as justifying an ethnic struggle for life and as legitimizing the
settlers' routing of the Maori. Moreover, because
religious ardor rarely rose above the lukewarm, New
Zealanders responded with remarkable enthusiasm to Darwinism. The response of
Canadians, in a context similarly concerned with assembling an academic
infrastructure, was rather slower. Here the dogged digging for data-so
strenuously underwritten by a flourishing Baconianism of Scottish
derivation-together with Protestant-Catholic politico-religious struggles,
meant that little time was left for theorizing of the Darwinian or any other
variety. Besides this, the harsh physical environment of the Canadian North
remained what one writer called "the single greatest fact" in the
Canadian psyche. Endlessly resistant to agricultural taming and a monumental
obstacle to northward settlement, it did a good deal to dampen nationalistic
optimism at precisely the time the Origin of Species made its appearance. In
these conditions nature seemed anything but a creative developmental force.
The vast expanses of a harsh, sparsely
populated environment influenced the reception of Darwinism in Russia in a
rather different way. Here Darwin's metaphor of a struggle for existence was
resisted by the leading members of the Russian scientific intelligentsia. The
St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists embraced versions of evolution that
minimized the role of competition; they remained deeply skeptical
of the Malthusian elements in the Darwinian scheme. In part this reflected the
country's political economy, largely composed of peasants and landowners and
lacking a market-driven middle class. In a political climate favoring cooperation, advocates of evolution aimed critical
commentary at Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and unnamed "European
Darwinists." Politically, they preferred versions of the theory in which
"mutual aid" dominated. But the physical environment also had a role
to play. A meager population and extreme climatic
severity did not fit at all well with Darwin's picture of teeming life-forms or
Wallace's lush tropical vegetation. Organisms in the Russian North were not
packed into tiny, tight ecological niches. For Russian evolutionists, the
Darwinian struggle just did not square with the Siberian land and climate; it
seemed a theory made in, and for, the tropics. In Russia, Darwinism could
survive,. only without Malthus, for both ideological and environmental reasons.
The reception of Darwinism thus
displayed an uneven regional geography. In some cases religious commitment was
crucial. In others racial neuroses or political fixations controlled the
diffusion of the Darwinian mind-set. In yet others the contingencies of local physical
geography were directly relevant. Whatever the particulars, local circumstances
were decisive in shaping how regional cultures encountered new theories. In the
consumption of science, as in its production, a distinctive regionalism
manifests itself.
To leave this short conversation on a
more humorous note I should point out that even map making was to have an
effect on regional identity. Scientific mapping provided a new means of
collective spatial knowing suited to the needs of the state. So by imposing
national standards of measurement, the map brought France into cultural
circulation both on parchment and in perception. But when Louis XIV was shown
the results in 1682, he was shocked to learn that the coastline of France had
"shrunk" by more than a hundred miles in some places.
As for racism as such, Stephen Haynes examined
the history of the American interpretation of Noah's curse and pointed out that
a major flaw of many studies on racism going back to classical antiquity is the
confusion between aesthetic preference and racial prejudice. Disparagement of
black somatic features is not in and of itself racist. Only when a society's
internal structures are discriminatory and its ideology justifies such
discrimination can that society be considered racist. Otherwise we are merely
looking at "ethnocentric reactions to black otherness and mere expressions
of conformism to the dominant aesthetic values."
The difference between ethnocentrism and racism is
"a self justifying concomitant of economic,
political and cultural domination and exploitation." Without it the seeds
of racial prejudice will not germinate and take root.
Also the colors black and
white become in the early modern period the conduit through which the English
began to formulate the notions of "self" and "other."
It wasn't a recognition of color difference, or even
an ethnocentric preference, that was new in sixteenth-century England.
It was the appropriation of these differences to
support a racial ideology. "Traditional terms of aesthetic discrimination
and Christian dogma become infused with ideas of Africa and African servitude,
serving as racial signifiers. The very word "race," from the
beginning of its use in the English language reflected a particular way
of looking at and interpreting human differences, both physical and cultural.
It was intricately linked with certain presuppositions
of thought held by European colonists from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
centuries. During that period the word was transformed in the English language
from a mere classificatory term of biophysical variation into a folk idea. This
idea expressed certain attitudes toward human differences as well as
prejudgments about the nature and social value of these differences.
Webmaster of World
News Research: Why was there no witch hunt in Islam?
Eric Vandenbroeck:
This in spite of the fact that Islamic culture is saturated with magic and with
belief in devils and evil spirits, and Muslim theology accepts the power of
sorcerers to do harm. And indeed, according to Islamic law, death is the
appropriate penalty for sorcery.
