1.2 An order of meaning

The medieval interest in the Universe was not primarily in its structure, nor in how it worked, but in what things in it meant.

Some pointers:

1. Nature full of lessons from the Creator

The fact that the order of the cosmos was regarded as an order of meaning comes out for example in the didactic use nature was put to.

Does these help? - Some remarks of Charles Taylor's.

Much of the talk and writing about animals and plants in the medieval period had as its topic their medical users especially the medical uses of plants. But the other really large interest, especially in the early part of the middle ages (until the 13th C) was the guidance animals and to a lesser extent plants gave human beings regarding their conduct, and regarding God's intentions for them.

Different animals symbolised different theological elements, and this helped the rhetoric of preaching. The onager for example symbolised the Devil; the panther Christ. The symbolism provided the preacher with powerful illustrations for sermons and reached through that route a large audience. A preacher would go through a list of phenomena or features and attribute them to theologically significant happenings, with the purpose of making those theological points. Here is an example offered by Stannard, which by the way I don't understand, about a reference to the eagle:

"Because of sins which take their origin from the mother, man is like the eagle here, but he is renewed thus: he soars above the clouds, and feels the sun's fires, despising the world and its pomp."
(quoted in Jerry Stannard, "Natural History" in Lindberg (ed) p. 435.)

2. Explaining = revealing what things signify

Gilson, on the early middle ages:

"To understand and explain anything consisted for a thinker of this time in showing that it was not what it appeared to be, but that it was a symbol or sign of a more profound reality, that it proclaimed something else." (Gilson, quoted by A.C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo, p.37)

3. Natural phenomena the result of moral catastrophes

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) held that man's fall had had physical effects on nature, causing spots on the moon, wildness in animals,insect pests, animal venoms and disease.

4. The doctrine of signatures

Another way in which the concept of an order based on meaning comes through: the doctrine of signatures explained that every plant animal or mineral bore somewhere a sign which indicated its use or virtue. It seems to have originated with Pliny the Elder.

What do you think?

Can we recover today what it would be like to think of the world primarily as a book instead of primarily as a physical structure? Maybe some of us think of the world like this anyway? Can you think of it as a structure of meaning even if you don't believe in a God?

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Reason, Nature and the Human Being in the West
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