Notes on the Great Chain of Being
In reading many of your dialectical journal responses for The Great Gatsby, I noticed that many of you made reference to the Great Chain of Being, or simply to a sense of cosmological order (even if you didn’t use that term precisely).
While I am very happy to see your burgeoning cultural knowledge, it is important to contextualize ideas-again, another reason for the importance of history. Let’s put The Great Chain in its place:
The origins of this powerful and influential idea go back, as many things do, to Plato. Plato conceived of the universe as existing on many levels, with the highest level a “world” of pure ideas known as the forms. This world was the most orderly and was totally complete. Perfect. A world extended below which was a copy of the first (and copies are always imperfect); another below that was a copy of a copy; and then a copy of a copy of a copy; ad infinitum, down to our own world which was but a mere shadow of the splendor of the original. Does anyone hear echoes of “The Allegory of the Cave”? I hope so.
Plato’s philosophies were handed down and taught throughout the Mediterranean world for centuries. When Christians got ahold of Plato they found a cosmology so wonderfully laid out, many wondered aloud if Plato had not really been a Christian. Early church fathers borrowed much of Platonism or Neo-Platonism (as we now designate the much later version of his ideas) and adapted it for Christian theology, with Christ being the transcendent connection between God (the highest, most perfect world) and man (the lowest, most imperfect). This view of the cosmos endured for over 1000 years. Not even the Protestant revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries could dislodge the Great Chain of Being from its position of preeminence. For men and women of the time, the universe was clearly rationally ordered, with the infiniteness of the Creator exhibited at every level.
It wasn’t until the 18th century, through systematic philosophical investigation and rational inquiry did the Chain begin to weaken. Newton’s mechanistic model of the physical reality opened a slight breach in the former mysteries-now formerly magical phenomenon could be explained with mathematics. The new science, one based on experimentation and observation, started showing gaps in this supposed unbroken chain. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant found that the Chain of Being had no empirical application and when it was used could only produce imaginary knowledge. The 18th century was also the century of the Encyclopedists: the French scholars who began to record every scrap of knowledge in a systematic format for reference and cross-reference. And it was the century of the dictionary. Knowledge became an organized body that could be referenced quickly and easily. It was even more profound a change than the Internet, for the Internet only helps us locate and link knowledge; the Encyclopedists, on the other hand, organized the knowledge for the very first time.
For all this the Chain of Being still clung to life. Only with the dramatic upheavals in the life sciences beginning in the 1750s that culminated in Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859) did the idea fall into disuse. People like to point to Darwin as either this great genius or great Satan, but in reality he was building on a body of research more than a century old. As he was developing his argument for the spontaneous generation of new species from existing species, others were very close on his heels. You might remember from Bio class that Lamarck was very nearly right, but just missed the mark. And if it weren’t for monks scared of Mendel’s “radical” ideas, we would have had a theory of genetic inheritance that would have undergirded Darwin’s claims. But only with this sea change in the concept of the world did the Great of Chain of Being begin its long and fitful decline. Is it any surprise that it declined at the same time the great and centuries old monarchies also begin their fitful and ignominious demises? Individualism and democracy became the new ideals-shockingly so, since only a two generations previous they were considered to be slur words against common decency.
Today, the Chain of Being is usually considered a quaint anachronism: something for a simpler time when people knew their “betters” and knew their “place.” Its vestiges still exist in the debate between evolution and “Intelligent Design.” Intelligent Design is another name for the same basic idea as the Chain of Being.
So, when reading be sure to place the story and author in their contexts (author’s can write about the distant past, too). Try to imagine the world-view the author lived within. In a sense your mission is to decipher his or her epistemology-how do they decide what is true? The Great Chain was the dominant idea for nearly two thousand years. But its time has passed, and I think we are yet to produce a name for our present one.
15 Comments »
Filed under: Class Discussions
September 24th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Perhaps a more appropriate name for today’s beliefs is materialism. Commercialism would also work. It seems as though we hold these concepts as high as our elder philosophers held the Great Chain and its counterparts.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Maybe. Materialism is a belief in the material world–physicality; as opposed to a spiritual or supernatural conception of reality. That’s definitely true, but “Materialism” has such negative connotations. We also believe very strongly in unseen things: markets, economy, ethics, values, evil, good.
