THE OSU PHENOMENON : DENIGRATED OUTCAST OR VENERATED ISOLATE : A DEBATE : PART 1

     

                                                     The Osu Phenomenon

                                          Denigrated Outcast or Venerated Isolate?

                                                               A Debate

                                                                 Part 1

                                        Compiled by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

 

                                                             Compcros

                                        Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                     "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

1. OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

 

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com   Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:39 PM subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

What about the osu cast system in Igboland? To what degree were the osu not slaves? I know little about this but a pic I saw of an osu and a dibia on the Igbocybershrine blog  a powerful and  unforgettable pic, suggested  something that reminded me of slavery.

 

Toyin

 2. Dr. Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:39 PM

Mr. Adepoju;

 

One wonders the mental hinterland which could empower such a misintepretation of an issue that dwarfs one's competence. If you know little about the Osu caste system in Igboland, why don't you go do some research before coming here to empanel hearsay. The Osu caste System is not slavery. Next topic please!!!

Dr. Franklyne Emmanuel Ogbunwezeh

3. OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:47 PM

I am informed on the Osu caste system.

It does demonstrate elements of slavery.

I can provide evidence if required.

Anyone who wants to challenge what I have written should present their case.

Shouting insults is meaningless.

Toyin

4. Rex Marinus

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 2:34 PM

Toyin Adepoju,

Would you consider a monk in a Catholic monastry a slave?  I should actually advise you to be a bit more circumspect on things you know very little about. You have no idea what the Osu is. You do not know anything about Igbo cultural and religious practices and it is actually degrading to jump too fervently into a dance whose steps you have not mastered.

The Osu is not a slave. S/he is actually traditionally a sacred being made into a living companion to the gods. The actual meaning of the Igbo word "Osu" is "Sacred to the gods" or "beloved of the gods" or "dedicated to the gods." Over the years, Christianity and other alien ideas desacralized the intent of the institution and made it antinomic.

 But the status of the "Osu" is sometimes entered voluntarily, particularly when the individual feels himself or herself no longer able to depend on the protection of the ordinary community; s/he hands the self to the gods for protection through servuice and eternal obligation. They become guardians of the altars and the sacred groves of the deities to which the pledge themselves; they take the oaths of perpetual allegiance; they live in ritual isolation; they grow their hair long as an act of self-mortification; they are also thus, in pledging themselves and being ritually dedicated to the altar and service of the gods and the shrines of the land down generations, they become "publicly protected citizens." No man could therefore, on pain of retribution, kill, draw blood, or cause an "Osu of the gods" to cry.

The only barrier is in choosing that life, or being dedicated to that life as a pledge from their families to the gods, the Osu can no longer be expected to live a secular life; aspire to the titles of the land, or even participate in the commerce of daily enterprise. They are fully provisioned through the offerings brought to the altars by the communities; they are in charge of all the votary animals, and assist the high priests in the ritual process.

 In a society where meat was rather a luxury, the Osu had a constant supply through these sacrifices, of which they were the only ones permitted to partake of the animals offered to the gods. Usually in Communities that instituted the Osu system, the best and most fertile public land, often called "Ohia Agbara" are farmed by the Osu; they are given the best portion of the land because they are the human links to the gods.

In the years of yore, an Osu may decide to "free himself" of his obligation, but it often required such an expensive ceremony in that halcyon past, that no Osu could afford to conduct the ceremony. In any case, I'll urge you to read Sylvia Leith-Ross' "Notes on the Osu System amomg the Ibo of Owerri Province" (Journal of the International African Institute," 1937) for starters.

 There have been terrible terminological errors in describing the Osu as a "cult slave" - an English/christian term that avoids a simple fact: the Osu was on many instances a voluntary act of escaping from the secular self into a more isolate world. It is not slavery. It is the Igbo equivalent of the monastic life.

 You have what the romantics would sometimes call "enthusiasm," Adepoju, but you also are terribly careless and presumptuous as a scholar, and in fact self-regarding  by the ways in which you assume authority over issues that are far beyond your immediate apprehension. If you want to study the Osu cult system, take a chill pill, and start again, and this time with clear intent.

Obi Nwakanma

5.  OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 3:07 PM

Thanks, Obi Nwakanma, for providing an opportunity for a comparative study  in the sociology of religion by presenting, for the second time in my encounters with you in discussing this subject, your unequivocal valorisation of the Osu phenomenon, and now, foregrounding that valorisation  in the stark manner of equating the characteristics of the  Osu phenomenon with those   of   Catholic monasticism.

Brother, I wont stoop to the  tendency to invoke credentials of knowledge  where what is needed are authentication of claims.

The essay you recommend actually debunks your position.

The essay you suggested does not support your unequivocal valorisation of Osu, and makes clear that your equating the institution with Catholic monasticism is a distortion of the nature and history of that monasticism in the name of uncritical parallels which can be easily  shown to be problematic, if not false.

You choose to isolate one account, and one of doubtful certainty from the way it is described in the essay,  of the origin and social characterization   of Osu and ignored all the other accounts in the same essay  and the careful contextualization of the subject provided by the author.

That is not scholarship. It is at best a form of revision of evident reality which anyone can easily puncture even by reading the essay you recommend.

My immediate summation is that your unequivocal valorisation of the Osu phenomenon is counter to Igbo history and culture and cannot be sustained.

