Chapter XI
Synopsis
[ This final Chapter of Volume I is focused on Faustian science and specifically Physics. It is important to recognize that Spengler did not have the insight of later Quantum Mechanics; his knowledge of advanced Physics would be limited to advances made up to 1922. (with the Revised Edition). Quantum mechanics was in its early formative years; historians of science refer to the “old quantum theory”, a collection of results from 1900–1925, predating modern quantum mechanics. Such theories were never complete or self-consistent, but rather heuristic corrections to classical mechanics. Of course this lack of insight does not necessarily weaken his exposition, & it seems improbable that had he been aware of the advances after 1925, that such knowledge would have affected his thesis. ]
I. Theory as Myth, page 377.
The Faustian physicist wishes to measure all things including extension into space & motion in space; this measuring effect serves as the proof of truth. Modern physics is an immense system of indices, names & numbers allowing us to work with Nature as with a machine. However it is not human physicists but Faustian physicists who transpose all movement onto a set of mass points. It is the Faustian perception only & not provable in the absolute sense. The indices, formulae, research, all result in a symbol, that of the Faustian Culture/Civilization, true fact to Faustian, fantasy to non-Faustian. Physical observations (science) prove the images & the presuppositions; its effect is to make these presuppositions more convincing. Yet the scientist is as much part of Faustian Culture as is the priest; faith & knowledge are but 2 classes of the same, faith being older.
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Kant claimed that science was true exactly in proportion to the mathematics it reflected. Yet a law without words, made up of only figures & numbers read from instruments is not effective. Every experiment is a reflection of the idea within the experimenter’s head, it is a symbol. Laws formulated in words, are categories; each category is a unique symbol of the specific Culture. Necessity comes in 2 types: that of the cause & effect which is Faustian science, and that of the Destiny of each Culture, the organic necessity for it to be born, live & die, to achieve ALL that is possible within it.
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Every fact is from the start a theory; a fact is an impression. What matters is not the object (what the fact describes) but who formulates it (the subject, the Culture). Even words like “quantity” or “position” are loaded with Cultural images, images incomprehensible to non-Faustians. Each word has its own scientific mythological; we believe they are derived from valid & unprejudiced research. Yet presented to Archimedes, he would respond with incomprehension & draw completely different conclusions, which would make sense to his mind, his eye, his Culture.
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II. Every Natural Science depends upon a preceding Religion, p. 380
The images of Faustian physics (magnetic fields, polarized light) have affinity with the images of Faustian BECOMING (Viking voyages, Gothic vaults, the Copernican universe). Nature Knowledge is founded on religion, its image based on the Gothic springtime. When urban civilization looks back on religion, its superiority proclaims truth in science, not religion. Yet, the age of science is brief, in the Autumn & Winter, fading in the light of the second religiousness. The Apollonians enjoyed only about 185 years, a duration which will prove similar for the West. And far from being “true” both religion & science rest on inner certitude, bearing affinity with their basic principle. All ideas mirror their authors; we create God in our own image, likewise science. For the Apollonian light was a corporal particle, the Magian saw vision reflecting spiritual power; the Faustian sees light is impetus or force. Each Culture’s images is true ONLY for itself; with the death of that Culture its symbols including Science, die. Numbers & scientific laws need a living body which only mankind provides. There is no absolute physics but as many as there are Cultures.
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Statics, Alchemy, Dynamics as the theories of three Cultures p. 382.
The Apollonian Prime Symbol (archetypal, Ur-phenomena) was the nude statue, from this “a static of bodies”, a physics of “the near.” From Magian symbols, the arabesque & the cavern vaulting, comes Alchemy & its mysterious substances. Faustian man has infinite space, from which comes the physics of distance.
Apollonian motion was change of position in space of a body, Faustian sees process, going forward (directional energy). Apollonian elements were states (the 4 states of Empedocles: earth- rigid corporal, water- fluid corporal, air- non corporal, fire- strongest optical impression). Magian elements are ideal, chemical elements, a magic substance, whose secret causality allows appearance & disappearance at will; alchemy doubts the plastic actuality; it aims to dissolve the visible body to find the essence. Thus it is iconoclastic (see Islamic & Byzantine Iconoclasm), disbelieves in visible nature (see early Church council’s debates regarding the “true” substance of God). Apollonians have no chemistry. Magian alchemy (or chemistry) born in Hellenistic Alexandria (of the Pseudomorphosis) destroys Apollonian Nature (mechanical statics). Faustian Stahl & his Phlogiston theory (scientific investigation) liberated the Faustian from Alchemy. Newton & Leibnitz liberate Faustian mathematics with Calculus. Paracelsus (16th century) transformed alchemy into pharmacy. In the 17th century Boyle develops (thru analysis) the Elements. But this is not Faustian alchemy, rather it is dynamics & tension relationships between molecules (gas/solid/fluids).
