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| What Do They Say About Life?
Sami Saeed LIFE represents a complex and multifaceted
reality that defies conceptual formulation. But the human mind,
perennially engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, seeks to impose meaning
on the chaos of experience, shape an orderly picture of life and evolve
coherent patterns of thought from a plethora of amorphous observations. This is the central paradox that underlies
the relationship between life and letters and makes the human quest for
truth so exciting and interminable. Infinite complexity and continuous change
mark the vast panorama of life. It has many facets and dimensions which
multiply, as in a folding mirror. The fabric of knowledge is woven of
threads as diverse and tangled as life itself. It seeks to explore the
entire spectrum of life - the hidden mysteries of the physical universe,
the interaction between man and his environment, the relationship between
individual liberty and social order, the spiritual recesses of mind that
transcend mundane reality. Knowledge is a systematic exploration of
reality as refracted through the human mind and senses. As such it is an
account of life in human terms. The vast body of knowledge that exists
today has accumulated over the centuries; it is the treasure-trove of
languages and literature, social and natural sciences, history and
philosophy, folklore and the fine arts, mythology and ideology. The long
perspectives of time, the complex processes of life, the changing aspect
of society and culture, all this is the stuff of knowledge. In this
exciting and endless pursuit, however, man remains the permanent point of
reference. There has been a phenomenal growth of
knowledge in the modern world. The last 500 years, since the European
renascence, have surpassed all previous ages in this regard. Urged by
curiosity and restless to search for new horizons, man has gone to the
corners of the globe, cruised through space and probed the mysteries of
the universe. The mastery of man over the forces of
nature has immensely increased and the resources at his disposal grown
apace. Side by side, new forms of social and political organization have
evolved, making man the captain of his own soul and the master of his own
destiny. The English thinker Francis Bacon summed up
the spirit of the new age by rejecting the scholastic theory of knowledge.
There is a famous passage in his book, “The Advancement of Learning”,
where he compares the scholastics with spiders, weaving webs out of their
own heads without relating themselves to the life around, and the webs
were admirable for the fineness of thread and workmanship but without any
substance and utility. Knowledge, he affirmed, should not be a rehash of
useless speculation but address the actual problems of life and help
improve the human condition. As the complexity of life increased and its
problems multiplied, there was a burgeoning of new sciences and
disciplines, deepening man's understanding of himself and extending his
domain over the physical universe. Physics discovered the natural laws
which govern the universe. Geology broke the earthen crust for infinite
riches that changed the destiny of many a people. Psychology delves deep
into the mind and explores the motivation of human behaviour as physiology
unveils the mysteries of human body. Anthropology harks back to the
origins of man in remote antiquity as archaeology helps history
reconstruct the past by unearthing buried cities and forgotten
civilizations. Not only have the frontiers of knowledge
expanded and its scope widened; knowledge also came closer to reality as
beliefs and superstitions held by man for ages were exposed to the test of
scientific analysis. Facts were sifted from fiction and myths replaced by
reality. Darwin by his theory of evolution rejected the theological notion
of the chain of being. Frazer looked into the origins of man and
reconstructed the remote antiquity of life. Freud questioned the sanctity
of human consciousness and traced the mainsprings of human action in the
subconscious. In sum, the traditional worldview was mercilessly flouted
and new ideas gripped the human mind. Modern science is based on the powers of
human reason to sift the data of the senses. It is underpinned by the
empirical theory of knowledge, which regards sensory data as the ultimate
source of truth. But the empiricist philosophy created its own antithesis.
The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in his monumental work “The
Critique of Pure Reason”, brought out the inadequacy of science to
penetrate the ultimate reality of things as it was exclusively based upon
sensory impressions. According to him, knowledge which comes through the
inherent structure and nature of the mind is more authentic than knowledge
which is refracted through the distorting and illusory channels of the
senses. Under the impact of a mechanical theory of
knowledge, whereby the human mind is just a passive recorder of sense
impressions and does not involve any creative process, the study of man
himself deviates from the truth by ignoring his own essential nature. The
dimension of transcendence is lost to him. To borrow the lucid imagery of
M H Abram's “The Mirror and the Lamp”, the human mind is reduced to a
mirror which simply reflects objective reality and not a lamp which sheds
radiance on the world around. The Iranian scholar, Syed Hussein Nasr, in
his work “The Plight of Modern Man”, brings out this point very
forcefully: "The modern man has known the world in externalized terms
and has sought to reconstruct an image of himself based on his external
knowledge. He sees the world as devoid of spiritual horizon, not because
there is no such horizon present, but because he lives at the rim of the
wheel of existence and is forgetful of the axis". The growth of knowledge has brought
specialization in its wake. Specialized knowledge concentrates on one
aspect of reality; it offers more and more about less and less; it fails
to relate part to the whole. The repository of specialized knowledge has a
limited horizon, his vision is piecemeal, and his thoughts couched in
esoteric terminology. Bertrand Russell, in his essay “Knowledge
and Wisdom”, distinguishes between the two. Knowledge is a collection of
facts, while wisdom comes by relating facts with one another. It is in
this sense that fragmentation of knowledge has led to a loss of
perspective. Knowledge without wisdom, concluded Russell, is dangerous. Modern philosophy makes watertight
distinctions between the material and the spiritual, the human and the
Divine, the intellectual and the emotional. As Aldous Huxley, in his book
“The Human Situation”, puts it: "This way of thinking tears apart
the closely-knit web of reality and turns it into nonsense".
