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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
The sociology of knowledge is faced with a problem of historical temporality that it has carefully avoided up until now. The subject has been avoided or ignored because a discussion of it in depth would run the risk of questioning all modern scientific thought. The problem is that of the concept of absolute time as it is used in evolutionist theory. In this category of theory I include not only social evolutionism, abused for a long time and recently reanimated by the “socio-biologists,” but also biological, paleontological, geological and other types of evolutionism, that is, those qualified as “scientific.”
1 I must make it clear, however, that in this paragraph I allude to a limit ed concept of abstract oriented time. Obviously, time is the essential question of metaphysics, a question without an answer and thus constantly being reviewed. In the case of the limited concept just mentioned, scientists, and more recently biologists, have brought the question up again, accepting the view of classic thermodynamics as that of the world. This attitude is very easily seen in the way in which the General Theory of Systems has felicitously re newed the question. Here I would refer to two works that give a general presentation, including the problem of oriented time: in English, W. Buckley, Modern System Research for the Behavioral Scientist, Chicago, Aldine, 1968; in French, J. de Rosnay, Le Macroscope, Paris, Seuil, 1975.
I should also like to add that the bibliography of evolutionism is enormous, and I shall thus mention only works that refer to a precise point. A basic bibliography is readily available, and may be found in France in the pamphlet of J.-P. Lehman, Les preuves paléontologiques de L'evolution, Paris, P.U.F., 1973. The reader may judge at the same time the validity of the proof and the way in which the temporality proper to the phenomenon is overlooked.
2 A. Martinet, Evolution des langues et reconstruction, Paris, P.U.F., 1975.
3 La Renaissance du livre, Paris, 1923, p. ix.
4 P.-P. Grassé, L'Evolution du vivant, Albin-Michel, 1973, p. 53. Is it necessary to recall, after many authors such as E. Morin or S. Moscovici in France, that far from making man descend from his pedestal, evolutionism has placed him at the summit of creation? This is noted by J. de Rosnay (op. cit. p. 221). "From now on the actions of men contribute to opposing (to entropic degradation) a flow of creation of information that is more and more intense." In other words, Man is finally making his own history. Is it because of this that Jacques Monod, at the end of the preface to the French translation of the classic by E. Mayr, Population, Species and Evolution (Cambridge, Mass., Belknap Press, 1970) strongly emphasizes that "the theory of evolution is exemplary"?
5 P. Sorokin, Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time, New York, Russell Sage, 1964 (first edition 1943). A collective work due to Unesco also opens up other ways of situating man in duration, Les Cultures et le temps, introduc tion by P. Ricoeur, Paris, Payot/Unesco, 1975; followed by Les Philosophes et le temps, idem., 1978.
6 Quoted by F. Meyer, La Problématique de l'évolution, Paris, P.U.F., 1955, p. 249.
7 G. Halévy, L'Accélération de l'histoire, Paris, Ed. Self, 1948.
8 An article by A. Cailleux, "Le temps et les échelons de l'évolution" (in a collection) Time in Science and Philosophy, New York-Prague, Elsevier, 1971, pp. 135-145, summarizes these theories in the form of "temporal laws." The title of the article does not contradict our introductory proposition, since there is no interrogation on the socio-historical nature of utilized time.
9 R. E. Lapp, The Logarithmic Century, Prentice Hall, 1973.
10 I will however mention a curious work by a group of three Belgian researchers whose aim was to demonstrate that all progression is accompanied by an equivalent regression. Their examples are taken from sociology (i.e., regres sion of collective property in Switzerland) as well as from biology (i.e., atrophy of branchial arches in mammals or the tail in man!); J. Demoor, J. Massart, E. Vandervalde, L'évolution régressive en biologie et en sociologie, Paris, Alcan, 1897. Let us remember that this old idea of equilibrium in Nature, organic as well as social, was one of the last great "conservative" ideas before the birth of transformism. Linnaeus, for example, explained at length, with the aid of numerous anecdotes destined for the education of his son, how all morally reprehensible action is, one day, compensated by an unexpected misadventure, in an inverse sense and of the same type. Modern political ecology has not yet found this moral, but it is getting close (C. Von Linné, "De l'Equilibre de la Nature," Paris, Vries, 1972, and especially De Nemesis Divina, edited by E. Malmstrom and T. Tredbäy, Stockholm, Bouvier, 1968).
