First, let's start with the quote that starts it all, from C.S. Lewis' "The Discarded Image." This talks about how the Medieval beliefs were ALL flipped upside down with the discovery that the Earth rotates around the sun..instead of the opposite, fundamental beliefs everyone accepted as truth: there being concentric spheres that all ascended from the Earth and moved in a "cosmic dance" creating harmonious music; symbolic of the harmony of God's creation. This discovery by Copernicus and later Galileo traded an old model of reality for a new one, and had real costs associated with it. This quote shows what was at stake in trading in the old worldview for a newer one.:
"In our universe (the earth) is small, no doubt; but so are the galaxies, so is everything--and so what? But in theirs there was an absolute standard of comparison. The furthest sphere, Dante's maggio corpo, is, quite simply and finally, the largest object in existence....Hence to look out on the night sky with modern eyes is like looking out over a sea that fades away into mist, of looking about one in a trackless forest--trees forever and no horizon. To look up at the towering medieval universe is much more like looking at a great building. The 'space' of modern astronomy may arouse terror or bewilderment or vague reverie; the spheres of the old present us with an object in which the mind can rest, overwhelming in its greatness but safisfying in its harmony....Pascal's terror at le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis (the eternal silence of the infinite spaces) never entered his mind. He is like a man being conducted through an immense cathedral, not like one lost in a shoreless sea."
(so, based on this quote- imagery that goes with these ideas: Medieval Universe- looks like a towering cathedral; has harmony; spheres moving around Earth in a cosmic dance... Modern Universe (what we have today)- sea that fades away into mist; no harmony; earth rotates around sun... you can see how for the Medievals this would make them "spiritually homeless". The new model was less personal, less orderly, etc..)
Quote by Brian McLaren (via Neo-his fictious character):
"Most modern people love to relativize the viewpoints of the others against the unquestioned superiority of their own modern viewpoint. But in a way, you cross the threshold into postmodernity the moment you turn your critical scrutiny from others to yourself when you relativize your own modern viewpoint. When you do this, everything changes. It is like a conversion. You can't go back. You begin to see that what seemed like pure, objective certainty really depends heavily on a subjective preference for your personal viewpoint."~Brian McLaren's character, Neo in the book "A New Kind of Christian"
The next quote is, again, from C.S. Lewis' "The Discarded Image"..
"It would...be subtly misleading to say, 'The medievals thought the universe to be like that, but we know it to be like this.' Part of what we now know is that we cannot, in the old sense, 'know what the universe is like' and that no model we can build will be, in that old sense, 'like' it....There is no question here of the old Model's being shattered by the inrush of new phenomena. The truth would seem to be the reverse; that when changes in the human mind produce a sufficient disrelish of the old Model and a sufficient hankering for some new one, phenomena to support that new one will obediently turn up. I do not at all mean that these new phenomena are illusory. Nature has all sorts of phenomena in stock and can suit many different tastes."
My brain is going in all kinds of directions now with these ideas of Postmodernity..and what Modernity, in fact, is. Postmodernism isn't a BAD thing- it's actually a viewpoint that is emerging based on our evolving/ever-changing world. We can't be like the Medievals and just accept EVERYTHING the way we were brought up to believe- we need to challenge our preconceived notions..
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