LOVE Vs. LAW

What moves the stars?

The medieval answered “love.”

The modern answers “laws.”

We are accustomed to call the first poetry and the second science, as if poetry were a dream and science a thing of iron. But history tells a more curious tale.

The word law was borrowed. When Descartes and Newton set themselves to explain the motions of the heavens, they went not first to the fields or the stars, but to courts and commonwealths for their language. They spoke of command, obedience, and regulation. For a while, everybody knew this was a metaphor, an image taken from human rule and laid upon nature. Then, as so often happens, the metaphor was forgotten and the image petrified into a fact. As Ben Clark writes, “The language of law, once a metaphor, became the very structure of reality itself.”

C.S. Lewis saw the trick at once. In The Discarded Image he turned the question back upon the modern world:

“But do you intend your language about laws and obedience any more literally than I intend mine about kindly enclyning? Do you really believe that a falling stone is aware of a directive issued to it by some legislator and feels either a moral or a prudential obligation to conform?”

Read The Rest @ https://substack.com/@justiandreasen/note/c-233386555