Seeking a Wiser Worldview in the Twenty-first Century: Micheal O'Siadhail's The Five Quintets (II)

Abstract

Seeking a Wiser Worldview in the Twenty-first Century: Micheal O’Siadhail’s The Five Quintets (II)* David F Ford ‘Finding’: exploring and praising the mystery While marvelling at your choreography, Stars and quarks beyond our mastery, We still explore to praise your mystery. (xxii) It may be that the most comprehensive issue for worldviews of the twentyfirst century is the theme of the fourth quintet, ‘Finding’, in Micheal O’Siadhail’s The Five Quintets. The theme is summarised in the fifth stanza of the epigraph: how we understand and respond to the sciences. Whether we look at the cosmos and its stars, or at the sub-atomic level and its quarks, we face conceptions of the nature of reality that radically differ from earlier centuries. ‘Finding’ engages mainly with the natural sciences, but also with some other areas of inquiry that have affected worldviews, such as archaeology, linguistics, and the social sciences. ‘Marvelling’is the overwhelming theme, in a daringly original way. There is not only continual wonder and amazement at the discoveries of the sciences in recent centuries, as one area after another is celebrated and described with detailed understanding – this quintet’s scientific grasp has received weighty endorsements from senior scientists such as Nobel Prize Laureate Steven Weinberg (xxii), Martin Rees,1 and John Wood.2 This wonder is punctuated and embraced by two other repeated forms of wonder, both concentrated into three-line exclamatory interjections that work like a chorus. The pattern is set early on: As the heavens are higher than the earth so too my ways are higher than your ways. Madam Jazz, show the wonders of your laws. (240) Studies • volume 110 • number 438 213 The first two lines are scriptural, a quotation from the biblical book of Isaiah, part of its celebration of the wonder and mystery of God’s creation. The third line invokes Madam Jazz.3 What is happening here? There is a double framing of modern science. On the one hand, science is being connected with Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologies of creation, at whose heart is the mystery of a God who says ‘my ways are higher than your ways’. Moving on through the quintet’s other choral exclamations we find variations on this theme, all in scriptural quotations, most from the Bible, and some from the Qur’an: Who then can number the clouds in wisdom or who can stay the bottles of heaven? The heavens are yours, the earth also yours, the earth and its fullness you founded them. Make me understand your commandments’way and so shall I ponder your wondrous works. See how ships glide the sea by Allah’s grace so they may show you of his wonders. Your majesty above the heavens praised The moon and the stars that you have ordained. Bless and make his face to shine upon us So that you may be known upon the earth. Who stretched the line, who laid its cornerstone, The time the morning stars sung together. And so on for thirty-seven more quotations. One point seems to be that, at the same time as modern science has been making its discoveries, the mystery of a creator God has been continually celebrated – often, of course, by Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other religious scientists. There is no suggestion that in order to worship this God one needs, for example, to subscribe to the ancient near-eastern worldview of those who wrote the creation accounts Studies • volume 110 • number 438 214 David F Ford in the book of Genesis – worldviews change as understanding of the world changes. Rather, the suggestion is that God is not tied to any particular scientific worldview, and that there is a wisdom in the scriptural traditions of affirming the mystery of God that is as relevant today as it has been through successive changes of worldview in the past. Within the worldview of the fourth quintet, it is possible to affirm the reality of God with three billion or more Jews, Christians or Muslims today, as well as those in other traditions, and also at the same time welcome the achievements of the various sciences. It is worth noting how...