Disenchantment, Actually Doug Sikkema

f you remember anything from tory of science,” one we tell ourselves high school science, you may in the modern, secular world: the Iremember something of Marie story of disenchantment. Josephson- Curie. She was a pioneer in chemis- Storm summarizes it as follows: try and physics, and the only person ever The Myth of Disenchantment: ...at a particular to be awarded Nobel Magic, Modernity, and the moment the dark- Prizes in both. Her Birth of the Human Sciences ness of supersti- By Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm tion, myth, or reli- research on radioac- Chicago ~ 2017 ~ 400 pp. gion began to give tivity led her to the $96 (cloth) $32 (paper) way to modern light, discovery of poloni- exchanging tradi- um and radium, and helped make tional unreason for technology possible technologies used in cancer and rationality. When told in a treatment, nuclear energy, and nucle- soaring tone, this is a tale of tri- ar weapons. But while readers may umph; and when recounted in know this synopsis of her life, much a different and descending emo- less familiar is her abiding fascina- tional register, it can sound like tion with the paranormal — or that in the inauguration of our tragic 1907 this paragon of scientific ratio- alienation from an idealized past. nality attended a séance with Eusapia Palladino, a psychic rumored to make Whichever your take, the narrative objects move with her mind. abides: Modernity, thus understood, In The Myth of Disenchantment: is an age of rationalism, science, and Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of technology that eventually (and inev- the Human Sciences, Williams College itably) overcame the mysterious won- religion professor Jason Ā. Josephson- ders of magic, religion, and supersti- Storm opens with this anecdote, not- tion. But this story, Josephson-Storm ing that it doesn’t quite jibe with “the argues, is a myth. Why else, he sug- single most familiar story in the his- gests, would an esteemed scientist

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Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Disenchantment, Actually like Curie be cavorting with the likes that science necessarily deanimates of Palladino? nature.” Part of his evidence comes from The book, however, is less import- recent polls, which show that belief ant as a history of science and magic in psychic healing, ghosts, telepa- than as a history of how we came to thy, witches, reincarnation, and other believe the myth of disenchantment. paranormal phenomena remains As he traces the story, Josephson- remarkably high. According to 2005 Storm brilliantly pulls open the cur- Gallup research, seventy-six percent tain on one of our oft-told and rarely of Americans “profess at least one questioned modern myths, helping paranormal belief.” Results from us better to see the motley crew the large Baylor Religion Survey of responsible for its production. the same year show that about 80 But if disenchantment is a myth, percent of respondents believe that just how has it managed to persist angels probably or absolutely exist, for so long? While Josephson-Storm and about 66 percent in the case of does a fine job exploring the ori- demons. gins and story of the disenchantment While these numbers challenge the myth, his failure to offer an adequate idea that ours is a disenchanted age, answer to this question leaves much perhaps such beliefs might still be to be desired in his project. The rea- expected among the common folk. son for this failure seems to be his Thus Josephson-Storm places in the restricted understanding of myth as crosshairs members of the scientific a merely fabricated story or a fiction, establishment, who we would expect and of disenchantment as something to be right-thinking. He provides an we should be able to detect easi- impressive compendium of Curie- ly from people’s behaviors or self- like anecdotes going back to Bacon, professed beliefs. Descartes, and Newton, dabblers in magical thinking all, suggesting that n Josephson-Storm’s account, the our default image of the scientist as Imyth of disenchantment originat- hardnosed materialist is more carica- ed with the German Romantics and ture than reality. was crystallized through Friedrich From these anecdotes, Josephson- Schiller’s influential poem “The Storm concludes that “we have never Gods of Greece.” First published been disenchanted.” Thus “we should in 1788, the poem became a key be less surprised than we usually expression of a nostalgic longing for are to find scientists of all stripes a time when primordial man was in keeping company with magicians.” harmonious union with the natural “Séance and science” have often gone world and the gods who animated it. hand in hand, and “it is unclear... The Romantics bemoaned their age