The problem of involution has also been posed, with religious militantism, by G. Salet and R. Lafont, L'évolution régressive, Paris, Ed. Franciscaines, 1943.
11 G. Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York, Ballantine Books, 1976, p. 154.
12 Here we find an interesting application of Gödel's theorem.
13 Cf. "Education et évolution" in A. Gras, Sociologie de l'éducation. Textes fondamentaux, Paris, Larousse, 1974, p. 364.
14 In La Recherche, No. 100, May 1979.
15 In spite of everything, some enigmas remain, but they are rarely taken into consideration in serious criticisms. For example, 60,000,000 years ago the dolphin had a cerebral capacity greatly superior to all mammals that succeeded it. In addition, the cranial volume of the Neanderthal man, who appeared perhaps 100,000 years ago, in any case, before Homo sapiens, is on the average larger by 200 cm3 than that of modern man (while the series of increase in cranial volume of hominids had earlier shown a constant progression).
16 For example, the existence of an irrational number disturbed mathemati cians up until the 19th century, but in a topological theory of numbers this problem simply does not exist.
17 F. Meyer himself had already observed that "paleontological material is presented in such a way that the problem of filiation finds no basis for investi gation in it that conforms to the exigencies of a truly positive research" but "from a strictly methodological point of view," op. cit., p. 10.
18 M. Souriau, Le Temps, Paris, Alcan, 1937.
19 As J. Dorst wrote: "Geologists and paleontologists are at a loss here, given the intense metamorphosis that transformed them." (Personal communica tion and to Diogenes).
20 These skeletons, discovered in 1844, are in the museum of Puy-en-Velay. The geological formation seemed to date from the tertiary, but these hominids appear to be Neanderthalian. This happened in 1906. In 1921 the durations were inversely modified: the sedimentary layer was attributed to the most recent Pleistocene, and the skeletons put back to Homo habilis. Nothing more was said about it. We may compare this situation with that of the Piltdown man, immediately authenticated because it went along perfectly with the theory. When much later the "discovery" proved to be a fraud, it was difficult for the scientific community to admit it.
21 The relationship between teleology and tautology has not often been made by scientists, even though in the last thirty years biologists had renewed the discussion. On the level of temporality, I have not however found very much that is new. The combat is taking place in a restricted field between vitalists, mechanists, spiritualists, radical materialists and so on. I am thinking of course of J. Monod, Chance and Necessity, New York, Knopf, 1971, but also of the commentaries of P. Gavaudan on the classic by A. I. Oparin, The Origin of Life on the Earth, New York, Academic Press, 1957, especially Commentary IX.
22 Dating by natural radioactivity changes absolutely nothing. The method appearing after the general theory, and intended to verify it, could only be inscribed in the pre-established restricted concept. Once again, to verify is not to validate. In this regard, and even though I do not share the point of view of the authors on the solution of the problem, I must mention an excellent work of general criticism that also takes up the question of natural radioactivity, J. Flori and H. Rasolofomasoandro, Création ou évolution?, Dammarie-Ies-Lys, S.D.T., 1974. It nicely completes the classic, perhaps too classic, works of the anti-evolutionist L. Bounoure.
23 K. G. Denbigh, "Time and Chance," Diogenes, No. 89, 1975, pp. 1-20.
24 More precisely, in The City of God, XXII xxiv.
25 J. Rostand, Ce que je crois, Paris, Grasset, 1953, p. 24.
26 I am thinking of course of Th. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolu tions, 2. ed., Chicago University Press, 1970, but also of the "Popperian" radical P. K. Feveraben, Toward an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, London, N.L.B. Books, 1975.
