No all cultures seek to overcome nature, they simply accept it. For many, anything discovered about nature that appears to go against nature was considered a curiosity. As one example, the Chinese made a lot of discoveries over the years but never applied them as they could have. For instance, when they discovered gun powder they did not do anything more with it... it was a curiosity. Whereas Europeans went the distance with it and still do. Why? Because, Western man was designed that way. The idea of questioning and investigating nature is a purely Christian/European phenomenon. Which has now spread all over the world, because the Europeans spread out another aspect of Christian social imagination. The science that is applied today is a 'Christian' science, a method by which scientists question and investigate and imagine what is beyond what they see. This kind of thinking and investigating has now become accepted and applied by the world but again, in many cultures this kind of thinking, imagining was not original to them.
Ironic as it seems, given that many scientists today who work in applied sciences may say that they are atheists. 'Christian' man takes a dominate position over nature rather than a submissive role as we find in Pagan beliefs. We can read this in Genesis, as in the beginning, man was given dominion over all of nature, while he lives with it, he is master of it. God gave him the ability to name the animals. This was the means and authority of assigning them their nature which man was given control over. Pagan, animistic and pantheistic beliefs place man equal to or subservient to the natural world. If one is subservient to nature, one does not question it nor bother to understand it.... it simply is.
Modern science and especially including quantum physics is a direct consequence of the Judeo-Christian world view. If it were not for that world view, appearing in Europe in the Judeo-Christian social imagination,, the world would be a different world, and we would not be living in the world of technology that we live in today.Yes, other cultures have adopted technology and some have come over to Western science 'social imagination' but that does not mean they apply it in the same way or seek to go farther distances with it as does Western man. We can notice that they have no problem jumping on board with Western science to complete a task or to partake in construction frameworks as in mathematical theories that can be applied. But it is what the application means to those other cultures that is different from Western cultures. The meaning they derive will be different from 'meaning' in Western man's social imagination.
The best visible application we can see in Western man regarding Christan social imagination comes in the activity of naming. Naming was and is important for Western man's social imagination. As naming is an action, and with it follows the giving of commands; revealing Western man's design. He was designed to apply authority over things, not to live in acceptance of things. In computer programming naming is important. The Creator begins with the 'Word' as a first name and this first command runs other commands in the program. On the quantum level of computing, the Creator's programs give commands acting in authority.
God created man, and man was commanded by his Creator to run a program, to have dominion over all creation. Man established the nature of things by naming and commanding, which shows his authority and not submission... Western man is essentially a co-programmer of the world on a quantum level ~ speaking as a sociologist, this is what he was meant 'designed' to do in the Christian social imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment