For lust of knowing what should not be known/ We take the Golden Road to Samarkand. [[1]]

The Silk Road has always been known for providing pathways that allow the Far East to exchange goods and ideas with the European West. History often remembers that the Silk Road helped Europe expand and flourish. However, the cities that lived in close proximity to the Silk Road routes also benefited economically and culturally. Samarkand, specifically, became a multi-ethnic city of trade under the leadership of Tamerlane in the 14^th century. According to historian Christopher I. Beckwith, Tamerlane formed Samarkand into a “model city” [[2]]. But was it Tamerlane’s skill as a political leader, or the influence of the trade routes that brought glory to the grand city? While Tamerlane’s empire was vast and incredible, it is impossible to deny that the Silk Road played a larger role in the flourishing of Samarkand due to the market established in the city, as well as its toleration of those with different cultural and religious identities.

Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane, was a successful military and political ruler in the city of Samarkand. As a child, Timur found himself living on the Central Asian steppes where he and his tribe would migrate at the mercy of the seasonal weather [[3]]. However, as he grew older, Timur soon found himself gaining a foothold and conquering tribes, making alliances with other warlords, and looting as a missionary throughout Central Asia [[4]]. One of Timur’s most influential alliances was made with the Balkh warlord Amir Husayn. Throughout the course of the alliance between Timur and Husayn, tensions were high and it eventually disintegrated [[5]]. Despite Timur facing betrayal during his previous experience with Husayn, the two again joined forces to eventually overthrow the Sarbadar government in Samarkand in 1366 [[6]]. While ruling alongside Husayn in Samarkand, Timur gained many followers. Timur was regarded as a brave, intelligent, and generous ruler among his people though it was well known that he was also ruthless to his enemies [[7]]. With his skill to gain followers and prestige all across the Central Asian steppes and cities, Timur was finally able to make his way into the Mongol courts. After Genghis Khan died, Timur was able to cement his control as the sole ruler of the Chagatai territory on April 9, 1370 [[8]].

The ancient city of Samarkand is well known to be a melting pot of people with different races and religions. The Sogdian people are considered to be one of the first to populate the area. In fact, the first traces of the Sogdian people date back to 700 BC. Valerie Hansen of Yale University writes that it is likely that the early Sogdian settlers lived peacefully within the city as merchants, farmers, and servants. She also states that the Sogdians were also able to continue using their native language although it was not the mainstream language of the city [[9]]. However, the Sogdians were not the only people to occupy the city. When Ruiz Gonzales de Clavijo visited the city while on embassy in 1412, he noted that there were people from across the world living in the city. Clavijo wrote:

…The population now of all nationalities gathered together in Samarqand… [Amounting] to about 150,000 souls. Of the nations brought here together there were to be seen Turks, Arabs and Moors of diverse sects, with Christians who were Greeks and Armenians, Catholics, Jacobites, and Nestorians…[[10]]

These different religious and ethnic groups likely lived in peace and toleration of one another and focused on improving commerce within the city.

While Tamerlane was a successful ruler and won the respect and loyalty of his citizens, that alone did not cause the city of Samarkand to become great. Instead, the Silk Road routes are most likely the reason for the city’s strong economy. The Silk Road was a series of trade routes that stretched from China, located in the Far East, to the European West. These dangerous trade routes allowed merchants to not only sell silk, but also chemicals, spices, minerals, leather goods, and paper [[11]]. While China traded with many different countries across the known world, the country mainly focused its trade with Samarkand. The Chinese likely had a special trading partnership established with the Sogdians, who were seen as the “main contributors” to the Silk Roads [[12]]. Hansen refers to the painting that was seen in the Panjikent House. In this painting, a woman is shown who appears to be a deity. The style of art was likely influenced by the Chinese because of their relationship with the city [[13]].

