A Timeline of the Great Drama
The following are some (not all!) moments and events of interest throughout the Great Drama. The events are meant to be relevant to Science After Bacon. There is also a more concise version here.
In 399 BCE, Socrates was executed after spending a life in obedience to and examination of the Logos. He was said to be the wisest man in Athens because he was the only one who knows that he does not know. Nearly 400 years later (between 6 BC and 33 AD), Jesus of Nazareth was born and baptized in the river Jordan. That is to say, the Word (Logos) became man. He was later betrayed by Judas Iscariot and crucified under Pontius Pilate. Three days later he rose again.
The Ancient Greek philosophical project (Plato and Aristotle) began its integration into the Judeo-Christian project (Augustine and Aquinas) when Augustine wrote his Confessions in 400 AD. He wrote On the Trinity and The City of God over the next 20 years. Here, Augustine successfully reconciled the works of Plato with Christianity. The joint project aimed to identify and align man with nature's formal and final causes. This is distinct from the later scientific project which aims to replace final causes with functions in service of man and, in its later stages, will remake nature’s forms when necessary (e.g., transhumanism). Aristotle was introduced later.
The Prophet Muhammad lived from 570 AD to 630 AD. Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks in 768. In 786, Harun al-Rashid became Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. This begins the Islamic Golden Age. In 800, Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome. The Islamic Golden Age featured the rediscovery of Aristotle, whose work Avicenna and Averroes synthesized with Islamic metaphysics in the late 1100s. It also saw the development of algebra and significant progress in astronomy and medicine. From 802 to al-Rashid’s death in 809, a diplomatic channel between Harun al-Rashid and Charlemagne opened, a rarity for Christendom and the Islamic world. Thus, Aristotle was introduced to, but not yet integrated with, the Christian World.
In the 1100s, the troubadours flourished in Southern France. They were the earliest poets of courty love (court d’amor). According to Marie Louis von Franz, a famous student of Carl Jung, this is relevant insofar as they were developing the capacity for love in contrast to the power drive. A “drive” may be understood as the underlying motivation the leads to thought and action. She explains, “Each Knight elected a woman of his choice who represented his beloved anima figure. And he made poems for her, and he did his heroic deeds for her, and he worshiped her like a goddess. And that at the same time, he was cultivated. Those men grew out of their barbarian warrior behavior and became cultivated people. (They became) people who could really relate to women – men who cultivated their capacity of love, their sensitivity.” Importantly, this is not something that can be done abstractly – ie, the change will not occur by simply understanding a concept intellectually. The Knights wrote poems, did heroic deeds, and worshiped. Each of these were actions that penetrated deeper than the conceptual mind, and changed the psychic structure (or the soul) of the Knight. That is, it changed their likes and dislikes, their capacities and incapacities, and so on. Von Franz continues, “The church didn't like this development, because it led to all sorts of complications, and it made people a bit too independent from her, and so it was suppressed. And interestingly enough, when those court d’amor were suppressed, the Witch hunting began. The feminine became negative, and one began to pursue alluring, interesting women as witches. One had suppressed the beginning development of love life.” St. Francis, deeply influenced by the troubadours and the court d’amor, renounced his wealth and embraced radical poverty in 1206. Three years later, he received informal approval from Pope Innocent III to found the Franciscan Order.
St. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, finally synthesized Aristotle with Christian doctrine in his Summa Theologica, which he wrote from 1265 to 1273. He stopped writing after two mystical experiences. The stories go as follows: After he finished writing about the Eucharist, he was lifted into ecstasy. He heard a voice from the nearby crucifix. It told him he had written well and asked him what he would like as a reward. Thomas replied, "Nothing but Thyself, my Lord.” Later that year, Aquinas experienced an “unusually long ecstasy” during Mass and refused to continue writing. He said, "I can do no more. After what I have seen, all that I have written seems like straw.” He would die soon afterward.
Renaissance Florence began to flourish around 1450. Da Vinci painted The Adoration of the Magi in 1481 and The Last Supper from 1495 to 1498. Machiavelli rose in politics beginning in 1498, after Savonarola was executed. Leonardo and Machiavelli briefly worked together in Florence on engineering and political projects during Cesare Borgia’s campaign in 1502 and 1503. In 1504, Michelangelo finished his statue of David; he finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome in 1512. The Medicis returned that same year and Machiavelli was exiled. He wrote The Prince in 1513 (though it wasn't circulated until 1532). Raphael finished the School of Athens in 1514. In 1520, Raphael died at 37, symbolizing the close of the High Renaissance.
