Anderson wrote much more fiction than Lewis whereas Lewis wrote much more non-fiction than Anderson. In the 1960s, I first read and appreciated Anderson's hard sf and Lewis's popular theology. I liked the theology because:
I am basically a philosopher;
Lewis's prose is always enjoyable, whether fiction or non-fiction;
I had been indoctrinated in Christianity and at that time wanted to rationalize it, which Lewis offered to do.
Rereading Lewis's spiritual autobiography, Surprised By Joy, I find the philosophical reasoning that led to his conversion hopelessly inadequate. We need to understand human reason, not to claim that it is inexplicable except by invoking divine reason. Is God merely believed or definitely known to exist? Either answer generates further problems.
Poul Anderson had definite views on certain issues but did not devote his works to promoting any particular view.
16 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I know you don't much care for how John Wright thinks and writes, but your mention of Pullman's DARK MATERIALS books reminded me of the essays Wright wrote about those books BEFORE his conversion to Catholic Christianity. He found many literary flaws, incoherencies of plot, and unconvincing philosophy in the books. And, atheist tho he was at the time, Wright was offended by what he considered Pullman's dishonest treatment of Christianity.
Poul Anderson did not use his stories to HEAVY HANDEDLY promote what he believed was right is a better way of putting it. His job was to tell stories in ways readers would find interesting and entertaining. But he certainly did believe in some things: like rational thought and science, the limited state (in whatever form it might exist), free enterprise economics, the desirability and necessity of mankind getting off this rock, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
I find Lewis to be very rational, but strikingly old-fashioned; he has a basically premodern view of the world.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Could you define more exactly what made Lewis' view of the world so pre-modern? Do you mean his apparent hostility to science?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: No, his lack of -understanding- of science. He didn't understand how it -worked-.
Yes. Also, the man lived in the past.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I sought among the works of Anderson for a brief definition of what science is and how it works. This is what I found on page 146 of IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? (Crowell-Collier, 1963): "Without trying to define what science "is"--something that no one has yet done to the satisfaction of practicing scientists--we can describe it as a body of more or less organized fact and theory together with a process of discovery involving hypothetical explanations whose deductive consequences are checked against observed data and that are discarded when they don't work. This is quite different from a collection of industrial recipes and gadgets. Science can indicate ways to make such things, but science is not itself a technology."
Put like that, it seems straightforward enough, so I'm sorry Lewis did not understand how a real science works.
Paul: But to say a man lives in the past is to use loaded terms, which needs to be defined to be properly understood. How or in what ways did Lewis lived in the past?
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, to any interested!
In my previous comment I quoted what I thought was a good definition of what is science and how it works from one of Anderson's books. And that brought to mind the question of what is NOT science? I thought of this bit from Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION, Part II, Section 4, Lord Dorwin speaking: "Look heah, now, I've got the wuhks of all the old masters--the great ahchaeologists of the past. I wigh them against each othah--balance the disagweements--analyze the conflicting statements--decide which is pwobably cowwect--and come to a conclusion. That is the scientific method. At least"--patronizingly--"as *I* see it. How insuffewably cwude it would be to go to Ahctuwus, oah to Sol, foah instance, and blundah about, when the old mastahs have covahed the gwound so much moah effectually than we could possibly hope to do."
Needless to say, this is NOT science. A truly scientific archaeologist and historian WOULD personally investigate questions and problems he found in the sources he studied to search out the truth, as best he could. What Lord Dorwin called the scientific method is merely rote study of past work, without a proper regard for how to solve questions, doubts, problems.
For reasons I've discussed elsewhere, I'm no longer a fan of the science fiction of Asimov, but once in a while he says something in his stories I find striking. And this bit, just now, was one of them.
Ad astra! Sean
Ugh, in the quote beginning "Look heah,..." I instinctively wrote "masters" when it should have been "mastahs." Drat!!!
Sean
Sean,
I think that the meaning of "lived in the past" is clear enough. It remains to give examples.
(i) The Narnia Chronicles glorify medievalism.
(ii) I have just reread SURPRISED BY JOY. There is a passage which I can't find right now but I will continue to look if necessary. Lewis says that his friends describe him as a "laudator temporis actis," one who praises past times.
(iii) Ransom describes the 20th century to Merlin: Christians are divided and are a minority; there are no Christian princes left to come and cleanse Britain; there is no Emperor to put down tyrants and enliven dying kingdoms; the poison brewed in the West has spat itself everywhere; Earth is full of machines, crowded cities, empty thrones, false writings, barren beds, maddened and soured men worshiping their own works, cut off from Mother Earth and the Heavenly Father; demonic forces cover the whole Earth. (I am paraphrasing.) When Merlin has heard that there is no Emperor, he remarks that this is a cold age.
Paul.
"...laudator temporis acti..." (not "actis"), XIV, p. 170.
"Had something really dropped out of our lives? Was the archaic simply the civilized, and the modern simply the barbaric?" (ibid.)
Lewis's answer is yes.
It was Lewis's critics, not his friends, who described him as "laudator..." etc. He accepted the criticism.
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks for explaining why you considered Lewis to have lived in the past. Considering the nightmares, horrors, and tragedies we saw after 1914, Lewis could have argued he had good grounds for thinking like that. And many of the things characteristic of our "modern" times are indeed barbaric, btw. Such as "legalized" abortion.
As for "glorifying" medievalism, whatever that means, Anderson himself might be accused of that as well, considering the sympathetic look he gave to feudalism in "No Truce With Kings."
I am not sure how much of what Ransom said in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH replicates what Lewis himself believes. What an author has a character saying in one of his stories does not have to mean he himself agrees with it. I recall how many times Anderson was fair to, even sympathetically so, he was to characters he disagreed with.
Aside from reading THE WITCH, THE LION, AND THE WARDROBE, I'm not familiar with the Narnia books. I only came across them after reaching adulthood, and I thought them rather too "young" for me. My loss, I'm sure!
Ad astra! Sean
Lewis Sean,
Well, I think that "glorifying" is obvious. STARSHIP TROOPERS glorifies the military. It ends "To the everlasting glory of the infantry..." Lewis presents Narnia as a medieval utopia with no progress ever.
Of course a character's views are not necessarily the author's but sometimes we can judge that they are. Manse Everard, Dominic Flandry and Max Abrams say some things that come straight from Anderson. What Ransom says to Merlin fits with what Lewis himself says in SURPRISED BY JOY.
Paul.
I don't know how the word "Lewis" crept in at the top of that previous comment. I was distracted while typing.
Kaor, Paul!
No problem, re "Lewis Sean." Just a slip! (Smiles)
Yes, RAH glorified the military in STARSHIP TROOPERS. But I don't believe he did so in any bad ways.
As for the Narnia books, I can't really comment, having read only one of them. But I don't believe everything some call "progress" will be good. A lot of what is called "progress" has been bad.
I agree many of the things we see Manse Everard, Dominic Flandry, Anson Guthrie, etc., saying reflects what Anderson himself believed.
SURPRISED BY JOY is one of those books by Lewis I've not read. So I can see his views in that book reflecting what Ransom said in THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH.
I've been more interested lately in what Stirling said about how Lewis did not understand science, did not understand how it works.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
The discussion in this combox on what is science and how it works interested me enough that I copied the bit I quoted from Anderson's IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS? into my pretentiously named CODEX ANDERSONIANUS. So I would know where to go for a quick reference to what I believe is a good brief description of what science is.
Ad astra! Sean
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