On the other hand, between the submission of this manuscript and the first proof, two works have appeared that support the theses defended here: I Prigogine and I. Stengers, La Nouvelle alliance, Paris, Gallimard, 1979; and B. d'Espagnat, A la recherche du réel, Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1979. The first two authors deem that "classical science has reached its limits" (p. 63), that in the long run "for the solar system, for example, dynamics cannot answer with certitude" (p. 248) and even that, paradoxically, "Einstein strongly incarnates the ambition to eliminate time" (p. 274). They do not treat general evolution directly but take it up with a slant of a severe criticism of prevailing scientific concepts. Bernard d'Espagnat, however, is more insistent when he writes: "What must I think of the scientific descriptions of the origin of the solar system? Probably this, that it is only a matter of metaphors, or if you prefer, myths… " (p. 24); or when he considers that biologists are the true scientists of today or sacrilegiously affirms "that the description of lakes and forests of the secondary era is exclusively a commodious process of the synthesis of the indications that can be given to someone looking for oil or diplodocus bones" (p. 59)! Furthermore, between the publication of the French version of this text and its English translation, an article by Mark Granovetter appeared which, by a happy coincidence, develops arguments similar to my own with regard to social evolution: "The Idea of "Advancement" in Theories of Evolution and Development," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 85, 3, 1979, p. 489-515. It really seems as if we have entered a phase of radical criticism of the old paradigm.
1 This index measures a combination of several variables, not only power but mobility, fidelity, number of targets per shot, etc. According to the author of the article, the comparison between the capacities of the new conventional weapons and the capacities of small caliber nuclear weapons shows that the gulf between them has been partially filled in. This makes the rules of the game and the balance of terror obsolete. This table is taken from J. P. Perry Robinson, "Neutron Bomb and Conventional Weapons of Mass Destruction," in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, March 1978, pp. 43-45.
2 N. Tur-Sinai, Note on the Hebrew Dictionary of El. Ben-Jehuda, Vol. XI (1945), p. 5367, in the article "Sebha'."
3 Franz Delitzsch and Lotz, Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie V (1898), p. 756.
4 Morris Farbridge, Studies in Biblical Symbolism, 2nd edition, New York, 1970, p. 277.
5 Karl Christian Bähr, Symbolic des Mosaischen Cultus, I, Ileidelberg, 1837, p. 317. The lists in this detailed work are only rarely acceptable or relevant for the understanding of the Bible or the later Jewish tradition.
6 Ibid., p. 323.
7 Benno Jacob, Das erste Buch der Tora, Genesis, Berlin, 1934, p. 257.
8 S.R. Hirsch in his commentary on Genesis, Der Pentateuch I, Frankfurt 1893, pp. 148-49, finds in this sign in which all the colours are refracted "from red to the darkest violet" thus building a complete ray, a refraction of the divine spirit, capable of reaching even the man furthest and most distant from God.
9 In tractate Kethubboth, 77b, of Rabbi Josua ben Levi, also later in the Zohar of Rabbi Simon ben Yokkai (Midrash ne'elam in Zohar Khadash as well as in the Zohar itself III, 36a). It is there stated as a general rule (III, 15a) that it is a sign of a truly pious man if the rainbow does not appear in his lifetime.
10 Tractate Menachoth 43b. The Kabbalic interpretation of blue in the tsitsith in the book of Bahir § 65 is based on this passage.
11 In the Jerusalem Talmud Berakhorth I, 2; Shorter than the above Talmud of Babylon, where the striking comparison with the (green) grass is missing. In a later version of this tradition in Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 24, ed. Buber, 105a, it states at the end: "and the Throne of Glory resembles his own glory." The comparison with green grass (perhaps also the Pesikta passage cited in note 19) influenced Raschi's interpretation of tekheloth as green: this interpretation is found in numbrous passages in his Commentary on the Torah and Talmud.
12 Cf. references Bähr I, p. 305.
13 "Today we have only the white ritual fringes because the tekheleth has disappeared", as stated in the late Midrash Bamdbar rabbah, Section XVIII, § 5.
