The Origins of Synthesis: An Axial Hypothesis
The Origins of Synthesis: An Axial Hypothesis
By Howard Gardner
In a series of blogs, I have sought to illuminate the nature and mechanisms of synthesizing—the act of culling lots of information and assembling that information in ways that are useful for others, as well as for oneself. I’ve made various assumptions:
· Synthesizing is a well-established human capacity
· Most contemporaries are familiar with textbooks (these are inherently synthesizing works)
· We admire and seek to learn from great synthesizers (as examples, the philosopher Hannah Arendt (blog here), the financial wizard Warren Buffett (blog here) or the English playwright Tom Stoppard (blog here)
· At least some of us attempt syntheses in our own work and/or our own lives.
Yet, it would be presumptuous to assume that homo sapiens always synthesized, at least in the way that I have formulated it. Accordingly, I have sought an origin story—when, where, why, and how did human synthesizing begin in earnest.
Initially, all roads led to Greece in the 4th century BC… and, in particular, to the writings of Aristotle. This singular individual, who lived for just over 60 years—often in exile and danger—appears to have written hundreds of books, only a handful of which have survived. These books covered an astonishing range of topics—virtually an entirely liberal arts curriculum—physics, biology, astronomy, politics, poetry, rhetoric, ethics, metaphysics, the list goes on.
In each of these writings, Aristotle not only reviews current thinking on these topics, as formulated by predecessors and peers. He also introduces his own ideas, puts his fingers on the scale, so to speak, and generally ends up with a clear and often decisive summary of the ‘state of the art’ in that field. So powerful and persuasive was the Aristotelian canon that it prevailed throughout the West for well over a millennium—during which time he was simply called “The Philosopher.” Moreover, much of subsequent scholarship was either a continuation of, a debate with, or an explicit dismissal of the Aristotelian synthesis. (1)
Of course, not even Aristotle was a solitary figure. For perhaps two decades he had been a student of Plato in the famed Academy. And Plato, of course, built on the oral brilliance of his teacher Socrates—so much so that it’s not possible to determine which ideas came from which of these awe-inspiring Athenians. And then, as those who have studied the history of philosophy will remember, these men built on the pre-Socratic philosophers (for example, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Heraclites, Pythagoras, Zeno), with whom they carried on vigorous debates—sometimes respectful, sometimes quite brawling. Finally, in the background, from centuries earlier, was the poetry of Homer—originally verse transmitted orally, as we now know, but somehow transcribed in the centuries between the Homeric and the Athenian eras.
We may need a broader framework. And thanks in large part to the German-Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), we have one—it’s called The Axial Age.
In a now very well-known and much discussed publication that appeared right after the Second World War, Jaspers (who was not a Nazi sympathizer) put forth a brilliant hypothesis. According to Jaspers, an important—indeed fundamental—change in human thought and action occurred in the first millennium before Christ—more precisely, in the centuries (and even the decades) around 500 BC. Quite surprisingly, this transition occurred in at least four seemingly independent blocs of the world: In India, around the life and work of Buddha; in China, around the life and work of Confucius; in Israel, with the “books” of Moses in the background, around the words and ideas of the prophets (e.g., Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel); and of course, in the Greek city-states, Athens pre-eminently, but also Sparta, Miletus, and a few others.
While the importance of Jaspers’ paper was not immediately recognized (scholars had other preoccupations in the postwar era), it has since sparked considerable discussion and debate in the scholarly literature. (For a good survey see Bellah and Joas, 2012; also, Daedalus Spring 1975.) Not surprisingly, the debate has involved input from many disciplines, and drawn on expertise with respect to a variety of topics and cultures (dating back to the Sumerian alphabet and Egyptian crypts and forward to the lives, words, and work of Christ and Muhammad).
However fascinating this debate, I focus here on a different set of issues: Just what was it that these individuals and times enabled that had not been noticeable (or may not even have been possible) in earlier times; and how did such factors, in turn, enable an intellectual milieu where synthesis existed, mattered, and could be built on by subsequent synthesizers.