However, belief in satanism and in a
widespread and dangerous network of agents of the Devil was early one, not
developed in Islam. Instead a major factor is that Islam was content to condone
the widespread practice of magic, in part because it posed no threat to Muslim
political rule, and partly, too, because many of these practices are
"embedded in" the Qur'an. And a second factor is that Muhammad
provided individuals with the means to be entirely secure against all forms of
magic and sorcery.
Muslims believe that by reciting the
last several sentences of the Qur'an following the five daily prayers, they
neutralize all evil forces. Finally, Islam failed to develop a satantic perspective for the same reason it failed to
develop science, Islamic theologians were not nearly so committed to reason and
rationality as their Christian counterparts later on.
Hence while Christian theologians could
not settle for the observation that magic simply "worked," their
Muslim counterparts could and did. That is the final and fatal irony about
European witch-hunts. As we have seen before, they were in fact the result of 'reason and logic' but applied to a
false premise.
Webmaster of World
News Research: Also, why early on in the Middle East there were no fears
of a Jewish conspiracy and domination as is the
case now?
Eric Vandenbroeck:
For that we best go to the late nineteenth century, as the crisis of the
Ottoman Empire deepened, the tide of European anti
Semitism began to wash over. In addition to the now more widely distributed
blood libel, a new theme emerged, already richly developed in Europe.
Then came the 1930s, a time of rising
racialist fevers in Europe - and a time, too, of rising friction between
Zionist settlers in Palestine.
Nazi teachings found receptive ears
among Arabs facing what they regarded as a "British-Jewish" plot to
seize their territory.
A variety of political parties and
movements sprang up in countries across the region that emulated the Nazi
system and Nazi symbols, organizing themselves in strictly hierarchical fashion
and embracing the nationalist and anti-Semitic tenets of Hitlerism.
They included the National Socialist Party in Lebanon and Syria, the Futuwwa in Iraq, the Young Egypt Society also known as the
"Green Shirts," and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Webmaster of World News Research: And finally, having traveled widely,what differences
between eastern and western culture have you noticed?
Eric Vandenbroeck:
They derive in good part from perceptual differences, what is attended to, and
in turn are driven by differences in social structure and practices.
China, Korea and Japan (the countries I
still regularly go) are developing out of a historical tradition of thought in
which holistic influences is emphasised, whilst logic was never formalized.
The Western tradition (Europe and North
America) ultimately developed out of the Aristotelian formalization of logic in
search of ultimate causes. Eastern students on the other hand are more likely
to make attributions based on context, are happier with contradictions, seeking
the "middle way" rather than rejecting one of two contradictory
positions and tend to make classification judgements based on family
resemblances rather than rules.
Thus our cultural upbringing may also bootstrap
our psychological abilities by providing us with an epistemological framework
which serves to predispose the interpretation of a set of circumstances in one
or other direction.
And a key functional advantage of the
"limited capacity" of consciousness is that it provides a single
interpretation of a visual scene, a quality that facilitates fast and direct
action. By reducing informational complexity, our cultural upbringing would
serve to facilitate direct action.
For example the process by which organisms
discover the relation between pairs of variables. Eastern students seem more
inclined to detect co-variation, and are more confident when doing so, than
western students. Similarly, field dependence, which reflects the ability to
separate the object from its surroundings, also varies across culture, with
eastern students demonstrating higher levels of field dependence than western
students.
That cultural differences may attenuate
our tendency to separate the figure from the ground, might suggests that we are
dealing with fundamental differences in how objects are distinguished and we
have no reason to believe that these differences do not correspond to
differences in how our brains express the relevant stimulus.
The difference between western and
eastern culture can also be seen by looking at the role of elders. In eastern
cultures, elders are the leaders in the home, so children do what the elders
say without questioning them. Any important decisions to do with a child are
generally made by an elder. When parents grow old, children are often the ones
who take on the responsibility for caring for them. Often in western cultures,
an elderly person’s welfare becomes the responsibility of the state in
collaboration with children or other close relatives.
Arranged marriages commonly take place
in eastern cultures. They are usually arranged by a couple’s parents or another
elder. They believe that love follows marriage, not the other way round.
This may shed light on an important
aspect of information processing associated with conscious awareness, the
binding problem. The binding problem refers to the attempt to understand the
process by which the brain in some way binds together, in a mutually coherent
way, all those neurons actively responding to a different aspect of a perceived
object. It seems on the face of it that there seem to be as many potential
interpretations of a visual scene as there are well-formed sentences in a
language.
It is only experimentation, something
for which there is currently an interest, which will determine whether the
environmental and cultural influences experienced throughout one's development
may have measurable consequences for the mechanisms through which conscious
experience is expressed in the brain. But consciousness and other good tricks
that our brains employ probably are an emergent property of the
interaction between the workings of innately specified brain modules and the
social system within which we exist.
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