[Main Blog Post] Understanding Spengler's Decline of the West Bit 5: Rationalism and Religiousness

[jprussell]

I think this will be the second-to-last post on The Decline of the West, at least for now. The next one will be a "grab bag" of quotes and thoughts that didn't quite rise to the level of "I should do a full post about this."

As always, I appreciate your thoughts and if there's anything I'm missing or that you'd like to see more of.

Comments

[sdi]

On the topic of ages of Reason and systems of Reason, I really love how the Faustian mindset is so obsessed with straight lines to infinity that we even worked out a convoluted way for how the planets really actually move in straight lines no really it's everything else that is curved seriously stop laughing.

Silly things like that are kinda hard to unsee once you start seeing them.

[jprussell]

Heh, I hadn't heard general relativity explained that way, but that is pretty funny!

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the new blog! Looking at mobile phones, physics is very much alive. Bright screens, location, wireless communication combined with good battery life. How mobiles affect humans is worrying, and I've stopped carrying mine, but the technological progress is amazing.

Are we really collapsing? I do see people reduce their optional expenses, like holidays, eating out and cars. Interest in religion and meaning is slowly growing. Those may indicate the first steps of collapse. Yet the amount of energy the world uses keeps growing (https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption Perhaps its just our society that collapses, and China will take over the torch, with their form of collective organization as the new Culture.

[jprussell]

Thanks for your comment!

On your first point, I'd say that those are examples of engineering, not fundamental physics. Physics has been trying to make String Theory yield the kind of insights relativity and the quantum revolution did since the 70s, and from what I've heard, it has not been working. And folks like Peter Thiel say that outside of computers, we haven't been advancing much on engineering either.

That aside, as for "collapsing," I should reiterate that Spengler didn't characterize the transition from Culture to Civilization as "collapse" - he pinned the Apollonian transition from Culture to Civilization as happening between Alexander and Augustus - the entire imperial period of the western Roman Empire is during the "Civilization" period.

And yes, when our Culture/Civilization collapses, it seems very likely that one of China/India/Russia/some other Culture will have the most material power.

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for pointing out the difference between collapse and the shift from culture to civilization.

Fundamental physics is a strange subject. Quantum theory, the standard model, and string theory are abstract models with supposedly mind-boggling implications. None are in use in engineering. General relativity is in use for GPS location, so that at least has a real use.