The city of Samarkand also had an elaborate trading marketplace set up with the city itself. Ruiz Gonzalez de Clavijo also mentioned that the city of Samarkand was stocked full of goods and other merchandise from around the world. Some items were even exclusively sold within the city. Spices from India, for example, were “never to be found in the markets of Alexandria.” According to Clavijo, when Timur succeeded in conquering new lands, he would often bring the best craftsmen of the conquered territory to Samarkand. For example, Timur brought weavers from Damascus, gun smiths from Turkey, as well as glassmakers and armorers that were found in other locations [[14]]. Additionally, the fertile soil in the areas surrounding the city helped farmers to harvest wheat, wine, fruit, and cotton. The price of goods was then controlled to prevent inflation from rising too high. Clavijo mentions that the price of a pair of sheep would normally cost a “ducat,” which is equivalent to about six shillings. A person in Samarkand could also pay a “half a real,” equivalent to about three pence, for a bushel and a half of barley [[15]].

Aside from the strong economy and ethnic tolerance in the city, Samarkand is also known for its beauty. On his trip, Clavijo noted that Samarkand was larger than Seville and also noticed surrounding suburbs, orchards, and vineyards outside of the city. It is noted that the “most noble and beautiful houses” are also located among the vineyards, gardens, and farmlands [[16]]. Inside the city, Samarkand also possessed beautiful buildings. Historian Xinru Liu of the College of New Jersey writes that the city’s close proximity to the Silk Roads and the cultural influences from within caused Samarkand to have several different cultural buildings erected from within. For example, Liu mentions that Islamic scholars traveled along the Silk Roads and, eventually, Islamic architectural building and centers sprang up throughout the city [[17]].

Initially, the city of Samarkand was established as a military garrison by the Arabs after defeating the Turks in 712 [[18]]. Overtime, the city became prosperous and a large trading hub where people from across the world could trade for exclusive items. How did the city of Samarkand become such an influential power at this time? Some, including Christopher I. Beckwith, and Clavijo, argue that the rule of Tamerlane is what expanded the city’s influence, wealth, and power. However, it is more plausible that the presence of the Silk Roads and the city’s multi-ethnic identity is what made it great. Today, Samarkand still remains a prosperous city of trade with multi-ethnic identity [[19]].

Bibliography

• Beckwith, Christopher I. Empires of the Silk Road: A History of the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
• de Clavijo, Ruiz Gonzales. “Clavijo’s Embassy to Tamerlane.” University of Washington, http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/clavijo/cltxt1.html (accessed April 26, 2017).
• Flecker, James Elroy. “The Golden Road to Samarkand.” AllPoetry.com, https://allpoetry.com/The-Golden-Road-to-Samarkand (accessed April 24, 2017).
• Hansen, Valerie. The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
• Liu, Xinru. The Silk Road in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• Marozzi, Justin. Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (Cambridge: Da Capo  Press, 2004).

Footnotes

[1] James Elroy Flecker, “The Golden Road to Samarkand,” AllPoetry.com, https://allpoetry.com/The-Golden-Road-to-Samarkand (accessed April 24, 2017).

[2] Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 203.

[3] Justin Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2004), 28.

[4] Ibid, 30, 40-48.

[5] According to Justin Marozzi, Timur and Amir Husayn, formed an alliance via a marriage between Timur and Aljai Turkhan-agha, who was Husayn’s sister. The two men went undercover as missionaries when Timur decided that he did not want to submit to Moghul rule. It was even during this time as a missionary that Timur most like injured his leg, which never healed, giving him the nickname “Timur the Lame.” In 1365, the partnership ended when Husayn left Timur on the battlefield after resentment tore the two allies apart. They eventually worked together once more in the battle for Samarkand, but while ruling the city, the alliance once more became strained due to differences in political policies and beliefs. Husayn, reportedly, began to tax Timur and his followers because the two leaders had opposing styles of leadership. The alliance between the two officially ended when Aljai, Timur’s wife and Husayn’s sister, died. In 1370, Timur, backed by the government in Bukhara marched with his followers on Balkh to conquer Husayn’s city. Husayn was captured by one of Timur’s men and reportedly tried to bribe the guard with pearls. He was eventually brought before Timur, surrendered, and then executed.

