Medieval Thoughts On A Monday

There are four seasons in the year, in which the Sun... tempers the globe... according to the universal solicitude of divine wisom, so that by not always remaining in the same place, it does not devastate the Earth's lovely vesture by its devouring heat. -The Venerable Bede, in "The Reckoning of Time"

Following on from yesterday's exercise in medieval thought- where one focuses on any area of the body besides the head as the seat of one's mind- today, let us think about the universe. The big shift, as I'm finding it, between medieval cosmology and modern, is not the development of the heliocentric solar system. I think that's a just a part of the process by which we have come to concieve of the universe as random.

We no longer ask why does the universe do what it does?
and we no longer answer because the earth is a nice place to live, and everything is designed to keep it that way. For one thing, we're becoming aware that the earth might not stay a nice place to live!
We can't answer that question anymore. We can't even ask it. We can ask why certain parts of the universe act the way they do, and it turns out they act like that because of mysterious things called forces and quantum. The earth goes around the sun because of gravity, and it's miraculous that it ended up in a good place for human life.

I don't know about other (sane) christians, but i have never had an image of big shiny God plonking the earth down and making the universe go just for our benefit. My God is rather more like a... actually, i don't know what he's like. What kind of being, aside from God, sets a whole huge universe in motion? A long causal chain which created stars and galaxies and planets... and along the way, a series of tiny, minutely accurate coincidences- gravity set at the right levels, star at the right size, no random asteroids, all of that- were so finely calibrated as to create the planet earth, and a long succession of evolution. Now, all of that looks like it was done for our benefit, but if i believed that then it would be simpler to stick with Bede's version. Equally, it could be for the benefit of the cockroach. Probably is.
(And despite all that, I can and will sing God Version 1.0 with much enthusiasm. *hums* I don't believe in a watchmaker above- set this world going but now is not involved, who from a distance is watching as we fall- I believe in Jesus God who suffers with us all! Ah, gotta love the dichotomies of faith. And Robin Mann choruses.)

A thousand years ago, my theology would be unthinkable. It's a product of our constant modern awareness that the universe is big and we are tiny. It makes it rather strange to try to concieve of Bede's universe. The mere fact of its mundocentrism (is that a word? it is now) doesn't go near to encapsulating it.

Life, According to Highly today

I was just saying, the other day, that the brain behind Harry would do wonderfully well at detective novels. She'd also do a great job at writing RP videogames, but that's another matter.

As a basic rule, do not have sex on a commercial flight. Unless it’s really long haul. And he’s irresistible.
This, and other practical but extremely shallow advice, courtesy of the Times Online

and hehe: Nude Virgins Flee Sex Blaze
I quote: Your first sexual experience can be a powerful, magical moment, as two loving souls entwine into one and enter a glorious new realms of sensuous filth. Then again, it can be a horrific, mortifying disaster that completely puts you off the very idea of sex for several years. Guess which category this story is in?
Check out the captions on the pictures, too. Snigger.
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I'm often puzzled by the extent to which we get all het up about a Pollie's personal failings. Although I'm not sure where to draw the line myself... Mark Latham punching a cabbie, three years before his election campaign, was the death knell when the news broke during the campaign. That made sense, the man turned out to be a nutter. And I'm certainly bothered by the story someone dredged up from old Honi Soits, in which then-liberal club president John Howard was reported to be directing race-based insults at a newly admitted Indigenous law student back in the 60s. Yet I'm not sure why anyone cares how drunk K-Rudd was four years ago and what clubs he went to. Although if he turns out to be disaster, will I be saying "I always knew he'd go wrong- look at that New York incident"? Let this LJ stand testament to my quiet faith in K-Rudd as the very much lesser of two evils.
Why are we so conserned to have morally conservative Pollies? Mr Rudd, a conservative Christian, said he was too drunk to remember much of his visit to Manhattan's Scores "gentlemen's club" announces The Age. Wasn't the K-Rudd being trumped as the liberal christian's answer to Tony Abbot, just a few months ago? Why is it important to cast him as betrayer of "conservatism"? I'm unsure how to take that line- are we supposed to side with conservatism, and see Rudd as a moral backslider? Or are we supposed to be liberal and see Rudd as one of those hypocritical Christians? both?
Either way, it doesn't look good for K-Rudd.

