It is a rather formidable task to describe a culture and to try to explain the reasons for its specificity. And yet, if we want to understand the situation in which we find ourselves and its causes, we have to attempt to do just that. Of course, the discussion will be limited only to those aspects of culture which are relevant for our analysis. In the first place, let us try to elucidate further what we have said in the previous chapter about the rise of Western culture to its dominant position. The expansion of Western powers since the 15th century was fuelled by economic factors and the dynamism of Western people. Their conquering spirit was certainly a major cause of the expansion of Western influence over the world, but it was not the sole cause of the importance which Western culture has achieved in modern times. Westerners were not the only conquerors in history. The history of humanity is a long sequence of conquests in all parts of the world, by all sorts of peoples. What was peculiar to Western people was the fact that they combined their combativeness and lust for conquest with another quality which assured them the leading position in the world.

It is this other factor which is the most likely cause of the uniqueness of Western culture. Namely, Western people have developed mental attitudes of respect for, desire for and increasingly massive support for knowledge and its methodical development. True as this statement is, it is not yet sufficient for distinguishing Western culture. The respect for knowledge was not exclusive to the West. What was special, and still is in the case of our culture, is the respect for knowledge combined with the conviction that existing knowledge, whatever its level of advancement, is not definitive, nor sufficient. Western people want not only to know, they want to know constantly more. They are convinced that knowing more and developing better, more advanced knowledge is eminently worth the effort.

In contradistinction to many other cultures, the Western desire for knowledge was not preponderantly tradition-oriented or bound. In our culture, great intellectual systems conceived in the past, such as Plato’s, Aristotle’s or that contained in the Bible, influential as they were — or still are — did not prevent further development of knowledge. Instead, they fed the inquisitive spirit of succeeding generations and contributed powerfully to the development of Western culture. Culture is a system, the elements of which are intrinsically interrelated. This is why, it would be wrong to assume that the Western attitude towards knowledge is a cultural aspect standing alone, unrelated to other elements of that culture. Quite the contrary, the exceptional respect for knowledge goes together with and is supported by the uniquely Western perception of the human individual as a person, and the importance attached to the development of personality. This is why the Western approach to knowledge stresses personal input, is creativity centered and future-oriented. In other words, the Western attitude towards knowledge is a systemic phenomenon, an element of the Western system of culture with its hierarchy of values and basic beliefs. The result of this system was the production of evermore advanced and efficient modes of cognition, giving their authors and users ever greater power over humans and the environment. The knowledge thus developed, combined with the conquering spirit, allowed Western people to achieve the dominant position in the world. It also made possible the satisfaction of evermore numerous and sophisticated needs and desires leading to the environmental problems which we now experience.

It is one thing to describe a culture; it is another to explain its roots which determine, at least to some extent, its nature. Western culture is, in a sense, a hybrid. It has two quite different sources: Greek and Hebraic. Not only are these sources different, but our awareness of each one of them is different as well. Interestingly enough, while the Greek factor is widely recognized and stressed, the Hebraic heritage is much less readily admitted. And yet, the latter’s role in the formation of our culture was, through Christianity, truly decisive. Let us begin the discussion of the roots of our culture with a brief description of the Greek world view. The Greeks perceived the world as a cosmos, a well-organized whole. Nature appeared as eternal and unchanging in its essential determinations, governed by eternal laws. The world was thought to be a well-ordered whole, a cosmos. Its perceived regularities were the source of intelligibility and the foundation of natural law. Nature was the great ruler and the purveyor of all the necessities of life. Humans were subordinated to it and did not form an independent order of reality. Nature was for them an object of contemplation. It would have been inconceivable for the Greeks to consider nature as inferior to humans, a mere source of primary resources for human use, such as it appears to modern humans.