[6] Ibid, 40.

[7] Beckwith, 197-200.

[8] Beckwith, 198.

[9] Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 117, 120.

[10] Ruiz Gonzales de Clavijo, “Clavijo’s Embassy to Tamerlane,” University of Washington, http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/clavijo/cltxt1.html (accessed April 26, 2017).

[11] Hansen, 5.

[12] Ibid, 4.

[13] Ibid, 126-127.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Clavijo’s Embassy to Tamerlane.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 106-107.

[18] Beckwith, 133.

[19] Liu, 66-67.

In the seventeenth century, nearly seven centuries after Ibn Sina, the Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek (also referred to as the “Father of Microbiology”) observed microorganisms under a microscope (van Leeuwenhoek 1980). With his fundamental discovery, he showed that there were living organisms that were not visible to the naked eye. What van Leeuwenhoek did not realize was that these microorganisms (e.g. pathogen: a disease causing microbe) could actually be the cause of infections. This is contrary to the discoveries made by Ibn Sina seven centuries earlier that microorganisms could be the cause of infections despite the extremely limited evidence for the existence of microorganisms at the time. Nearly two centuries after Leeuwenhoek’s first observation of microorganisms, in 1876, Robert Koch, a German physician, postulated that microorganisms could actually be the cause of infection and therefore disease by his fundamental observation that the blood of an infected animal that contained pathogenic bacteria that, when transferred to a healthy animal caused the recipient animal to become sick (Koch 1999).

Let’s take a moment to reflect on Ibn Sina’s life story to encourage readers to learn more about him (McGinnis 2010) and his contributions to modern medicine and science.

Ibn Sina was born in 980 in in the village of Afshana near Bukhara, Uzbekistan (previously known as Khorasan) to a local governor named Abdullah, from Balkh, and his wife Setareh, a local from Afshana. Thanks to his father’s position as a governor as well as his background as a scholar, Ibn Sina had access to an excellent education in Bukhara, which at the time was the capital and intellectual center of the Samanids. Ibn Sina was taught by some of the most famous scholars of the time in the sciences and in Islamic theology. By the age of 18, Ibn Sina had already mastered the sciences of his day and had become a practicing physician. In addition to his expertise in medicine, for which he became world-renown, he was also a well-known philosopher, astrophysicist, mathematician, and theologian. He spent his life educating people, treating patients and writing books that not only enlightened the people of his age but later generations throughout the world as well.

Although Ibn Sina was considered one of the greatest Muslim philosophers of the medieval age he was a widely respected and well-known physician and was known as the “Prince of Physicians” in the West, and al-Sheikh al-Rais (Leader of the Scholars) among his students and colleagues (McGinnis 2010, 227). His gigantic medical encyclopedia al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), comprising of upwards of a million words, has been used as the standard medical textbook up until the seventeenth century and is still widely considered a valuable resource for the study of medicine. It was printed thirty-six times in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alone (Ullman 1978) and is regarded as one of the most influential books in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Siraisi 2001).

The Canon of Medicine consists of five books with each book subdivided into various subjects, subsidiary subjects, summaries, and sections. The first book, also called al-Kulliyyat (The Collection), discusses the scientific background of medicine and anatomy such as physiology, symptomatology, and the principles of therapy. The second book has an account of the therapeutic properties of substances used in medicine. The third book is devoted to pathology and specific or localized ailments. Diseases that affect the whole body, such as fever, are discussed in the fourth book. Ibn Sina explained the mixing of drugs in the final volume, which is a book on pharmacology. Ibn Sina, in his Canon, derives his system of medicine from the Greco-Roman physician Galen (Galen of Pergamon, modern day Bergama, Izmir, Turkey, 129-200 CE) who himself based his approach on Hippocrates (460-370 BCE). Ibn Sina also benefited from ar-Razi (Rhazes in Latin, 865-925 CE) and al-Majusi (Haly Abbas in Latin, died circa 990) to present a systematized and comprehensive view of the medical sciences of the time (Prioreschi 2003).

