Subject: The Tempest: A PostModern Love Story 

This being so close to Valentine's Day, I thought I would give you a
mini-lecture on love and romance instead of conflict and structural
stupidity as had I promised last week...I promise that, next week, the
lecture will be as dry, empirical and unromantic as is possible but
this week, let's talk of love and romance for science and knowledge.

Shakespeare wrote The Tempest in 1611; probably the last play he wrote.
Bacon had written, his wonderful essays on modern science beginning in
1607: some Shakespearean scholars believe The Tempest to be about this
new body of knowledge [de Novum Organum] in which Bacon summed up the
the work of Kepler, Galileo and others and which, a few years later
would result in Newton and his Principia Mathematica...the marriage
of math and theory to give the possibility of what Bacon called the
Great Instauration; mastery of nature and society by science.

So let's take a look at the characters and themes of the Tempest and
see how they offer insight in the romance between young people such as
yourself and sociology as a body of knowledge.  Later on, I will play
Ariel to your Miranda and, with a little word magic, help reconcile the
new Tempest in which American Sociology is now caught up...reconcile
modern sociology with postmodern sensibility...stay with me for all good
love.

Characters:  Propero: in the story, he is a scholar betrayed by his
brother...sound familiar??  Are any modern sociologists betraying the new
postmodern scholars in your department???  I should hope not!

Miranda [miraculous] is his daughter set adrift by the brother, Antonio.
She represents the young and innocent scholar caught up in the conflict
between old ways of knowing and the new ways illuminated by Bacon/Prospero.

Antonio, the brother proud in power, represents all established gate-
keepers of the knowledge process who set adrift all those who challenge
existing ways of knowing; ways of being.

Alonzo is King and for our purposes, the final authority on who will
teach and who will learn.  He is the father of

Ferdinand, successor to the throne who, with the aid of Ariel, falls in
love with Miranda [I told you this was a love story; it is on several
levels...bear with me].

Ariel is the spirit of science; with Ariel, Prospero does magic of a
sort: one grounded in science and technology.  With science, one can
raise or quiet the seas; one can drive people into madness or help
them toward repentence and redemption for their sins.  For purposes
of this lecture, I will be your Ariel and help, as I said, reconcile
modern and postmodern sociology...neat trick, eh??

There are a lot of other characters but the most important one for now
is CALIBAN.  Shakespeare probably stole the character from Montaigne
who had written about Cannibals, who when compared to the savagery of
civilized peoples, looked pretty good.  Shakespeare was arguing against
the idea of the Noble Savage and, at another level, may have been using
Caliban as icon for all those in pre-modern knowledges processes who
reject science as the work of the devil.  Robert Browning would later
write a poem entitled, Caliban Upon Setebos...where Setebos is a puni-
tive and whimical God and Caliban his disciple.  Odd, I read both the
Tempest and Browning in college and didn't put them together with Bacon.

The Themes:  There are four...it may be a coincidence that Bacon held
that modern science would drive the four idols of pre-modern thinking
from the temple of knowledge...but that is another story.  Back to the
Tempest:

1.  The first theme is the triumph of science over superstitution and
    ignorance.  Shakespeare let Prospero take his books with him when
    he was cast adrift by Antonio...I hope you take all your books with
    you when you leave the university.

2.  The second theme is repentence for evil done...when Alonzo thinks
    his son, Ferdinand is dead...lost in the Tempest which Prospero
    raised to bring all his enemies to his island...Alonzon repents
    truly and is reconciled with Propero.  For our purposes, if
    society/authority/the state repents its shoddy treatment of science
    and sociology, we will help it to solve its problems...Bacon's
    idea of the Great Instauration.

3.  A third theme is purification...one has to go through a trial/ordeal
    and with luck, comes out a better person...in the play, Ariel drives
    the 'men of evil' into madness...Alonzo is purified but others are
    not and are condemned to their special Hell; bereft of the benefits
    of modern science.