On the bright side, a GetUp! sponsored survey has found that the government's workplace relations ads have in fact made us less comfortable with WorkChoices. I dunno, what did they expect? I for one get that uneasy feeling whenever i hear a chirpy radio ad reminding me that a minor cannot sign an AWA without parental approval, because this also reminds me that a) I'm not a minor, and therefore on my own and b) that I wouldn't have allowed my parents to interfere with a job I really wanted, when I was I a minor.

Meanwhile, the weather is out to get us again: The Bureau of Meteorology has issued a severe weather warning this morning for localised flash flooding for the Northern Rivers area, the Mid North Coast, the Hunter region and the Sydney metropolitan area.
ed in the evening: well, it rained. but that's about all. Haven't heard of anything more exciting than that.

This might be a good place to announce my new policy of not flooding your flists. I'm keeping a running entry in Semagic for random interesting stuff, news links, and incomplete trains of thought. So for the next little while you'll get one massive entry per day, plus any complete trains of thought/ coherent topical posts that I put together.
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STOP PRESS! apparently Fisher Library has a card catalogue! And the book that i've been chasing all week, which ought to be in Rare Book but isn't, might be on the card catalogue. How is it, that in 3.5 years of study here, i am utterly unaware of the existence of the card catalogue?
Can I even remember how to use a card catalogue?
I swear someone in fisher library just likes making me run around in circles for days on end. And forcing me into confrontations with confused Rare Book staff.

Also- my new favourite book: Skeat's Etmological Dictionary of the English Language. And none of this poncy paperback edition, oh no. Fisher has great big hefty 1910 editions- one in the original binding, one that looks like it was rebound in the 30s, and one in the red binding they've been using for the last twenty odd years. Amy is a happy bunny. Amy was also wrong about the verb Þyncan, and will be footnoting corrections on yesterday's entry. Not that it matters to any of you, but I feel it ought to be announced anyway.

Alright. Happy Monday, All.

More on the medieval universe

Subsequent to my musings on the Venerable Bede, I would like to offer you the wonderful world of Byrtferð's Enchiridion. It's a text on chronology, basically. Weeks, days, months, seasons, years- and their relations to the heavenly bodies, to the four elements, and to man as a microcosm. It appears to be a translation of either his own or someone else's (I'm unsure, i've only read the photocopied pages in the course reader) Latin text. The edition I have as // original and modern text- so the left hand side alternates between Latin and OE, and the right hand side, entirely in english, looks daft because it's just repeating itself in circles.
Anyway, Byrtferð was a poetic sort of a guy, it seems. When his OE diverges from the latin, it's for one of two reasons- a) to give a basic arithmetic lesson- "in one day there are twenty-four hours, and in two days there are forty-eight hours", etc. or b) to wax lyrical about the beautiful way the universe is ordered. Expanding on a little sea-imagery in the Latin, here is what he has to say about the science of calcuating the seasons:

We have touched with our oars the waves of the deep water; we have seen as well the mountains by the salty shore of the sea, with with billowing sails and prosperous winds we have harboured on the coast of the fairest nation. The waves stand for this profound science, and the mountains stand for the magnitude of this science. Therefore it says 'where we saw the lilly's blossom' (the beauty of the comptus), 'there we sensed the roses' fragrance' (we percieved the profundity of the comptus)... Therefore I shall not be silent either on account of the eloquence of the literature or for the sake of those learned men who have no need to discuss these things among themselves. But we have touched the deep sea and the mountains of this work...*

I'm very impressed with Byrhtferð. More so than I was with Bede's The Reckoning of Time (sorry, Bede). Anyone with a deep passion for what they study is bound to impress me. And what a pretty pretty image. So go Byrtferð.

*Byhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. Peter S Baker & Michael Lapidge, pg 17