Human History According to Franz Rosenzweig

“What happens in history, [Rosenzweig] says, is not a struggle between man’s faith and man’s reason but a struggle between God and man. In world history the absolute powers themselves are dramatis personae [the characters of the play]. Revelation breaks into the world and transforms creation, which is the Alpha of history, into redemption, which is the Omega. Philosophy has a pagan quality. It is an expression of the Alpha, of creation, of pure nature to which God has given freedom — even against himself. But as revelation comes into the world, it gradually absorbs philosophy, deprives it of its pagan elements, and illuminates it with its own light. The Omega of history will be realized after the element of creation, the world’s freedom, has spent itself. Then God, who has allowed the world to be in the Alpha, will again be the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.”

~Alexander Altmann, from Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: An Introduction to Their “Letters on Judaism & Christianity”, from Judaism Despite Christianity, University of Chicago Press, 1935, page 33.

The Kingdom of Speech (Book Review)

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The Kingdom of Speech, written by Tom Wolfe, is a simple and interesting book looking at the miracle of human speech, or language.

Wolfe begins with the theory of evolution and Charles Darwin. I’m not sure how much Wolfe believes, or disbelieves, in evolution, but he does criticize it here. Most people are unaware that Darwin was almost “scooped” in his theory by a man named Alfred Wallace. Wallace, who was not a member of the elite class like Darwin was, sent in a paper to Darwin explaining the idea that evolution occurred through the process of natural selection. Darwin had already thought up that idea himself, but had not yet put his thoughts to paper hoping to collect more evidence for it. Darwin gave Wallace credit for the idea, but in a backhanded way — “He, Darwin, would not be claiming priority. Just the opposite. He was extending a magnanimous hand to a newcomer. He would be making room on the stage for a lowly flycatcher to be heard.” (Wolfe)

Darwin, of course, wanted his theory of evolution to apply to Man in every way. The one issue that didn’t seem to fit though was language. How did language evolve? Darwin wrote that it came from birds tweeting and animals grunting and so forth. Wallace, however, wrote in an essay entitled, The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man, that language was an absolute dividing line between Man and animal. This conundrum stymied Darwin and other evolutionists on the issue of language, and the field of linguistics entered into, what Wolfe names, its Dark Ages for about three quarters of a century.

Then came Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has been seen as the god of linguistics since the 1950s. Chomsky’s big idea was/is that language evolved in Man over time, and now every human has what’s called the “language organ.” The language organ functions in every person just like the heart or kidneys do — it’s just there and it is functioning from the moment of birth. Chomsky also put forth the idea of recursion. Recursion is the ability of humans to place one thought within another (in one sentence) in a potentially endless series. For example: John has a nice house … John, your brother, has a nice house … John, your brother, has a nice house on thirty-first street … John, your brother, has a nice house on thirty-first street, which he purchased from his father in law … etc… etc… The idea of recursion became orthodox within linguistic circles — like a law of nature, Wolfe says — Noam Chomsky – like Newton, Copernicus, Einstein – had discovered a new law!

Now enters Daniel Everett. Everett is a failed missionary, ex-Christian, who lived and worked with the Pirahã (pronounced Pee-da-hannh) people for many years. He is one of the only people who actually learned the Pirahã’s language. Everett found no examples of recursion among the Pirahã, and he refuted Chomsky’s theory by suggesting that, rather than humans evolving language and developing a language organ, humans instead developed language as a tool after evolving to the current state — a tool, much in the same way humans have developed hammers, axes, bows & arrows, and computers. Language is not a direct product of evolution, but rather an artifact invented by humans after evolving to the point when humanity was capable of developing such a thing.

