The 17th Century
Introduction
Every age in cultural history has responded to the problem-solving process in its own way. But three periods stand out because of their impact on the world we live in today.
Those three periods are the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
We’re going to take a quick look into how each of those periods of cultural history responded to the problem-solving process and how each of those periods has influenced our approach today.
Our purpose here in this series is to simply direct attention to the relationship between Cultural History and Problem-Solving.
Our justification for this is the conviction that a knowledge of the relationship between cultural history and problem-solving is both highly relevant and extremely useful, particularly for developing the qualities of perspective and self-awareness. And much more.
In today’s entry our focus will be on the 17th century.
So, let’s begin.
Part I
Problems emerge when there’s a gap between ability and demand, or, between situational demand and responsive ability, let's say.
In other words, problems emerge when we perceive the difference between what a particular situation demands of us and how well we can respond to those demands at that moment.
At PRC this is referred to as Disparity Awareness.
Normally, disparities are ignored. If an individual or group feels any disorientation they get rid of it by suppressing awareness.
But, in the Arts & Sciences disparity awareness is not suppressed, it’s experienced! Hence the cultural importance of both.
Note: That is, the Arts & Sciences as they used to be taught before Identity Politics and Cancel Culture came along. The point here being that IP/CC Complex, as it were, is a state-enforced maladaptation, because it prohibits any and all feedback and correction, which is the source of human adaptability.
This ideology, which is the dominant ideology in the Western world today and therefore has total institutional power and cultural control, also puts an extraordinary pressure on itself by claiming to be able to account for all of the necessary data in everything it directs its attention to, something no explanation can do, including the one offered here, hence the need for feedback and correction, which Identity Politics prohibits. As everyone can see who cares to look, the consequences are immense.
Those working in the Arts & Sciences of the 17th century, also called, The Century of Genius and The Scientific Revolution, made their decisions in order to increase the number of problems.
This is why A.N. Whitehead said that all of modern science is based on the scientific discoveries made during the 17th century.
Good problem-solving means a high level of exposure to problems. Especially complex problems resistant to solution.
To the extent problem-solving is related to innovation, there is no innovation unless the problem-solver knows the rules. Why?
Because the more rules you know the more creative you can be, the more creative you can be the more rules you can break, the more rules you can break the more you’ll innovate. That’s why.
And we’re talking about the quantity and quality of rules.
For example, the group of thinkers, writers, and artists we will look at had one thing in common, and that common bond was what placed them in a particular period of cultural history.
A period known as the Baroque that spanned from 1590 to 1720. To simplify things we’ll refer to it as The 17th century.
And what was it they had in common?
Whether they were working in the arts or sciences all of their work is characterized by high levels of creativity and innovation consequent upon the self-imposition in the number and complexity of rules, rules often in conflict with each other.
The result was a high level of creativity and innovation.
And, unless I’m seriously mistaken, creativity and innovation are still highly valued today exactly because they’re so useful.
Note: Hence the relevance and usefulness of PRC. Because, who else is talking about this?
So, the more we understand about how this process works in general, and through periods of time in particular, the better.
Now the exposure to a large number of very demanding rules, particularly when some of those rules are inconsistent with each other, means a high level of exposure to problems.
So far, so good. But so what?
Exactly why is this important to know?
Well, the answer I would offer would be this:
Problems are the form in which awareness of the gap between human behavior and situational demand is perceived.
Can you imagine being in a situation when you don’t know how to respond? Of course you can. We all can. That’s why teaching and learning is so important, and why replacing education with indoctrination is so devastating, not only to the life of the mind and the world of ideas, but to our chances of survival as well.
Not knowing how to respond is why life is filled with so many problems. It’s why most people find prolonged periods of uncertainty to be simply intolerable. So, again, the more we know about the problem-solving process the better off we’ll be.
In any event, the reliability of this idea regarding the relationship between rules and problem-solving can be seen in any number of different situations. For example:
Chess involves a lot more stringent rules than a game of tag.
A night out with friends has fewer rules of etiquette than a meeting between world leaders.
The social management required to sustain modern civlization is inconceivably more difficult than a primitive, illiterate culture.
Modern science is more complex than gossip, or anything operating on the intellectual level of gossip, such as, for example, Cancel Culture, Identity Politics and the Mainstream Media.
In fact, the more modern science has governed itself by rules the more productive and innovative it’s been. Obviously!
Note: Of course, since human beings are not naturally social, but obviously asocial, anti-social behavior is the result of a failure to learn the rules, or the failure of adults to teach them.
But even more complex than modern science is high level art.
Why?
Because, science is expected to solve its problems, art isn’t.
Art is the only area of cultural activity that doesn’t have to solve problems, it only has to present them. And it does, on purpose.
Art is a rehearsal for experiencing the cognitive tension that goes with all problem-solving. So, it’s primary focus is on problem-exposure, not on problem-solving. But this position, at its most advanced, was arrived at after a lengthy process, a process that began in a formidable way in 17th century Europe.
Part II
The key to understanding the high level culture of the astonishingly creative 17th century is in its self-imposition of rules. What do we mean by self-imposition of rules? Two things.
Radical Simplification and Radical Stringency.
Of what?
Of rule-controlled behavior.
