AGORA: An Allegory for Consciousness Studies?

Posted by Simon Raggett on 9 May 2010 | 3 Comments

Tags: Agora, Hypatia, consciousness, Newtonian physics, neuron doctrine

The recently released film, Agora, shows the last gasps of ancient religion and philosophy in 4th century AD Alexandria, where a fanatical form of Christinianty is in the process of taking over all political and intellectual authority. The main character is the historical figure of Hypatia, the only female astronomer and mathematician known from the ancient world, who is murdered by the Christian mob, because of their suspicion of her science.

Little is known about Hypatia's actual work, but in the film, she anticipates both Galileo, with respect to frames of reference, and Kepler with respect to elliptical orbits in the solar system. In the latter case, even the insightful Hypatia is for a long time blinded by the obsession of Greek philosophy and geometry with the perfection of the circle, and the semi-religious idea that the motion of the celestial bodies must conform to this perfect shape. It is only at the very end of her life that she grasps the notion that elliptical orbits would allow an understanding of the movement of bodies in the solar system. Unfortunately, the film shows this insight dieing with her, not to reemerge until the Renaissance.

It seems possible to compare the mental stranglehold of the entrenched traditionalism of Greek ideas about the circle to the modern stranglehold of Newtonian physics and the 19th century neuron doctrine, which like ancient Greek astronomy required more and more convoluted arguments to sustain it, while at the same time blocking the path to any explanation with greater explanatory power.

In the film, Hypatia is suggested to be a forunner of a Newtonian type of physics. However, in the context of modern consciousness studies, the Newtonian camp look more like the Christian fanatics, with a fundamentalist rejection of attempts to reach a theory with convincing explanatory power.