Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Doing splits

I blame our cultural split between mind and body on Fives. Descartes was a Five and he split all of reality into two: res extensa and res cogitans - things you can measure (they have extension) and things of thought. So scientific thought focuses on what you can measure while human experience, tainted by consciousness is not considered "scientific." So if you go to a doctor, basically a chemist, he will not ask you what you're thinking or feeling, he just measures stuff: pressures, proportions, and percentages. Then he prescribes pharmaceuticals. It's all very scientific but not human and I blame Descartes, rather universally acknowledged as the father of modern science and his style Five split between body and soul.

1 comment:

  1. Maybe E.E. Cummings was a Four? I'm thinking of his poem "voices to voices, lips to lips" with this splendid stanza:
    (While you and i have lips and voices which
    are for kissing and to sing with
    who cares if some oneyed son of a bitch
    invents an instrument to measure Spring with?

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