Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

We can also see clear similarities in modes of thought across the Indo-European cultures. A typical likeness is the way the world is seen as being the subject of a drama in which the forces of Good and Evil confront each other in a relentless struggle. Indo-Europeans have therefore often tried to ‘predict’ how the battles between Good and Evil will turn out.

sight was the most important of the senses for Indo-Europeans.

Lastly, the Indo-Europeans had a cyclic view of history. This is the belief that history goes in circles, just like the seasons of the year. There is thus no beginning and no end to history, but there are different civilizations that rise and fall in an eternal interplay between birth and death. Both of the two great Oriental religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, are Indo-European in origin. So is Greek philosophy, and we can see a number of clear parallels between Hinduism and Buddhism on the one hand and Greek philosophy on the other. Even today, Hinduism and Buddhism are strongly imbued with philosophical

When we get to Christianity the picture becomes more complicated. Christianity also has a Semitic background, but the New Testament was written in Greek, and when the Christian theology or creed was formulated, it was influenced by Greek and Latin, and thus also by Hellenistic philosophy.

He is a personal God who intervenes in the course of history and dies on the Cross for the sake of mankind.

Hellenism was influenced by a fusion of religions.

The German poet Goethe once said that ‘he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.’ I

was given the title “Pope” – in Latin “papa,” which means what it says – and gradually became looked upon as Christ’s deputy on earth.

we could say that Neoplatonism was handed down in the west, Plato in the east, and Aristotle to the Arabs in the south. But there was also something of them all in all three streams. The point is that at the end of the Middle Ages, all three streams came together in Northern Italy. The Arabic influence came from the Arabs in Spain, the Greek influence from Greece and the Byzantine Empire. And now we see the beginning of the Renaissance, the “rebirth” of antique culture. In one sense, antique culture had survived the Dark Ages.’

‘The medieval philosophers took it almost for granted that Christianity was true,’ he began. ‘The question was whether we must simply believe the Christian revelation or whether we can approach the Christian truths with the help of reason. What was the relationship between the Greek philosophers and what the Bible said? Was there a contradiction between the Bible and reason, or were belief and knowledge compatible? Almost all medieval philosophy centered on this one question.’

The Manichaeans were a religious sect that was extremely characteristic of late antiquity. Their doctrine was half religion and half philosophy, asserting that the world consisted of a dualism of good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and matter. With his spirit, mankind could rise above the world of matter and thus prepare for the salvation of his soul. But this sharp division between good and evil gave the young Augustine no peace of mind. He was completely preoccupied with what we like to call the “problem of evil.”

according to the Stoics, there was no sharp division between good and evil.

He became a Christian first, but the Christianity of St. Augustine is largely influenced by Platonic ideas.

‘Well, St. Augustine certainly maintains that God created the world out of the void, and that was a Biblical idea. The Greeks preferred the idea that the world had always existed. But St. Augustine believed that before God created the world, the “ideas” were in the Divine mind. So he located the Platonic ideas in God and in that way preserved the Platonic view of eternal ideas.’

Augustine also inclined to Neoplatonism in his view of evil. He believed, like Plotinus, that evil is the “absence of God.” Evil has no independent existence, it is something that is not. For God’s creation is in fact only good. Evil comes from mankind’s disobedience, Augustine believed. Or, in his own words, “The good will is God’s work; the evil will is the falling away from God’s work.”’

St. Augustine put it, “Divine foresight directs the history of mankind from Adam to the end of time as if it were the story of one man who gradually develops from childhood to old age.”’

‘The greatest and most significant philosopher of this period was St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived from 1225 to 1274. He came from the little town of Aquino, between Rome and Naples, but he also worked as a teacher at the University of Paris. I call him a philosopher but he was just as much a theologian. There was no great difference between philosophy and theology at that time. Briefly, we can say that Aquinas christianized Aristotle in the same way that St. Augustine christianized Plato in early medieval times.’

Aquinas believed that there are two paths to God. One path goes through faith and the Christian Revelation, and the other goes through reason and the senses. Of these two, the path of faith and revelation is certainly the surest, because it is easy to lose one’s way by trusting to reason alone. But Aquinas’s point was that there need not be any conflict between a philosopher like Aristotle and the Christian doctrine.’

According to Aquinas, there was a progressive degree of existence from plants and animals to man, from man to angels, and from angels to God. Man, like animals, has a body and sensory organs, but man also has intelligence which enables him to reason things out. Angels have no such body with sensory organs, which is why they have spontaneous and immediate intelligence. They have no need to “ponder,” like humans; they have no need to reason out conclusions. They know everything that man can know without having to learn it step by step like us. And since angels have no body, they can never die. They are not everlasting like God, because they were once created by God. But they have no body that they must one day depart from, and so they will never die.’ ‘That sounds lovely!’ ‘But up above the angels, God rules, Sophie. He can see and know everything in one single coherent vision.’ ‘So he can see us now.’ ‘Yes, perhaps he can. But not “now.” For God, time does not exist as it does for us. Our “now” is not God’s “now.” Because many weeks pass for us, they do not necessarily pass for God.’

