the past is another place

I heard about a conference that's happening in August on the subject of distance. Here's part of the call for papers that describes what the conference is about:

"The long eighteenth century saw the experience of cultural distance through overseas exploration, empire, travel and trade. The diverse interactions led to comparisons with other states, subjects, languages and traditions. In 2020, physical and social distance has once again become a defining feature of our society, and this virtual conference invites all to consider how our current situations can bring a new appreciation for how distance was integral in the communities and cultures of eighteenth-century society."

It captured my interest and made me want to write something on that topic. 

George Berkeley was a prominent philosopher of the 18th century. In Berkeley's, AN ESSAY TOWARDS A NEW THEORY OF VISION (1709), he writes a lot about distance and he brings it up right at the start, which shows how central it was to his essay. What's interesting is how strange (from a 21st century point of view) his idea of distance is. 

Here are the first two points in Berkeley's essay:

1. My design is to show the manner wherein we perceive by sight the distance, magnitude, and situation of OBJECTS. Also to consider the difference there is betwixt the IDEAS of sight and touch, and whether there be any IDEA common to both senses.

2. It is, I think, agreed by all that DISTANCE, of itself and immediately, cannot be seen. For DISTANCE being a Line directed end-wise to the eye, it projects only one point in the fund of the eye, which point remains invariably the same, whether the distance be longer or shorter.

It's as if the very concept of distance is something new and open to question....as if, maybe, distance could be considered a characteristic of the objects being viewed. It seems to be premised on a whole different conception of what it means to see and also what distance is - a conception in which it's rational to say that you can't see distance. To us, that seems obvious. 

Maybe it shows that the idea of distance was relatively new and was still being defined. When I look up the etymology of the word 'distance', it says that the meaning "remoteness of space, extent of space between two objects or places" is from the late 14th century. Before that, earlier in the 14th century, and as far back as 1300, it had the meaning of "a dispute or controversy, civil strife, rebellion;". 

I did some more research and found out that one of the things Berkeley is doing in his second point above, is disagreeing with Descartes. Descartes had made the suggestion (which fits more closely with our modern understanding of distance) that we can assess distance based on what we see - basically that the smaller something appears, the further away it is. Berkeley's response was - how ridiculous....you can't see distance....the same data enters the eye, however distant the object is. From our point of view, Berkeley misinterpretted Descartes - wilfully, maybe - but that's only because Descartes's view has become our reality. To put it in terms of distance, Descartes is closer to us than Berkeley, even though he's further away chronologically. 

It's fascinating the way that the pioneers of science, through their analyses, were led to view phenomena in ways that are radically different from our assumptions about those phenomena, because those assumptions had not formed yet. For example, even after publishing his Traité élémentaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry) (1789)  which in many ways represents the real beginning of modern chemistry, Antoine Lavoisier still believed that heat was a substance (see p 245 of The Age of Wonder (2008) by Richard Holmes). 

So, the distance between us and people who were writing in earlier centuries illuminates our assumptions. When we engage with those works, we experience a sense of cultural difference. It's a journey of discovery.