Incarnational Literature and Material Accuracy: Eschatology and Paul Ricoeur's Arc from Understanding to Explanation

 Note: This was revised the morning after I originally wrote it.

Intro:

This post arises from a recent discussion following watching the film Arrival (review here) and making the statement that, in meaningful narrative, material accuracy will always break at some point under the weight of theme. This is a theme that I have developed before in my definition of narrative as a "kairotic chronology," that chronos always breaks under the weight of karios. But, here, I felt a little bad because one of the people is of a more scientific turn of mind but well-intentioned and much better of a person than am I and it seems like being combative. I also worry about what I would call "yeehawism," by which I mean getting all excited and taking a principle to the extreme (I even got critical commentary on this once from a homosexual academic in my sort of taking one of Judith Butler's principles overboard in a paper; the prof said "well, for Butler, there is something at the base, which is bodies," because I was sort of radicalizing Butler's concept of groundlessness in her criticism of the language of "grounding").

So, I thought it a good corrective, or at least clarification, to do a post on the importance of the drive for scientific/material accuracy in quantitative details.

Incarnational Thinking:

As I said, I say in my post on "Story Time," in defining narrative as a "kairotic chronolgy,"  I think that kairos (time as loaded, as full of unique meanings in themes and symbolization) will always break chronos (material clock time). What I want to add here is simply that the fact that this will happen is not an excuse to avoid trying for quantitative or scientific accuracy in material time and details. That would be what I call the yeehawism, and it is actually irresponsible. The material side is necessary to life and actually theologically significant. John 1:14 says that the "Word became flesh," and our experience of flesh, while it is much more than simply quantity, is also still quantitied as well. To deny it is, in a certain sense (although usually to a non-culpable degree because done unwittingly) to deny the core principle of the Incarnation and become gnostic (the ancient religious movement that said that spirit is good and matter is evil).

Paul Ricoeur

The other heading under which I would discuss this is the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. I don't remember exactly where he says this in a succinct way, but the most succinct formulation I have heard of it was from a person whose knowledge I trust to be very accurate because he was the faculty member who was my examiner for my PhD comps question in Ricoeur's metaphor theory. Ricoeur said that our processing of our existence takes place on a fluctuating spectrum between "understanding" and "explanation." Understanding can best be seen in what it means to "get" a joke. You have to be familiar with the subject matter, of course, but the actual humor itself isn't something you can put into words; you just get it. The more you have to explain, the less funny the joke becomes. The real fullness of "understanding" is poetic language.

"Explanation" is scientific language. Whereas poetry functions on the possibilities of multivalence (multiple meanings, such as the relationship between literal reference and metaphorical reference), scientific language strives for univocity ... singular, well-defined meanings.  According to Ricoeur, we fluctuate back and forth between these two poles.

Circles and Spheres: Eschatology and Explanation and Understanding

My own belief is that, some day, we will be able to have both fully at the same time, and that includes having the scientific explanation fully, which I don't think we can do here and now. That is just another way of saying that having either fully and having both at the same time is a fully eschatological event ... it won't happen until the next world. I don't think we we even have completely accurate scientific language until then. When we do have it there, I think it will be a bit like the sphere is to the circle. If all you had was the two-dimensional circle, you would never be able to guess the three dimensional sphere. But once you do have the sphere, you can see the principle of it (circularity) already present in the circle ... it didn't get transformed into something completely foreign. I think our understanding of scientific language will be beyond what we can understand now, but also that we'll be able to see how the principle was present in some form in our scientific understanding in this life.

Although, the place where I think the circles and spheres analogy breaks down is that, when we see circles and spheres, our concept is naturally that the circle is prior and the original of the concept and that the sphere derives from it when extrapolated into three dimensions instead of two, which may be true of circles and spheres. But I think that, in the case of the eschatological version of understanding and explanation, we will see that the sphere is actually the original and the 2D circle derived from it. 

(Sidenote: I'm not sure about it actually being true about spheres deriving from circles because both are concepts/"qualities," constructs of the mind, and the mind always encounters the 3D reality first, but of course, it might also be a question as to whether, in early developmental stages, the mind first learns to grasp 3D processing or 2D, and the whole thing is very much complicated by the fact that all of that develops alongside the sense of touch and assigning 3D quality to the concept of the body as the conglomeration of all of the tactile sensations. But we certainly have that idea or think that thought that the 2D circle is the original and the 3D sphere derived from it, whether we're "right" or "wrong" about it.

Positive Aspects of "Explanation"

But, for this point of not ditching trying for material, scientific accuracy just because you cannot achieve it fully in this world or because kairos will always break it at some point, I would offer these points:

1. It is a necessary part of life. If we are to work with our physical world and survive, including providing for the survival of our children, we do so through managing it through scientific quantification: How much pressure to apply to this or that thing to yield results for producing things necessary for life, etc.

2. Communication: Even purely on the level of survival, we need commonly shared language for working together, and this means unitary, singular meanings.

3. Community: This is the biggest one because it is most core because, in and of itself, it goes beyond mere material needs. The drive to express in explanatory language is bound up in our drive for community, for communion with each other. We do try to share things in poetic language because it expresses things that can't be expressed scientifically, but we also express some of our deepest cares for each other in ways that require shared unitary meanings. When we say "I love you," we want the other person to know what that means, what the individual words mean and what they mean when put together, and that requires, to some degree or another, unitary meanings of the words and commonly shared unitary meanings of grammatical constructions and syntax and all the rest.


Caviat: Although, conversely, do not move to materialism and scientism or the belief that the scientific mode of knowing is the only one, or even the base of all others. While we do fluctuate between the two poles, the poetic is always the prior (the Hebrew Bibles is actually the first instance of religious prose; before that, all narratives of the gods etc, were done in verse form; Likewise, Tolkien is famous for being down on allegory, but he said that it was not that he found absolutely no use for it, just that it was not the big, ultimate thing that it is made out to be [much like his take on drama, especially modern drama from Shakespeare on], and he actually admitted to one instance of allegory in the LotR, which is Tom Bombadil, who is allegorical of prelapsarian [before the fall] nature, which aspect is embodied in the fact that he always speaks in verse).