World views are fundamental elements of cultures with far-reaching existential consequences. The idea of the subordination of humans to nature is a perfect illustration of this fact. The subordination was twofold: intellectual, as we have just indicated, and operational. The most important practical consequence of the subordination was the belief in the reign of necessity. Necessity ruled supreme: while nature was governed by deterministic laws, inexorable Fate ruled over divinities and humans alike. True, some thinkers tried to loosen the suffocating grip of Fate over humans. For instance, Aristotle limited the realm of necessity to the cosmic order and introduced the principle of indetermination, prime matter, in the sublunar realm, thus creating a possibility for the exercise of human free will. However, it has to be remembered that his lofty ideas did not represent the beliefs of the average Greek, expressed so eloquently by poets and dramatists.

Greek ideas about human subordination to nature were not exclusive to their culture. On the contrary, they were the general rule among cultures. What set the Greek culture apart from other cultures and made it truly unique was its attitude toward reason. For the Greeks, knowledge was a divine attribute, rationality was the most perfect faculty of humans, while contemplation of Truth and Beauty was the most noble activity. The two greatest thinkers of Antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, although differing widely in their ideas, were unanimous in extolling the virtues of the intellect. For Plato, the human intellect belonged by nature to the perfect world of ideas, while for Aristotle, though earthbound, it was "as if it were everything" — its object of knowledge extended to the whole realm of being. Hence, in principle, the whole Universe was intelligible. It was this attitude and hierarchy of values which made possible the invention of theoretical knowledge and its prodigious development. The spirit of rationality was the most distinctive mark of Greek culture. As is well-known, Greek rationality has determined to a large extent the development and the nature of Western culture with its particular mode of rationality.

Among the most important ideas developed by the Greeks, which exercised a decisive influence on our culture was the distinction between theoretical or contemplative knowledge and practical knowledge. In Antiquity and until modern times, this distinction seemed evident and well-founded. There was, indeed, a great difference between the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge and the know-how aimed at producing a concrete object, for instance, a tool or a house.

The importance of the distinction between the two types of cognition transcended the field of knowledge. It had far-reaching social effects as well, because of the difference in the social status accorded by the Greeks to pure thinking and practical knowledge. The former was reserved for wealthy males freed from the yoke of manual labor and able to pursue freely their intellectual interests. Practical knowledge involved manual labor and had the lowly status of servile art, i.e., craft. Thus the difference in the value attached to the two types of knowledge reinforced social distinctions. Moreover, it led to an unequal development of knowledge. It is well-known that in antiquity the development of theoretical knowledge far outdistanced that of technology. What is less well-understood is the influence of the ancient evaluation of knowledge on the perception of the intellectual achievement of the Greeks by early and medieval Christianity, and even by many modern thinkers. Namely, what was preserved, widely known and valued were mainly the theoretical achievements, not so much the practical accomplishments. In all fairness to the Greeks, we have to say that the slanted perception of the Greek heritage was caused not only by the Greek ideas, but also by the Judeo-Christian hierarchy of values.

In the present stage of the development of knowledge one may wonder what was the value of this once so important distinction. Armed with hindsight and before passing a judgment on the formal value of the distinction, it is now possible to say that the contemplative attitude and the lesser interest for the advancement of practical knowledge prevailing in Antiquity and the Medieval Ages, did have at least one very important and positive effect. Namely, it lead to the development of logical reasoning to a remarkable degree. Logical skills and the ability to theorize proved very useful for coping with the flux of observational data. When Europeans became interested in the exploration of nature and in practical knowledge requiring more and more theoretical underpinning, they possessed the intellectual tools necessary for undertaking this task. Having said this, let us now turn to the question of the formal value of the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge.

In light of the power of contemporary knowledge and of the evident relationship between theoretical science and its practical consequences, the ancient distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge appears inadequate and mistaken. The distinction, however, is not without foundation. It is valid on the level of the intentions of knowledge. One may pursue knowledge for the pleasure of knowing, interested only in theoretical problems, or, one may be interested in knowledge as a means for achieving practical aims. Had the consequences of knowledge been unequivocally dependent on the intentions of those producing knowledge, the distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge would have been fully justified. As it is, the intentions of knowers and the consequences of knowledge belong to two very different orders of reality. There does not seem to be much direct, causal relationship between them. Whatever the intentions of the thinker, be they the most theoretical and devoid of any practical intentions, the knowledge which he produces has a direct or indirect practical consequence. The classical illustration of this is the theory of relativity formulated by Einstein for purely theoretical reasons which, nevertheless, led to the development of atomic energy. More and more, to know means to know how to do. However, the growing practicality of theoretical knowledge does not diminish the value of theoretical knowledge as such.