Here are the key ideas, as I try to synthesize them:
In earlier times, individuals certainly observed and spoke about their experiences. And the most gifted, like Homer, or Moses, could do so in powerful and memorable ways.
But these ideas needed to be written down, shared among contemporaries, and passed on in substantially faithful ways to succeeding generations. And the written system had to capture the range of human words and concepts: not just record market transactions, or dynastic successions and other kinds of record keeping.
Once there existed a sufficiently nuanced and comprehensive record, so to speak, discussion and debates could ensue about the various claims, alternatives, possibilities, risks, rewards—the evidence on which they were based (early science, early history); the ways that they were described (rhetoric, verse); the values that they reflected (morality, ethics, codes of behavior), the larger entities to which they referred (communities. cities, states, geographical regions). Authors and readers could propose concepts and theories and debate their respective merits.
At least as important, though less easy to describe succinctly, there was a conviction that these ideas were somehow connected and should be construed as part of a broader belief system. These ideas were qualitatively different from magic and myths. Termed ‘transcendence’ by scholars, such broader systems constituted a religion, prototypically a monotheistic one. These bodies of thought enveloped the human experience, signaled how it should (and should not) be lived; and—crucially—how it related to a capacious envelope, one that transcended particular individuals and groups, one that provided models and standards according to which all beings were expected to live… and die. In short, a synthesis that spans the important issues of living, thriving, dying.
If Jasper’s ideas about an axial age have validity, they signal a fundamental change in human thought and experience. To be sure, in earlier centuries and perhaps millennia, there had undoubtedly been informal ideas about what the world was like, which experiences were to be pursued, how one should behave (see the work of Homer, the stories of Exodus in the Old Testament, as well as many orally-transmitted myths); this agenda now became the explicit focus of certain charismatic individuals and certain transmittable works. And, indeed, these key texts gave rise, in turn to formal educational systems. In schools or academies of various forms, this knowledge was passed on—sometimes faithfully, sometimes less so, and occasionally built upon—to future generations, at least some of whose members would be expected to be leaders, priests, teachers of those who came afterwards. (2)
That these axial changes occurred at roughly the same time in the history of our species boggles the mind. One might think that perhaps there was some change in the human brain, or some epochal event in the universe, that prompted parallel developments across four discrete geographical territories. But I think it far more likely that an accumulation of cultural events over the previous millennia or two gave rise to the co-incidence of coherent systems of thought at four places in our planet….and perhaps others, that we do not know about because traces of them were destroyed.
One last, important point: Even the Greek philosophers realized that this new intellectual state of affairs was fragile and could easily be undone. There was plenty of potential for barbarians to undercut these ideas, approaches, standards, aspirations…. Indeed, it could be argued that the Axial age declined with the waning of Greece and ended (at least in the West) with the fall of the Roman Empire; and its agenda was not resumed significantly till the Renaissance, a thousand years later. Jaspers put forth his synthesis, in part, in the hope that, following the carnage of the Second World War, the essential unity of human nature and experience could be identified and confirmed. But he knew that was not a fait accompli—and if anything, the fault lines across the planet have become increasingly pronounced in subsequent decades.
That said, while communion among nations and societies, seems as fragile as ever, there is no sign that synthesizing itself is on the wane. If anything, we are faced with a plethora of syntheses, within and across cultures, by individuals and groups of different degrees of knowledge and authority, (which include much malignant material making its way onto the Internet and social media) and joined more recently by those syntheses that are carried out by computer algorithms.
What we need are not more syntheses, but better ones, more reliable ones, a conversation (that builds on theses and antitheses) and ultimately contributes to the welfare of the planet and the life that exists—all too fragilely—upon on it.
Footnotes:
(1) I plan a blog on how Aristotle has been interpreted by recent authorities.
(2) Jaeger, Werner. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. See also my blog on Paideia here.
References
Bellah, Robert and Hans Joas. The Axial Age and its Consequences. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Daedalus 104, no. 2 (1975). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024323.
Jaeger, Werner. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Lord, Albert B., Stephen Mitchell, and Gregory Nagy. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.