Ibn Sina is only one of many great minds of the Muslim World during the medieval era. There were other great minds such as Ibn Rushd (Averroes in Latin), Ali Kuscu, al-Farabi (Alpharabius), Omar Khayyam and many more whose multifaceted studies encompassed diverse scholarly fields such as exegesis, law, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. The great Mesopotamia and Andalusia Civilizations – civilizations that were built by these brilliant scientists and philosophers – established the foundations of the science, art and philosophy of our age. The knowledge developed by the Muslim scholars was later transmitted to Europeans and enabled Europe to emerge from the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance.

A Renaissance is also needed for the Muslim world today. This can only be possible when they can raise a new generation of scholars like Ibn Sina who can lead the society with their groundbreaking findings and illuminating interpretations.

References

• Colgan, Richard. 2009. Advice to the Young Physician. Springer, New York.
• Koch, Robert. 1999. A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology. ASM Press, Washington, D.C.
• Life and work of Anton van Leeuwenhoek of Delft in Holland; 1632-1723. Municipal Archives, Delft, 1980.
• McGinnis, Jon. 2010. Avicenna. Oxford University Press, New York.
• Prioreschi, Plinio. 2003. Medieval Medicine vol. 5: Medieval Medicine, Horatius Press, Omaha, Nebraska.
• Siraisi, Nancy. 2001. Medicine and the Italian Universities 1250-1600. Leiden, The Netherlands.
• Ullman, Manfred. 1978. Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
• United States National Library of Medicine, MS A 53
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/mideast/themes/science/index.html

Multiple factors shape thought, but communication is especially heavy-handed. Communication not only restructures the contents of the mind,; it re-configures the brain’s very neurological patterns (Rotman 2008: 51-52). Brian Rotman explains four ways people communicate selfhood: self-pointing, a spoken “I,” an alphabetically written “I,” and “self-enunciation within contemporary media” (Rotman 2008: xxxiii). The written “I” is the only disembodied method, but this separation subliminally trickles beneath conscious awareness. Writing has been a major component of communicating theological concepts because writing has been the easiest form of mass communication for centuries. Theologians 1,000 years ago probably did not ponder the disembodiment of writing any more than landing spaceships on the moon. Television – which mediates communication through bodies – was not on their radar. But contemporary theologians have options. Gunther Kress is clear that, “The former constellation of medium of book and mode of writing is giving way… to the new constellation of medium of screen and mode of image” (Kress 2003: 9). These moving constellations have forced a fundamental shift in the way social brains engage thought. Theology that fails to take this into account will find itself hopelessly outmoded and no longer equipped to engage the study of God in fresh situations.

This article addresses the cognitive and neurological effects stemming from shifts in “culturally mediated systems of external memory” (Rotman 52) – such as writing and images – and how theological communication could expand in response. Writing reinforces left-brain, systematic, and linear thought (Armstrong 1995: 115). Images, on the other hand, encourage more right-brain, intuitive, and spatial reasoning. It would be simplistic to hold that writing is only mediated through the right hemisphere and images only through the left, but communicative modes create lateral biases. Theological minds emerge, – not only from the “linear, logical, detail-oriented left hemisphere”, – but from embodied, whole brains. The first section of this paper shows writing’s left-brain bias. The second section turns a corner by examining emotion as altered body states and how this leads to a right-brain bias. Visual mediums are the most direct way to communicate right-brain thoughts, so the last step is to show how visual mediums could add a holistic, embodied element to theology.

WRITING AND A DISEMBODIED, LEFT-BRAIN BIAS

Writing forces neurons to march in line with time (Kress 2003: 2). The left hemisphere attributes meaning to words and strings those words together to form sentences, paragraphs, and full discourses (Hogue 2003: 87). In a sentence, one… word… follows… another, so the brain follows a preset “reading path” (Kress 2003: 3). A dog bit Karen means something entirely different than Karen bit a dog. Reading paths necessitate choices about which words make the most sense in which temporal order (Kress 2003: 3), so writing creates “the subliminal appeal of reducing wholes to constituent parts” (Jahandarie 1999: 57-58). It entrenches linear (temporal) neurological patterns through the repetitive, reductive decision-making (Jahandarie 1999: 54).