14 Compare the description of this cause célébre in some passages of the article. "Tekheleth unserer Zeit" by M. Kasher in Leo Jung Jubilee Volume, New York 1962, pp. 241-258 of the Hebrew part.
15 This expression actually means the cochineal, but also the red colour that is obtained from it.
16 Cf. Lamentations 4: 8 and Job 10: 21 ff.
17 Franz Delitzsch in R.E.Z.P.T. V, p. 762.
18 Cf. M. Haran in Hebrew Union College Annual 36 (1965), p. 202.
19 Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, ed. Mandelbaum, I, p. 7. Cf. Shemoth rabbah, end of Section 35 and Shir ha-Shirim rabbah 3: 11 where the king more impressively demands from his court painter the copy of a very beautiful picture.
20 Philo, De vita Mosis III § 88, and Josephus, Altertümer III, 6, 4 (§ 183).
21 Tract. Berakhoth 57b, cf. Al. Kristianpoller, Traum und Traumdeutung im Talmud, Berlin-Vienna, 1923, p. 53. There a remarkable variant from the Yemenite Midrash Anthology of the thirteenth century is introduced, from Midrash ha-gadol: "All kinds of colour have a bad connotation in dreams, but the worst is purple blue."
22 Kristianpoller, p. 54.
23 Tract, Berakhoth 56b and Sanhedrin 93a.
24 Pesikta de-Rab Kahana, ed. Mandelbaum, I, p. 323: Midrash Tehillim 104:4; and the parallels in Theodor's Edition of Bereschith rabbah, p. 20.
25 Tract. Shabbath 114a. and Niddah 20a, Talm. Jer. Kil'ajim IX, § 5. Cf. S. Lieberman in Tarbiz 40 (1970-71), pp. 14-16.
26 Sifrah on Lev. 16:4 (Husiatyn 1908), p. 340; tract. Rosh ha-Shanah 26a; Jerusalem Talmud Yobab VII, 8. In De somniis I, SS 214-218, Philo interprets the colours of the priestly garments as progressive steps into the knowledge of God, whereas the white in which the High Priest is clothed when he enters into the holy of holies symbolizes in a similar way the highest step of such knowledge.
27 Michael and Gabriel, who represent these two aspects of the divinity, are, for example in Shir ha-Shirim rabbah 3 : 11, the archontes of Snow (white) and Fire (red).
28 Cf. for example Rashi on Niddah 20a.
29 tract. Kiddushin 40a.
30 It is interesting to note that black clothes for mourning are only mentioned occasionally, but are not cited in detailed description of mourning. A black apparition announced the death of Alexander the Great to the high priest Simon the Just (tract. Yomah 39b); at the death of the son of a non Jewish king the inhabitants of his town wore black clothes (Pirkei Mashiakh, in Jellinek's Beth ha-Midrash III, p. 74).
31 Massekheth Gehinnom in Beth ha-Midrash I, p 149; as well as in the Hebrew book of Henoch, which belongs to the literature of the Hekhaloth books (cf. H. Odeberg, 3 Hezaoch, ch. 44 § 6) as well as in the English translation p. 137. This text, which is of a visionary character and includes a description of the luminous world of the angels, is remarkable for the absence of any indication of specific colours. Instead it revels in vague descriptions of gleaming lights and streams in which the angels or the other creatures of the Merkaba are clothed. It avoids the word "colours" and speaks of "different kinds of light" and similar objects. (ch. 26, § 7).
32 3 Henoch, Odeberg 44 § 5.
33 Midrash Bamidbar rabbah, section 2, § 7.
34 Solomon ibn Gabirol, Tikkun middoth ha-nefesh, Riva di Trento 1562, fol. 4a; this certainly comes from Arabian philosophers.
35 Certain medieval Bible commentaries actually preceded Maimonides in explaining the sapphire as white (i.e. Sa'adya, who explained the sapphire as white, and from whence the medieval Hebrew term for sappiriyi as "transparent" arose); on the other hand, Abraham idn Ezra interpreted the colour of the sapphire as red-green (cf. David Kaufmann, Die Sinne, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Physio logie und Psychologie im Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1884, pp. 114-116).
