Explaining Explanation (And Failing)

Explanation is a funny thing. Or rather, man’s constant demand for it is funny. And I mean funny in the most tragic sense possible. 

The first question recorded in the Bible is in Genesis 3:1, where the serpent asks Eve, “ ‘Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ ” Any Sunday school child can finish the story from there, chronicling the back-and-forth between woman and snake, which culminates with that fateful bite from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the ultimate casting out of Man from Paradise. In the story of the Fall, anyway, curiosity did much more than kill the cat. 

Yet humans were clearly created to be inquisitive. This should require no proof beyond the way in which we have pushed and continue to push every conceivable boundary, leaving in our wake everything from the wheel to the printing press to the airplane to the internet. Indeed, God commanded us to “ ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’ ” (Genesis 1:28). But there are clearly things we were not meant to know, or the forbidden fruit would not have existed in the first place. 

So where is the line? What questions are off limits? These, at least, are questions we don’t ask ourselves nearly enough. I don’t know who first said “There is no such thing as a stupid question,” but I’ve always found it to be one of the most ignorant axioms I’ve ever heard. Of course there are stupid questions. To not recognize this is more dangerous than we should like to realize or admit. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis writes of man’s quest for knowledge, “The true object is to extend Man’s power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work; but his goal is that of the magician” (95). It is our nature to seek an answer to everything, but do we ever stop to think whether there are things we ought not -- or, God forbid, cannot -- know? 

Well, we used to, I think. Back when we had a healthy respect for Nature and the All-Powerful Being people still believed existed behind it. Was this respect ever contorted into gross ignorance and superstition? Certainly, but at least we were humble enough to recognize our own fallibility. We were just as curious then; we had to be, or else how did we get from there to here? But we knew, better than we know now, that some things simply cannot -- and indeed, should not -- be explained. It is hard to know when we first started to violate these mysteries, but Lewis, writing in 1943, believes that this violation is approaching its climax. “The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won” (73). 

It never ceases to amaze me how much faith we humans have in our own capabilities. Reading these lectures of Lewis’s brought to mind portions of a speech I once memorized that illustrates this arrogance perfectly. It is John Steinbeck’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He states, “We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life and death of the whole world - of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in Man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and wisdom we once prayed some deity might have. Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: in the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.” 

Well, Lewis would agree with the first part. We have indeed usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. But he would not see this as something to be proud of. For he almost laughs at the notion that “ ‘Man has Nature whacked’ ” (66), replying, “What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument” (68). And he is not simply referring to the potential for one group of people to physically wipe out another (the atomic and nuclear technologies that Steinbeck is referencing in his speech were not yet invented in 1943), though that might have been at the back of his mind. Let us not forget, The Abolition of Man is a treatise on education, not on war or even on technology, and as such is less about control of the body than control of the mind. 

So what is dangerous about the way the mind of Man has developed? It is certainly not that we ask questions. As we have already established, God created us to be inquisitive. He also created us to get hungry -- that does not mean we should eat ourselves to death. Lewis was a big believer in the “golden mean.” That is, finding the virtuous path between two opposing sins. To stick to the food metaphor, we are not to starve, nor are we to be gluttons; we must satisfy our hunger and no more. Where, then, is the golden mean when it comes to explanations? It would be not merely sad, but sinful to totally neglect our inquisitive nature. But, as Lewis writes, “You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it” (99). This, of course, begs the question, how far is too far? How should we know if what we are trying to see through is the last thing between us and transparence? 

And this is where I cannot find a concrete answer. It is hard even to know on which side it would be better to err. For I don’t want to put blinders on to the world and numb my mind to curiosity. To do so would be not to obey God but to obey Man, or at least that part of Man that should like nothing better than for me to stop questioning all that goes on around me. Lewis warns against this in his first lecture in this series. Nor do I want to turn into a skeptic who, because he cannot find an answer to everything, in the end cannot believe in anything. As Lewis concludes his final essay, “If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see” (99). I would in no way venture to disagree. But as Man increasingly moves toward total control over Man, it is hard to know how to find my way without turning into either slave master or slave.