And don’t think that people in the past were above ‘get rich or die trying.’ They definitely did lots of that. And, ironically, it was the monks in the monasteries who laid the foundations for the money economy. I love the ironies of history.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
I find Mr. Eldridge’s explanation on the Great Chain of Being very interesting because it is different from what we learned in Robinson. I still have my excerpt from Robinson “The Great Chain of Being,” and we analyzed this differently than the ‘copies of the perfect world’ that Eldridge talks about.
Eldridge’s variation seems a little more complicated than the “picture of a chain vertically extended” with increasing order of inanimate objects, vegetation, animals, humans, angles, and, at top, God. But still both correlate in the hierarchical order.
Interesting Note: twice today I have come across the concept of ‘humors.’ In class Eldridge so nicely pointed out the very graphical ways of dealing with illnesses (letting those who are ill bleed to release body fluids and return the 4 different humors to balance). As I skim over my “Great Chain of Being” from Robinson, the ‘humours’ jump out at me again.
The excerpt states: “just as the world was composed of 4 ‘elements’ (earth, water, air, fire), so too was the human body composed of four substances called “humours,” with characteristics corresponding to the four elements. (Illness occured when there was an imbalance or “disorder” among the humours, that is, when they did not exist in proper proportion to each other).”
Just something to think about.
September 25th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
what is this so-called “chain of being”? is it the idealistic sequence of human emotion, or the historically scripted chain of human events that have affected future generations of being? i think that the chain of being is every single action and the results of those actions (chain reactions). as far as Plato’s idea of the world consisting of many levels, I do agree to some extent. obviously there are different levels of emotion, action, and ideas that take their place in the formation of the world, but I do not think that the highest level of planetary being is one of pure ideology. Seing as how the chain of being is one of actual being, there can not be an existing level of pure ideology and perfectness, because as we know nothing is perfect. There obviously is a level of idealistic notions and theories (i.e. utopian society, heaven, mount zion), but I do not believe it is the strongest; the strongest level is that of actual human action and the results, which is in turn just the “chain of being”. as far as our beliefs go (rather your beliefs, i do not like to be a part of your vague generalizaions, thank you very much), i do think that many people are materialistic, but materialism is not a constituted belief system. i suppose it is a way of being however. alright, i’m not really sure where to go with this now…i really wanted to write something about hypocrisy and christianity in american society, but i just couldn’t find the right place to put it. if one day i happen to pop up on a blog about religion, believe me, the wrath of sky dawg will fall upon us all.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Sky dawg, look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chain_of_Being
I know Ms. Robinson talked about it a lot with her classes. It’s a philosophical system that helped explain the order of the universe for about 2500 years.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Lauren, nice connection. And I’m super-glad you’re reviewing past notes. It’s amazing what we’ll pick up when we return to old learnings.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
The key difference between the modern and pre-modern conceptions of the universe is this idea of pre-existent order. The Great Chain PRESUPPOSES an order exists and that we must discover that order. This is nice because if we understand the order but are missing pieces we can just fill in the blanks b/c we “know” it should be there.
Modern concepts PRESUPPOSES that NO system underlies phenomena, so our investigations first try to gather data and then try to make sense of it. This is the great classifying quest of biology and physics. Scientists keep searching for ‘why’ there appears to be at least some order in the universe.
As you can see it is two different epistemologies. They are incompatible. That is why if one person, today, accepts one system he or she cannot accept the other. Does anyone hear echoes of the conflict between religion and science…?
September 26th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Religion v.s. science most definitely – not really as an “echoing conflict”, but in today’s society more as a screaming debate ringing in your ears. Not so much in the perspective that most see, because religion doesn’t necessarily conflict with all aspects of science. Yes, it’s generally accepted to believe that your body is composed of microscopic cells and that your computer mouse is composed of atomic molecules, but there are some things in science that, with fact, logic, and careful critical thinking can be contradicted in some perspectives. For instance, the Cell Theory states, in part, that all cells come from pre-existing cells…but take a look in your typical chemistry book and the Law of Conservation of Matter states that matter, like energy, cannot be created or destroyed…well then, where did those first cells come from? And in another aspect…How would the universe originate from a supposed “big bang”, and yet have particular order in just about everything from the interwoven food chain to planetary orbits? Could such a orderly universe come from a sudden explosion?
We may never have an entire grasp of the reality and origins of the world…moreover, I don’t think we can ever really answer the unnerving question, “why?”