III. The Atomic theory p. 384.
Human thought is always favourable to cause-effect dialogues & this leads to a tendency to reduce nature to numbers or mechanical differentiation, which lends itself to atomism. Of Indian & Chinese science we know nothing; Magian science is too convoluted to discuss. However we may profitably compare & contrast Apollonian & Faustian atomic theory.
Analogy: the Apollonian atom is sculptural (static plastic), Faustian is musical (dynamic contrapuntal). These fundamental differences are visible elsewhere, such as ethics (the Stoic Apollonian atom, and Socialist Faustian atom): the Apollonian atom moves randomly; the Faustian atom is full of aggressive energy; it is Oedipus versus Macbeth. Greek pre-Socratics speak & use language which reflects Greek tragedy (accidental meetings, love & hate, comings & goings); so too the politics of the polis, tiny states in constant random conflict, as against the giant European dynasties, with powerful organized cabinets & diplomats, with comprehensive visions, powerful directions. Faustian & Apollonain are very much poles apart: force & tension versus undefined primordial substance, an impersonal first mover. Faustian atomic physics is also evident in the aristocratic elitist hierarchy of the Ancien Regime as against the democratic, community of Athens. The former is full of wilful direction (like the theory of potential energy), the latter, almost free of will (like the atoms of Democritus). The idea of tension (absent & untranslatable in Greece) is key to Faustian Nature, reflecting Will to Power, utterly absent in Athens.
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[ Spengler establishes his main epistemologic principle: all knowledge including scientific truth, is a by-product of the Culture, not a universal axiom. And each Culture will have their own unique knowledge, and scientific truths. He also considers the nature and relations of “being”, his own ontology. He discusses existence, being, becoming, & reality. He asks the questions of how entities are grouped into basic categories. His answer is the morphology of the Culture/Civilization. It will supplant the Kantian categories. It is the a priori background, which far from being Kant’s abstract universals, is specific & idiosyncratic strictly to a specific Culture/Civilization. These entities exist on the most fundamental level.
This section is a lengthy labyrinth of linked metaphysical concepts, mostly focused on Spengler’s ontology, the metaphysics of being; it is unusually hard to follow, on the track of Nature, being/ becoming, the hardest section in the entire volume for the reader to follow. ]
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Atomic theory is a myth, not an experience, an expression of the Faustian essence. “Extension” cannot exist apart from the observer (who is tied to a Cultural Prime Symbol). Just as direction is related to extension, knowing is related to the known. The observer will have his own type of Cultural extension. It is only thru a living Culture’s direction that a feeling is extended into distance & depth, becoming space. And so the structure of the extended is a reflection of the living thinker himself.
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The “depth experience” allows the Soul to awake & create the World which belongs to that Soul (the Macrocosmos). Our senses (mostly visual) give us length & breadth (2D); with interpretation (which is alive, with direction, motion & irreversibility- qualities which work in the mind to produce the word TIME) that we can add depth, and actuality (the world)! Life is the third dimension. With extension it entails both the future as well as the horizon.
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Life itself stiffens, hardens, the becoming turns to the become; stiffened life turns into the 3-D space. Descartes equated thinking (imagination) & being (extension); in all thinking the Prime Symbol enters: perfected extension for the Apollonian was sensual bodily presence, for the Faustian limitless space. As space is cognized further & further the concepts matter & form emerge for the Apollonian, for the Faustian capacity & intensity.
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In the known (the BECOME), living time cannot reappear. It has passed into existing Depth; thus duration (without time) and extension (from depth) are identical. Only knowing possesses direction and the use of the word time by the Physicist is incorrect when applied to the KNOWN, the BECOME (the imagined & measurable world of Faustian Physics). Better substitute Destiny for time, realize Nature does not possess time, but is timeless. The form world of Physics extends just as far as the Number form & interpretation. There is no relation between mathematical number & time. Yet in the world around us we see motion, when motion & thinking (notion, or cognition) are incompatible.
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Time & destiny effect Life, cannot be removed form LIFE, yet the Physicist (the thinker) tries to do this, separating his observation from LIFE. His observed Nature, is dead, rigid. As such it can be measured. Physics (knowledge of nature) is an activity of measuring yet both the observer and Nature, live (BECOMING). Nature exists not merely moment to moment (what the observer records) but is the continuous flow, motion. It contradicts Nature as a still image, yet it IS Nature’s history. Just as Understanding is abstracted by words away from feeling, and mathematical space from light resistance, so too time is abstracted from physical motion.
Physics knows time only as length but the Physicist lives amidst the history of Nature and tries to grasp time as a measurable, as reflected in his formula & experiments. Yet the issue is not motion WITHIN the picture, but the motion OF the picture itself. Motion in nature is metaphysical giving rise to the idea of succession. However the known (the BECOME) is timeless, it is alien to motion. Only the organic sequence of knowns produces motion.
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The problem of motion insoluble p. 389.
The Physicist observes not as an agent of a universal REASON, but as a man of specific Culture, part of World as History. Nature knowledge always will reflect a Culture. Physics is the treatment of the motion problem & it is here that the life problem (death) emerges. Both death & motion are insoluble. The secret of Motion gives the awareness of death. Nature knowledge is self-knowledge, nature is a mirror of Man, his Culture; efforts to solve the motion problem are efforts to discover the Culture’s destiny.
[ This section is a continuation of his Epistemology - he asks the questions such as: "What is knowledge?", ]
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Motion can be accepted when we see its outward appearance; whereas the thinking man reduces it to a system, logical, numeric, ordered, but so handled, also dead. Goethe was the contemplative type. For the thinker however, it is a system, and as such motion is a contradiction. Substitute ageing for motion, consider the ageing of a system & it becomes organic. But mechanics has nothing to do with ageing, or motion, but as science needs a motion problem, no complete & self-contained mechanics is possible. There will always be an organic starting point & here LIFE enters.
No picture of Nature is pure, it will always have traces of history. Apollonians, being ahistorical, their nature is the point-formed present, static & self-contained, without past or future. His time, as expressed in number will become measure; we measure in time that which is present.
The historically aware thinker (the Faustian) sees time when expressed in number, as dynamic; for him time will have a past, and a future. So the insoluble motion problem tends to be covered up in Apollonian physics, whereas in Faustian physics it comes to the front.
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History is always BECOMING, it is future; Nature is BECOME, forever past. An inversion occurs- the BECOMING loses its its priority over the BECOME. When the mind (the BECOME) looks back (to history) the idea of Destiny (aim & future) is turned into a mechanical cause-effect, and its focus is the PAST. The spatial experience (BECOME) is prioritized over temporal living (BECOMING), time replaced by length in a spatial world system.
In creative acts extension follows from direction, spatial from life; reason imports life into imagination. Life sees space as belong to itself; reason sees life in space. Destiny asks what is future? Cause asks what was past? Science starts from the BECOME, searching for causes treating BECOMING as a length. Of course we cannot live backwards, we can think backwards. Time & destiny are not reversible, but what the physicist calls or thinks “time” is, and he admits it in his formula (as negative or imaginary quantity). This puzzle has always existed, though not seen as inherent. The Apollonian Eleatics argued motion was impossible, instead declared thinking is being, the known & extended are identical, knowledge & becoming irreconcilable. But their reasoning did not stop Apollonian physics from emerging.
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The Faustian scientists have tried to solve the motion problem along dynamic lines. The concept of FORCE is the attempt to find a logical solution (mathamicially & conceptually) to motion. Hertz was the last attempt to do this. He tried to eliminate force positing instead time, mass and space. But he failed to realize that TIME is necessary for any dynamic theory, is itself organic to force as the direction factor. As well as this error, the factors time, space and mass are a dogmatic unity, inseparable.
Apollonian science is rooted in the word Element; Faustian science is rooted in Force. It is implicit in the Cultural Soul of Faustian men. Force is rooted in our Physics just as Will is rooted into our SOUL and the infinite Godhead is rooted in his world picture.
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VI. The style of causal process and experience p. 391.
