Knygatin wrote, "I would expand on Lovecraft's view, and replace the term materialism with science instead."

That's a lot more than a replacement of a term, of course.

HPL was committed to materialism not just as a procedure but as a philosophy, as in fact the "explanation of everything."

Someone who knows more about his thought than I might be able to say whether or not he took any account of the vital importance of consciousness (in the observer) and physics. My sense is that he didn't.

This article from ten years ago, on biocentrism --

[discovermagazine.com]

-- is probably still worth reading.

What needs to be emphasized is that it posits the vital importance of consciousness -- but consciousness remains elusive for science, certainly for materialism. (To offer "just so" stories about it may be worthwhile, but doesn't substitute for real knowledge.)

This posting is not a departure from Machen and Hieroglyphics, by the way -- which we should spend more time on, if possible. But that book is -- though it might never use the word -- about "consciousness." It's not a book to be classified as psychology, but Machen, I think one could argue, keeps coming back to fine literature and great art as those works that are evidence of and experiences of an elevated consciousness -- i.e. elevated above the humdrum kind of task- oriented mental activity that is devoted to the navigating of our "animal" needs and that tends to think of ourselves in "animal" terms.

So I could well imagine Machen being pleased and stimulated by the Lanza and Berman article, where Lovecraft would need to depreciate it. He would sense that it is not friendly to his outlook.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 26 Oct 19 | 07:48PM by Dale Nelson.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Knygatin, your speculation about the mountain peak
> painting seems far-fetched to me, but then I think
> it's possible that for any or almost any theory of
> things, there will be some things that it seems to
> explain very well and others that it has to strain
> to explain.
>
> Thus, there was a time when the adherents of the
> Ptolemaic conception of the universe resorted to
> what seem to us now far-fetched explanations of
> "epicycles." But there were other phenomena for
> which the Ptolemaic theory worked very well. But
> effort had to be put forward to "save the
> appearances," until the Copernican understanding
> carried the day.
>
> Today, the theory of the multiverse seems
> far-fetched to some, a desperate effort to "save
> the appearances" in order to preserve
> materialism/naturalism*; all right, its advocates
> say, we grant that our universe does seem
> astonishingly fine-tuned for life; but then it is
> only one of a vast number, or, heck, even infinite
> number, of universes, that are not necessarily
> fine-tuned for life; we just happen to live in the
> very rare exception. Somewhat similarly, my
> "young earth creationist" brethren resort to
> far-fetched supposals to explain the "appearance"
> of great age for the universe. (It should be said
> that "young earth creationism" is a highly visible
> but minority view; I suppose most Christians
> who've gone into the matter think the universe
> looks old because it is old.)

Here's a more recent article on the multiverse idea/strong theory.

[www.wsj.com]

Not sure if anyone else here is following the Weird Studies podcast, but the latest episode has an interesting discussion of Jonathan Demme's film The Silence of the Lambs with reference to Machen's Hieroglyphics.

The discussion doesn't get to Hieroglyphics until close to the end, but the podcast hosts essentially build up to it throughout the episode, and they conclude with Machen's ideas providing a perfect aesthetic framework with which to interpret the film.

Well worth a listen!

[www.weirdstudies.com]

Is anyone up for a discussion of some other nonfiction by Machen? How about Far-Off Things, his first volume of autobiography? It is available online.

[www.gutenberg.org]

If anyone wants to go ahead with that, let's start a new thread.

Knygatin spoke up for elephants some months ago. He and other ED folk might be interested in thisarticle:

[archive.wilsonquarterly.com]

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Knygatin spoke up for elephants some months ago.
> He and other ED folk might be interested in
> thisarticle:
>
> [archive.wilsonquarterly.com]
> hant-within

THANK YOU, Dale! That is an extraordinary document! If God is good, and I am sure He is, because He always points us towards the Truth, then He will bless you.

The next time I read Hieroglyphics, perhaps I will try to keep before me this famous passage from Coleridge's Biographia Literaria:

----In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.-----

Each poet was not just supposed to write poems, but was to evoke poetic consciousness. I'd say that the agenda here relates closely to Machen's idea of "ecstasy." All three of these writers perceive their society as, largely, inhabiting a disenchanted state of mind; if you regard numbers, measurement, materialist philosophy, and so on as sufficient, as answering to the requirements of reality, as "adequate," then you must be "disenchanted," and so you have a society increasingly characterized by disenchantment (and perhaps concurrently by a counterfeit "enchantment," i.e. sentimentalism). Well, then a one-word equivalent of "ecstasy" might be "re-enchantment."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11 Aug 21 | 01:30PM by Dale Nelson.