The Ego Discovers Quantity

Along with the development of the ego comes a hierarchy of power that shifts from religion to science to politics, to the economy and technology. But, at the very core, humanity has made little or no absolute progress. One can read a quotation from a Greek or Roman philosopher bemoaning the state of the world and think it’s something just posted on the Internet.

Around 1300 A.D. a shift begins and the individual ego desires adventure and exploration. Kepler (1571-1630), serving as the bridge from the medieval to the modern world, spent twenty years attempting to reconcile the Christian God with measured quantity. Unable to stem the growing dissociation, he was the last before subjective religious passions faded and the “objective quantitative element” began to dominate.

Thus, around 1600 A.D., with no “adequate organizing convictions” and religion unable to stabilize the dissociation, the developing intellect believed that “quantity” was the sole clue to understanding nature and set its site on exploring, measuring, and dominating it.

Humanity, Nature and their Relationship! This seems to be one of the primary issues in the development of the ego. First the pagan individual tried to control nature through ritual; in monotheism humanity established a god to mediate between the two; in the age of quantity humanity attempted to control nature; and maybe in the next development humanity will realize it is part of nature’s process.

The concept of “quantity” changed the world. Because nature could now be measured, anything that could not be measured was treated as beyond the scope of positive science. The consequences are reverberating today. All thought and action suffered from the belief that the quantitative aspect was the determining factor in all phenomena. L.L. Whyte refers to the quantitative method as the beginning of a “virulent cancer” which “bore no relation to the general order.” (The Next Development in Man pp 110-111)

There were objections and some religious and philosophic thinkers warned of the dangers of believing quantity was the only “reliable truth”. They saw a path ahead which led to mechanical science to mechanical industry to the mechanization of human life. But the ego went headlong on its journey.

By 1619 Descartes left no doubt about the direction: He “represented man torn from his roots, over-traveled, over-skeptical, over-lonely, over-conscious of himself.” Mankind was alone with his doubts, a subject without conviction, love, or action. Looking for something permanent, static, and unchanging, he sought it in an isolated “I”—“I think, therefore I am.”

From here man became an object, a cog in a machine whether it was the economy, politics, industry, technology, medicine or like today, advertising.

Whyte states in his book that it’s only through the study of social history that we can understand the development and significance of our ideals and realize they can sometimes be the enemies of our future development. We are at a stage when we need to integrate what thought has separated. Subjective rational humanism, according to Whyte, lead man to deny himself and this “isolated subject” must die before he is ‘reborn as part of nature”. He concludes, “…mankind is at the greatest opportunity of its history since the Jewish prophets proclaimed the ethic of monotheism and the Greek thinkers established the universal idea. The species can now, through the full acceptance of process, realize unity without loss of diversity or differentiation.” (The Next Development in Man p 131)

And tomorrow I move forward into Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s book “The Phenomenon of Man.”

Tags: Consciousness, L.L. Whyte, The Next Development in Man