The birth of the distinction between theoretical and practical cognition and the persistence of the ideal of theoretical knowledge was explained by the availability of cheap manual labor and the resulting lack of the need to develop more efficient forms of practical knowledge, i.e., of more advanced technology. There is no doubt that cheap labor was a factor, but it was not the only factor; cheap, slave labor existed in other cultures as well, and even on a more massive scale; yet other cultures have not developed the same distinction between the two modes of knowledge. The above explanation cannot, therefore, be accepted as adequate. It attempts to explain the mental by the material and, like other reductionistic explanations of this sort, does not quite succeed.

It seems that a more adequate explanation may be given by taking into account another intellectual factor specific to Western culture, namely, the ideal of objectivity. This ideal was a logical complement to the ideal of theoretical knowledge, the two justifying and reinforcing each other. Both belong to the conceptual order. The notion of objectivity, like that of theoretical knowledge, does not represent an evident, simple datum such as the piece of paper on which these words are written. It is not a given perceived and accepted by everybody. The notion of objectivity and the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity are products of reason, conceptual distinctions with foundation in reality. These notions were conceived in ancient Greece and became the cornerstones of Western rationality. It is, therefore, difficult for us to imagine that they are quasi-inexistent in other cultures. Somebody may remark here that these notions have lost much of their importance and that in this respect we are moving closer to other cultures which have not elaborated the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity to the same extent as our culture. In this century, microphysics taught us that all observation is deformation and that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish in scientific data between the part played in their formation by the observer and the thing observed. Again, the relativity theory taught us that all observation is relative. There are, therefore, no absolute observers and the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is much more complex than previously had been thought. It remains, however, that outside the arcane field of advanced physics, this distinction continues to be accepted at its surface value and to play its crucial role in Western mentality.

It is one thing to insist on the role of the notions of objectivity and subjectivity in our culture; it is another to explain why they were developed in ancient Greece and not elsewhere, at least not to the same extent and with equally far-reaching consequences. As far as the present writer can tell, this question remains open. What can and should be said is that the notions which interest us here cannot be conceived without certain preconditions. Namely, they presuppose the factual distinction between subject and object, and the perception and conceptualization of this distinction. These preconditions are more or less obvious. What is less evident and less well-understood is another precondition that belongs to the mode of thinking. It concerns the mode of forming concepts. The notions of objectivity and subjectivity, of theoretical and practical knowledge imply precise concepts which presuppose a particular mode of abstraction in the formation of concepts. This mode is known as formal abstraction. It produces clear and distinct concepts which, in turn, make possible the formation of univocal and analogical concepts, the perception of the distinction between them and the differentiation of both from equivocal concepts. These intellectual tools allowed the development of Western science and philosophy and Western forms of social life.

The distinction between the subject and object of knowledge, simple and evident as it may seem to us after twenty odd centuries of its formulation, presupposes another notion proper to Western culture, namely, the notion of person as an exclusively and distinctly human property. It entails the belief in the unique character of the human being among all creatures. This belief is reinforced by the conviction of the radical superiority of humans over other beings. The root of this belief existed independently in Greek and Hebraic culture, but its justification in each case was conceived in a different intellectual perspective — lay in the first case, religious in the second. For the Greeks, the justification of the special status of humans is to be found in their rationality and in the value which they attach to the intellect. The Jews valued the intellect at least as much as the Greeks, but, moreover, their belief in the uniqueness of human persons was given a powerful, theological justification.

The Old Testament taught that man was created after the image of God and God considered man, because of man’s rationality, a valid interlocutor. God gave humans the extraordinary command of populating the earth and of subordinating it to their will. It is difficult to overexaggerate the importance of this command and its consequences. Being distinct from, and superior to the rest of nature, humans are free agents, therefore authors of their acts and responsible for them. As free agents, they are not subject to Fate; the determinism of nature does not rule over them. Instead, they can and should explore nature and rule over it. A person brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition has great difficulty imagining how liberating and friendly were the doctrines of human personality and of the freedom of will. How different they were from the oppressive belief in Fate proper to other cultures past and present.