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Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Doug Sikkema when man felt himself no longer a writings it anticipated, was a reaction part of nature but now a thing apart against a narrow, parochial moment, from it, no longer a semi-divine par- “a literal secularization” as “German ticipant in material life’s drama but a states appropriated property pre- detached observer of it. Schiller: viously belonging to the Church.” “Many Catholic universities were ...Ah! how diff ’rent was it in that suspended, thousands of monasteries day! were disbanded, and the ecclesiastical When the people still thy temples territories previously governed by crown’d, bishops were given over to secular Venus Amathusia! states.” It is no wonder the gods When the magic veil of Poesy are thought to have been eclipsed, Still round Truth entwin’d its lov- Josephson-Storm implies, when sec- ing chain — ularism turns violent in neighboring Through creation pour’d Life’s ful- France and the Holy Roman Empire ness free, (including Germany) collapses soon Things then felt, which ne’er can thereafter. feel again. But those most influenced by the Then to press her ‘gainst the poem — the thinkers who were cru- breast of Love, cial in perpetuating the disenchant- They on Nature nobler power ment myth — removed it from this bestow’d, — context and treated the story of All, to eyes enlighten’d from above, Of a God the traces show’d.... God’s disappearance as a larger historical development. Hegel, Max Beauteous World, where art thou Weber, the Scottish anthropologist gone? O, thou, James George Frazer, Freud, the Nature’s blooming youth, return German philosopher and psychol- once more! ogist Ludwig Klages, and other Ah, but in Song’s fairy region now lesser-known figures all not only Lives thy fabled trace so dear of referenced Schiller’s poem but large- yore! ly assumed the broader architectonic Cold and perish’d, sorrow now the patterns of history as laid out by plains, the German Romantics. This pat- Not one Godhead greets my long- tern assumed a linear movement ing sight; Ah, the Shadow only now remains of disenchantment, with increased Of yon living Image bright! alienation of humans from both the gods and the natural world, culmi- Josephson-Storm explains that nating in industrialized technologies in its own time and place Schiller’s and revolutionary political orders. poem, like the later German Romantic Indeed, through their acceptance and

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dissemination of this narrative, these But these hopes are frustrated. thinkers began the important work Now, Josephson-Storm does concede of encoding the myth, adding texture that the logical positivists attempted and detail to a world picture that “to refashion philosophy in scientific arguably still captivates the imagina- terms.” Theirs was “essentially a tion today. secularization project,” aiming to do away with notions of God and the he remainder of the book moves supernatural. Indeed, the positivists’ Ton to deal with the myth’s per- aim was broader even than this: They petuation. This is where things start sought “the elimination of metaphys- to get a bit fuzzy. ics,” the aspect of philosophy — the As story after story reveals, many cogito of Descartes, the “thing-in- of the post-Romantic scientists and itself ” of Kant, the idea of “nothing” peddlers of the disenchantment nar- in Heidegger — that they thought rative cultivated a deep and ongoing had become entirely unhinged from fascination with magic, the occult, human experience and the possi- and the paranormal, not to mention bility of empirical or logical veri- religious beliefs of all sorts. None fication. To sum up, according to of this, Josephson-Storm continu- Josephson-Storm, the positivists ally reminds us, fits the perception were anti-religion, anti-magic, and that “people no longer believe in anti-philosophy in the established magic and spirits.” And while the sense, opposed to anything that book admirably achieves its aim to evaded rigorous scientific thinking. “push back against this narrative,” As their forefather Auguste Comte, one niggling question persists: Why the original positivist of the nine- then does disenchantment continue teenth century, articulated it, theolo- to find traction today? gy always gives way to metaphysical In hopes of an answer to this philosophy, which in turn gives way question, I approached one of the to science. So, we might think, if we final chapters, on the Vienna Circle want to find a reason for why the of logical positivists, with bated myth of disenchantment has sur- breath. Surely, I thought, these early vived to our time, we should need to twentieth-century thinkers are the look no further. true culprits; these are the actual dis- But then Josephson-Storm leans enchanters who bastardized science back on his prior strategy. Through into scientism and fixed their ideas in numerous examples of how the the popular imagination, giving this Vienna Circle thinkers were “pro- myth its teeth. Let’s lay the blame at foundly entranced by the paranor- the feet of the positivists and finally mal” and “haunted by magic and put a bow on this project. the ghosts of the very metaphysics

