“Quel est donc ce père de l’église qui dit que les erreurs des hérétiques ont, de tout temps, eu pour repaire les broussailles de la métaphysique d’Aristoteles?”
— “Jehan Frollo du Moulin” in Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris
Spencer Klavan’s Light of the Mind, Light of the World is a spiraling odyssey through the intellectual heritage of what we now broadly refer to as “physics.” From Democritus to DeGrasse Tyson, Klavan chronicles the trajectory of Western thought on the basic questions of mind, matter and the cosmos. The author’s antiquarian mindset makes this thread remarkably easy to follow, tracing a few peculiar ideas throughout millennia with stark continuity.
The result is a narrative about the very meaning of science itself in its primordial sense of scientia, knowledge. Klavan suggests compellingly that while the so-called “Enlightenment” derailed Western knowledge for the last few centuries through its repugnant materialism, the latest developments in quantum theory actually necessitate a supernaturalist substructure (proving in the process that at the bottom of physics has always been philosophy). The world, he postulates, is not objective in the sense of independence from perception but actually depends on perception for its existence, that in seeing the world, man participates in creating the world. Despite the superficial farfetchedness of this thesis, the defense Klavan musters reveals a glimpse — even a glimpse — of the obscure and sublime truth beneath, the truth that, in the words of Niels Bohr, “In the great drama of existence we are audience and actors at the same time.”
Light of the Mind, Light of the World is a triumph in many respects, but not primarily for it’s erudition, it’s flowing prose or mellifluous interweave of historic narrative and philosophic import, but because by the end of the work Heraclitus of Ephesus remains vindicated. Certainly, Klavan deserves praise for his technical skill, for the organic composition of the work, for the unmatched ease with which he wafts from precision to poetry, and for managing to capture the breadth of his monstrous subject under the banner of a succinct and strong thesis. But, this reviewer must confess that he internally performed something like the juvenile hooting and pointing of simian cognizance at the one passing mention of the Obscure Philosopher in Klavan’s otherwise chagrin-elicitingly Aristotelian treatise.
Which characteristic presents itself as enticing as any point to start, being that it constitutes one of my only substantive gripes with Mind World (as the cover design confusingly renders the title at a passing glance). Klavan seems to put a bit more stock in Aristotle than in Plato, which is obviously some sort of mistake, probably on the part of the editor, as a man of Klavan’s intelligence must certainly appreciate the genius of Plato over and against Aristotle. “Heretics have in all ages sought refuge under the briers of Aristotle’s metaphysics.” The attitude of Galileo, which Klavan uses as representative of the transitory spirit from the Medieval era to the Modern, and which he posits as something like the great epistemic error of classical physics, is actually more of an Aristotelian ethos. This seems sensible in the scope of history, given the Medieval period of the Catholic Church could rightly be called the age of Aristotle mania, but it doesn’t seem terribly congruent with Klavan’s own view.
The epistemic error in question regards the collapse in the distinction between objective facts and perception or representation of facts. Klavan presents Galileo, among contemporaries, as a pivot on which the West turned from a healthy skepticism that human perception could touch on invisible realities to a more modern-sounding assertion that objective facts are available to human science, free from the messy, irrational, non-mathematic interference of consciousness. The invisible transcendence of Plato’s Forms seems like an appropriate remedy, which does not seem to deter Klavan from preferring an Aristotelian angle. That said, it is obvious that Klavan is not an outright detractor of Plato, and therefore it seems unnecessary to dwell on the subject longer.
However, it is difficult, in certain scenarios, to evaluate a work without considering its author. It is particularly difficult for this reviewer, specifically, to separate Klavan’s politics from his philosophy. The similarity between the facts that Spencer Klavan styles himself a conservative Christian yet does not consider that his lifestyle is an ingredient in the same poison ailing both conservatism and Christianity in America; and that he positions himself against a modernist epistemology while not confronting the Medieval Aristotelianism that gave birth to it is striking. Klavan proves himself a useful, even worthwhile author but remains a man of irreconcilable contradiction, desirous of change that is not quite radical enough to matter.
But, that is not to decry that same utility, which Klavan fights hard to earn — in truth, fighting with a style dependent more on alacrity than vigor — and indeed earns in commendable measure. The real jewel of this prize is the aforementioned vindication of Heraclitus’ cosmological hypothesis. Klavan’s suggestion, via some brilliant quantum physicist, that the fundament of objects is in different degrees and forms of light rather than in discrete arrangements of atoms is deliciously Heraclitean. Frustratingly, Klavan does not seem to notice this, but this is more forgivable than the previous peccadillo. In view of Klavan’s tapestry of heady quantum epiphanies, the Obscure takes on new significance.
And this truly shines as the victory of Mind World: that it is a new coat of polish on a pair of old heirloom shoes. What Klavan really achieves is in fact the vindication of old ways of thought at least as much as the presentation of a new one. Only time will prove Klavan’s prophecy that the “Enlightenment” is at last truly coming to an end, but carried on his honeyed words it is a sweet prediction, indeed. If the sensation of reading this book, of feeling the scales of materialism peeled off one’s eyes, can be duplicated at a collective scale, then the future of the West would seem that much brighter.
By the end of the journey, the reader is able to dip beyond the classic cosmological query of, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” to “Why is there everything instead of just something?” as Klavan pierces through the glaze of fatal arbitrariness that has been laid so thickly for the last three-hundred-some-odd years. I am optimistic that Klavan is, while an eloquent spearhead, not a lone wolf in this shift. It seems that he even views himself as doing mostly the work of observing what change is already happening and as only incidentally instrumental in that change. Perhaps phenomena such as the rise of neo-paganism in America, for example, actually bode well for the Church, given that said rise is explainable by the growing abundance of supernaturalism, which is fertile for both paganism and Christianity but toxic to secularism. By all appearances, a new era is certainly beginning.
Mind World, despite its triumph, does not glory so much as it reclines. Klavan makes the cognitive feat of juggling the mathematics, philosophy, and history of what we now call physics appear as effortless as recalling what one had for lunch yesterday. His expertise is of the same breed as the deftness that makes Olympic fencing simultaneously so arcane and so briskly simple. His thesis is modest in its substance and leviathan in its implications. The entire corpus is a proof from history that man participates in existence in an essential, even generative capacity, which he caps by a simple assertion, daring the intrepid reader to surmount the bare skeleton of a mountain of facts that he has assembled into such a high and delicate tower. A skeleton it must remain by the end of his work, though, given the curious companionship of its modest scope and immense gravity. Klavan’s treatment is sound but far from comprehensive, and so a few wobbly joints are left for the reader to mull over.
I am indebted to my good friend Nathaniel for gifting me my copy of Mind World and to the Lord for giving me a sick day to read it.
“…cet obstacle transparent, cette muraille de cristal plus dur que l’airain, qui sépare toutes les philosophies de la vérité… O vanité de la science!”
Being Kindled 
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