During the Enlightenment, thinkers of the time noticed that there
have been repeated cycles of reason and superstition in Western
civilization.  That idea isn't taught any longer (having been
replaced by the idea of progress) but it still seems to have some
validity.  Are we entering (or have we entered) a period of
greater superstition and a loss of knowledge?  The recent decline
of our school systems is not a good sign.

32 responses total.

I'm not sure about the cycles (I do believe that they happen, but I don't think
I understand why) but if you look at what's going on in the Soviet Union right
now, it's very interesting. I read an article (Scientific AMerican?) about the
growth of anti-scientific sentiment in the SU. Weird - they have faith healers,
snake oil salesmen, and all of the usual bullshit that you would normally
associate with backwoods mid 19th century cultures and they are apparently 
sanctioned by the government. I think that if the society is falling apart (for
whatever reason), people find solace in all sorts of weirdness.

   WE have faith healers and snake-oil sellers.  Or hadn't you noticed?

Yes, but they are not given official sanction in this country (at least not
outside of california and not, usually, north of the Mason-Dixon line). The
current explosion in the Soviet Union apparently has the blessings of the 
state. Even NU-SKIN is being investigated here.

  True enough.  Although our former president did rely a lot
on astrology, and had people in his cabinet who were convinced
that Armageddon was coming.  A couple of decades ago, that
would have been cause for a lot of ridicule.

wrong - the geezer relied on his wife who relied on astrologers

Putting into "cycles" is way too simplistic.  'Progress' itself is
a mode of thinking, a particular belief and approach to the social
and physical sciences that charges that we must always go ever-upward
and that more is always better.

'Not north of the mason-dixon line?'
You predjudiced ass.

Your greater detroit red-neck buttheads beat anything the beautiful south
has to offer.  Or hadn't you ever been to the south?

Not if I can help it.

Not only do we not have kudzu, they don't handle serpents and drink strichnine
(not even in Ypsi).
I have been in the south (Georgia, Louisiana, and a few other places) and I
like most of what I've seen, but outside of California, more weird things go on
there than here (Milwaukee excepted).

Progress and cycles are by no means the only possiblities.  Personally, I
believe in regress.
Actually, I think cycles is close - I believe that the overall level of
rationality is more nearly constant than this term is taken to mean, but
of course there are regional & temporal variations.

I offer as evidence the following assertion: though the enlightenment was
loud in denouncing "superstition" and announcing "reason", whether this was
more than jive is highly questionable.  The historical progress of the
French revolution is a case in point.  I believe we lucked out & missed the
Terror largely because of the relatively-available elbow room.

   That's one of the cherished myths of our society.  In the
words of historian Crane Brinton, there was "more than a touch of
the reign of terror" in the American Revolution.  Loyalists were
tarred and feathered, their property seized, and they were turned
into refugees. 80 Thousand loyalists fled to Canada: as a percentage
of population, our revolution produced more emigres than the French
Revolution with it's Reign of Terror: 24/1000 for the American
colonies, 5/1000 for France.

   Let's just say that the winners write history, and leave it at
that....

Emigration was easier here.  But how about a comparison of percent put to
death?  (I don't know the figures, I admit.)  My impression from reading
(a long time ago now) suggests that there were some pretty significant
differences.  One - feel free to correct me if my facts are nonfacts - is
the degree to which the issues changed from moment to moment.  Did we
undergo the same progression of increasingly radical governments, under
which more and more people were open to being arrested as supporters of
the old regime?

(And supposing I'm wrong about the American revolution, that would appear
to further support the point I was making.  Do you have a comment on the
main issue?)

BTW: I have a friend who truly does believe in progress.  If we discuss a
piece of SF (came up originally many years ago with Dune), he seriously
objects that it's just incomprehensible because how could the society be
so technologically advanced and so morally repugnant?

This has come out on so many occasions in so many ways that it's plain to
me that it's deeply believed at a gut level - even though it's inconsistent
(I think) with some of his other beliefs.  However, I haven't been able to
probe deeply enough to get anything like a coherent defense; it appears to
be so basic that justification is beside the point.

Does anyone out there seriously believe in progress & wish to offer any
ratioale?  I am interested but quite sceptical...

This might be a little off track here, so it may be worth starting
another item, but here goes.   I can see where your friend is coming
from.  Projects like sending fleets of starships into space and 
forming a federation of planets requires the effort of *lots* of
people.  I think you can only get that kind of cooperation if there
is a certain level of "morals" in a society.

