I recently read Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances. Owen Barfield was C.S. Lewis’ professor and an expert in the history of meaning. Saving the Appearances argues that the evolution of human consciousness can be tracked and that it has had a profound, if largely unrecognized effect on human perception and culture.
According to Owen Barfield, ancient man fused his nascent culture with the sense data to create a perception of which he became conscious. The subjects of this consciousness were eventually named and what Owen Barfield calls “alpha-thought” then began; the use of words as icons of perception. Man could then communicate all that was needed to survive and thrive; Adam and Eve walked and talked with God.
Once man began to thrive, however, he was free to think about alpha-thinking, which Barfield called “beta-thought”; Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are the first to record these beta-thoughts. By definition beta-thinking objectifies the world, and also man, for study. This same process also separates man from his environment, the Fall as it were. This tendency grew in the West and came to full blossom in the scientific revolution of the 16th Century onward.
My reaction to this is that this process came at a cost because there is only so much RAM for conscious thought so to speak. To provide intellectual space for beta-thought, and it takes a lot of space, man had to give up a percentage of available RAM previously dedicated to alpha-thinking and therefore perception itself. Thus, it isn’t irrational to wonder if bronze-age man actually perceived the divine in a way that we simply cannot; we may seek, but we cannot perceive the divine because we cannot perceive it for lack of conscious space. Perhaps, those who seek the divine long enough and hard enough can change who they are sufficiently enough to perceive it—as a man is, so he sees. Perhaps Art is the best the rest of us can do.
No. 24: Owen Barfield and beta-thinking
I recently read Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances. Owen Barfield was C.S. Lewis’ professor and an expert in the history of meaning. Saving the Appearances argues that the evolution of human consciousness can be tracked and that it has had a profound, if largely unrecognized effect on human perception and culture.
According to Owen Barfield, ancient man fused his nascent culture with the sense data to create a perception of which he became conscious. The subjects of this consciousness were eventually named and what Owen Barfield calls “alpha-thought” then began; the use of words as icons of perception. Man could then communicate all that was needed to survive and thrive; Adam and Eve walked and talked with God.
Once man began to thrive, however, he was free to think about alpha-thinking, which Barfield called “beta-thought”; Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are the first to record these beta-thoughts. By definition beta-thinking objectifies the world, and also man, for study. This same process also separates man from his environment, the Fall as it were. This tendency grew in the West and came to full blossom in the scientific revolution of the 16th Century onward.
My reaction to this is that this process came at a cost because there is only so much RAM for conscious thought so to speak. To provide intellectual space for beta-thought, and it takes a lot of space, man had to give up a percentage of available RAM previously dedicated to alpha-thinking and therefore perception itself. Thus, it isn’t irrational to wonder if bronze-age man actually perceived the divine in a way that we simply cannot; we may seek, but we cannot perceive the divine because we cannot perceive it for lack of conscious space. Perhaps, those who seek the divine long enough and hard enough can change who they are sufficiently enough to perceive it—as a man is, so he sees. Perhaps Art is the best the rest of us can do.