Dialogue Between Life and Death
Period between 1500 and 1800 is deemed the most significant period with regard to change in European thought as well as culture. It was a period of scientific revolution in Europe when developments in diversified subjects, including physics, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, revolutionized societal views about nature. As there was a shift in the field of astronomy from a geocentric understanding of the universe or Ptolemaic model of heavens, (centred around Earth) to a heliocentric model with the Sun replacing Earth as the centre of solar system, by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century, it was also called “Copernicus Revolution.”
The period marked a watershed moment and would become a precursor to modern science as we know it today. Thus it brought a fundamental transformations in people’s perceptions as well as attitudes towards the world of nature because it was defined as a systematic study of the natural phenomenon with basic (mechanical) tools of observation and experiment. Moreover, it was claimed to be based on the objective observation of physical world. It believed in pure objectivity and rejected any subjectivity negating the truth that just dead facts/numbers or data is of no use without the power of imagination. And as Samuel Taylor Coleridge also conceived, the imagination is ‘a living Power’, creating new forms. For Coleridge, it was also a prime Agent of all human Perception’ and thus, for him, human mind was essentially creative, in contrast to the picture of the mind he found in Newtonian science, ‘a lazy Looker-on on an external World.’ Moreover, pure objectivity is just an impossible thing as we all are enmeshed in a web of subtle influences that are impossible for us to escape intellectually.
This modern science was also a far cry from the Medieval Science heavily influenced by the ideas and writings of ancient Greek and based on Aristotelian Logic or deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is a logical approach where you go from general ideas to specific conclusions. It was rather Holistic Science that teaches a broader, more colourful approach to science and knowledge than has become conventional in modern science. Holism emphasizes that all parts of a whole are interconnected and that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts.For instance, an ecosystem is not just a collection of individual species but an interconnected web where each component interacts with others in complex ways to maintain an ecological balance. In other words a universal spirit suffuses all the things and living creatures that exist, including the soul of the reductionist who thinks that he is nothing but a bunch of chemical molecules. It argues that there is much more to science than just numerical or measurable data.
It was opposed to reductionist approach of modern science which breaks down complex psychological processes into small parts and reduces them to simple explanations. Thus physical bodies are just collections of atoms and consciousness, according to reductionist approach, can simply be reduced to neural activity alone. According to this approach thus a computer can understand your feelings and emotions by means of binary logic and algorithms.
Regardless, during this era, from the year 476 to 1600 AD, society also saw an advancement in science and technology that greatly impacted the areas of health, agriculture, and economics. However, the study of nature was pursued more for practical/humanistic reasons than as an abstract inquiry or for materialistic reasons: the need to care for the sick led to the study of medicine and of ancient texts on drugs, the need for followers of different religions/faiths to determine the proper time to pray to connect with divine that led to study the motion of the stars, the need to compute the date of Easter or month of fasting (that taught self control) etc., led to study of mathematics and the motions of the Sun and Moon. Thus it was not important to know or determine if centre of universe was earth or the sun as it had no practical implications for the humanity at large.
Some the inventions of those times included mechanical clock, eye glasses, gun powder, printing press, astrolabe, compass etc.
However, the modern scientific revolution was the cause as well as effect of age of exploration or great geographic discoveries (or ruthless colonialism) for selfish gains that paved the for the to integration and development of Europe into a global economic system. New commodities as well as slaves, many of them imported or usurped from recently discovered and (then colonized) lands in Africa and Asia, enriched material life in Europe. Not only trade (or exploitation of resources in the name of trade ) but also the production of goods increased as a result of new scientific ways of organizing production. Merchants, entrepreneurs, and bankers form Europe accumulated and manipulated capital in unprecedented volume.
Most of all modern scientific knowledge enabled the emerging class of capitalist entrepreneurs or businessmen and industrialists to blindly pollute and destroy mother earth’s environment in the name of development and at the same time invent dangerous war weapons and ultimately weapons of mass-destruction to bring the whole of the non-European world and its resources under imperial subjugation. Thus, as some scholars are of the view, the histories of science and capitalism or imperialism have always been bound up together. As far back as the 17th century, if not before, precise and detailed empirical knowledge has been imposed and valued by those seeking commercial gains.
That is why, it was also a period that was radically and immutably transformed by another movement that today we know as Romanticism that was nemesis of modern science.
Romanticism was characterized by the celebration of nature and lay man and a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and so-called Enlightenment. The Enlightenment thinkers, such as viewed Modern Science as having generated an unprecedented increase in knowledge in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and physics, and also having the potential of generating the same kind of revolutionary progress through its application in every field and thus panacea of all ills. Romantics chose to view the world as composed of living beings with sentiments, rather than objects that merely function. As a scholar from Rutgers University, USA puts it “The ideals of Romanticism included an intense focus on human subjectivity and its expression, an exaltation of nature which was seen as a vast repository of symbols, of childhood and spontaneity, of primitive forms of society, of human passion and emotion, of the poet, of the sublime, and of imagination as a more comprehensive and inclusive faculty than reason.”
Thus as the sciences viewed nature as matter in motion, obeying certain laws of nature which scientists seeks to understand, for the Romantics like Wordsworth, nature was not just a matrix of (dead) particles. Thus they opposed the prevailing deterministic view of the natural world by insisting that it was alive.
