Iranian Society: Manifestations of Culture

Abstract

Linguists, historians, and theologians, are but a few who have researched and written on the nuanced relationships between our thoughts, behaviors, and the language that we use. Our experiences are translated into our language and, similarly, our thoughts are expressed through language and manifest in behavior.

Appendix A

Descartes’ vision is perfectly matched with that of his pre-Enlightenment neighboring fellow, Francis Bacon. Bacon envisioned the manner in which to understand and order reality known as Empiricism, or as is commonly referred to as the scientific method. Bacon, the one-time clerk of the infamous Start Chamber, the ruthlessly inquisitorial royal court⁷⁰, apparently was agitated with the ancient Greek tradition of analytic thinking, the approach that emphasizes the “why” of things in science.⁷¹ The Greek, he wrote, had not “adduced a single experiment which tends to relieve and benefit the condition of man, and which can in truth be referred to the speculations and theories of philosophy.”(Bacon 1857, pp. 74) According to Charles Taylor, Bacon, “constantly hammers home the point that the traditional science [the Greek tradition] have aimed at discovering some satisfying overall order of things, rather than being concerned to see how things function; I find even those who have sought knowledge for itself, and not for benefit and ostentation, or any practical enablements in the course of life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark—namely, satisfaction (when men call Truth) and not operation”. (Taylor 1992, pp. 213) In short, Bacon believed the Greek tradition of inquiry, which also provided the bedrock of Islamic philosophical tradition to this day, bears no fruit. In other words, the Greek approach is not only useless, but the knowledge it rendered is far from accurate.⁷² To correct this perceived deficiency, Bacon turned his attention to the “how” of things, and in doing so came to the realization of three mechanical discoveries: printing, gunpowder, and the magnet. In his words, these three discoveries “have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world; the first in Literature, the second in warfare, and third in navigation; whence have followed innumerable changes; insomuch that no empire, no sect, no star seems to have exerted greater power and influence in human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.” (Bacon 1857, pp. 114) In his most celebrated work Novum Organum (1622), he outlined the goal of his scientific method, which was “to establish and extend the power of dominion of the human race itself over the universe.” (Ibid.) For Bacon, nature is perceived as a “storehouse of valuable resources,” in the words of Rifkin (2009), and the only relation that mattered was how the power is used to own it. Reality, for Bacon, “was objective and manifested in expropriation. We come to know nature by the way we manipulated it.” (Rifkin 2009, pp. 154)

These visions and mindsets, which had been refined and developed further through centuries by other Western thinkers, were not only important for the development of classical physics, but also had a tremendous influence on the general modern Western way of thinking up to the present day, in which a man in the western hemisphere equates his identity with his mind, instead of with his whole organism. Seeing a world in black and white confinement of rationality shapes the mentality and reality of a man in a different way than a man whose view of the world is not boxed in (bounded by reason alone), and therefore see the world in color. In another word, Western modern individuals are only aware of themselves as isolated selves existing; a modern existence that mostly celebrated as individualism in which “The mind has been separated from the body and given the futile task of controlling it, thus causing an apparent conflict between the conscious will and the involuntary instincts. Each individual has been split up further into a large number of separate compartments, according to his or her activities, talents, feelings, beliefs, etc., which are engaged in endless conflicts generating continuous metaphysical confusion and frustration. This inner fragmentation of man mirrors his view of the world ‘outside’ which is seen as a multitude of separate objects and events. The natural environment is treated as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different interest groups. The fragmented view is further extended to society which is split into different nations, races, religious and political groups.” (Capra 2010, pp. 23) In retrospect, Descartes and Bacon schemes of things constructed the most basic notion of modern thoughts and consciousness including wide ranges of modern perceptions and conceptions, from perception of real and what constitute truth⁷³ to delineation of freedom and what denotes equality.⁷⁴ For instance, the modern paradigm e.g., Cartesian thesis argues that reality is made up of truth, which exist a prior, and hence fixed and absolute. In this respect, we don’t create truths but discover them. In short, truths/reality are objective autonomous phenomena, and hence cannot be make out of our experiences, e.g., the explanation we make about the common experience that we share with each other. Similarly, to be free, argues the modern man of reason, is not depend on or beholden by others. This view is clear prevailed among classical economists, who set the tune of a modern economics, in which views an individual as an autonomous agent that is free to pursue his distinct self-interest in the material world. This is a negative⁷⁵ freedom that exclude other, independent of others to the extend that a man is an island to one-self, in which William Ernest Henley classic poem Invictus alluded: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of soul”. The strength of this self-sufficiency is based on the ability to close oneself off from others and treat others with wariness. This is the principle that has been imbedded in the social science fields, the modern western paradigm of human scholarship.⁷⁶ Thomas C. Patterson, in his classic work, Inventing Western Civilization , summarized brilliantly the works of Descartes and Bacon, these vanguards of modernity, by reminding his readers their worldview that portrayed “society as a machine that resemble a gigantic clock. By removing society from its historical context, they stripped away its content. As human society became abstraction devoid of context and content, discussion of civil society, the state, and the civilized person were also framed in increasingly abstract terms.” (Patterson 1997, pp. 35–36)