Necessity, like force, is rooted in religion. The necessity (meaning Laws) in Physics is rooted in the metaphysical intuitive. But while the intuitive creates, necessity restricts. Our Physics is related to our Culture and cannot be anything other than this.
Physics and its laws consist of a multitude of individual cases, which are mathematically consistent, the chronology of which is unimportant. That we have power over Nature through the Laws of Nature is a reflection of the Faustian will to Power. Miracles, which we dismiss as a breach of the Laws of nature, were accepted by the Magian (as the exercise of uncommon power); and the Apollonian never attempted mastery over Nature to begin with!
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The feeling of God and the knowing of Nature p. 392.
Causality for the Faustian is evident in his Science, philosophy, mathematics yet is improvable as its proof lies in the nature of Science, not in absolutes. Bacon’s scientific experiment approach is an a priori. The Apollonian did NOT have this yet their Science remains true to them. Their world image is true, to them, without causation. The Magian also has no nature Laws but only LAW, that from God; indeed belief in Nature Laws is a doubting of God, doubting the power of God.
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The concept of number as function relates directly to the dynamics principle of cause-effect. Both relate to Nature as BECOME. The physics of Democritus is optically based, that of Newton is abstract relations. Facts for Apollonians were things, on the surface; for the Faustian facts are relations, usually invisible, mastered intellectually using a code language few comprehend. In the Apollonian statics, necessity is immediately evident in phenomenon; for the Faustian cause-effect weakens, even abolishes corporality.
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The principle of Conservation of energy is nothing but another description of the dynamic principle of causality by means of force. The Faustian appeal to experience, the debate on judgment as a priori or a posteriori, is quintessentially Faustian. As is the “experiment” paradigm, with its hypothesis & measurement, a direct spin off of the experience concept. And yet “experience” was not recognized by other Cultures, it is singularly Faustian.
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Yet experience, the sensuous-intellectual experience, is identical to the mystical religious experience (e.g. Pascal). Experience is an intellectual activity, not passive but actively seeks them, orders them, overcomes their sensual nature & brings into a unity, from the particular, to the infinite. But whereas the Faustian drills into nature with experience, the Apollonian contemplates Nature. Faustian scientists seek formula and Laws, overriding the senses; Greek science is a collection of impressions based on immediate sense.
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Natural science conforms to the Forms of mathematics, and art, and religion; great mathematicians resonate spiritual currents as well as numbers. The great Faustian men of religion, reflect a soul & created images paralleled by the great artists, and the great scientists.
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Men & animals evolve from their everyday experiences of nature; in man this experience is most telling as visual. With the visual comes language, with langue reason, technique & theory. Technique is used for immediate need, that which is visibly near. Theory deals with distance & the terrors of the invisible. From this emerges myth (the story of the divine force in nature) and then cult (the way to control this divine force). Only in late Civilization does theory become scientific, yet Physics remains tied to religion, conjuring, controlling the forces of Nature.
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From the Renaissance onwards, the notion of God has moved towards the Prime Symbol, infinite Space. The mild & personal God of Giotto or Francis of Assist becomes the creative force in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Personality is dissolved in Loyola & the Counter Reformation, abstract principles loom ever larger. Paining can no longer capture the essence & music comes to the fore, Palestrina & Bach. Science moves to ever greater abstractions with Galileo & Newton, Pascal.
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The Faustian concept of God is radically different from the Apollonian or Magian, and relates directly to the forest from which the Germanic tribes emerged. Here we find the ash, oak and linden of the Germanic woodlands. The Norseman had their Yggdrasil or World-Ash. Romanesque sculpture recalls the woodlands, Gothic pillars shoot up vertically & then spread across the vaults. Late Baroque adds its own sylvan touches with its Rococo leafy curves & ornament. These woodlands imbue the observer with awe, and unspeakable wonder, of the past & future, of a deep relation with Destiny, the Infinite. Just as the Gothic vaults capture the space of the Infinite, so the organ captures the sound of the Infinite. Western music from the 18th century on has worked to mimic the longing, hovering of the organ tone.
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Classical, Magian and Faustian numina p. 397.
From this primary feeling, of the immanence of the Infinite of the woodland, the observer takes in the impression of motion in Nature, in the alien around him, the indistinct numina. This, the Other, is a divine force, source of both religion & science. The Other is feared, revered, eventually investigated but the feeling is the same, both in religion & science.