In short, Romantics viewed the world as composed of living beings with sentiments, rather than objects that merely function under laws of physics. Thus it was a battle between the idea of a world or nature consisting of dead matter as the only reality and of nature having a soul that is living or vibrant as well as eternal. Even Matter, in some mythologies, is not considered totally dead but believed to be the unconscious energy of the Lord. where as the soul (non-material) is deemed the marginal energy of God, and is conscious.
Thus death is not the end of life or existence as science would want us to believe. On the contrary we leave this world for another world. Both Hinduism and Islam believe in the life after death. According to Hindu beliefs and traditions, there is a concept of reincarnation of souls and thus soul undergoes a cycle of death and rebirth, in the ‘samsara’ or sansar (world). As soul is eternal, it never dies and is reborn multiple times in different physical forms, whether plant, animal, human, or divine. And karma, the accumulation of an individual’s actions, will determine what form the soul will take on in the next life. Eventually (perhaps after leaning useful lessons or discovering ultimate truth) the soul will achieve freedom or salvation from this cycle.
Similarly, there is a concept of “Resurrection” in both Islam and Christianity. According to Wikipedia, Islamic and Christian eschatology both have a “Day of Resurrection” of the dead (yawm al-qiyāmah), followed by a “Day of Judgement” (yawm ad-din) where all human beings who have ever lived will be held accountable for their deeds by being judged by God.
Regardless, the concept of death and life is also the main theme of a poem written by the Romantic poet of great repute, William Wordsworth. The poem’s title is “We Are Seven” that was published in Lyrical Ballads, a joint publication by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, that also helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature. Poem explores how a young girl perceives her deceased siblings as still alive and thus part of her family. And although, for many it shows a contrast between little village girls’ innocent viewpoint and the adult’s understanding of death and separation. In my view, it is a dialogue between faith or true consciousness (symbolized by little girl) and modern science or dead logic (symbolized by the adult)
Here is the poem:
— — — A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
— Her beauty made me glad.
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”
“You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.”
Then did the little Maid reply,
“Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.”
“You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.”
“Their graves are green, they may be seen,”
The little Maid replied,
“Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.
“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
“The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
“So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.”
“How many are you, then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”
“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”
Explanation:
Poet begins a conversation with a young lively girl in which he asks her how many siblings she has. The girl, who is just eight years old, replies that she is one of seven. When the poet asks about the details, she then explains that “two [were at] Conway”, or going to school, and that “two [were] out to sea” and finally that two were buried “in the church-yard” and that she alone lived with her mother in a home not too far from where her two siblings were buried.
However, the poet, after hearing her answer, questions her calculations, claiming that if two are gone to study and two are at sea, there could not be seven left. The poet apparently doesn’t have the heart to mention the two buried siblings, but he does question how she can claim to belong to a family with seven children, when four are away. He asks her, “sweet maid, how this may be?”
The girl, in her innocence, keeps insisting that they are seven while emphasizing at the same time, that two are laid in the ground under the tree in the church-yard.
In stanza 9 the poet again challenges the girl by letting her count “if two are in the church-yard laid, then ye are only five”. It would seem that he wants to convince the little girl of the reality of the tragedy she has endured. He is trying to get his point across that her two siblings are dead and gone, and that would mean she is only one of five children.
The girl is still not convinced and in stanzas 10–12 explains very innocently and vividly that their graves are green as well as close to where she and her mother live. She then describes her interactions with them, claiming she often knits there and sits on their graves to sing to them. She also tells the poet that she also often takes her supper out to the churchyard to eat with them.
At last, the speaker gets irritated and attempts to make her realize that her two siblings are dead; their souls are in heaven. Now, they are only five, but the innocent girl denies it.
What we also must know is that he young girl frequently uses seasonal imagery when describing her changing relationship with her siblings that comes to represent the interconnectedness of life and death in the natural world.
Moreover, poet repeatedly cites numbers and encourages the girl to count her siblings multiple times. He also contrasts the girl’s physical liveliness with her siblings’ stillness in death, saying, “You run about, my little Maid, / Your limbs they are alive.” Here, the poet seems to be taking a scientific approach, again relying on his adult knowledge and worldly experience — things the innocent little girl does not possess — in order to make his point.
However, the girl remains persistent, even though the poet seems to be suggesting that she is simply blind to the truth.
The poet stands by his (apparently scientific) understanding of death as something that definitively severs people from life. Thus he seems determined to teach her about his own, more artificial view of mortality as something final. The young girl, on the other hand, proposes that death is the transformation of life rather than its loss. In other words, nature is a seasonal affair, with flowers dying in Autumn only to reappear in Spring. Death is less the actual end of something than a phase in a cyclical process. And the child knows that it is part of a larger natural cycle and, as such, that the dead remain closely connected to the living world.
The poem also shows a close connection between the word “Breath” and “Death” (in 1st stanza) as the two rhyme directly contrasting the liveliness of the child with an understanding of death. It also shows that “Death” is the opposite of “Birth” and not of “life” that continues even after the soul departs from this world.
Thus Girl wins, in spite of having no knowledge of mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry.
Why?
Because she can listen to her heart or inner voice that transcends the logic and reason. And as they say, wherever your heart is that is where you’ll find your treasure.
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References:
i) https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Scientific-Revolution/
ii) https://pressbooks.pub/anne1/chapter/the-medieval-world-and-sts/
iii) The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2000).
v) https://habib.camden.rutgers.edu/introductions/romanticism/
vi) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52298/we-are-seven