Hildegard of Bingen …’

Renaissance humanism, since now, after the long Dark Ages in which every aspect of life was seen through divine light, everything once again revolved around man. “Go to the source” was the motto, and that meant the humanism of antiquity first and foremost.

“Horses are born,” it was said, “but human beings are not born – they are formed.”’

‘Throughout the whole medieval period, the point of departure had always been God. The humanists of the Renaissance took as their point of departure man himself.’ ‘But so did the Greek philosophers.’ ‘That is precisely why we speak of a “rebirth” of antiquity’s humanism. But Renaissance humanism was to an even greater extent characterized by individualism. We are not only human beings, we are unique individuals. This idea could then lead to an almost unrestrained worship of genius. The ideal became what we call the Renaissance man, a man of universal genius embracing all aspects of life, art, and science. The new view of man also manifested itself in an interest in the human anatomy. As in ancient times, people once again began to dissect the dead to discover how the body was constructed. It was imperative both for medical science and for art. Once again it became usual for works of art to depict the nude. High time, after a thousand years of prudery. Man was bold enough to be himself again. There was no longer anything to be ashamed of.’

Now it was said that every investigation of natural phenomena must be based on observation, experience, and experiment. We call this the empirical method.’ ‘Which means?’ ‘It only means that one bases one’s knowledge of things on one’s own experience – and not on dusty parchments or figments of the imagination. Empirical science was known in antiquity, but systematic experiments were something quite new.’

“Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured,” said the Italian Galileo Galilei, who was one of the most important scientists of the seventeenth century. He also said that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.’

“Knowledge is power,” said the English philosopher Francis Bacon, thereby underlining the practical value of knowledge – and this was indeed new. Man was seriously starting to intervene in nature and beginning to control it.’

Ever since the Renaissance, mankind has been more than just part of creation. Man has begun to intervene in nature and form it after his own image. In truth, “what a piece of work is man!”’

geocentric world picture, or in other words, the belief that everything revolves around the earth. The Christian belief that God ruled from on high, up above all the heavenly bodies, also contributed to maintaining this world picture.’

heliocentric world picture, which means that everything centers around the sun.’

Galileo was that he first formulated the so-called Law of Inertia.’ ‘And that is?’ ‘Galileo formulated it thus: A body remains in the state which it is in, at rest or in motion, as long as no external force compels it to change its state.’

English physicist Isaac Newton, who lived from 1642 to 1727. He was the one who provided the final description of the solar system and the planetary orbits. Not only could he describe how the planets moved round the sun, he could also explain why they did so. He was able to do so partly by referring to what we call Galileo’s dynamics.’

Newton. He formulated what we call the Law of Universal Gravitation. This law states that every object attracts every other object with a force that increases in proportion to the size of the objects and decreases in proportion to the distance between the objects.’

Newton proved that this attraction – or gravitation – is universal, which means it is operative everywhere, also in space between heavenly bodies. He is said to have gotten this idea while he was sitting under an apple tree. When he saw an apple fall from the tree he had to ask himself if the moon was drawn to earth with the same force, and if this was the reason why the moon continued to orbit the earth to all eternity.’

‘Which brings us to Newton’s law on planetary orbits. In the case of how the earth attracts the moon, you are fifty percent right but fifty percent wrong. Why doesn’t the moon fall to earth? Because it really is true that the earth’s gravitational force attracting the moon is tremendous. Just think of the force required to lift sea level a meter or two at high tide.’

‘Are there two different forces working on the moon?’ ‘Exactly. Once upon a time when the solar system began, the moon was hurled outward – outward from the earth, that is – with tremendous force. This force will remain in effect forever because it moves in a vacuum without resistance …’ ‘But it is also attracted to the earth because of earth’s gravitational force, isn’t it?’ ‘Exactly. Both forces are constant, and both work simultaneously. Therefore the moon will continue to orbit the earth.’ ‘Is it really as simple as that?’ ‘As simple as that, and this very same simplicity was Newton’s whole point. He demonstrated that a few natural laws apply to the whole universe. In calculating the planetary orbits he had merely applied two natural laws which Galileo had already proposed. One was the law of inertia, which Newton expressed thus: “A body remains in its state of rest or rectilinear motion until it is compelled to change that state by a force impressed on it.” The other law had been demonstrated by Galileo on an inclined plane: When two forces work on a body simultaneously, the body will move on an elliptical path.’ ‘And that’s how Newton could explain why all the planets go round the sun.’ ‘Yes. All the planets travel in elliptical orbits round the sun as the result of two unequal movements: first, the rectilinear movement they had when the solar system was formed, and second, the movement toward the sun due to gravitation.’

