{"id":2730,"date":"2009-09-20T06:18:48","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T14:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2730"},"modified":"2009-09-20T06:18:48","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T14:18:48","slug":"eat-that-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/eat-that-apple\/","title":{"rendered":"Eat That Apple!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stanley Fish is not normally my favorite commentator, but his New York Times<\/em> piece <\/a>on curiosity today\u00a0is well worth a look:<\/p>\n

\u2026There is another tradition in which, far from being the guarantor of a better future, curiosity is a vice and even a sin. Indeed, it has often been considered the original sin.<\/p>\n

When God told Adam he could eat of all the fruits of the Garden of Eden, but not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he placed what has been called a \u201cprovoking object\u201d in Adam\u2019s eyes. The provocation was to go beyond the boundaries God had established and thereby set himself up a rival deity, a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything. Such a being would imagine himself, God-like, standing to the side of the universe and, armed only with the power of his mind, mastering its intricacies. Those who engage in this fantasy, says Thomas Aquinas, think \u201cthey are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another churchman, Lorenzo Scupoli, put it this way in 1589: \u201cThey make an idol of their own understanding\u201d (\u201cKnowledge puffeth up,\u201d I Corinthians 8:1)\u2026<\/p>\n

Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge\u2019s boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that [N.E.H.] Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H. to digitalize just about everything. \u201cThe computer revolution,\u201d he announces, \u201cholds out the prospect that the digital library could be become an international citadel for the pursuit of curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what Paul Griffiths, professor of divinity at Duke University, is afraid of. Where Leach welcomes the enlargement of curiosity\u2019s empire, Griffiths, who is writing a book on the vice of curiosity, sees it as a sign of moral and spiritual danger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d expect no less from a professor of divinity, but how sad\u2026and what a useful reminder of what a block to progress (suspect word, but it\u2019ll do in this context)\u00a0certain types of\u00a0religious faith (and\u00a0their accretions and superstitions) can represent.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, I wonder what that Senator Brownback has been up to recently\u2026.Ah yes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ht\/t: The Daily Dish<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stanley Fish is not normally my favorite commentator, but his New York Times piece on curiosity today\u00a0is well worth a look: \u2026There is another tradition in which, far from being the guarantor of a better future, curiosity is a vice … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[14,21],"tags":[1132],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2730"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2733,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2730\/revisions\/2733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}