This leads to what could be called: alphabetic reasoning. Daniel Siegel explains that the left hemisphere is responsible for “more slowly acting, linear, sequentially active, temporal (time-dependent) processes. Verbal meanings of words… are a primary mode of processing for the left side” (Siegel 2001: 179). The left-brain deals in “monosemantic ‘packets’… which are then processed in a slower, linear mode” (Siegel 179). Writing strengthens linear thought patterns in the left hemisphere. Siegel holds that, “Repeated activation of specific neuronal pathways reinforces the strength of connections between groups of neurons” (p. 194), so neurons fire in similar patterns in the future (p. 24). The brain functions like a malleable muscle, but writing only exercises the left-brain. The brain is sculpted like a bodybuilder who only lifts with one arm. That arm ripples, but the other atrophies. Plastic makes perfect.

The “linear, logical,” and “linguistically-based” left-hemisphere (p. 161) evaluates the contents of written words through syllogistic reasoning (p. 197), prejudicing the brain to evaluate their contents through the brain’s semantic operator. The semantic operator deals with “propositional representations – symbols of external or internal facts that can be… assessed as ‘true’ or ‘false’” (p. 35 [emphasis mine]). In alphabetic reasoning, ideas are filtered into categories of: right or wrong, – fact or fiction. Then, alphabetic reasoning reinforces the brain’s quest for causation through sequencing. Reading paths communicate meaning through cause-effect relationships, so the ensuing left-brain thought patterns in the semantic operator create a syllogistic lens. Wholes are eliminated in the effort to snap details into linear, cause-effect relationships. Meaning is confined to these necessary but limited ways of processing information.

THEOLOGY AND LEFT-BRAIN BIAS

As writing has become increasingly more accessible in punctuated bursts over the past few millennia, theologians have become more and more linear and syllogistic in thought. But neurons fire in strikingly complex and highly plastic patterns (Bennett and Hacker 2008: 137). Linear rules for systematic theology are only engrained through repetition. The dark side of alphabetic reasoning is that it can produce theologians who tend to exercise linearity while alternative methods atrophy. Recall that the semantic operator can only qualify concepts as right or wrong. Linear patterns do not leave cognitive space for multiple details to be processed simultaneously. In the study of God, this cognitive capacity is absolutely necessary.

So far, I have examined several important consequences of alphabetic writing: it is inherently linear; in committing to using particular words in particular sequences it automatically eliminates other options; it coerces thought into cause-effect analysis, and it externalizes, or disembodies, thought. Of these consequences, the disembodied nature of theological writing is the most problematic.

EMOTION AS ALTERED BODY STATES

Emotions are physiological changes in a person’s body. These are mediated through combinations of gestures, postures, and behaviors (Damasio 2003: 63). External images – or stimuli – are mediated to the brain through the senses, and internal body and brain states refract the external world (Damasio 195). Marshall McLuhan writes, “The use of any medium or extension of hu/man/ity alters the patterns of interdependence among people, as it alters the ratios among our senses” (Jahandarie 51). The higher cognitive processes involved in developing theological concepts are pushed and pulled by the body’s constant emoting (Siegel 143).

The signals passing in and out of bodies generate emotion, so change signals can make emotions contagious (Siegel 143, 50). Siegel explains that, “Complex neural/bodily aspects of emotional processes are not easily translated into words. Nonverbal expressions, including those of the face, tone of voice and gestures, can transfer information about internal states more fully to the outside world than words can do” (Siegel 150). When it comes to altering the emotions correlated with belief – belief that can override higher cognitive functions – bodily gesture trumps writing.

