Clairvoyance & 'Scientific Sight'

Peace Friends. Sharing a little more from the first book, An Unpromising Hope. The language is a bit clumsy, but I'm hoping some of it may apply to the present. We'll see. Please note that for Westehelle 'scientific sight' is not the same as 'all science that ever existed.' It's something else. If the concept interests you at all, I encourage you to read his essay “Scientific Sight and Embodied Knowledges: Social Circumstances in Science and Theology.” Modern Theology 11.3 (1995) 341–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.1995.tb00070.x . I've got a PDF of it that he gave me permission to share indefinitely, and I am happy to do so upon request! Peace. ~Tom

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Bloch’s Loss of Clairvoyance & Westhelle’s ‘Scientific Sight’

Yet, for Bloch, why is there no clairvoyance? Why can we no longer catch a glimpse of what is to come? A piece of our seeing as in a mirror dimly, is the frames we have inherited. Indeed, our lenses help us to perceive, but only by way of their distorting function. And we have mistaken our method of observing-distorting as truth itself, or as true perception. Westhelle calls this way of perceiving scientific sight.

Scientific sight, he explains, first emerged at the wedding of colonization and scientific exploration. Going into a new habitat, scientists would observe species. They would then categorize these species, simultaneously encapsulating them into two-dimensional sketches or diagrams.

A sketch itself (the representation of the observed object, of the spectacle), would be copied and recopied, then, by way of the printing press. This representation of the observed object (the spectacle), produced by the observer (and not the one spectated), would then become universally available for the consumption of other eyes in nearly all corners of the colonized world. This practice happened more frequently as technology advanced.

The representation, reproduction, and universal distribution of a spectated object became something of a Platonic ideal form of the object. To scientific sight, this other on the page was held as truer than the other’s account of herself. This becomes evidently dangerous when the colonizer/scientist begins to define indigenous people in the Americas, in Africa, and so on. There, as elsewhere, scientific sight silences and distorts those it wishes to represent.

Scientific sight in the colonizing world becomes the truth. Scientific representations become so well trusted that if an objectified person wished to deviate from her own idealized sketch (her confining caricature—often as one who is meant to be detained/enslaved) she would become something of a transgression—or she would be caught in transgression—and one that requires a hefty penalty. To de-conform is to be abnormal. To become abnormal is to transgress. To transgress is to be criminal, to be labeled as illegal. To be criminal is to be potentially crucifiable.

Drawn, defined, described, and contained, the other to empire is taxonomically put in its place. In its place, judgements are made about inferiority and superiority. Policy and legislation reflect these judgements. Such science aids fascist ideologies (such as Hitler’s eugenics) and, as mentioned, worldwide colonization. Such sight aids fascist ideologies today. Certainly Bloch and his family were targeted by such science. He, defined as a Jew by rising fascist power, was subject to the fascist definition of what Jew or Semite meant and to the appropriate punishment for existing as a transgression.

Thomas R. Gaulke, "Hope in the Key of Heimweh," An Unpromising Hope: Finding Hope Outside of Promise for an Agnostic Church and for Those of Us Who Find it Hard to Believe (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021), 11-13.