About "The Mind of Man"

I was once genuinely, if briefly, frightened as a pre-scientific teenager, by that vision of Whitehead (or Wittgenstein?) of the universe as a formless collection of unknown objects hurrying through the dark on unknowable purposes.

This was the extreme tree falling unobserved in the wood. Sun, stars and candle flames do not provide light, they just supply photons, more dark objects scurrying about in the basement of reality. As a philosophical position, it seemed reasonable.

But it was frightening, too, because I was already half-convinced that God was not lighting up the universe either. And if I did not have a privileged position because God put me there, then I was just more of this rushing about in the dark stuff.

But, understood or not, things most certainly exist. They bump into me. When kicked, they kick back. And, I am sure, I know that some of them are stars.

But imagine something with me. Imagine that inert, rough matter can gather itself together, get up and walk away, alive. Would this not be magnificent beyond the imagining of Man? Yet that was my way back from Whitehead. Man as man, without benefit of strange infusion nor esoteric soul-stuff.

Today, even more than then, it looks like good philosophy, and even better science, an almost inexorable logic still just beyond the reach of mind, but so tantalisingly close. Life inevitable, then the co-evolution of intelligence, language, self-awareness, building and rebuilding, each on the other. And on, to knowledge. And to wisdom. And power. And glory.

"The Mind of Man" wrote itself from glimpses of the glory of that logic.

In the absence of mind, the light of the stars provides no illumination. It is the light of mind that illumines the world around us. Thus, mind gives man access to his universe, to himself and to the rest of humanity.

And thus again, Man is not defined by posture or gait, nor by use of tools or fire, nor by any of the other accidents of appearance or competence. Man is the animal who listens when his friend speaks his thoughts, who sees what his friend describes, who feels what his friend sings about...

...and what we may become is no longer limited by what we are borne with, nor into, nor by the length of our lifetime, but by the depth of our ability to listen to our friends.

Man is defined by mind. And language is his soul.

The philosophy of science attracts strange moths to its light. Did you ever read the opening verses of St John's Gospel?

"In the beginning was the Word 
and the Word was with God 
and the Word was God 
which was in the beginning with God. 
All things were made by him;  
without him was not any thing made that was made. 
In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 
And the light shineth in darkness;  
and the darkness comprehended it not." 

Same story, different perspective

He said it better, is all.

But I had to try.