Syncretism
in the West
Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 1463 - 1494 (at center),
with Marsilio Ficino and Angelo Poliziano (according
to tradition) Steve
Farmer article
downloads
This page updated 16 November 2009
This site
provides an overview of S.A. [Stephen A.; 'Steve' in more recent
writings] Farmer, Syncretism
in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional
Religious and Philosophical Systems (Tempe,
Arizona: MRTS, 1998), 598 pages.
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Syncretism
in the West can be purchased
from Amazon
and most other major booksellers (for about $32).
-
Proofreading errors in the first
edition are listed on the Errata Page
[these errors were supposed to be all corrected by the publisher in
the second printing but weren't].
Files
from key sections of the book, along with files of closely
related theoretical work involving studies of ancient India and
comparative history, can be downloaded from links found below.
Syncretism in
the West develops a cross-cultural model
of the evolution of premodern religious, philosophical, and cosmological
thought, viewed through the exaggerated syncretic system developed in
Pico's 900 theses. Pico planned to debate the theses at Rome before the
Pope and leaders of "all schools." The book contains a corrected
Latin edition of Pico's text, the first English translation (the only
reliable translation in any language), and a commentary on Pico's debate,
in which he planned to discuss (and partially harmonize) all major traditions
known in his day.
(Pico literally
had "cosmic ambitions": in his letters and early texts, he hinted
that debate of the 900 theses (the first printed book ever universally
banned by the Church) might trigger Christ's Second Coming and the end
of the world; for evidence, see pp. 39-46 and passim in Syncretism
in the West. You can download
those pages here as a 1.3 meg pdf)
The cross-cultural
model developed through study of the 900 theses discusses the neurobiological
grounds of primitive religious thought and the systematic ways in
which that thought was transformed by writers like Pico over thousands
of years in manuscript traditions. One novel aspect of that model
is its ability to be implemented in a series of simple computer simulations — the
first of their type used to model the evolution of premodern thought.
The simulations mimic the ways that syncretic processes operated
in manuscript traditions, generating the kinds of multileveled 'correlative'
(or fractal)
structures typical world-wide of traditional religious, philosophical,
and cosmological systems. Papers that discuss the research and teaching
applications of the model can be downloaded from links provided below.
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A few historical
findings that have emerged since the book was published are covered
in the following:
A few selections from Syncretism
in the West are currently available
as pdf files:
-
- Pico's
debate: Preparing the way for the End of the World? (1.3
meg pdf.) Pico left some strong hints at least that that was his
original plan. The textual evidence is discussed
here.
- Pico
and 'Freedom of the Will'? (1.7 meg pdf). The
old view that Pico was a strong proponent of the so-called
freedom of the will first arose from modernizing readings of
the mistitled Oration 'On the Dignity of Man' (on
Pico's own title, click here)
by idealist historians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This section of the book discusses the complexities of Pico's
views of the 'will' and shows how distant those views were
from the modern concepts with which they have been confused
(especially by historians in the neo-Burckhardtian tradition,
including Gentile, Semprini, Cassirer, Garin, Kristeller, Yates,
Rice, Trinkaus, and many others). Standard textbook accounts
of Pico's thought have much to do with romantic fantasies about
'human freedom' and the 'Renaissance philosophy of man' that
were popular in the dismal days just before and
after World War II - but very little to do with Pico's own
views. (Those fantasies have had a long life due to the many
reprints of translations of the so-called Oration 'On the
Dignity of Man' in
anthologies produced in that period.)
-
Pico
and Renaissance Magic (overturns Frances Yates's
famous model of the origins of Renaissance magic in Pico
and Ficino; Pico again emerges as Ficino's adversary, not
as his 'disciple'; 3.5 meg pdf)
-
Charts
of the 900 Theses. Provides an overview of
the 'authorities' that Pico meant to discuss (and partially
reconcile) in the 900 theses (550 k pdf). (Pico claimed
that the debate would deal with "all the most ambiguous
and controversial questions" of his time.)
- Theoretical
Conclusions (1.2
meg pdf, pp. 91-6 from Syncretism
in the West)
that link syncretic processes, neurobiology, manuscript traditions,
and the evolution of the 'correlative' structures typical cross-culturally
of premodern religious, philosophical, and cosmological systems.
A biography (in French) of Pico's nephew-editor Gianfrancesco Pico,
an extreme anti-syncretist who collaborated (with Girolamo Savonarola)
in the posthumous doctoring of Pico's works, has been published as Steve
Farmer and Steven Vanden Broecke, Jean-Francois
Pic de la Mirandole (c. 1470-1533), in Centuriae latinae
II. Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance (Geneva, 2006).
We originally wrote the paper in 2000: so it goes with academic publishers.
I have an informal English translation of this biography that I will
eventually publish; email me if you want a PDF.
****
Papers available below apply the model that originally arose from study
of Pico to developments in premodern Chinese, Indian, and other non-Western
traditions, which were driven by syncretic processes similar to those
found in Pico's work. The extreme nature of Pico's 900 theses is what
makes his work an ideal 'laboratory' to study the effects of syncretic
processes in premodern traditions.
My main collaborators in my cross-cultural studies are Michael
Witzel (Wales Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University),
John B. Henderson (Chinese and East Asian Studies, Louisiana State University),
Richard Sproat (Computational Linguistics, Oregon Health and Science
University), Dorian Fuller (Archaeology and Ethnobiology, University
College London), Steve Weber (Archaeology and Ethnobiology, Washington
State University at Vancouver), and Bill Zaumen, Ph.D. (our lead programmer
at the new Cultural Modeling Research Group
and an MIT-trained physicist). PDF files on this part of our work can
be downloaded from Article downloads.
Articles and lectures
that demonstrate that the famous "undeciphered script" from
the Indus Valley Civilization (or Harappa) was not part of a true writing
or speech-encoding system, as had been assumed since the 1870s, are also
available at Article downloads. Oddly,
the first hints that the Indus Valley was not a literate civilization
arose unexpectedly from the theoretical model first developed from study
of Pico's 900 theses.
For the most comprehensive
overview of the evidence, see Steve Farmer,
Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel, The Collapse
of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization.
Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS): 11-2
(13 December 2004): 19-57. On the international
controversy that article has spawned in studies of ancient India, which
has a nasty modern political dimension, see Article
downloads.i
The fact that studies of a fifteenth-century
CE Western intellectual like Pico could trigger a scientific controversy
involving India's oldest civilization (c. 2600 - 1900 BCE) demonstrates
the power that theoretical models can currently bring to studies of the
history of thought. Many signs indicate that we are moving into a scientific
era of history far removed from the purely "descriptive" or
"narrative" studies of the past. A detailed discussion is found
in a book in progress (Brains
and history: Modeling the evolution of human thought, from prehistory
to the future [working title only]. For a description
of this book and related papers, go to Article
downloads.
Comments welcome: email saf@safarmer.com |