Secular Enigmas (1): Elusive Definitions
One very often hears the word “secular” bandied about in discussions of sociology, politics, and religion. Amazingly, one also hears the very same word used in discussions of technical matters in mathematics, astronomy, and physics. Few people, however, are aware that the adjective “secular” refers to the noun “saeculum” in Latin. Even fewer people are cognizant of the fact that saeculum refers to an age, era, or epoch. Still fewer people know how and why the ancient temporal concept of the secular was gradually transformed into the modern political notion of the separation of church and state. Drastically fewer people are aware of the motivations behind the usage of that same word, secular, in certain types of mathematics, astronomy, and physics. A very small fraction of the mathematicians and scientists who actually use the so-called auxiliary, or characteristic, or secular equations know the origin of the term “secular” in their fields of study. These technical workers merely use the term “secular” in order to label either a certain type of astronomical motion or an equation that occurs in the solution of certain differential equations via algebraic equations. If one may hijack a saying attributed to Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about ‘the secular,’ but nobody - - or virtually nobody - - does anything about it, at least by way of etymology.” In order to remedy this defect, we now undertake to investigate the meaning and etymology of the word “secular.”
Before citing a dictionary definition of the word “secular,” the present writer will rehearse his own knowledge of a variety of meanings imputed to this word.
First of all, some of those meanings are negative, i.e., indicative of what the secular is not: To be secular is to be vaguely non-religious; or at least not specifically religious in any well-defined sense; or, on the other hand, very well separated from any ideas, experiences, or practices associated with personal relationships, historical identities, or organized religions.
Secondly, some of those meanings are political: To be secular is to be rigorously isolated from any ideas or practices associated with the American Christianity of the Revolutionary Era, i.e., to fall within the purview of the Jeffersonian theory of the wall of separation between church and state. Eventually, this theory encompassed all religious groups and the secular state. Over time, the idea of the secular state came to co-exist uneasily with the metaphor of melting-pot assimilation of immigrant subpopulations, each of which expected some type of interaction between church and state. This problem was originally papered over by the idea of civil religion, which could provide moral examples of good citizenship while lying outside the theoretical scope of the separation of church and state. For example, John Adams presupposed the compatibility of the secular state with civil religion when he stated that “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” The idea of civil religion persisted into the 1950’s, when Dwight David Eisenhower said that “America makes no sense without a deeply held faith in God - - and I don't care what it is.”
Thirdly, some of those meanings are due to the European Enlightenment (ca. 1715 to 1804). One task of the secular state was the suppression of any preceding, historical religion that violated Enlightenment norms of rationality. The secular state might, however, institute a civil religion; provided that the ideas of eternity, eternal perspectives, and absolutes in philosophy or religion were rejected. At the height of the French Revolution, the so-called Cult of Reason was instituted by the secular French state as a suitably secular, non-historical, and atheistic religion not subject to separation between historical church and state. One notes in passing that this Enlightenment view of religion is at variance with the Platonic idea of time as the moving image of eternity: Any experience of time, or moving images, presupposes the existence of eternity.
Finally, the present writer is aware of at least three more-positive ways of belonging to a secular or non-religious world. The secular may refer to the physical and temporal world, including the space, time, and events occurring in the physics of all bodies fast or slow, large or small. In this sense, the secular pertains to an objective world in classical physics as appropriately amended by special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Moreover, the secular pertains to the subjective time occurring in the psychology of natural consciousness, including the long-term mental effects of religious practices considered as research variables, as opposed to existential beliefs. Alternately, the secular may be said to pertain to an impersonal rationality or spirituality (the Zeitgeist), which arises from the joint activity of finite spirits. These finite spirits explore the universe and contribute to an asymptotic approach to the Hegelian goal of Absolute Knowledge.
By way of comparison, we now turn to the five definitions of the adjective “secular” stated in Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (1968): (1) belonging to the world as opposed to the church, i.e., not sacred or religious; as with secular music or schools. (2) living in the outside world unrestricted by monastic vows or rules, e.g., secular clergy as opposed to regular clergy. (3) occurring only once in an age or century. (4) continuing for a long time or from age to age. (5) secularistic, or according to secularism, i.e., rejecting any form of religion, and, typically, endorsing the theory of the separation of church and state.
That same 1968 edition of Webster’s dictionary gives the etymology of “secular” as deriving from the Latin word “saecularis,” which means belonging to a generation or age, which in Latin is a “saeculum.” The Latin word “saeculum” carries with it the possible connotations of a human generation, a characteristic time for a civilization to be transformed, an era, or an epoch. The English word “age” is here understood as an epoch, era, or average longevity of a particular cohort, rather than as the lifespan of a particular individual.
In subsequent postings to this blog, we shall attempt to point out some of the many ways that the idea of “the secular” has developed from ancient times up until our own. In particular, we shall explore how the usage of the word “secular” has proliferated from ancient history, to history of the Christian church, to certain astronomical phenomena, and to some of the mathematics required for theoretical advances in astronomy and physics, including quantum mechanics.