The highest level for all great thinkers and creators of this period of cultural history was given to those who could endure the greatest amount of cognitive tension in their respective fields.
A level made even more difficult to reach when, to repeat, a lot of those self-imposed rules were in conflict with each other.
But, the proof is in the pudding. So, let’s look at some examples.
The great poet John Milton attempted to justify God’s way to man by cutting away, with laser-like precision, the theological fatty deposit that had accumulated since the Middle Ages.
And this attempt was to his great credit as an artist. Why?
Because, as is evident in many passages in his masterpiece Paradise Lost, he was still stuck in the Middle Ages, such an attempt did not come easy for him. But he did it anyway!
In John Dryden’s heroic tragedies life’s problems are reduced to that of love and duty, or, personal love and social obligation, while another poet, George Herbert, focused his attention on the psychological realities of religious experience.
For both Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope it was the determination to see the world and human life as they really are.
Swift, lacerated by savage indignation, directed his fury, and humor, at mankind’s ability to deceive itself. He did it by focusing on the consequences of original sin and the fall from grace. Pope did the same thing in his poem The Dunciad, published just two years after Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
Descartes and Locke provide two examples in Philosophy.
Descartes reduced all knowledge to a single proposition: Cogito, ergo sum, and attempted to recreate the world on this ground alone, governing the rest of his behavior on the most stringent rules possible. Locke, similarly, attempted to do without any information for the mind except what might be derived from experience. That neither one achieved complete success is beside the point. After all, no one has.
The point is, both of these men chose strategies that guaranteed the maximum amount of cognitive tension, the maximum amount of disparity awareness, and the maximum amount of problem exposure and solution postponement. The attributes of wisdom.
In the entire recorded history of thought, no one, anywhere in the world, had done anything like what these two men did.
But they couldn’t have done it without Francis Bacon. Because it was Bacon who, earlier in the century, had separated natural philosophy from theology. He was the first to try to do without:
The idols of the tribe, the cave, the marketplace, and the theatre: that is, the illusions man suffers from because he is a human being, because he is a unique cultural product, because he uses unanalyzed language, and because he has been intellectually amused and deceived by all previous philosophies.
All of modern Critical Thinking begins with Francis Bacon.
Part III
In music the same forces can be seen at work. Like the literature and philosophy of the time, music too was subjected to a radical simplification and multiplication of the rules. It did this by reducing the modes to two scales, actually just one, and the vertical and horizontal integration of both harmony and melody.
The great master of this period, of course, was Bach.
His manner of writing music was developed by creating as many musical puzzles and problems as his extraordinary imagination could come up with. And that is saying a great deal.
In fact, his famous fugues emerged by the accumulation of problems, or, discontinuities, that were known at the time as the ricercare, an Italian word that literally means research.
Bach governed himself by more rules than any musician before or since. Unfortunately, this has led to a misunderstanding of his work that a great many people have been unable to overcome.
This is worth a quick looking into because it’s highly relevant.
Because his fugues were governed, as most are, by a great many number of rules, most people think that listening to one is very difficult. They think they have to know all of the rules in order to appreciate the music. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, listening to a fugue, especially one by Bach, is like going on a roller-coaster ride. Anything can happen. And with Bach all hell is always about to break loose. What accounts for this?
Because no musical type offers more discontinuities, meaning, more disparity awareness, than a fugue. Of course, to truly understand this statement would require we go a bit deeper into the elements of musical composition than is necessary here.
All that’s necessary is that one go on the roller-coaster ride and enjoy the music, only this time with a better idea of what’s going on and why. Instead of Ah! The Majesty of Bach! A better reaction would be Look what the son of a bitch is doing to you!
Note: this reaction would be well-advised when encountering the work of any great artist.
Anyway, the same thing can be seen in the painting of this period, especially with Watteau, particularly in A Pilgrimage to Cythera, where all implicit forms are reduced to one and within that one the presentation of complex details, much like life itself.
Part IV
The greatest thing a scientist can do is offer the world in general and the scientific community in particular a great problem.
This is far more important than offering a solution to an existent problem, or even to one the scientist has formulated themselves.
But, even more importantly for us here in this entry is the fact that many scientists have reported, over and over again, that the first step toward discovering a great problem was the feeling that something was wrong, that something they could not yet understand or explain was missing, something that the theories they were using in their investigations could not account for.
That feeling is what is meant by cognitive tension.
What’s this got to do with the 17th century and what does the 17th century have to do with us? Well, everything. Why?
Because all of modern science is an investigation of the scientific problems uncovered in the 17th century.
In short, modern science was founded in the 17th century.
After all, three of the greatest minds of that century, Fermat, Newton, and Leibniz, were each absorbed in the problems of the calculus. And each working independently of the other.
Part V
From literature to philosophy, to music, to painting, and science, we turn to the political life of the 17th century, which, given its historical context, was just as innovative as the other areas.
With the politics of that period, some of a conservative cast, some of what today we would call liberalism, there was a desire for a simplified mode of political organization.
Note: Simplified, not simple-minded. That came later in the 18th century. The century that laid the foundation for everything from Sentimentality, Nature Worship, Political Polarization, Communism, Fascism, the USA, modern Europe, present day China., and, of course, Cancel Culture
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