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Once the observer is conscious of the numina he names it. Naming will control. The intellectual power of man harnesses the Other, with a name. And as the numina is named, it becomes, a God.
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For the Apollonian being was revealed as body, shape, form. That which was form, shape, was being. That without shape, was non being. Apollonian gods were perfect bodies, perfect shapes; however in other ways (such as Time, space) they worked under the same limit as common men. Faustian man’s depth experience led him to see space, force being a lesser abstraction from space; he did not see shape or body or mass; indeed that which was sensible was of a lesser order, specious, to be overcome. Mass is what is in space, derived from space & not that which is distinct in its own. The definition of mass is based on force. The Apollonian saw body or shape, and from this entity or being also came non-being. Faustian notions of substantiality start with potential (to be moved), the polar of kinetic (moving).
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Apollonian and Faustian feeling of God compared
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Scientists assume gods & religion are tales of primitive society; in reality these myths stem from the first age of the great Culture, the Spring & not from a primitive form. The concepts of the Primitives (e.g. the Germans of the Migration, the Jews before Cyrus) cults, fragmented, irregular, scattered, are not full myths or divine. And they are subject to influence from alien Cultures/civilizations for it is during the primitive (pre-Cultural) age that the alien Culture can impact a nascent Culture
Every Culture has its own organized great myth, religion & architecture. It is in the Spring time that both the great religious visions and the great epics, are born. These forms, mythical (Roland, Siegfried) and divine (the Passion plays, the saints) appear mutually exclusive. In fact they exist together in great unity. Heroic poetry & epics and religious hagiology, stem from the same age. The priests in the cathedral developed the religion myths & epics, the nobleman in the castle developed the heroes of the great sagas. Both traditions emerged concurrently. There are even examples of the blending of the 2 in the German Muspilli.
There is a deep unity in the Faustian hero myths & religious characters, the heroes & sacred persons, even the places, show affinity. Christ the King & Siegfried are different names for the same figure. So too Valhalla & Avalon, Mary & Frigga. The antiquarian scrambles to find the peculiar provenance of each when in fact the provenance adds nothing to the meaning. The symbols & their immediate meaning is far more vital than the provenance. Even if the provenance reflects aspects of older cultures, what is most important is the numen of the living Culture; this is non-transferable (unlike a name, or dress or mask). The Celtic & German myths, indeed the Eastern Christian heritage, were all but raw material for the Faustian Soul
The Spring time of the Apollonian age was the Homeric period (1100-800 BC); the Springtime of the Faustian age was the Teutonic period (900-1100 AD). These 3 centuries of Imperial Germany, gave the Faustian Culture its great religious icons, the saints and also the great northern epics, both growing from the same soil & time. It was not the precursor period of a primitive pre-Culture.
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comparisons of 3 Cultures/Civilization
The Magian Soul, between 44 BC and 272 AD created a huge body of cults, visions & legends, syncretic cults (Syrian Baal, Isis & Mithras in Syria), the Gospels, Acts & Apocalypses. Jesus & Zoroaster, heroes of the Magian Culture, parallel the Apollonian Achilles & Faustian Siegfried & Percival. The most dramatic scenes of his passion stand with the great Greek & Germanic sagas. And all the while this was growing while shadowed by the dead Soul of the Apollonian civilization & though its sprit dead, its forms were still heavy & impacted on an infant Magian Culture.
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Apollonian religion was exacting, seeing divinity as corporal body; Gods were bodies, bodies exist in plurality never in isolation. This explains Greek & Roman distaste for the Jewish one God Yahweh. And Gods were social in nature, not reclusive; the Apollonians did not worship star gods, far in the distance (or Sun or moon gods). Nor were they moved by storm or forest, hence no storm gods. It was the concrete, the particular; specific rivers, specific trees but never the far away or distant: there is no cloud or horizon in Classical art work. They worship a limitless mass of gods, each being tangible & independent, and equal.
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Whereas Faustian religion looks to unitary space, Apollonians saw the individual things; Olympus & Hades are very specific almost geographic and Apollonian gods (e.g. Ceres) are the actual things (e.g. the seed). The Faustian sees unitary space- his Valkyries exist doing things, on a battlefield somewhere, free to roam. His universe abhors the physical & impenetrable. Valhalla is just somewhere far. His myths are full of secret buried treasures under mountains and creatures within subterranean realms. His fairies & fairy lands are without weight, not on earth but somewhere in an undefined space. Even the solidity of stone Gothic cathedrals is dissolved in the airy vaults, existing in space.