This idea caused much controversy in the linguistics world, and the gods (Chomsky & followers) were not happy. But, even though Everett was dismissed as being a low-brow hack, his idea did change the flow of thought in linguistics and brought things to the point where no one really knows anymore where language came from. “Language — what is it? What is it? Chomsky’s own words at age eighty-five after a lifetime of studying language! The previous 150 years had proved to be the greatest era ever in solving the riddles of Homo sapiens — but not in the case of Homo loquax, man speaking. A parade of certified geniuses had spent lifetimes trying to figure it out — and failed.” (Wolfe)

Wolfe completes his book with some of his own conclusions. He seems to agree with Everett — speech is a tool developed by Man, enabling Him to take dominion of the world. Notice how the words of one man, like Jesus or Muhammad, can control millions of people over centuries: “[T]he power of one person to control millions of his fellow humans — for centuries — is a power the Theory of Evolution cannot even begin to account for … or abide.” (Wolfe)

“Speech ended not only the evolution of man, by making it no longer necessary for survival, but also the evolution of animals.” (Wolfe)

The elephant in the room, which Wolfe never mentions but I will, is God. God: the Great Speaker, who created all things with His Word, and then breathed His breath into Man making him His image bearer. Man does have dominion over the world because Man can speak, and that speech is a gift – not a product of evolution – straight from God. God sustains the universe by His Word, all things were made through His Word, and that Word became flesh for all to see: Jesus (John 1:1-14). So, the mystery of speech is no mystery to the Christian.

All in all, The Kingdom of Speech, is a good book — an easy read which I recommend to anyone interested in the field of linguistics and the power of speech.

I gave it 4/5 stars.

Further reading: Kingdom of Language by Peter Leithart, First Things

Thomas Sowell Quotes #5

“Like so much else that is done by those who treat education as the continuation of politics by other means, the lasting damage that is done is not by insinuating a particular ideology, for people’s ideologies change over time, regardless of what they were taught. The lasting damage is done to the development of critical thinking.

“Learning to think, and how to know what you are talking about, is a full-time occupation. Nowhere is this more true than in the formative years. Even naturally bright people can turn out to be nothing more than clever mush heads if the discipline of logic and the analytical dissection of many-sided empirical evidence is slighted for the sake of emotional ‘experiences.'”

~from The Thomas Sowell Reader: Educational Issues, page 346-347

Men & Women

I read this on a Facebook page called Strange Art. I thought it was good so I’ll share it here…

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Man is the most elevated of creatures, Woman the most sublime of ideals.
God made for man a throne; for woman an altar.
The throne exalts, the altar sanctifies.
Man is the brain, Woman, the heart.
The brain creates light, the heart, Love. Light engenders, Love resurrects.
Because of reason Man is strong, because of tears Woman is invincible.
Reason is convincing, tears moving.
Man is capable of all heroism, Woman of all martyrdom.
Heroism ennobles, martyrdom sublimates.
Man has supremacy, Woman, preference.
Supremacy is strength, preference is the right.
Man is a genius, Woman, an angel.
Genius is immeasurable, the angel undefinable.
The aspiration of man is supreme glory,
The aspiration of woman is extreme virtue.
Glory creates all that is great; virtue, all that is divine.
Man is a code, Woman a gospel.
A code corrects, the gospel perfects.
Man thinks, Woman dreams.
To think is to have a worm in the brain,
to dream is to have a halo on the brow.
Man is an ocean, Woman a lake.
The ocean has the adorning pearl, the lake, dazzling poetry.
Man is the flying eagle, Woman, the singing nightingale.
To fly is to conquer space. To sing is to conquer the Soul.
Man is a temple, Woman a shrine.
Before the temple we discover ourselves, before the shrine we kneel.
In short, man is found where earth finishes, woman where heaven begins.

See the original post here.

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Three Ghost Stories (Brief Book Review)

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Bag of Bones by Stephen King

I think this is my second favourite King novel after The Shining. It is about a recently widowed writer, Mike Noonan, who decides to spend some time living at his lake house, named Sara Laughs, to cope with the loss of his wife and his writer’s block.

There’s a dark history at this lake village which involves Mike’s own ancestors, and the ghosts of that past begin to haunt Mike in his home. It is a simple, yet effective storyline. It reads smoothly, like most King’s novels do, and it does scare at times.