Teresa of Ávila was born in 1515 and entered the Carmelite convent in 1535. She wrote her Autobiography in 1565, which was used both to defend herself before the Inquisition and to instruct others in prayer. She wrote The Way of Perfection in 1566 and The Interior Castle in 1577. In 1567, Teresa prayed for a collaborator. When the famously short St. John of the Cross arrived, she said, “God, I asked you for a monk—you’ve sent me half of one.” Together, they founded several monasteries. In 1577, St. John was imprisoned by fellow Carmelites opposed to their reform; in his cell, he composed poems that became The Dark Night of the Soul.
Modernity began epistemologically with the shift from Aquinas (as the Christian integration of Aristotle) to Bacon (Novum Organum, 1620) and Descartes (Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641). Bacon encouraged knowing via observation and experiment, rather than deductive reasoning. Descartes initiated the subject-object split with his famous “I think, therefore I am.”
Modernity began politically with the shift from Aquinas to Machiavelli (The Prince, 1532) and Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651). Machiavelli replaces virtue (the cultivation of moral excellence, alignment with the good) with virtù (bending fortune to one’s will through strength and cunning). This disconnected politics from its final cause: to live well together. Politics to the ancients encompassed both state and society; ancient constitutions encompassed both law and custom. As Machiavelli no longer sought to pursue virtue, the term politics refers primarily to attempts to gain control of the state and society is no longer understood through politics but rather through culture.
The devastation of the Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648) further shattered hopes for a unified Christendom. This led Hobbes and Locke to seek political orders grounded not in shared theology, but in natural rights—thus transferring questions of formal and final causes from the domain of the state to the conscience of the individual.
Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, 1776) asserted that humanity could be understood as primarily rational economic actors, thus limiting our formal cause. Locke and Smith form the foundations of Western society. The US Declaration of Independence (1776) affirmed Locke’s natural rights, allowing for the further rise of Smith’s liberal capitalism. The French Revolution began in 1789.
In 1836, Samuel Colt invented the revolver. In 1867, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. In 1884, Hiram Maxim invented the first fully automatic machine gun.
Marx published The Communist Manifesto in 1848.
In 1882, Nietzsche first declared the Death of God. Though, in a way, Dostoyevsky had already rediscovered God in Crime and Punishment (1866), and further articulated his case in The Brothers Karamzov (1880). As Sean Kelly notes, both books seem to concede “Yes, if there is no god then all is permitted.” This is a Modus Ponens. (If P, then Q. → P. → ∴ Q.). But, Dostoyevsky points out, “Look at our lives, all is not permitted! When you commit terrible acts, such as the murders in each novel, your life becomes unlivable. Therefore, God is real.” This is a Modus Tollens (If P, then Q. → Not Q. → ∴ Not P.). In 1888, Nietzsche famously wrote that Dostoyevsky was “the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn,” though this referred to Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground. It does not seem that Nietzsche ever read Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov.
Near the turn of the century, we began to scientifically map the inner world. In 1895, Freud published Studies on Hysteria, marking the conceptual birth of psychoanalysis. In 1900, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, introducing the unconscious and dream analysis. In 1913, Carl Jung split with Freud. That same year, Rudolf Steiner broke with the Theosophical Society and founded the Anthroposophical Society, and Edmund Husserl published Ideas I, formally establishing phenomenology. All three projects (psychoanalysis, anthroposophy, and phenomenology) attempt to bridge the subject-object divide initiated by Descartes.
Ludvig Wittgenstein, born to an ultrarich Austrian family, met Bertrand Russell in 1911. Their relationship would go on to shape the development of his masterpiece, the Tractatus. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in June of 1914. World War I began one month later, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Wittgenstein enlisted shortly after, and continued writing the Tractatus during the war, including while stationed on the front and in a POW camp. This is the first war where both sides had machine guns en masse, and the horrors of the battlefield effectively ended the more naive versions of the scientific progressive narrative. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919, formally ending the war exactly five years after the assassination.
The Russian Revolution unfolded in 1917. In February, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated his throne, ending more than 300 years of Romanov rule. In October, Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized government buildings, marking the start of Soviet rule. The Romanov family was executed the following year.
In 1920, Yogananda arrived in the U.S. and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship, bringing Kriya Yoga and Vedantic teachings to the United States.
Wittgenstein gave up his inheritance in 1919, shortly after returning from service in World War I, choosing a life of relative poverty. He published the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921, offering a vision of the limits of language and the unsayable. The English edition appeared in 1922, introduced by Russell, and concluded with its now-famous final proposition: “What cannot be spoken of, must be passed over in silence.”
After being banished throughout modernity, questions of human nature reemerged politically in the buildup to the second world war. Carl Schmitt, a major political philosopher of Nazi Germany, re-engaged with the essential questions. He redefines the political as the battlefield where different conceptions of religion, virtue, and human nature take place.
