“In [William] Cowper’s verse, the poet is a discoverer of truth, not a creator. Although he laments the lack of originality in contemporary poetry — ‘whate’er we write, we bring forth nothing new’ — Cowper’s goal is to find new language for known religious truths: ‘Twere new indeed, to see the bard all fire, / Touch’d with a coal from heav’n assume the lyre.’ As much a nature poet as Wordsworth, Cowper’s poems even give a ‘pre-intimation of immortality,’ according to [John] Newton — a phrase that may have lodged in Wordsworth’s imagination. Nevertheless, Cowper is hardly the poet to claim that his language or imagination are, in themselves, creative tools. ‘I might have preached more Sermons than ever [Archbishop] Tillotson did, and better,’ he wrote his cousin in 1786, ‘and the world has been still fast asleep. But a Volume of Verse is a fiddle that puts the Universe in motion.’ Verse puts the universe in motion, but it neither supplants nor competes with the truths of the sermon or the scientific treatise. His practice is completely opposed to that of an Enlightenment thinker like the Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), who believed that knowing the forces and positions of all entities at a given time could theoretically produce certain knowledge of their past and future positions. Although his emphasis on beauty implies a unified vision of truth, Cowper recommends no single mode of inquiry for obtaining it. His verse in the 1780s makes use of many fields of knowledge. Even theology yields to botany, history, moral philosophy, political science, and psychology, when appropriate.
“In rejecting the Enlightenment attempt to detach the personal realm from the scientific one, Cowper’s Task emphasizes the role that intuition plays in acquiring knowledge. This intuitive, reciprocal relationship between the observer and the natural world gives fullness to the experience of ‘nature’ in the final book of that poem:
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds, And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleas’d With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave. Some chord in unison with what we hear Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
“Even more broadly, the poem finds truth when natural observation, morality, and beauty are reconciled in one’s inner life and outward experience.
“The accumulation of observable facts may have a connection with wisdom and truth, Cowper writes, but only under certain conditions. The detached intelligence that knows all universal forces and positions in Laplace’s theory could never achieve wisdom. True knowledge must be internalized. It must pass through serious reflection. As an example, consider this winter scene where Cowper rises from a description of a late robin to a broader reflection on observation itself:
The red-breast warbles still, but is content With slender notes and more than half supress’d. Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where’r he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, That tinkle in the wither’d leaves below. Stillness accompanied with sounds so soft Charms more than silence. Meditation here May think down hours to moments. Here the heart May give an useful lesson to the head, And learning wiser grow without his books. Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, Have oft times no connexion. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
“The mere accumulation of knowledge is trivial beside a wise apprehension of nature, Cowper maintains. The wise observer, whether poet or scientist, does more than merely locate, identify, describe, and analyze what he or she observes. Instead, he or she ‘dwells’ in observations meditatively over so long a period that hours seem to be mere moments. Only by establishing such a personal connection does the observer have the possibility of discovering a language for nature that will, over time, command broad intellectual assent.”
