Abstract
The history we have related so far has attempted to summarize the journey of homo sapiens from prehistory to the beginning of the conquest of space, paying particular attention to the events that saw Western civilization take on the role of protagonist. The focal point of this path is the increasing role of the logical-rational component of humankind, which has been at the center of hopes and expectations over the future of our species since the Middle Ages. We have spoken, in this regard, of an authentic “faith in progress” that over the centuries, without interruption, has motivated millenarists, monks, merchants, capitalists and scientists. As we said at the beginning, humans are technological animals, and technology as we know it today is a product of rationality. Many innovations, from money to the wheel and from the airplane to nuclear energy, have been realized to answer to specific human needs, starting from a logical elaboration of the underlying problems.
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Notes
- 1.
In his A History of Alchemy – The Ancient Science of Changing Common Metals Into Gold, Tower Publishing, New York City, 1962, the historian Serge Hutin stated that analogy, “a key notion of alchemy”, was based on “a strict correspondence between the world as a whole and what operates in the alchemical laboratory. Parallelism that works also on other planes (...): it is not a case, for example, that alchemists are oriented towards the total respect of the rhythms of the Great Book of Nature: the seasons, the planetary configurations, the terrestrial, lunar and solar magnetism…”.
- 2.
Homeopathy is a method of treatment formulated by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755−1843) in his Organon of rational medicine of 1810. This discipline, however, has nothing to do with the scientific universe, as it is based on mere associations which defy scientific proof, such as the principle of infinitesimal dilutions. The risks of the dangerous mixture between the rational scientific and the merely associative approach reaches its peak in homeopathy. See, for instance D. Vione, “Why homeopathy is not a science”, www.cicap.it, 2004; AA.VV., “The homéopathie au banc d’essai” in “La Recherche”, 310, 1998, pp. 57-87; and J.M. Abgrall, “The charlatans of health”, Editori Riuniti, Rome 1999.
- 3.
The cult of the Great Architect of the Universe of Freemasonry, as defined in the Constitutions of Anderson of 1723, is also deistic. Masonic spirituality would require a long treatment in its own right, but undoubtedly represents, at least in some circumstances, a form of secular esotericism, which may be associated with the subjects discussed in this chapter.
- 4.
In November 1793, during the celebration of the Goddess of Reason, Robespierre burnt an atheistic statue considered “contrary to civic values”.
- 5.
These two apparently opposing degenerative directions are more related to each other than it may seem. A clear example of this connection is the strong presence of esoteric and occult beliefs in the establishment of the German Third Reich. On this topic, see for instance R. Alleau, Hitler et les sociétés secrètes, enquête sur les sources occultes du nazisme, Cercle du nouveau livre d’histoire, Paris, 1969; and E. Kurlander, Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2017.
- 6.
O. Spengler, The Decline of the West, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1962. According to Spengler, all civilizations experience a cycle that is at first progressive and then regressive. By comparatively examining the Western world, it would be possible to conclude that Europe and the United States have been in their declining phase for decades.
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Genta, G., Riberi, P. (2019). The irrationalistic constant. In: Technology and the Growth of Civilization. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25583-1_11
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