Because this emotional processing is primarily non-conscious, people do not qualify intuition as true or false by sequencing details into rational arguments. For example, anger is typified by “dilated pupils, widened orbital area, raised eyebrows, furrowed brow, and pursed lips” (Siegel 128). The brain absorbs all of these signals at once when someone unexpectedly sees this:

Through non-conscious processing, faces can change emotions and minds in a flash.

Intuition of other people’s emotions occurs within the Mirror Neuron System (MNS). This system draws most heavily from facial expressions (Siegel 290), and it tells the viewer’s brain to respond to the viewed face in kind (Siegel 129). The MNS non-consciously indicates: whatever is happening in that person is also happening in me. This is why people constantly imitate the “motor acts, postures, and gaze of their co-citizens” (Kanwisher and Duncan 2004: 463-64). When people talk, their body language loops without their awareness as emotions harmonize. Yawning becomes contagious. When the MNS causes altered body states and facial expressions, people influence each other’s emotional-cognitive looping, and thought itself is steered.

There is scientific evidence that the entire body is engaged in understanding and remembering. James McGaugh demonstrated that the Vagus nerve – which connects the brain stem to the stomach – directly unites visceral and emotional experience with mental processing. McGaugh presented subjects with two stories containing similar amounts of data. One story had high emotional content and the other had low emotional content. People with functioning Vagus nerves recalled more data from the stories with high emotional content than from the stories with low emotional content. People with damaged Vagus nerves had identical recall from both stories. This suggests that certain types of thought are crippled by the absence of full-bodied emotion. Siegel explains that, “conceptual representations are nonverbal. They form the fundamental building blocks of our thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and aspects of our explicit memories” (Damasio 167). Written theological method is often left wanting embodied communication to close the cognitive loop.

EMBODIED COMMUNICATION AND RIGHT-BRAIN BIAS

The body’s indicators of emotion – somatic markers¬ – interface with the right hemisphere more than the left (Damasio 144, 82). The right-brain simultaneously correlates multiple details rather than sequencing them in cause-effect relationships. Siegel describes how the right-brain deals with nonverbal communications through “fast-acting, parallel (simultaneously active), holistic processes” (Damasio 179). This means that the right-brain is the default processor of metaphor and paradox. Imagistic representations in the mind do not force choice, categorization, or analysis. They exist simultaneously without being truncated by “top-down” processing as emotions ebb and flow (Siegel 165).

Kress calls this type of right-brain embodied thought “spatial reasoning,” and he places it in opposition to the “temporal reasoning” sublimated by alphabetic thought (Kress 45). Spatial reasoning portrays multiple details simultaneously, so spatial reasoning is correlational rather than sequential. This opens up possibilities for theologians by beginning with building blocks of thought before they are sequenced into categories of justified and true, fact or fiction.

The right-brain is functionally nonverbal, so its contents have to be externalized in “non-word-based ways, such as drawing a picture or pointing to a pictorial set of options” (Siegel 327). Alternative mediums, such as video and visual art, could generate entirely new forms of theological thought.

MEDIA’S ROLE IN SPATIAL REASONING

Video and visual art are viable possibilities for developing a right-brain, spatial reasoning into theological method. Jahandarie poetically explains, “Electric media are extensions of our central nervous systems and thus put us in touch with the totality of experience” (Jahandarie 99). Jahandarie overstates his case; – for example, video does not communicate through odors, for example, – but his intended meaning is helpful. New technologies make it possible to create right-brain mass communication. The MNS is 80-85% as effective at influencing emotion through video as it is in person (Kanwisher and Duncan 469), so gestures captured on video have a startlingly high ability to steer the emotional side of the cognitive loop. Emotions can be altered and details can be expressed simultaneously if theologians were to use a wider set of cognitive and communicative tools.