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Apollonian polytheism saw gods in all corporal existence, trees, rivers, all that was local & near; and when abroad he respected gods of other locales, whether he knew them or not. There is a strong additive feel here, the cults grew & multiplied as the Empire expanded, each new region contributing its local gods. The city Rome, ever more crowded, fuller of Eastern types, grew fond of such accumulations, especially of Eastern deities. This way the Magian Soul begins creeping in and very often the conduit was the Legion itself.
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In this process the deification of men was not difficult: first the deification of a plenitude of things (a copse or well), moving towards a deified statue representing a god, then an outstanding man, a hero, emerging as a god. The Apollonian worshipped the genius of the living, and the divi of the dead, the perfected shape or form. Roman consuls in their triumphs wore the armour of Jupiter Capitolinus, had their arms pained red so as to resemble the terra-cotta statue of the god. This is different from the Magian deification. Eastern, Persian deification was ceremonial, worship of the office, not the man who held it. Different also from the Caliph worship which we see in Constantine & Diocletian.
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With the early Empire a new Soul, the Magian, arrived, felt, but not so much in externals. In Apollonian religions, locality was a major element; it commanded respected. The geographic limit of the precinct or temple defined the God. New temples had to defer such boundaries. Gradually however, with the rising tide of Hellenistic syncretism, the new deities of the East collected more & more divine names & attributes. Transplanted already from Egypt or further afield, geographic limits did not count. The names begin to merge into a spiritual essence, not of particularity of place or title, but monotheism, one god, with many names & places. The Apollonian tendency for the endless accumulation of deities is now reversed. Instead of addition we see the absorption of old gods by new. Instead of the Apollonian pantheon growing, the new imported Eastern Gods fuse with the older Apollonian gods, their titles & attributes. Many are merged into the One. Images are replaced with symbols (the Cross, the Bull).
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After Trajan (died 117 AD) Apollonian religion changes: gods as bodies loses to gods of a transcendental feeling. Caracalla (217 AD) ended the distinction between Roman & foreign divinities. Isis absorbs in toto the female godhead. The aliens Sol & Baal absorb more & more Roman divinities; Rome becomes a diocese of Syria! It was not a question of would Greco-Roman divinities survive, but rather, which of the alien cults would prevail.
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The gradual decline in emperor worship can be plotted from “Divus Julius” (42 BC) officially elected by the Senate, to, after Marcus Aurelius (died 180 AD), the ending of construction of special temples & consecration of special priests for said worship, and finally the recognition of “divus” as a mere imperial title. Likewise in the change of inscriptions reflecting the merging of the various Roman, Greek & eastern gods ( e.g. Mithras-Sol Invictus-Helios), towards a single godhead, monotheism.
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Like religion, atheism is deeply symbolic, a necessary but brief phenomenon, the expression of spirit that has exhausted all religious possibilities, moving to the inorganic. Not incompatible with the wish for faith, akin to Romanticism, a sentiment recalling that which is gone. It is an unconscious mind set at the dawn of Civilization, of the city, of the educated who acquire it mechanically.
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Each culture has its own form of unique religiousness, which has its own unique form of atheism. Men continue to view the physical world, but at the dawn of Civilization the organic understanding is replaced by a mechanistic. Faustian culture has Nietzsche’s dynamic atheism whereas Apollonian atheism is Euclidean, static, place bound. The early Soul is wise, rural while the late soul is urban, intelligent.
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A Culture is living & as such will always have, be religious; Civilization is dead, as such will always be irreligious. This reflects a historical period; the late Civilization is empty & however so desired, cannot manufacture religion, indeed religion in the Megalopolis is self-deception. Toleration is inversely proportional to piety; toleration infers either that the thing tolerated confirms an experienced feeling, or it has NOTHING to be felt.