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they were working to exclude,” and practices, we are indeed disen- he doubles down: Not even they chanted in a more fundamental and were disenchanted. He goes into pervasive way than Josephson-Storm painstaking detail to trace how the recognizes. members of the Vienna Circle were, Just recall his origin story much like Marie Curie, enchanted for a moment and his blind spot by mesmerism, telepathy, and other becomes apparent. He deems pre- paranormal activities. Revolutionary Europe to be merely So the question about disenchant- a “historical moment” the Romantics ment’s persistence as an idea never were reacting against in their writ- receives an adequate answer. After ings. In doing so “they were mak- several hundred pages, the point of ing grand themes out of the spe- all these anecdotes is just to show, cifics of their local history.” But repeatedly, that disenchantment is this reading fails to take seriously only a myth, only a fabricated story. the broader cultural conditions in which such a political and philosoph- erhaps Josephson-Storm never ical climate even became possible. Padequately addresses this ques- Might it have something to do with tion because he never fully appre- a broader notion of disenchantment, ciates the powerful ways in which or “dis-God-ing” (to translate from myths operate, even untrue or ques- Schiller’s “entgötterte Natur”), that tionable ones. That magic, religion, transcended this particular place and and superstition have all persisted time? If so, the German Romantics up to the modern day does not quite may have had real reason for con- demonstrate his claim that “we have cern, as may have the thinkers who never been disenchanted” — or, put built on their insights. Perhaps their another way, that “modernity signals understanding of history’s pattern a societal fissure” between religion as a linear alienation from God and and reason “that never occurred.” In nature was questionable, but the idea his keenness to show that the idea of a dis-godded condition becoming of disenchantment is undermined by solidified in a theory of progress and the persistence of both sides of the in revolutionary politics, and of it binary, he fails to examine a more manifesting in physical form in the interesting and arguably much more new industrial world, was so terri- important line of inquiry: how this fying to them precisely because they myth has altered the conditions in knew these things were greater than which both religion and science are their particular historical moment. now practiced. When we consider The only way for the book’s argu- this, we see that despite the contin- ment to work, then, is to accept at ued prevalence of enchanting beliefs face value the idea of disenchantment

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Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Disenchantment, Actually as the simple absence of religion and the living things around us, and magic. But we are actually as pieces of clockwork: items of disenchanted in a much more pro- a kind that we ourselves could found way. Yes, religion and magic make, and might decide to remake remain ubiquitous; but they are now if it suits us better. performed against a backdrop in The power of myths is that they which disenchantment is regarded, condition our experience, shaping in ways conscious and unconscious, how we perceive the world and our as true. Disenchantment is the place in it. To say that we are all default position in the social imag- disenchanted now means not that inary, encoded in our language and we have rid ourselves of the meta- in all manner of habits and practices physical or supernatural but that we that carry as if we inhabit a mecha- relate to these as a fallen rather than nistic world. It has become one of the a reigning order. Disenchantment is myths we live by, even as we resist it. the water in which we swim. The story of Marie Curie that This is the main thrust of Charles opened the book actually bears this Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007). While point out. That she was there at all Josephson-Storm briefly mentions takes so much of Josephson-Storm’s attention that he fails to look at Taylor early in the book, he misses how she was there: She attended this key point. Yes, Taylor traces the the séance not as a believer but as a long and winding story of disen- physicist investigating the supposed chantment over five centuries and, as defiance of physical laws. such, might be seen as just another In The Myths We Live By (2004), perpetuator of the false narrative the philosopher Mary Midgely help- of the decline of religion and magic fully expands the definition of myth in the West. But Taylor’s point is in ways that would have benefited hardly that the secular, disenchanted Josephson-Storm’s argument: age has done away with these things. Rather, it is that occult practice and Myths are not lies. Nor are they belief in God now occur within a detached stories. They are imag- culture that takes disenchantment as inative patterns, networks of a basic assumption. He is less inter- powerful symbols that suggest ested in what is believed than in what particular ways of interpreting is believable, and even as many still the world. They shape its mean- ing. For instance, machine imag- do believe in the supernatural of all ery, which began to pervade our kinds, it seems decidedly less believ- thought in the seventeenth cen- able than it once did. tury, is still potent today. We To say that we live in an urban- still often tend to see ourselves, ized and technological age doesn’t