Rotman explains that people listen, “not to speech sounds as such… but to the movements of the body causing them; we focus on what happens between the sounds, to the dynamics of their preparatory phases, pauses, holds, accelerations, fallings away, and completions” (Rotman 23). Through the MNS, we get hunches, – not only about what another person is thinking, – but how the person is thinking and feeling. The dynamics of gesture in film add an intuitive, interpretive element to its communicative ability. In split-brain studies, the left-brain cannot even register facial expressions or emotional states (Rotman 151). While the left-brain might be incredible at reading and writing books, it is inept at spatial reasoning. Siegel writes that the left-brain’s “monosemantic ‘packets’” operate through neurological patterns and processes “quite distinct from the analogic representations seen, for example, in an artist’s painting or in a photograph,” so “the right hemisphere more fully ‘sees the world for what it is,’ whereas the left hemisphere must reduce the world much more into mentally defined, often socially constructed chunks of information” (Rotman 179). The right-brain’s holism and simultaneity could be invaluable to theologians, but it is too often dampened by the limitations of past technologies.

WHEN THEOLOGY IS EMBODIED

Siegel mentions the “theory of nonlinear dynamics of complex systems” in regard to personhood (Siegel 7). The firing of every synapse in every thought exponentially complexifies what it means to be human. Perhaps God is not only linear, either. Images are not filtered through the linear critiques applied to writing because they function differently in the brain. This does not make imagistic, spatial reasoning irrational. It makes spatial reasoning non-rational, and theologians desperately need non-rational ways to discuss a nonlinear God. Spatial mediums are not able to comprehensively encapsulate God’s personhood any more than writing, but they could generate new perspectives to better triangulate theological depth in conjunction with it.

In the syllogistic line that runs from rational to irrational, the concept of a trinity is inherently problematic. The semantic operator only deals with logical, sequential coherence, so the multiple, simultaneously existing details involved in conceptualizing the trinity do not get cognitive space. In this case, it might be advantageous to take a right-brain, imagistic approach to theology.

Depictions allow for multiple details to coexist without sequence. Images can be worth far more than 1,000 words. Imagistic reasoning allows space for entire persons to subject themselves to concepts. The “events and actions” lost in writing’s “principles and concepts” could be filled out through images (Jahandarie 17). Instead of only understanding theology in terms of right and wrong, the theologian could also trust a Vagus nerve when it communicates that an image or gesture is good or bad. The details could remain simultaneous in the right-brain without being sorted, and persons could experience theologies to a fuller degree in addition to critically evaluating them.

CONCLUSION

As neurological patterns become more spatial and less linear, theologians have the opportunity to construct new theological paradigms by diversifying their communicative tools. Creating theology through imagistic mediums would be bounded by its own “epistemological commitments,” (Kress 57) though. Critical thought is a crucial element in theological conversations, for example. This suggests that – when used in isolation – either alphabetic or imagistic methods are reductionistic. Theology has to be alphabetic, linear, and critical to be constructive, but it also needs to be imagistic, embodied, and holistic to avoid reductionistic sequencing of nonlinear concepts. The multiple natures of cognition cannot be mixed or separated. Language and experience, left-brain and right-brain thinking, knowledge and belief, are locked into cognitive loops (Eichenbaum and Bodkin 179), and it is impossible to have a one-sided loop.

The advent of new mediums makes the creation of an embodied theological method – complete with shifting neurological patterns – a mandatory opportunity. The next step is to synthesize multimodal theologies with alphabetic reasoning. A critically holistic methodology would emerge as gestalt. Full-blown theological paradigms could materialize if both hemispheres were used in conjunction. However progressive, however gestalt, and however critically holistic theological method becomes, it can never be comprehensive or complete. Theologians must do theology at all times. When necessary, they should use words.

Jonathan Camery-Hoggatt is a freelance writer in Seattle. He has MA in divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.

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Although the disintegration of the Soviet Union has, largely, put an end to the end of Cold War, the world has not become more peaceful. The bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia and other savage conflicts have signaled the emergence of a new nationalism. In this context, to justify the use of force we frequently hear talk of self-determination and the rights of peoples.