Newton demonstrated that the same laws of moving bodies apply everywhere in the entire universe. He thus did away with the medieval belief that there is one set of laws for heaven and another here on earth. The heliocentric world view had found its final confirmation and its final explanation.’

‘Formerly, the earth was the center of the world. But since astronomers now said that there was no absolute center to the universe, it came to be thought that there were just as many centers as there were people. Each person could be the center of a universe.’ ‘Ah, I think I see.’ ‘The Renaissance resulted in a new religiosity. As philosophy and science gradually broke away from theology, a new Christian piety developed. Then the Renaissance arrived with its new view of man. This had its effect on religious life. The individual’s personal relationship to God was now more important than his relationship to the church as an organization.’

there was one distinct difference between people and animals, and that was human reasoning.

‘To be or not to be – that is the question.’

some philosophers believed that what exists is at bottom spiritual in nature. This standpoint is called idealism. The opposite viewpoint is called materialism. By this is meant a philosophy which holds that all real things derive from concrete material substances. Materialism

French mathematician Laplace expressed an extreme mechanistic view with this idea: If an intelligence at a given time had known the position of all particles of matter, “nothing would be unknown, and both future and past would lie open before their eyes.” The idea here was that everything that happens is predetermined. “It’s written in the stars” that something will happen. This view is called determinism.’

Leibniz pointed out that the difference between the material and the spiritual is precisely that the material can be broken up into smaller and smaller bits, but the soul cannot even be divided into two.’

There is a direct line of descent from Socrates and Plato via St. Augustine to Descartes. They were all typical rationalists, convinced that reason was the only path to knowledge.

One can say without exaggeration that Descartes was the father of modern philosophy.

The first significant system-builder was Descartes, and he was followed by Spinoza and Leibniz, Locke and Berkeley, Hume and Kant.’

‘What do you mean by a philosophical system?’ ‘I mean a philosophy that is constructed from the ground up and that is concerned with finding explanations for all the central questions of philosophy. Antiquity had its great system-constructors in Plato and Aristotle. The Middle Ages had St. Thomas Aquinas, who tried to build a bridge between Aristotle’s philosophy and Christian theology. Then came the Renaissance, with a welter of old and new beliefs about nature and science, God and man. Not until the seventeenth century did philosophers make any attempt to assemble the new ideas into a clarified philosophical system, and the first to attempt it was Descartes. His work was the forerunner of what was to be philosophy’s most important project in the coming generations. His main concern was with what we can know, or in other words, certain knowledge. The other great question that preoccupied him was the relationship between body and mind. Both these questions were the substance of philosophical argument for the next hundred and fifty years.’

The original meaning of the words “soul” and “spirit” is, in fact, “breath” and “breathing.” This is the case for almost all European languages.

‘I decide to lift my arm – and then, well, the arm lifts itself. Or I decide to run for a bus, and the next second my legs are moving. Or I’m thinking about something sad, and suddenly I’m crying. So there must be some mysterious connection between body and consciousness.’

‘In his Discourse on Method, Descartes raises the question of the method the philosopher must use to solve a philosophical problem. Science already had its new method …’ ‘So you said.’ ‘Descartes maintains that we cannot accept anything as being true unless we can clearly and distinctly perceive it. To achieve this can require the breaking down of a compound problem into as many single factors as possible. Then we can take our point of departure in the simplest idea of all. You could say that every single thought must be weighed and measured, rather in the way Galileo wanted everything to be measured and everything immeasurable to be made measurable. Descartes believed that philosophy should go from the simple to the complex. Only then would it be possible to construct a new insight. And finally it would be necessary to ensure by constant enumeration and control that nothing was left out. Then, a philosophical conclusion would be within reach.’ ‘It sounds almost like a math test.’ ‘Yes. Descartes was a mathematician; he is considered the father of analytical geometry, and he made important contributions to the science of algebra. Descartes wanted to use the “mathematical method” even for philosophizing. He set out to prove philosophical truths in the way one proves a mathematical theorem. In other words, he wanted to use exactly the same instrument that we use when we work with figures, namely, reason, since only reason can give us certainty. It is far from certain that we...

It was important for Descartes to rid himself of all handed down, or received, learning before beginning his own philosophical construction.’ ‘He wanted to clear all the rubble off the site before starting to build his new house