So did building the pyramids.  Tyrannies can achieve immense
technological feats.  (But perhaps I shouldn't drift...)

   After all, which 'superpower' has a working, staffed space station
in orbit?  Not the one that has been free and democratic for a long
time.

   As to the 'reign of terror'.  Yes, there are differences between
the French Revolution and our own.  But there are more similarities
than we would like to remember.  The French Revolution has a
reputation for being bloody, but the Reign of Terror didn't kill
all that many people -- scholars have pointed out that it wasn't
as bloody (in terms of numbers killed) as it is painted.  The
element of arbitrary, almost random death was present (and as
davel pointed out, lacking in the American revolution).  More
people were killed during the period of the French revolution,
also. (0.14 per thousand population: compare that with the
numbers of emigres, 5/1000 for France and 24/1000 for the Thirteen
United States.  I do not have death figures for the U.S. French
population at the time is 28 million +-)

   Both revolutions were founded on ideas from the Enlightenment
philosophers, both were revolutions against their rightful
kings.  Both populations were split, with members of families
ending up on opposite sides, etc.  For example, in 1870
Washington's army had about 9000 soldiers, while the British
army had about 8000 loyalist Americans. The fight was not
against a 'foreign' power, but more in the nature of a civil
war, like the French Revolution.  [When reading about
the French Revolution, one finds maps showing regions loyal
to the Crown (the Vendee' most notably).  Has anyone seen
a similar map for the U.S. Revolution?]

    To summarize, there are more similarities between the
two revolutions than we would like to believe.  Revolutions
are a bloody business, and split the population, and
families.  The American revolution was not unusual.

This digression may be more interesting than the original point at issue.
However, to ask it a different way: while the Enlightenment glorified the
*idea* of reason, what kind of evidence can be adduced to show that
people on the whole (in Europe, or even in those sections of Europe - sorry,
didn't mean to exclude the USA either) were in fact more rational & less
superstitious than people at other times?

(If anyone's inclined to adduce deism as evidence, I state in advance that
I disagree; not that you shouldn't do so, but that it would be appropriate
to justify the claim that this is an intellectually coherent position.)

   I'd argue that the people at large remained mired in
superstition (and remain so to this day, although somewhat
less so than at that period.  The superstitions are also
different.)  The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement
that affected the (miniscule) educated elite, not a widespread
social movement that changed the thinking of the average person.

   After all, Enlightenment rationality attacked every sort of
religion as superstition.  Even today, most of the U.S. has
a religious population (above 90% everywhere except the Pacific
Northwest, for whatever odd reason).  In some places (Texas, for
instance) less than 5% of the population is unreligious.  As I
found out one day at work (in Houston) when we started discussing
Armageddon, and I found myself the only one who didn't believe
it was imminent, of the 7 people in my office.

I agree, in general; but my question was a bit broader.  Possibly I should
ask whether even the educated elite were more rational during the Enlighten-
ment than during (say) the Reformation or the late Middle Ages.  That's
maybe half my point; the other, related, half is whether the deification
of reason during the Enlightenment actually meant that reason was more
practiced even in the limited realm of fairly technical philosophy.  Or
was the rejection of "superstition" largely a labeling of rejected views as
superstitious so they could be forgotten?  (Similar examples from a later
era - during the latter 19th C. everything was "scientific"; "magnetism"
was adduced to explain anything and everything, and we had "scientific
socialism" and whatnot.)

    Based on Peter Gay's history "The Enlightenment", I'd
have to say that the elite were more rational.  Certainly
more so than in the Reformation and High Middle Ages.  Of
course, it depends on exactly what you mean by 'rational'
'reason'.  
     I'm reading a very good example of Enlightenment
reasoning right now -- a good, logically argued and
organized piece called "The Federalist Papers".  It is
a very 'rational' piece, in that when it claims something,
it backs up the claim with evidence, examples.  It has a
logical organization, and proceeds with it.  The first of
the papers lays out the broad strokes of the argument,
which was followed by the papers published after it.
(The contents and arguments are particularly interesting
given the light they shed on Maasricht and on the events
in the now-splintered Soviet Union.  'Publius' claimed
that certain unpleasant things would happen if the U.S.
confederation broke up.  They have in the former USSR.
They may in the possibly-to-be-former EC.)

