Summary of Key Points LEWIS, C.S. The Discarded Image. London: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

(1964 Original printing) The Medieval Situation In the same manner that most knowledge in our society depends on observation, in the Middle Ages most knowledge depended predominantly on books. Theirs was a bookish culture. (p.5) Nothing about a literature can be more essential than the language it uses. A language has its own personality; implies an outlook, reveals a mental activity, and has a resonance, not quite the same as those of any other. (p.6) The medieval world view was a synthesis of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental Model of the Universe. This is the image discarded by later writers. (p.11) Because the medievalists had a bookish culture, they found it very hard to believe that anything an author said was untrue. All apparent contradictions needed to be harmonized. A Model must be built which will get everything in without a clash; and it can do this only by becoming intricate, by mediating its unity through a great, and finely ordered, multiplicity. This Model, in Lewis view, is not only a supreme work of art, but it is also the central work, that in which most particular works were embedded, to which they constantly referred, from which they drew a great deal of their strength (p.12) 13- 21 Reservations Occams Razor we must accept (provisionally) not any theory which explains the phenomenon we observe but that which does so with the fewest possible assumptions. Thus the two theories (a) that the bad bits in Shakespeare were all put in by adapters, and (b) that Shakespeare wrote them when he was not at his best, will equally save the appearances (explain the phenomenon). But since we know that there was such a person as Shakespeare and that writers are not always at their best, we must therefore (provisionally) accept the second theory. (p.15) Thus, any astronomical or chemical theory can never be more than provisional. It will have to be abandoned if a more ingenious person thinks of a supposal which would save the observed phenomena with fewer assumptions, or if we discover new phenomena which it cannot save at all. The real reason why Copernicus raised no ripple and Galileo raised a storm, may well be that whereas the one offered a new supposal about celestial motions, the other insisted on treating this supposal as fact. (p.16)

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The real revolution consisted not in a new theory of the heavens but in a new theory of the nature of theory. In our age I think it would be fair to say that the ease with which a scientific theory assumes the dignity and rigidity of facts varies inversely with the individuals scientific education. Popular imagination may believe in the Cave Man as a hard fact, and the life of Caesar or Napoleon as doubtful rumor. (p.17) Every Model is a construct of answered questions. The expert is engaged either in raising new questions or in giving new answers to old ones. When he is doing the first, the old, agreed Model is of no interest to him; when he is doing the second, he is beginning an operation which will finally destroy the old Model altogether (p.18) This was not the case in the Middle Ages. Popular scientism, a caricature of the true sciences, did not exist then. The ignorant were more aware of their ignorance then than now. There was however a level below the influence of the Model. There were ditchers and alewives who had not heard of the Primum Mobile and did not know that the earth was spherical; not because they thought it was flat but because they did not think about it at all. (p.20) 22-44 Selected Materials: The Classical Period Cicero influenced the medievalists with his thesis that the earth has 5 zones: two inhabitable through cold (Arctic and Antarctic), two habitable temperate zones and between them a torrid zone inhabitable through heat. That is why we could not meet the antipodes those living in the southern temperate zone because there is a belt of deadly heat between us and them. (p.28) 45-92 Selected Materials: The Seminal Period The Medieval Model is an anthropo-peripheral model, not anthropocentric. We are not at the center of the universe, we are creatures of the Margin. Our highest privilege is to imitate the spectacle of the celestial dance from the outskirts. We ought to imitate the heavens. (p.58) CS Lewis describing the concept of time in Boethius Consolation of Philosophy: Eternity is quite distinct from perpetuity, from mere endless continuance in time. Perpetuity is only the attainment of an endless series of moments, each lost as soon asit is attained. Eternity is the actual and timeless fruition of illimitable life. (p.89) God is eternal and not perpetual. He does not foresee; He sees only. Our future is a special area of His infinite Now. He sees (not remembers) your yesterdays acts

because yesterday is still there for Him; he sees (not foresees) your tomorrows acts because He is already in tomorrow. As a human spectator, by watching my present act, does not at all infringe its freedom, so I am none the less free to act as I choose in the future because God, in that future (His present) watches me acting.

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Earth and her Inhabitants The Human Soul It is not the souls nature to leave the body; rather the body (disnatured by the Fall) deserts the soul. CS Lewis quotes Aquinas. (p.155) The Rational Soul The medievalists distinguished between Intellectus and Ratio. We are enjoying intellectus when we just see a self-evident truth; we are exercising ratio when we proceed step by step to prove a truth which is not self-evident. A cognitive life in which all truth can be simply seen would be the life of an intelligentsia, an angel. A life of unmitigated ratio where nothing was simply seen and all had to be proved, would presumably be impossible; for nothing can be proved if nothing is self-evident (p.157) The belief that to recognize a duty was to perceive a truth not because you had a good heart but because you were an intellectual being had roots in antiquity. Plato preserved the Socratic idea that morality was an affair of knowledge; bad men were bad because they did not know what was good. (p.160) Sensitive and Vegetable Soul 5 senses are: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch 5 wits are: memory, estimation (instinct), imagination (what we would call invention), phantasy (what we would call imagination today) and common wit (common sense) [p.162] In the WORLD Hot and Moist make Air; Hot and Dry, Fire; Cold and Moist, Water; Cold and Dry, Earth In the BODY Hot and Moist make Blood; Hot and Dry, Choler; Cold and Moist, Phlegm; Cold and Dry, Melancholy Historiography has then three functions: to entertain our imagination, to gratify our curiosity, and to discharge a debt we owe our ancestors.(p.177) Every knew that the past contained Nine Worthies: three Pagans (Hector, Alexander, and Julius Caesar); three Jews (Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabaeus); and three Christians (Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon). (p.181)

A man who lacks invention himself does not easily attribute it to others. Perhaps in the Middle Ages those who had it did not easily attribute it to themselves(p.213) Epilogue It is not impossible that our own Model will die a violent death, ruthlessly smashed by an unprovoked assault of new facts The new Model will not be set up without evidence, but the evidence will turn up when the inner need for it becomes sufficiently great (pp.222-223)

If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point. - Martin Luther