36 Aristotle, De anima II, 7.
37 Moreh Nebhukhim I, 28. I use the 1957 translation of S. Pines, The Guide of the Perplexed, Chicago 1957, p. 61, which gives far more precisely the original Arabic text. The Hebrew translations of Jehudah Alkharizi and Samuel ibn Tibbon, which have certainly had far more influence, are nót so reliable in many passages such as this.
38 Cf. Scholem, Ursprung und Anfänge der Kabbala, Berlin, 1962, pp. 276-77.
39 Cf. Kaufmann, Die Sinne, pp. 105-10.
40 This expression reflects perhaps the Jewish version of the neoplatonic terminology of Scotus Erigena, who rendered the hyperousia of Proklus as superesse. "The light that is hidden in the superesse (hebrew tossefeth) of the inaccessible (literally, hidden) darkness (of the pure divinity)" would then be a more correct translation of this difficult sentence. In the almost contemporary writings of Azriel von Gerona superesse in used for the Bibliocal word yitbron. The two words contain the element of "excess" which approach the meaning of superesse which in Hebrew is difficult to translate. For the Hebrew text, see A. Jellinek, Auswahl kabbalistischer Mystik, Leipzig, 1853, p. 10.
41 Cf. Scholem, Ursprung und Anfänge, pp. 296-7.
42 Cf. Scholem, Die jüdische Mystik, p. 25 and 353, where reference is made to Scotus Erigena's same terminology in de divisione naturae.
43 Zohar I, 15a, cf. the full text of these pages in Scholem, Die Geheimnisse der Schöpfung, Frankfurt 1971 (Inselbücherei no. 949), p. 49 ff.
44 Sod ba-sefirotb, Mss. Vatican hebr. 171, fol. 133a, cf. also Ursprung und Anfänge, p. 297, and my Hebrew study on the Spuren Gabirols in der Kabbala (1940), p. 173.
45 Zohar II, 239a.
46 Zohar I, 21a.
47 Tikkune Zohar, Kopys 1825, no. 70, fol. 135b: "Even the most radiant lights were dark before him."
48 Pardes Rimmonim, composed in 1548, Cracow 1591, leaf 71a-73d; in the pages which follow, the paragraphs of the chapters are cited as follows: Cordovero § …
49 Azriel, Perush esser sefirotb, Berlin 1850, § 9; also in Sod ha-sefiroth, Mss. Vatican 171, where it states that this blue is not a colour, but the po tentiality of all colours. The etymology of tekheleth mentioned in the text probably comes from Abrahm ibn Ezra's Commentary on Exodus 25:4, explained in more detail in the shorter version which was published by I. S. Reggio, Prague, 1840, p. 78. S.R. Hirsch explains this passage as the colour which lies at the "limit of our horizon" and which points to the invisible, to the divine, which goes beyond our physical horizon. (This is not far from the Kabbalistic concept).
50 Cordovero § 2.
51 tract. Hagiga IIb, cf. M. Joel, Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte des zweiten Jahrhunderts I, Breslau 1880, p. 142.
52 Azriel, Perusb ‘Aggadoth, ed. Tishby, Jerusalem, 1943, pp. 89, 102-105.
53 Very frequently in Zohar in the Idras and in the passages entitled Matbnitbin (mystical Mishna). Also found in Joseph Gikatilla, Sha'are Orab, Offenbach 1715, fol. 110b. The expression Mabsof ha-lovhen (Genesis 30:37) is mentioned in the same sense as the name of the first Sefira in the meaning of the "uncovering of the white" in the Sefiroth nomenclature of the thirteenth century. Cf. no. 65 and 93 of the list in Kiryatb Sefer X (1934), pp. 505, 508.