   So, Reason was practiced in the fairly non-technical realm
of politics.  (It would be nice to see that happen again.)

   It's worth pointing out that, of the discredited 19th Century
'science', some is simply reasonable science which didn't
work out, and some is the kind of charlatanry we have
up to this day.  Look at Scientology, Dianetics, and
Creation Science.

Ummmm.  I agree up to a point (wrt Federalist Papers, I mean).  I'd be hard
put to come up with a comparable example from the middle ages, but I suspect
that's partly because I'm relatively unfamiliar with the period.  (I was less
than passionately interested, it was a long time ago, & not much was assigned.)
Regarding the Reformation, though, I can certainly come up with examples
which I would regard as having the characteristics you mention - Calvin, to
look no further.

I believe that some examples which could be cited would also be somewhat
implausible to us not because of their rationality but because of conventions
of style & vocabulary which are unfamiliar to us.  An example:  I've
lost count of the times I've heard the medieval discussion of how many angels
can dance on the head of a pin held up as evidence of irrationality &
pointless obsession with trivia.  But I think that's a bad rap to be
explained as unfamiliarity on our part with the issues involved.  The theory
of substance underlying the dispute is not now current, but it was a
rational attempt to address real philosophical problems (& was by no means
a medieval invention); given it, and accepting the existence of angels as
plausible, the question of whether their substance is material wasn't
especially untoward.  But even understanding the issues somewhat, your
average medieval scholastic treatise is hard for us to understand well enough
to judge on its merits without a lot of study - because the style is so
foreign to us.  (I recall that Plato - generally closer to our style - as
really hard going for an awful lot of bright undergraduates, but that (say)
Hume was much worse.)

And one more note for form's sake.  We've been tossing around labels - I admit
that I started it - but these periods are pretty vaguely defined.  As I recall,
some scholars would include the Reformation as part of the Enlightenment; I'm
not sure offhand what the commonly-cited dates on either are.  This surely
isn't too important to the matter under discussion but is worth saying lest
someone think we're viewing these purported cycles as having very clear &
sharp boundaries.

   Good point!  My impression is that the Reformation started 
with Luther's theses on the door at Wittenburg (Worms?) in
1517(?).    I don't have a good idea of when it ended, but
I don't think it lasted over 100 years. (When did the Counter
Reformation start?)  The Enlightenment seems to have begun
in the late 1600s/ early 1700s.  Of course, dates like 
this are rather fuzzy.  And the Enlightenment ends in
the early 1800s.  There aren't any signal events to delineate
the Enlightenment, unlike some other periods.

<zzzzzz>
My fingers obviously kept typing after I was asleep.  Wittenberg was 1517,
the Diet of Worms (where Luher was placed under imperial, not ecclesiastic,
condemnation) was 1521.  The Counter-reformation is sometimes pegged to the
Council of Trent, beginning 1545; if viewed as a separate movement in reaction
to the Reformation (for many purposes the proper viewpoint) it began later
and probably continued later.  (On the other hand, for some purposes it makes
sense to view it as the Church of Rome's attempts to clean up some of the
abuses to which the Reformation was, in part, a reaction; given that it may
often be proper to view the Reformation and Counter-reformation as parts of
a single movement.)  (Given my lapse of last night, I checked the above
dates before entering this.)

Possibly what I was thinking of was this: I have heard it argued that the
Reformation was simply the end of the Renaissance, not a distinct period.
How "Renaissance" came out as "Enlightenment" I can't imagine.  You're right
that there's more separation in time between Reformation and Enlightnment,
though not a *lot* of time in some cases, I think.  I for one would view
Puritanism & all it entailed in England as part of the Reformation, late
though it was.  Things just didn't get settled in England as quickly as, say,
in Germany.

After all that: was your "good point" purely related to the fuzzy-boundary
point?  That was an afterthought; I was hoping for something on the question
of context in appraising rationality.  This is a thornier issue.  I don't
mean, of course, that we can't make judgments of this sort; only that we need
to be a little careful & that we're prone to certain errors when we do so.