In 1927, Martin Heidegger published Being and Time. Much of the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger (and his mentor Edmund Husserl) can be understood as an attempt to rediscover formal causes. Heidegger’s practices related to authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) may also be understood as an attempt to realign with final causes. In 1922, Leo Strauss studied briefly under Martin Heidegger.
In 1929, Jung wrote a letter to Rowland Hazard stating that only a spiritual experience can offer lasting recovery for his alcoholism. Seeking this experience, Hazard joined the Oxford Group in 1931. Hazard conveyed this message to Ebby Thatcher, who then conveyed it to Bill Wilson. Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. That same year, Dr. Jung first publicly defined the individuation process, which can also be understood as an inward alignment with one’s final cause. The same can be said of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which were influenced by Jung.
1933: In January, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. In April, Leo Strauss emigrated from Germany to France, and then to England, aided by Carl Schmitt. He moved to the United States a few years later. That same month, Husserl was stripped of his academic privileges and banned from teaching at the University of Freiburg by the Nazis. Heidegger, who had just become rector of the university and joined the Nazi Party, did not publicly defend him. Husserl’s manuscripts were preserved. His assistant Herman Leo Van Breda, then a 27-year-old Franciscan, secretly rescued the transcripts and transported them to Belgium. In October, Edith Stein, a student of Husserl and inspired by the Autobiography of St. Teresa, entered the Carmelite order. She integrated phenomenology with Catholic theology in the years that followed. She was killed at Auschwitz in 1942. She was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church in 1998.
WWII began in 1939. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Nuclear weapons were developed at Los Alamos beginning in 1943. In 1945: The Yalta Conference was in February; Germany surrended in May; the bombs were dropped in August; Japan surrendered in September.
In response to the second World War, most post-modern philosophies denied the existence of formal and final causes outright. The few exceptions were necessarily either esoteric or countercultural. Leo Strauss taught at the University of Chicago from 1949 to 1967, where he founded his school of political philosophy. Carl Jung published Psychology and Alchemy in 1944 and Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self in 1951. Valentin Tomberg converted to Catholicism in 1940 and completed his Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism in the 1960s (though it was not published until 1985). Though more spirituality than philosophy, Yogananda published his Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946, one of the first widely influential books on yoga written by an Indian monk for a Western audience.
George Keenan’s Long Telegram was sent in February of 1946, framing the ideological dispute of the Cold War. In it, Kennan recognized the Soviet behavior as inherently expansionist and resistant to peaceful coexistence, recommending a strategy of containment. In March 1947, The Truman Doctrine committed the US to support nations threatened by communism, formalizing the Cold War. The Long Telegram would become public as “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs.
US involvement in Vietnam escalated from 1961 to 1963. Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. The first major deployment into Vietnam was in 1965. In July of 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Michael Collins stayed on the ship. Woodstock began a month later. In his discussion with JBP, Thiel says directly “the Apollo space program (can be considered) the last great technological scientific project. (In) July of 1969, we land on the moon and Woodstock started three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, in some sense, that's when progress stopped. Scientific and technological progress stopped, and the hippies took over the country.” What Thiel misses is that the hippies picked up where the troubadours left off. They were continuing the “development of the capacity for love, in contrast to the power drive.” Von Franz notes, “the whole romanticism of the hippie movement was such a first attempt (to continue developing the anima). That's why they imitated troubadours with musical instruments and even revived troubadour music. That was all going back to (where we left off).” Though a small minority, some of the hippies made it all the way back to Christianity.
Saigon fell in April of 1975, ending the Vietnam War. The “Miracle on Ice” hockey game was in February of 1980. In June 1987, President Reagan delivered the famous line: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” As the Cold War ends, globalization begins. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama (who studied under Allan Bloom and Harvey Mansfield, among other members of the Strauss lineage) published his essay titled The End of History?. Liberal hegemony, which can be understood as the American desire “to assert its own form upon the world", becomes the dominant foreign policy ideology in the United States.
Thiel marks the events of September 11th, 2001 as a breaking point in the enlightenment liberal project of Smith and Locke. This is because it was no longer possible to maintain strict freedom of religion with the presence of Jihadist Islam.
In 1991, the World Wide Web became available. Facebook was founded in 2004. Twitter launched in 2006. The first iPhone was released in 2007.
Jordan Peterson began his lecture series on Genesis in May of 2017, in which he was able to weave together the primary ideas of psychoanalysis and phenomenology with the biblical texts. Due to social media, he was able to reach a popular audience. Peter Thiel publicly clarified his theory of stagnation on The Portal in 2019. A loose network of those interested in similar questions formed around JBP, including John Vervaeke and Jonathan Pageau, amongst others.
The Covid-19 pandemic unfolded in 2020. Science became political.
ChatGPT was released in November 2022.