— from Daniel E. Ritchie, The Fullness of Knowing: Modernity and Postmodernity from Defoe to Gadamer (Baylor University Press, 2010)
Poet Dana Gioia discusses the state of contemporary poetry and the sacramental relationship between language and reality. (15 minutes)
Harbinger of disorder — Mark Mitchell on Michael Polanyi’s recognition of the dangerous dead-end of materialistic reductionism
The personal element in all knowing — Mark Mitchell connects key aspects of Michael Polanyi’s conception of knowledge with Matthew Crawford’s insistence that real knowing involves more than technique. (34 minutes)
Esther Lightcap Meek challenges the modernist view of knowledge, which prefers the figure of the autonomous knower to the figure of a steward of knowledge acquired in part from others. (15 minutes)
Matthew Levering talks about the long and rich tradition of reasoning about God. (23 minutes)
The need to recollect ourselves as whole persons — In this 2016 lecture, John F. Crosby explores key personalist insights found in the thinking of John Henry Newman and Romano Guardini. (60 minutes)
“A sign of contradiction” — In this lecture, Daniel Gibbons compares and contrasts understandings of sacramental poetics proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Sydney. (36 minutes)
Education as a pilgrimage and a mystery — In this lecture, James Matthew Wilson gives a compelling argument for understanding the role of a literary or poetic education as an immersion of the whole being in truth and beauty. (43 minutes)
Nature’s intelligibility — In this lecture, Christopher Blum argues that scientists need to regain a full appreciation of nature’s intelligibility, as they are apt to lose sight of reality due to the reductionism produced by their theories. (31 minutes)
Submission to mathematical truth — In this lecture, Carlo Lancellotti argues that integration of the moral, cognitive, and aesthetic aspects of mathematics is needed in a robust liberal arts mathematics curriculum. (25 minutes)
“Prophet of holiness” — Timothy Larsen discusses a new edition of George MacDonald‘s Diary of An Old Soul, a slim book of poem-prayers to be read daily as a devotional aid. (30 minutes)
James K. A. Smith advocates for a return to some pre-modern conceptualizations of the human body. (18 minutes)
How we know the world — Daniel Ritchie argues that poet and hymnodist William Cowper was ahead of his time in critiquing the Enlightenment’s reductionist view of knowledge. (16 minutes)
William Cowper: Reconciling the Heart with the Head — Daniel E. Ritchie discusses the life and work of poet William Cowper (1731–1800), comparing his commitment to understanding reality through personal knowledge, intuition, and rigorous contemplation with the thought of Michael Polanyi. (43 minutes)
Daniel Ritchie describes how many of the figures he studies in his new book emphasize the significance of human experience, enculturation, and contingency to human knowledge. (21 minutes)
William C. Hackett discusses the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth. (29 minutes)
Bearing witness through poetry — Roger Lundin discusses the incarnational witness of poet Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004), exploring his service to truth and to his native tongue, Polish. (16 minutes)
Czesław Miłosz: A Poet of Luminous Things — Roger Lundin discusses the themes, breadth, and depth of poet Czeslaw Milosz‘s work, explaining how Milosz incarnated in his life and work a sense of exile and alienation so common to modern man. (43 minutes)
Soundings of the human soul — Professor John H. Timmerman discusses the poetry of the late Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) and his visit to her home, Eagle Pond Farm. (16 minutes)
The ecstasy of the act of knowing — Theologian Paul Griffiths situates our creaturely knowing within the framework of the relation between God and Creation
Michael Ward explains why The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis’s most important but also most difficult books. (36 minutes)
The rediscovery of meaning — Poet and theologian Malcolm Guite explains Owen Barfield’s idea of the development of consciousness over time, an evolution made evident through language that reveals an earlier, pre-modern way of seeing the world. (63 minutes)
The rich significance of everyday life — In this interview from 2000, Roger Lundin — a frequent guest on our Journal — explains how the poetry of Richer Wilbur connects with the verse of other New England poets. (24 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 159 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Kirk Farney, Andrew Willard Jones, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew Kaethler, Peter Ramey, and Kathryn Wehr
A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
Deconstructing the myths of modernity — In order to counter modernity’s fragmentation, Paul Tyson argues that we must recover a foundation of reality based on meaning and being. (35 minutes)
All manner of thing shall be well — T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is regarded by many as his greatest accomplishment. Today’s Feature presents a lecture about this monumental work, a talk given in 2019 by Dr. Janice Brown. (58 minutes)
Words as fulcrums — Wendell Berry on the mediating responsibilities of poets
Richard Wilbur: R.I.P. — Poet Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) describes how poetry is at once profoundly private and yet essentially public. Poetry — like love — calls us to the things of this world. (44 minutes)
Cosmology without God — Modern science is practiced in the context of beliefs that are intrinsically metaphysical and theological, even though practitioners of science claim (and usually genuinely believe) that their disciplines are philosophically neutral. David Alcalde challenges such claims within a sub-field of astrophysics. (21 minutes)
Dallas Willard on discipleship — Dallas Willard talks about how pastors should understand their vocation as one of making disciples — apprentices of Jesus — and that the training of pastors must include a commitment to pursue spiritual wisdom and faithfulness. (21 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 149 — FEATURED GUESTS:
Dru Johnson, Steven L. Porter, Reinhard Hütter, Matthew Levering, David Lyle Jeffrey, and Christopher Phillips