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Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Doug Sikkema preclude the existence of the Amish; technology assumes or encourages to argue that U.S. culture dominates a disenchanted view of nature. The much of Western culture doesn’t development of the microscope, for preclude the existence of a distinc- instance, allowed us to see particles tive Canadian culture; and to main- that had existed previously only in tain that ghosts and spiritual forces theory. This makes easier the belief have been excised from the world is that what is really real are these not to preclude that there are still small parts of the deceptive whole some — even many — who continue our naked eyes grasps. Of course, to believe in them. But the ways in philosophy can push against this, which one is Amish, or Canadian, or but the dominant sense in the mod- a believer are affected by the larger, ern world is that physical reality is dominant conditions in which one best understood by describing it in must be any of these. The Amish near terms of its smallest particles. The the University of Waterloo, Ontario, seemingly neutral microscope, then, for instance, have unique side-roads can help nudge culture toward the and demarcated lanes upon which to experience of nature as disenchant- ride their carriages through urban ed, and God or the gods can come to sprawl, and must continually negoti- be perceived as less real. Even if the ate how changing technologies must microscope or the science it enables be adapted or rejected for their com- don’t necessarily disenchant, science munity. Canadian classics like This is unequipped to answer metaphysi- Hour Has 22 Minutes or Little Mosque cal questions, and so without sound on the Prairie may market themselves philosophy a godless nature is often as purely Canadian products, but what’s inferred. they appeal to Canadian audiences Or take neurochemical or compu- whose appetites are cultivated by U.S. tational explanations for how the entertainment. This is not to suggest brain works, which often serve to that reigning myths, or paradigms, suggest that they will one day be able are not met with resistance. They to explain the entirety of our mental almost always are. Rather, in the very lives. This is a philosophical leap, act of resistance the true power of the ignoring among other things that myth becomes apparent. They have the modern scientific project became set the parameters, altered the very successful at explaining nature large- conditions for how others operate. ly because it excluded as a matter of principle those aspects it could ust what signs are there that disen- not systematically investigate (like Jchantment is pervasively encoded mind and final causes). Yet while the into the very structures of Western mysteriousness of the mind should life? Consider that much of modern at least keep the God option on

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Copyright 2018. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Disenchantment, Actually the table, our reductive language positive or negative, however, disen- often precludes this possibility in chantment has become an integral ways that would have been foreign to aspect of the modern view of the many thinkers several centuries ago. world and exerts tremendous pres- Or consider factory farms, where sure on our language, thoughts, and much of our processed meat is habits, even as many continue to try “raised,” to be delivered to our gro- to push against it. cery stores in neatly plastic-wrapped Myths are at their most potent packs. There is precious little medi- when they are least visible. Despite tation on the sanctity and mystery of the rather limited view of myth on animal life going on in such places, or offer in this otherwise remarkable in the minds of consumers who rely book, Josephson-Storm’s real gift is on them. Arguably, such places have in making visible that a deanimated been created and continue to exist on material world is not simply “the way the premise of a disenchanted world things are,” but an accomplishment in which animals are mere automata. of shared human understanding. As While these are negative examples, such, the myth, in the deeper sense we should remember too that dis- of the word, is real and powerful, yet enchantment is hardly all negative, also subject to critique — and per- as it has helped to make possible a haps, like what came before it, to host of inarguable goods of scientific replacement. discovery, such as modern anatomy and X-rays. It’s difficult to imagine, Doug Sikkema, a graduate student in at any rate, that modern science American literature at the University of would have developed the way it did Waterloo, Ontario, is a senior researcher if materialist doctrines hadn’t been at Cardus and the managing editor of adopted by many scientists. Whether Comment magazine.

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