Any discussion of the Hebraic input into our culture would be incomplete without the mention of the notion of linear time. The idea of linear time seems to us natural and normal because it is a fundamental element of our culture. We are so accustomed to it that we do not realize how unusual and unique it really is. All too often we forget the origin of that notion and its true meaning. The idea of linear time comes out of the Old Testament and has a religious origin and justification. Linear time is the dimension of the history of humanity which began with the expulsion of the First Parents from Paradise and will end with the end of the World and the Final Judgment. Human history is a unidirectional sequence of events, each one of them unique, nonrepeatable and having a natural and supernatural meaning. The meaning comes from the fact that each event is an element of the long journey of humanity from the loss of grace to the return to the divine fold. The idea of linear time owes little if anything to the observation of natural events. It is a religious, mental construct. It is, indeed, rather ironic that this religious construct became one of the fundamental and indispensable notions of modern, lay science and of the lay world view. All too easily we forget that we owe the notion of linear time to the Old Testament. Without this religious text, our contemporary knowledge would have been very different. And so would our perception of ourselves and of the world.

One cannot fully grasp how unusual and important is the notion of linear time without comparing it with the notion of time existing in other cultures. In light of this comparison, one will be able to understand the existential consequences of the different perceptions of time. The idea of time is one of the most important ideas ever formulated. It is a cornerstone of the world view proper to a given culture. If one wishes to find a demonstration of the impact of ideas on human life, the notion of time provides a perfect example. This is why the Hebraic notion of time deserves our attention. The proper understanding of this idea and of its consequences is of decisive help in comprehending Western culture as well as the present situation of humanity.

Outside the sphere of the Judeo-Christian culture, the notion of time was based on observation of natural events, in particular, on the perception of regularly recurring phenomena such as the diurnal and annual cycles and the movements of celestial bodies. These phenomena were perceived as circular and, quite naturally, suggested the idea of circular time. Not surprisingly, circular time became the standard idea of time in cultures which otherwise had little in common. Being based on observational data, circular time is a more concrete notion than linear time. In fact, it is more natural, and, grounded in observation, more scientific than linear time. The problem is that circular time has very unpleasant consequences for humans. It precludes the possibility of making sense of history in general and of human lives as building blocknowledge system of the historical process. What it does not prevent is the recording of consecutive events, i.e., the narration of the historical process.

The difference between narrating history and making sense of it may seem rather tenuous or obscure. Let us explain. History does make sense if the sequence of events which compose it has a direction, when it is a discernible, irreversible progression from state A to state B. This situation presupposes the unidirectionality of the flow of time and the resulting nonrepeatability of moments of time and of events. Circular time does not satisfy these conditions. It really goes nowhere, being an eternal repetition of the same situations. Being repetitious and going nowhere, circular time cannot be the dimension of the progress of humanity. In this situation there is no real progress, all developments come to naught as in the great year of Heraclitus, only to begin all over again, ad infinitum. Consequently, human efforts do not really change anything; humans have no power to stop or brake the inexorable circle of repetitious events, and life is not a happy or meaningful state. It is not surprising that for the Greek, Moïra, (Fate) was the supreme force standing above the gods of Olympus.

How different is the role of human life in the context of linear time! Humanity is perceived as a very special order of reality, distinct from and superior to nature. Humanity acquires a vocation all its own; human life and behavior become meaningful. Humans are motivated to progress, and human history becomes meaningful. As we have seen, the source of the linear idea of time is the story of the creation of Adam and Eve and of their expulsion from Paradise. The story is well-known. Students of Judaic and Christian religions understand the consequences of this account for believers and all those who live in the context of Western culture. What is less well-understood is the impact of the truly monumental message in the famous passage of the Book of Genesis on the development of modern science and technology and on the rise of Western culture to its dominant position. We will now attempt to discuss this question.