An excerpt…
The house had been aired out and didn’t smell a bit musty; instead of still, stale air, there was a faint and pleasing aroma of pine. I reached for the light inside the door, and then, somewhere in the blackness of the house, a child began to sob. My hand froze where it was and my flesh went cold. I didn’t panic, exactly, but all rational thought left my mind. It was a weeping, a child’s weeping, but I hadn’t a clue as to where it was coming from.
Then it began to fade. Not to grow softer but to fade, as if someone had picked that kid up and was carrying it away down some long corridor … not that any such corridor existed in Sara Laughs. Even the one running through the middle of the house, connecting the central section to the two wings, isn’t really long.
Fading… faded… almost gone.

I gave it 5/5 stars.

Check out more reviews of the book here.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

This book is about a group of British men who go up to the arctic to do some scientific research. The main character, Jack Miller, is a bit of an outsider and a loner. Three of the men make it onto the island, Gruhuken, to begin their work. When they arrive it is the last days of light, and soon the unending darkness will begin as the sun never rises in the winter up north. Jack is the communications man, and since the novel is set in the 1930s, that means morse code. As one of Jack’s companions gets sick, two of the three sail away from the island, and Jack is left alone for weeks in the darkness. He does, though, have a pack of Huskies to keep him company. There is a malevolent presence, a man, a murdered trapper, which begins to haunt Jack.

Jack has multiple opportunities to leave – his friends stay in communication with him via the wireless so he can always ask for help, another man who is staying on the other side of the island visits Jack and asks Jack to come home with him – but Jack always chooses to stay. He does not want to let his team-mates down, especially Gus, the team leader. And it’s this fact, I think, which makes the book very interesting. The story is not just a ghost story – it is a story about loneliness, darkness, and (less obviously) guilt and depravity.

An excerpt…
Two days since Bjørvik left. One since the dogs disappeared.
I walk bent over, as if there were a tumour in my gut. I miss the dogs. Without them, there’s nothing between me and what haunts this place.
It can come at any time. It can stay away for days, as it did when Bjørvik was here. But always I sense it waiting. That’s the worst of it. Not knowing when it will come. Only that it will.
A few years ago, I read a speech in the paper by the American president; he said, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
I’ve tried to pity the trapper of Gruhuken. He had a miserable life and a terrible death. But I can’t. All I feel is dread.
And knowing who he was doesn’t help me, because I can’t do anything to appease him. It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent. It isn’t only the guilty who suffer.
Besides, I am guilty. Because I’m here.

I gave it 5/5 stars.

Check out more reviews of the book here.

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

This is a creepy and strange book. The story is of two related families visiting their holiday homes after the death of the mother in one family. The homes are three houses in the middle of nowhere. The houses are identical but each faces a different direction. The middle house always remains empty, and is slowly being consumed by a sand dune. It’s also haunted.

I could not relate to the characters that well; they are too different from what I know in my own life. However, the interesting storyline makes up for that. The families have been coming to these homes for years, and one wonders why they keep going back. I was hoping for a better explanation as to why the third house is haunted — there was potential to connect the haunting to one of the families more strongly, but that never came about.

An excerpt…
“Child,” said Odessa. She stood out of the swing and turned her back on Luker and Dauphin, who were getting out of the car a dozen yards away. Odessa loomed before India, blocking sight of her father and uncle. “If anything happens at Beldame,” said Odessa, looking down at India sternly, “I want you to do something…”
“What?” said India, craning around to catch sight of her father. Odessa’s tone and her suggestion that something else might happen made her fearful.
“If anything happens,” Odessa said in a low voice, “eat my eyes…“
“What?” demanded India in a hissing whisper. Her father and Dauphin were coming nearer. She longed for their protection. Odessa stepped closer to India, pressing her hands behind her to signal the two men to keep back. “What does that mean?” cried India desperately. “What do you–”
“If anything happens,” Odessa repeated slowly, nodding her head with terrible significance, “eat my eyes…“

I gave it 4/5 stars.

Check out more reviews of the book here.

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