Membership of the United Nations has increased sharply only twice in its history. The first time was in the late fifties and early sixties, at the people of the decolonization following the retreat of the Western imperial powers. The second time was after the disintegration of the Soviet empire and then, a little later, of Yugoslavia. In the latter case, the new sovereign nation-states were not colonies achieving a new independence.

It is thought that the latest increase in the number of nation-states will encourage distinct communities within larger states to seek some measure of independence. Although the legal right for self-determination as the basis for the use of force to gain independence is not new, it would be wrong to deny that the use of force is now perceived as a likely means of realizing full independence or some degree of autonomy. That perception is surely one of the strongest reasons behind many of the conflicts currently stretching taking place in Bosnia- Herzegovina, Nagorno-Karabakh, Palestine, Kashmir, Northern Iraq, Somalia, Dniester region of Moldova, the Abkhazian region of Georgia, etc. These are only some of the hot spots which have one, or more than one group of people engaged in armed struggle for independence. Of course the list could easily be enlarged.

Language is certainly a decisive factor in the assertion of ethnic identity. According to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Dallas, Texas, there are 6,170 languages spoken in the world at this time (Grimes (ed). 1988, p.vii: quoted in Moynihan, 1933, p.72) However, there are only 184 states in the world, the latest additions being Eritrea, Monaco and Andorra.

The steady increase in the number of nation-states indicates that the process of state-building is far from over. International analysts John O’Loughlin and Herman van der Wusten expect the number to reach around 250 by the middle of the next century (O’Loughin and Van der Wusten, in Taylor (ed). 1993, p.l08). The way that number will be attained is likely to be by using force. That likelihood alone is enough reason for taking the issue very seriously. For, as the number of nation-states increases, so too do the chances of war between them as the conflicts of interest between the states become more complicated.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was a self-evident truth that wars, strictly speaking, could only be engaged in by established states. Other terms were used to describe other forms of violence such as insurrection, civil unrest, piracy, or rebellion. At most, there was ‘civil war’ where the adjective modified the idea and the law which applied.

Especially after the Second World War, opinions about what constitutes war and which entities in the international arena may wage war have altered. The swift break-up of colonial empires and the increasing consensus that there was a right of peoples to self-determination have led some to the view that wars of national liberation are international wars, albeit they are not inter-state wars (Wilson, 1988, p.134). It can he convincingly argued that the rules governing the Legitimacy of resort to force (jus ad bellum) and the rules governing the conduct of hostilities (jus in bello) have changed markedly since the Second World War and especially since 1960.

As the ethnic conflicts spread around the world, they are becoming another source of human misery in the aftermath of the Cold War. It is a reality of our time that secessionist, irridentist, and national liberation wars are the greatest killers-either directly through bloodshed or indirectly through hunger or disease stemming from such wars (Farley, 1986, p. 139). O’Loughlin and Van der Wusten hold that the causes of wars after the 1990s will most probably be ethno-nationalist disputes (Taylor (ed.), 1993, p.106), that is, related to national liberation or separatist movements. For the last two years, we have been witnessing through the nastiest example of such a conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Unless a remedy is found to these ethnic disputes, the peoples of the earth will not experience in the foreseeable future the peace that seemed to be, to so many, the promise of the end of the Cold War era. 

References

• FARLEY, Lawrence T. (1986) Plebiscites and Sovereignty: the Crisis of Political Illegitimacy, Westview Press, London.
• GRIMES, Barbara F.( ed) ( 1988) Ethnologue:Languages of the World. Summer Institute of Linguistics. Dallas.
• O’LOUGHLIN, J. & VAN DER WUSTEN, H. (1993) ‘Political geography of war and peace’, in Taylor(ed.)
• TAYLOR, Peter J. (1993) Political Geography of The Twentieth Century, Belhaven Press, London.
• MOYNIHAN, DANIEL P. (1993) Pandemonium:Ethnicity in International Politics, Oxford Univercity Press.
• WILSON, Heather A. (1988) International Law and the Use of Force by National Liberation Movements, Clarendon Press.