On Spirituality & Technology

This week's themes focus on indigenous knowledge, technology, and spirituality, according to the syllabus. It is curious that indigenous knowledge should be associated wih these two seemingly polar terms, but as proven by Moran and Nasr and other readings from this course, there are some insightful associations that can be made between the subjects.

I had been reading ahead to my assigned seminar reading of Brenda Denzler's chapters, and I must note that her discussion of the UFO community paralleled Moran's discussion of the alchemic enterprises during the Renaissance age in Europe. As it stands, both enterprises seemed to straddle a liminal state, of being neither accepted as a religious nor a scientific endeavor. According to Moran, "alchemy was never altogether anything that people believed in; it was something that people did". However, insomuch as it was a concrete activity that required the mixing together of certain chemicals, Pope John XXII condemned the field as being unnatural and one of forgery. Luckily enough (I suppose), the royal court legitimized the art of alchemy as a "fashionable science", because it had the practical function of producing coins.

This tells me that context plays a big role in determining people's opinions about alchemy. During the scientific revolution when breakthrough scientific ideas were being brought to the forefront, it was seen as legitimate, with scientists such as Isaac Newton, Tycho Brahe, and Thomas Aquinas participating in the activity. With the advent of modern chemistry, it was pushed to the backburner due to a more precise and accurate way of looking at transmutations.

Makes me wonder about alchemy's portrayal in the Harry Potter novels. Is the act condemned even more now because it has been cast as a mystical activity under the backdrop of a fantasy movie about wizardry and magic? The characters talk of the creator of an "elixir of life" named Nicholas Flamel, who I had initially thought to be fictional due to the context of the film, until I realized he was an actual being who lived in the 14th century. Such a magical portrayal of him seems to delegitimize the art of alchemy even more, especially when the novels make the fictional supposition that he had created this "elixir of life" that enabled him to live for hundreds of years.

The other article from this week was Nasr's article on Islam, Muslims and Modern Technology... which I found to be overly idealistic. While it is true that the Industrial Revolution has brought on countless technologies and that we are now swamped with an infinite selection of devices and machines to make life easier, it is a matter of choice whether to use technologies or not. Environment does shape the individual, but only to a certain extent. Nasr makes it seem as though human beings are easily malleable by transformations in a society, but this is certainly not the case. He says that Islamic civilization is more prone to following technological trends because they are less educated about technology's pitfalls. But for those who have been ingrained with spiritual values and artistic skills, does technology really have the immense power to take away these aspects of their life? I don't know really how to answer that, but I am inclined to disagree.