September 26th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
You make a good point. There are gaps in our knowledge and that again points to a “scientific” epistemology which does not allow us to fill in missing data.
You’ve hit upon some of the most unnerving mysteries of modern times.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Weeee, I feel smart now
But yes, ’tis true, the missing spaces between what we know as knowledge may never be filled with true understanding – our answers revert to questions spawning more questions.
September 30th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Our world has a never ending chain of questions and answers. Especially the question of why something happened or why it happened in that way. It makes people think twice about what is real and what is fiction. Thereby allowing others to find if people are proposing ideas through what they believe or what they have heard scientists say.
September 30th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I agree on some part with Marija. Yes as you said it is true that there exists GIGANTIC gaps in our existence which cuts our parts of our history, the Earth’s history, even the universe’s history is unknown to us, but then again, it probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway. There is no real way of knowing anything that happened in between those gaps, unless you consider the most extreme possibilities. Considering such events occurred billions of years ago, it is a fool’s idea to believe that much of any primary sources would still exist in good condition or well enough for anyone to interpret, thus any sort of being at that time would turn to oral tradition. From history, we can infer that oral tradition does not give a one hundred precent detail of the exist event. Over time, if not lost completely, the story would have been retold to keep it known and changed to be protected from enemies. Thus, by the time our civilization got the message, it would have been far to altered to interpret properly what had happened so many years ago.
But then again, there are many other views and possibilities to it too.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
It is interesting to note the transformation of the concept ‘The Great Chain of Being’. Starting off as an elegant philosophical concept of Plato’s, with its goal of understanding and joining the perfect and pure world of the forms. This beautiful and eloquent concept became politically charged when it was used as the primary source of justification for the rule of Kings/Emperors/Pharoahs. Although the ‘Great Chain’ still retained most of its original philosophical, religious doctrine found its way into the concept, along with the ‘divine right’ of the ruller to rule. This modified and impure distortion of the original ‘Great Chain’ fell hard with the coming of the Age of Reason and the last vestige of any real power of the Royal Houses of Europe and the Vatican, Perhaps echoing the original concept, a mere shadow of the platonic ‘Great Chain of Being’. The ‘Great Chain’ proved itself to be quite malable by the medival authorites, and there is nothing to suggest that it has not been modified once again for the new age. Perhaps this modernized version of the ‘great chain’ is off and running even now, answering all the question we can possibly ever ask and defining our time. I think now I understand what Jonathan was trying to say earlier, The concept of economically driven excistence has proven to be the benchmark by which people are measured today. This idea is increasing gaining acceptance to the point where it has become apparant and permanant, it is no longer a thing to notice, it is just accepted by people who have grown up with it. We have been quite ignorant in the assumtion that we live in a modern world just because we live in modern times.
October 1st, 2007 at 4:25 pm
David, your last point is very interesting and very insightful. We like to think of dramatic events unfolding in history–things like revolutions and wars and plagues. But all of these things are minuscule when compared with the tectonic changes that take place in our consciousnesses.
I chose that metaphor (tectonic plates) for a, I hope, clear reason: while the changes may be small they are far-reaching and permanent. Your point about the change of personal consciousness towards the facet of economics in our lives shows one of the subtle but slowly changing ASSUMPTIONS which guide our lives. I argue passionately against man as merely homo economicus. But the tide of history is against me. At least now. But I fight on, nonetheless.
What’s really key here is that what we CHOOSE to think about the world, what we CHOOSE to consider real will determine our choices and those will determine our future. When we need to change (in a crisis, say) then we look around for the available ideas and make use of them. If our ideas are not rich, varied, or workable–then our choices (and outcomes) are tired, dreary, and hopeless.
Here is an argument–a very practical one–for the work of philosophers, researchers, investigators, etc. who are not economically motivated. Their ideas help shape our world, and without them we would not be able to make sense of our lives, the world. Without them there is no future, only more of the same.
October 9th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I recall in college some years back taking a history course in which the professor took the view that the Age of Reason was a ploy in which the entire GCOB was used to explain the entire universe and therefore there was a definitive explanation for all things and a “Reason” for this order therefore no great need to explore this philosophy beyond the dictates of the GCOB. Not to be confused with the Enlightenment where the GCOB gets into trouble with the peasants (neo capitalists or capitalists in waiting).