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Plurality of cults & their validity was built into Apollonian religion; the Christians & Jews were exclusive (non-pluralists) & denied the aggregate of individual gods. They were therefore seen as godless atheists. When this feeling changed in Imperial times, the Apollonian god feeling, religion, was dead. Apollonians expected the form of the cult image or statue, the form of the sacrifice or festival, to be closely observed; contempt for, mocking or profaning the sacred image or rites, led to harsh condemnation. For Faustian, it is dogma, not visible ritual (form) that matters & opposition to doctrine is heresy. Faustian religion cannot allow freedom of conscience or even free thinking. The guillotine & stake suppress such thought; the pulpit & the Press do likewise, promoting dogma not free thinking. The Faustian “ fields of force” (an idea borrowed from Faustian electrodynamics Physics) will align minds to its convictions. Failure to do this means an absence of conviction & belief. The Athenians might raise cults to the unknown god but persecuted ruthlessly the Sophists who speculated on religion, as the fate of Socrates, Diagoras or Protagoras reflects. Contempt towards the Cult was fatal. Rome too was intolerant of atheism. Failure to sacrifice to the Imperial cult was punishable. Contempt to the visible cult was criminal; contempt for the narratives, stories, myths or histories was NOT. Just as the Roman Stoic (who held the mythical stories as fiction) piously made sacrifice at the Cult, so too the Enlightened philosophers (who might forego Church attendance or confession) gave credence to the fundamental truths of Faith (e.g. Goethe)
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XII. Faustian physics as a dogma of force p. 4II.
Turning from become to becoming, (from Autumn back to Summer, Civilization back to Culture) we see the Gods or god are the root of the images by which the intellect understands reality (Nature). Reason in the Summer or Spring created Gods; in the Autumn or Winter it creates notions or ideas.
The deism of the Baroque starts with abstractions (God, Freedom, Immortality) but ends with Principles of Physics (the Laws of thermodynamics or Conservation of energy. Such laws are fossils of the Baroque & have affinity with such Baroque phenomenon as the Jesuits (long range global missions, dynamic facades ).
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Western Physics is dogmatic, not ritualistic, its content is the dogma of Force, identical with space & distance, relating to the mechanical ACT in space. Although it began with Apollonian sense perception (acoustics, optics), it replaces sense with abstract systems of relations.
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Force (energy) is a Faustian Cultural a priori (not the end result of scientific experiments), a reflection of spirit & is not definable, but instead, defines; the scientist gives it the name work & a number but it cannot be measured in the absolute sense. The same holds for Faustian a priori Will and Space. Both are intuitive, not factual. Neither Baroque sciences or thinkers could define it & many approached it with a deistic feeling (Kant, Goethe). Each Faustian religion produced their own versions of Force. It is revealing that Spinoza & Hertz (both Magian Jews) had no room for the Force concept.
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Faustian Physics knows only Force; Statics (like Geometry & Arithmetic) are Apollonian leftovers, based on Form & Substance, without meaning to Faustian Physics. Late Renaissance artists believed they revived a superior Apollonian art & yet the best students of Classical form (Mantegna, Palladio) fell out of fashion with the ascendancy of the Baroque. Likewise the Aristotelian Cabeo whose study of magnetism was immediately forgotten! The process evolved slowly & even Galileo (1564–1642) remained tied to contact force & the conservation of momentum. It took Leibniz (1646–1716) to develop directional & free forces, living forces. Conservation of momentum was moving towards conservation of energy, from a quantitative number to a functional number. Mass evolved but slowly; both Galileo & Kepler found force & mass alien; mass as unrelated to volume was barely acceptable to the Renaissance. Only with Newton (1642–1727) with his functional mass were the observations of Kepler & Galileo finally linked. Apollonian Statics never considered space (the nonent) or motion: bodies moved on their own. Newton broke this Apollonian spell with his distant forces, completely outside perception. And yet we still wait for a complete & total explanation of gravity, centrifugal forces and the like.
From Summer to Winter we see the religious deed replaced by the irreligious work concept. The divinity of the Summer & Autumn is replaced by Nature, whose work is measurable as precise energy units. This transformation from divine to secular is mirrored in economic theory, with the rise of economic forces rather than God, direct economic movement.
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During the Baroque Summer period (1500-1800), Force ideas (Galileo, Newton, Leibniz) are first associated with 17th century oil paintings. Oil painting declined after 1630; the form which continued to carry the Faustian spirit transfers to music with the fugue & Bach, in parallel with the period of the great Classical mechanics of Laplace & Lagrange. Finally with the dawn of Civilization we see emerge pure analysis & the theory of functions.
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XIII. Limits of its theoretical (as distinct from its technical) development p. 417.