     My not-too-technical view of the Reformation pegs its end as the end of
     the
English Civil war, with the "Enlightenment" running from
about then to the end of the Napoleonic era.  I wouldn't
burn for this opinion though.
     Re the original question, as nearly as I can remember
it after the discussion, If by "reason" or
"rationality" you mean a search for a self-consistent, objectively verifiable
model of the world, and if by "superstitious"
you mean a search for a "spiritual" or "subjective"
world model relying on faith in the unknown
or unknowable, then I'd say that the cyclic phenomena idea becomes
compelling, and would furth posit a possible explanation.  Many
cultural phenomena are cyclic in nature.  Examples from this country
might include but not be limited to sexual freedom, and laissez-faire versus
political activism in government.  If this is so, it doesn't seem a great leap
of faith to look for cycles in the way people model their world.
     As an example from more modern history, let's look at
the time from 1960-present.  During the
sixties, Americans (I can't speak with any confidence about
those overseas) went through a profound period
of political, social and ethical change.  Riding
piggy-back on this movement was a rise in "spirituality", 
a lot of it in the form of bastardized Eastern religions.  During
the '70s, this trend waned.  But look at the '80's, and the
rise of such diverse cultural phenomena as the
Christian Right, astrology, channeling and aura-reading,
and the new attention being given to pagans of various
flavors.  The '80s also saw the blossoming of a seemingly
unrelated industry, that of role-playing games.  I think there's a
connection, though I'd be hard-pressed to prove it.
     Here is one possible example of a complete cycle,
from crest to crest of "superstition" in popular culture.  But the
original question dealt with a larger time scale.  But
with the advance of informational technology, these cycles
would be compressed, and their effects
would spread with the information about them.  This is
obviously a hypothetical, but if Rousseau had been more accessible
to the common people, his ideas might well have
spread through more of society, thus altering the
character of the French Revolution.
     Phew!
     Chris

  If there are cycles of "reason" and "superstition", I would tend to
ascribe them to man's tendency to reject a tool that isn't working in 
favor of trying something else.  In this case, neither reason nor
superstition has been as effective as we might like in solving the
puzzles  that we want to solve.  Predictably, when reason doesn't seem
to be working, superstition seems to be a more attractive approach and 
vice versa.

     In support of 25, how many times have we heard
the rise of Christian Fundamentalism ascribed to a 
loss of faith in our modern technological society
as a coherent and good model on which to
build a life?

   But aren't the cycles too short now to really be able to observe this?
I agree with Mike McNally on the cycles, but to me they are on the order
of hundreds of years.  What we've seen in just the last 80 are incredible.

You have to distinguish between (what you mean by) "cycles" and
"chaotic fluctuations". Cycles implies a rather orderly swing, with
relatively few component frequencies. Chaotic, however, can *look*
cyclic (things go up and down), but there is really no rhyme or
reason to them. We (humans) are often fooled by chaotic phenomena
(such as a lot of weather), and think they are cyclic (summer and
winter *are* cyclic, incidentally...;->).

   My impression is that the cycles are rather longer, too.
We're still on a religious wave, and will probably be
until the millenium passes.  What happened between the 60's
and 70's was more that people turned from Eastern religion
to traditional Christianity (somewhat), so there was less
press about 'odd' religions.  Many of us have lost our faith
in science over the last 20 years.  (Which is a good thing,
since acceptance of science shouldn't really rest on faith.)

Yeah, that's an interesting point to make.  If I get the point
of what you're saying, it's that "history repeats itself".  True,
how true.  It's now justa superstition-knowledge cycle, however,
I think it can probably be only described as the cycle of
existence, I guess.  True, history doesn't exactly repeat itself
(or maybe it does, we just look at too small a portion of time?),
but the similarities are uncanny.  

This is an interesting item - I'm glad I read it.
Re #25:  I agree that a good explanation for a "wave of spititualism" is that
people believe in what helps them deal with the world, and sometimes what we
call "rationality" doesn't work for everyone.  Someone brought up the 60s,
though, and that reminds me that what people choose to believe in also has
a lot to do with what they perceive the "majority" (or "establishment")
believes in.  People who feel oppressed tend to adopt beliefs contrary to
their oppressors, and people who feel comfortable try to agree with the
status quo.  When a lot of people feel oppressed, you see a growth of belief
systems which contrast the established one(s).  I think that perspective goes
a little way toward explaining the Reformation, too.

Man, i wish i were around when this item was juicy. The Enlightenment is/was
the best period in philopshy. When natural rights and reason ruled men's
thoughts. Good stuff.....

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