54 Zohar III, 128b (Idra rabbab), 293b (Idra zutta); Gikatilla, loc. cit.
55 Kaufmann, Die Sinne, pp. 86-94, on the seven skins of the eyeball in medieval literature. These are also partially interpreted in colour mysticism and cited in the Tikkune Zobar, for example, in the introduction, fol. 14a and No. 70, fol. 128.
56 Cordovero § 2.
57 Such instructions, Seder Siddur ha-'ilan, are found about the middle of the fifteenth century in a manuscript of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York (Inventory Number 76362) col. 106-112.
58 Scholem, Das Buch Babir, Neudruck Darmstadt 1970, p. 100 (§ 93).
59 Cordovero § 3.
60 For this the Kabbalists always refer to Isaiah (63:1-4, where God in a red garment treads on the winepress of nations.
61 tract. Yomah 44b. I have dealt with this passage in Zohar II, 148a in more detail in "Alchemie und Kabbala,", Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 69 (1925), pp. 22-25. On p. 22 I proved that Moses of Leon, the author of the principal part of the Zohar, referred in a Hebrew writing to the alchemists who understood well the "Great Work."
63 Compare the text in Madda'ei ha-Jahaduth II (1927) p. 280.
64 Zohar III, 67a; 102a; Zobar Khadash (Midrash ne'elam), Warsaw, 1888, fol. 19a, 21a.
65 Zohar III, 132b (Idra rabbab). This vision is a recollection of the Talmud passage in tract. Sanbedrin 111a-b, where Moses "saw" the patience of God This "forgiveness of sins" is one of the characteristics of God in Exodus 34:6 ff. which was known in the Jewish tradition as the "thirteen Middotb (or attributes)." In the course of the above-mentioned passage Simon ben Yokhai, the legendary chief spokesman of Sohar, says: "I have also seen the thirteen Middoth before me as radiant lights."
66 Cf. Ignatz Stern in his analysis of Zohar, in the journal Ben-Kbananya I (1858) 1 p. 509.
67 In Zohar III, 215a two opinions are mentioned: the customary opinion where the patriarch Jacob (the Sefira Tif'eretb) corresponds to green, and also the unusual interpretation where he is represented by unmixed white because no degenerate sons descended from him as Ishmael did from Abraham (whose white approaches green) and Esau (Edom) from Isaac (whose white approaches red). The green for Ishmael evidently alludes to the green flag of Islam. The red colour for Edom, originally the Roman Empire, and in the middle ages, Christendom, is the colour of martial Rome and Christianity, and representted for the Jews their bloody persecutions.
68 Solomon Schechter, Studies in Judaism, second series, Philadelphia 1908, pp. 297 and 299, mentioned this text.
69 tract. Shabbatb 25b.
70 3 Henocb, ed. Odeberg, ch. 18, p. 62; According to Yomah VII § 3 the angel as high priest in heaven (Gabriel) wears white garments.
71 This is reported in the name of Luria in Chaim Vital, Sba'ar Ha-Kawwanoth, Jerusalem 1873, fol. 63a; see also Jacob Zemach, Naggid u-Mesawweh, Amsterdam 1712, fol. 51a; also Shulhan Aruh Ha'ari, Jerusalem 1961, p. 100.
72 Zobar Kbadasb, Venice 1663, fol. 59b. There is nothing on this subject in the first two editions of Saloniki 1595 and Cracow 1604.
73 De la Croix, Mémoire… contenant diverses relations de l'Empire Ottoman, vol. II, Paris 1684, p. 306. When he received a delegation in 1666 from Poland, which had at that time suffered severe Jewish persecution under Chmelnicki, he wore a red robe in order to allude to the vengeance for bloodshed (Isaiah 63: 1). Cf. Scholem, Shabbetai Tsevi, the Mystical Messiab, Princeton 1973, vol. II, p 623 f.
74 This custom is described in detail in Khemdath Yamin, Venice 1763, I, fol. 20d-21c and in a Responsum of Rabbi Meir Eisenstadt from the beginning of the eighteenth century, Panim Me'irotb, II (1733), no. 152.
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