Western physics today is drawing to the limits of its potential in its mission to transform Faustian Nature feeling into intellectual knowledge, from faith towards exact machine form. Up to the end of the 19th century it was moving towards fulfilment, with ever greater rigour, purity, clarity. Then (just as the Apollonian science of 200 BC) the impetus ended. The foundations of its core concepts, on energy, time, mass, space, causality itself, came into question. Doubts on achieving a conclusive ending emerged. Scientific exactitude was replaced by probability. The search for a self-contained consistent mechanics is in peril. Newton’s gravity & the conservation of energy are no longer absolute. Relativity ends the life of the luminiferous aether, replaced by a vacuum. Newton’s mass is assailed by Planck & Bohr (along with his Calculus) and their atomic structures & quanta idea. Relativity ends absolute time. Radioactivity & modern thermodynamics erodes previously unchallenged assumptions. The grand Baroque structure of Physics is increasingly attacked by contradictions, for which a new hypotheses is erected, until they too are assailed.
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Faustian decline is heralded in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the law of Entropy: a quantified measure of the dispersal of heat energy. Energy will naturally disperse until it reaches entropy, when there is no more energy to be dispersed. Entropy is the irreversible dispersal of energy; for the Faustian, energy IS the deed, it is the symbol like Will and Force. The 1st Law (Conservation of energy) lives in the realm of classical Physics, the natural world. The 2nd Law (Entropy) embraces irreversibility, and because of this it exists in the realm of life, Becoming, and as such is in contradiction to the First law. The 2nd Law is focused on the study of particle physics, atoms; as such it is ruled by Quantum Mechanics & employs probability, statistics. These are the tools of economics & politics, history itself! They would be out of place for the science of Newton or Galileo. We see the beginning of confusion- science and history, Becoming and Become, causal & destiny; this is a sign of the end. The physics of the Baroque age was systematic; the new Quantum Physics is physiognomic. Goethe railed against Newton, it was his Becoming that Newton was blind to; but now, in the late Faustian age, Physics returns to its home in Becoming, Nature feeling.
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Faustian man has a focus on directional energy, Time, the past, the future; he envisions the New Age, the New Kingdom, Destiny. Thus so, entropy embraces Time. Causality (science) now embraces Destiny, historical direction. We can see something similar in the idea of radioactivity & half-life. Mathematical number is replaced by chronological.
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Entropy embraces, reflects the old symbols, Ragnarok, oil painting with its infinite space, the Infinite Series, even Faust part 2! As Gotterdammerung was the religious form, entropy is the irreligious; it signifies the inward journey is complete.
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Faustian Culture nears its end; even this perception is Faustian (who unlike the Apollonian, ever in the present), who live in the past & the future. Science in the 20th century reaches apogee & begins downward, from Will to Overcome, towards doubt & then, faith not reason prevails. Individuals cease reading science & society ceases to regard scientific discoveries as Great Events. Scientific disciplines become ever more specialized. By 1900 the Great Minds (e.g. Humboldt, Gauss) are gone. Future science will harvest, see to everyday needs, replicate, but not create.
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The final Faustian endeavour will be the systematic comprehension of ALL disciplines of Science, the sum of all symbols. This task will use intuition with a religious outlook, reinterpreting all disciplines, into a single expression, the body of data will be processed by a few theories (myths of the Springtime in modern clothing) to produce a unified symbol. To date no single modern philosopher has comprehended ALL science.
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Physics & chemistry of the early 19th century were distinct; today they are synonymous; 19th century chemistry had little mathematics; today it is a major description. In Physics it is the preferred expression! It even is part of Physiology. The elements are no longer indivisible but made of parts (protons, neutrons, elections) which determine their character; they possess “lifetimes” and are in dynamic states of disintegration (radiation).
Mathematics gives birth to “aggregates” a new species of number, no longer specific & singular but handling whole groups. Theory of Groups merges with algebra & logic, even geometry! This movement, evident in all of Science, moves towards a wholly insensible language, incomprehensible to the layman. Our Number (a primary symbol of the Culture) is transcendent & thus returns us to our origins. Number moved to uncover truth in the Invisible but returns our great Myths. In our sunset, science wanes, Skpesis waxes, Number, our final great symbol, akin to the Gothic cathedral or dynastic state, reflects the Faustian Soul. The final convergence of Science bears all the hallmarks of our Counterpoint. And finally, having achieved all possibilites, Faustian Culture passes a legacy onto an uncomprehending future.
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