Similarly, modern psychology has disintegrated human personality and
reduced man to "a heap of broken images". The theme of absurdity
of existence recurs throughout modern literature and is clearly seen as
rooted in the fragmentation of life and knowledge. Man has wielded immense power through
increased knowledge. But, paradoxically, he has failed to gear his vast
body of knowledge to human values and purposes. Moreover, advances in
science and technology coupled with the decline of moral and human values,
have made life rich in mechanisms but poor in purposes. Many thinkers
glumly believe that this is where the seeds of the destruction of modern
civilization lie. These, however, are facts of life which
cannot be wished away. What needs to be done is to relate the vast body of
knowledge that man has acquired with the wider approach to human problems
and purposes. That is what James Harvey Robinson called the humanization
of knowledge. Who are we? What is the meaning of human nature? How are we
related to the planet we inhabit? How are we to live together
satisfactorily? How can we develop our individual potentialities? This
kind of approach is important to the modern man who has gained immense
power through knowledge but has lost the vision and wisdom to harness it
for the largest good of the greatest number. The objective of knowledge should be to
present an integrated picture of life. Intellect and passion, reason and
intuition, objective knowledge and subjective experience, all these are
inseparable facts of life. The modern scholar should aim at bringing
together the worlds of immediate experience, objective observation and
spiritual insight. Through the unity of mind comes a unity of purpose,
which enriches individual personality and lends order and dignity to human
existence. Life unfolds a panorama as wide as the
world itself and as deep as the perspective of the ages of mankind. Its
mystery, subtlety and complexity has always been a challenge and an
opportunity to man who is eternally poised to unravel its secrets and
control the current of life. The advance of civilization is indeed
underpinned by the movements of mind and imagination. The man of letters
not only projects the values and standards of his age, but also reacts and
protests against them. He is firmly rooted in the social milieu, but he is
also the harbinger of progress and enlarges the mental and moral horizon
of his age. He is a futurist and an emancipator. The story of human
civilization is a story of creative interaction between man and his
environment, and knowledge is its distilled expression. Modern western civilization, which has
dominated the world for the last 500 years, illustrates this point more
clearly than any other civilization in the history of mankind. This indeed
has been a period of great social and intellectual ferment, which has
shaped the modern world and transformed our lives completely. The roots of
the modern world lie in the European renascence in the 15th and 16th
centuries, the intellectual impetus given by a new worldview replacing
mediaeval thought and philosophy. The process of change, however, was slow
yet sure. The eighteenth century, marked by new discoveries in science,
emergence of empiricist philosophy and a new political order called into
being by the French revolution, was a watershed in the history of the
modern world. It was during this phase, variously called the age of
reason, science and enlightenment, that most of the features of modern
civilization took a definite shape. After this, the world was never the same
again as the Industrial revolution, together with democracy and liberalism
which were the battle cries of the emerging bourgeoisie, swept away the
remaining vestiges of feudalism. But the new world order brought its own
contradictions and predicaments. Throughout the twentieth century,
skepticism about the basic assumptions of modern civilization has steadily
been mounting. The Victorians earnestly believed that science had opened
an unending vista of progress. This illusion was blasted by the grisly
horror of the world wars and the breakdown of traditional morality. The
modern man lives in the dazed consciousness of having belonged to a
civilization which has run its course. The movements of mind and imagination which propelled this remarkable phase of human history, the spirit of scientific inquiry and the tradition of individual freedom that opened a brave new world, the spectacular advances in science and technology that increased man's mastery over the physical universe, the grisly horror of the world wars that threatened civilization with extinction, the dehumanization of life brought about by the triumph of machine over man, all these aspects of modern civilization bring into sharp focus the potential and perils of human existence on the threshold of a new millennium. Copyright Notice This article is copyright 2000 DAWN, and may be redistributed provided that the article remains intact, with this copyright message clearly visible. This article may not under any circumstances be resold or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from DAWN. If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information about licensing materials from DAWN, please contact us via telephone: +92 (21) 111-444-777, +92 (21) 567-0001 or email: webmaster@dawn.com DAWN is located on the World Wide Web at http://dawn.com This entire Website including all its contents, graphical images and other elements are the intellectual property of the Pakistan Herald Publications Ltd. (P.H.P.L.) - publishers of the DAWN newspaper. This site is for use by individuals and may not be used for any commercial purposes. No part of this site may be redistributed or otherwise published without written consent of P.H.P.L. |