4.  Finally, there is the postmodern theme of virtual reality/illusion
    versus substantive/empiric reality.  today we understand that things
    defined as real; believed as real; treated as real become real in the
    consequence...the self-fulfilling prophecy we learned about in Intro.

    There is also, in postmodern philosophy of science [our new Tempest]
    the idea of fractal realities and fractal truth values but S. knew
    nought of this...so the midline between reality and falsity seemed
    to be a topical theme to consider.

The Action:  I have already mentioned some of the action.  Prospero and
Miranda, as a babe, are set adrift.  They land on an island.  Prospero
uses modern science to bring order out of disorder.  Caliban is on the
island but is tamed by Propero...a sullen, surly sort of servitude.

The Tempest.  Antonio, Alonzo, Ferdie and others are passing by on a
ship...Prospero uses Ariel to call up a storm...the ship is cast upon
the island...Prospero has his enemies in his power.  But the storm is
an illusion...all are safe [even Ferdie] with nary a tear in clothing.

Miranda, now 15 years old, meets the still lost Ferdie...they fall in
love with a bit of help from Ariel...who in mythology is also cupid.

Caliban, sullen sot that he is, has a fancy for Miranda...but that is
not on in this romance...brutist thought is set aside; Miranda has a
better offer....and so do you.

Prospero approves of the marriage of Miranda, daughter of scholarly
pursuit and dinand, son of earthly power.  Sounds like a happy
ending, n'cest pas??

There is an odd scene, called a masque or play within a play, organized
by Prospero in which Ceres, earth goddess is invited to a party to meet
Juno, sky Goddessin a 'contract of true love.'  This may be another
way of talking about the unification of theory and data so much apart
of the work of Galileo, Bacon and later, Newton...sounds sensible to me.
Wonder what Shakespeare had in mind...

Finally, Prospero steps out of character, addresses the audience in sort
of a Bretchian way, and asks them how they/we like the play...I wonder
if the audience had any notion of what S. was asking...I wonder if S.
was asking them if they liked the promise of modern science embodied
by Propero [prosperity] and the Is...a sort of Utopia.  Thomas More
had written his Utopia in 1516.

The New Tem Upon Us.  If Shakespeare, Bacon and Newton were today
alive, they would have to write entirely new plays, new books and do
new research...since they are not, you must do it...if you enjoy the
play as much as do I.

The centraharacters in the new Tempest are Foucault, Derrida, Lacan,
Merleau-Ponty and a hundred others who are cast adrift in a 'butt of a
boat' by the custodians now proud in power.Who will play Miranda and
who will play Fernando is still an open question...I would like it if
you were to play the lead in the next drama to be seen in the next
century...I would come.

And now, for the end of this lecture.  I have promised to reconcile
modern and postmodern sensibility...I will do more t that; I will
add pre-modern sensibility and assert with all good will that each
is essential to a well-rounded knowledge process.  Hear my case.

Premodern thought gave us the capacity to trust, to believe, to hope,
to desire and to have faith...without these, social relations and
social realities would not be possible.  One can focus on the ways in
which faith, hope, charity and grace are legitimated but apart from
the use of gods, devils, angels and heavens, such pre-modern thought
processes are essential to the human project...I believe in you enough
to work on these lectures...you believe and trust in the future enough
to gladly learn and gladly teach...have I made the case well enough?

Modern science and modern thought has gone from success to success in
helping us do better agriculture, better transportation, better comm-
unication and better medicine.  In sociology, it has given us insight
into politics, economics, religion and education not possible without
good data and good analytic techniques which now you learn.

Postmodern sensibility has given us the responsibility for our lives,
our societies and our theories not possible in either a God-hewn world
or one driven by remote, universal and eternally true laws of nature
and/or society.  Now we know the nature of the knowledge process; its
political and its poetic character, we become more responsible for
the concepts we chose to use to label the world; for the theories we
choose to make come true/fractally true; for the structures and func-
tions we set as essential to the social process.  For my part, I prefer
to be responsible for the advice and consent I give...

                                                  in all good love,

                                                                   TR

T.R.YOUNG@CMICH.EDU