ABSTRACT
During the pre-scientific sixteenth century the average European believed they were in direct connection with the center of the universe. This does not mean that they were narcissistic, as that would have been a deadly sin. They were profoundly humble as much as they were profoundly and innocently submissive to God as a legitimate authority. This worldview makes perfect sense if we remember that they had no objective standpoint from which to consider any other alternative. This was how the world appeared to their direct sensory observation. It was what’s called a “geocentric perspective.” It was accepted as truthful because nobody questioned what happened during direct experience. And in any case, imagining anything different would have been heresy or even insanity. Consequently, people had an obviously naïf worldview from our contemporary perspective. For them, ordinary objects were directly viewed as arranged around the observer and time was measured on the basis of highly local events with little conception of past, present, and future. Life was very “now-based.” It was what’s called a lococentric perspective (Lawler 2006: 25). When standing on a horizontal plane, the horizon was encircled, and the objects of perception were positioned around human bodies. The pre-scientific worldview, in summary, was geocentric, lococentric, and corporeally communal. In Lortie’s twentieth century terms, their perspective was conservative because it sought to conserve the stability of an unquestioned universe that was divinely created and unchanging. It was presentist, because there was no chance of social mobility, nor any imagination that the stable system could, or should change. Finally, it denied the ability to imagine the kind of democracy that might be possible with a scientific worldview. There was no individualism and there was no self-concept. People did not differentiate their bodies from the world because all of creation was part of one universal body (i.e. Mystici Corporis Christi). There was a biblical basis for this doctrine of universal connection (Cf. Colossians 1: 24) and the practical effects of this indoctrination resulted in the most extreme form of communitarianism. People interpreted external events with reference to themselves because they couldn’t identify with the objective perspective. Events happened to people because that was what was supposed to happen to them. Obviously, people
associated themselves with a family unit and a village, perhaps a manor, a county, or even a monarchial state. But in terms of their location in the world as living beings, they observed events from an unmoving standpoint. Their bodies were, along with the earth, the center of all things that they beheld around them. The effect of this splendor was not pride or arrogance but extreme humility and submissiveness. Understanding came with belief and without an objective perspective. Oppositions were not exclusive. This is very important to remember. There was no “I” without the universal body of all that existed. There was not subject/object distinction. Opposites were inclusive of one another because all that existed was a part of one universal body. Therefore, experience was directly felt without analysis, because analysis was not yet imagined.
