THE "DARK" AGES?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 359, 10 May 1946, Page 5

THE "DARK" AGES?

Sir,-1I feel I must spring to the side of Mr. Tyndall in his lone stand against obscurantism. All his critics have harped on the few great names in the world of culture in the Middle Ages. If they went deeper into their references they would find that even these few produced only works approved — usually ordered — by the Church; and for a very good reason, Had their works ever so subtly questioned the -Church’s teachings they would have ‘made uncomfortable acquaintance with torture or death. So though culture within strict limits was allowed-even ordered-woe betide ‘anyone who went beyond those. limits. Oh, yes, Art and Education were encouraged in the Dark Ages-provided only that one could learn, parrot-like, without thinking, accept without question, create without true originality. I may be excused for feeling rather strongly about this. I am one of those who think, who question, who like to be honest about their beliefs, and I would undoubtedly have been tortured and put to death in some unpleasant way by the "Free Educationalists" of the Dark Ages. I ask Mr. Tyndall’s critics to put themselves in my place (if their imaginations will run to it), contemplate the horrors of Middle Ages "free thought"

-and think acain. ans

TWENTIETH

CENTURY HERETIC

(Auckland)

(Subject to Mr. Tyndall’s right of reply, this correspondence is closed.-Ed.) Sir-I write supporting your beleagured correspondent Mr. Tyndall, in his assertion of a medieval blackout. Although I feel that Mr. Tyndall was perhaps too sweeping in his total -destruction of the medieval wood, I think his critics have been so concerned with the loss of pafticular trees as -to overlook the poor sort of wood their trees made anyway. With the exception of those particular varieties well and truly identified in your columns recently, I agree in general with Mr: Tyndall’: statement about the sparsity of the medieval intellectual and cultural flora. What seems to be lost sight of in this controversy is the broad prospect of the whole of human history. Up to the time of the later Greeks, man was making steady progress along the line of evolutionary development and _ adaptation. About the 5th Century B.C., however, the Greek philosophers in their ivorytowered Academy became aware of man’s mental ability ‘and demonstrated its function. This was of. first importance in that it drew attention to the most useful aid man has in the living-adapting process. But the Greeks were so im- pressed by their discoverey that they applied their first creation of its disciplined exploitation, the significant concept of value, to mind and its products. They made ideas about the world and human society objective, absolute, and universal in space and time. The day-to-day experiences of physical sensation and practical thinking were considered of only transient value, and on a banal and unimportant level at that. Euclid conscientiously kept his geometry "pure" and wholly intellectual. Archimedes, an outstanding applied scientist, refused to record any but his theoretical discoveries, Their appplication to everyday

living was considered unworthy of mental activity, the provision of material for which was taken as the only value of knowledge. Thus was created a dualism between intellect and the dynamic factors in man’s make-up. Christianity perpetuated this attitude by accepting the tyranny of objective and abiding values and canalising the dynamic factors into adoration and charity, Western civilisation squirmed in this intellectual Procrustean bed for centuries. Finally such men as Roger Bacon, Galileo, Copernicus, da Vinci and Columbus dared to break with tradition and applied mental activity to the data they gathered from observing and feeling as human beings living in a real world instead of the world inherited from that classical knowledge and opinion which

i i i i i i all through the Middle Ages had been the staple of the Schoolmen’s barren intellectualism.. This fusion of intellect and instinctive interest in the immediate world gave rise to a zest for achievement and a vitality in the quest for information and experiment. Man began to be himself again, a living being that thinks, in place of the duality of living and thinking he was in the Middle Ages. Under the impact of dynamic thinking, social, economic and cultural values suffered basic ‘charges — the very mechanics of adaptation. Whether we have in fact become more adapted is yet to be seen; recent history would suggest we have not. But we do see life and change in our science, education, and thought, qualities essential to the adaptation of the species, but unknown during the Middle Ages. Even the lush flowering of our art is alive and fluxional, even though perhaps not as perfect as the rare orchids of the medieval night.

GURTH W.

HIGGIN

(Karori).