Your uncritical effort to equate Catholic monasticism and the Osu phenomenon suggest that you are engaged in a romanticisation of Osu that suggests a need to better understand the character and role of Catholic monasticism  as one of the formative  institutions  of the Western cultural tradition as well as to better understand  Igbo cultural history.

Can you please tell us how you came by a conception of Osu that has little relationship with Igbo culture and history as represented by  the extensive literature on the  Osu phenomenon, both scholarly and general, along with accounts by Osu themselves,  such as the various  groups on Facebook directed at putting and end to the horrors resented by the Osu phenomenon?

What are your sources?

Are your sources based on personal encounters with Osu, experiences not replicated by the broad stream of discourse on the subject?

What is your rationale for crediting this personal experience, if you have such,  as the norm?

Have you researched  the phenomenon in its origins,development and particular configurations in various Igbo communities?

Can you refer us to any texts that support your opinion  on this subject?

Just refer us to any texts, then we can compare your sources with others to see how representative your views are.

I would have liked to go into detail on this right now, since deconstructing your strategy  here will provide rich reflections  in the sociology of religion but I need to rush to something else right now.

I will return to this later to show how your correlation of Osu and Catholic monasticism is facile,  and in a fundamental sense,  false,  in the way your frame it.

 I will also show how your framing foregrounds questions about the conditions for developing a spiritual tradition that energizes a culture,conditions present in Catholic monasticism but seemingly suppressed or absent in the social framing of the Osu institution.

I attach the essay you recommended along with   others on Osu [For essays see Scribd account : http://www.scribd.com/danteifa.

Meanwhile, anyone who is keen can do both a Facebook search for 'Osu, to see the groups formed to contributing to eradicating  this terrible tradition as well as a  Google and JSTOR search. The literature is very rich.

Thanks

Toyin

6. Olayinka Agbetuyi

to: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:53 PM

I think it is not fair to attack Adepoju's views as a deliberate attempt to ridicule the Osu system.  Such views are the  result of decades of misinformation and misrepresentation of what the Osu system is to outsiders (including yours truly) and even uneducated igbos... For a long time i have been a victim of the misrepresentation that compares the Osu system to the Indian pariah system of the untouchables.  The colonial mentality during the period of the eradication of slavery must be in large part responsible for this.  The current state of knowledge shows that experts such as the Nwakammas and Ogbunwezes still have much to do change the outsiders perception of the system.

 

As for what current Osus say and how they see themselves, this may be the result of new realities of modern societal  expectations and mentality that are incompatible with traditional roles.


7. Kenneth harrow

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 12:08 AM

this picture of the osus dedicated to god and positively presented as a specially favored group is as far from achebe's depiction of them in tfa and no longer at ease as possible. i confess to knowing absolutely nothing about osus except from achebe's novels, which apparently are not very accurate. i know many will tell me i am misreading achebe, but i think his depiction is quite transparent, and he presents their turning to christianity as a way of escaping their wretched lot.
please show me if i am wrong in this impression of achebe's depiction of them
ken


8. OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 9:53 AM

Instead of jumping to decide who is or is not an expert, read the relevant texts.

Nwakanma is engaged in a process of self delusion which informed people and other Ndigbo see through straightway.

Nwakanma has chosen to isolate a marginal perspective that has little  resonance in collective Igbo cultural memory and Igbo social life anywhere in the world as the reality of Osu.

The Osu phenomenon is too deep rooted in Igbo social identity to be a Christian  distortion.

My focus  in my examination of Nwakanma's effort at fiction will not be to prove him wrong, anybody who reads the very text he recommended and which I attached to my last post as well as the other texts, can see that he is engaged in a  fictive exercise, but will focus on   the implications of his strategy, a strategy  that other Ndigbo on this group, being people  who are subjected to or are witnesses to or are agents in the perpetuation of the Osu phenomenon know is all smoke, but which they are keeping quiet about out of ethnic loyalty, embarrassment or other forms of moral escapism,    and about which non-Ndigbo who care to educate themselves will  know better.

Anybody who is  waiting for Igbos on this group to speak up in support of Nwankama or in opposition to him might have a long time to wait. They know his position is indefensible but wont want to be drawn into an argument where they will either be seen to betray their ethnic brother  in his misguided effort to present one of the most heinous aspects of past and present Igbo life in a whitewashed romantic sense  at variance with Igbo culture and history in all its human complexity or to enter into something that they themselves are too  embarrassed  to discuss in the first place.

Thanks
Toyin

     9. OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

     to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

       

      subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 9:53 AM

Apologies, Olayinka.

I was not polite to you in the way I summed up your response.

I was agitated by the fact that you chose to ignore the scope of research on the subject and chose to fixate on a view of a person whose very text he claims supports his view actually debunks it.

Perhaps you have not had a chance to read the essay recommended by Nwakanma as well as anything else on the subject.

Thanks
Toyin

10.  OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

       

      subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 9:53 AM

Also, it might not be fair to describe Ndigbo on this group who choose to keep silent on this harrowing subject in Igbo life as engaging in moral escapism.

It might not be sufficiently sensitive to so sum up people's responses even though I am convinced that it is a duty to speak up on sensitive issues, particularly one  which concerns a situation one is directly involved in, in which a group are rendered second class citizens and related to in a dehumanizing  manner in sensitive situations  by others in their own group, as the Osu are by the so called free born Igbo.

The Osu  system will be destroyed only when its horrible reality is confronted and challenged by the majority of Ndigbo, not by pretending it is not evil, has not and is not causing huge pain and distortion in people's lives or by  keeping quiet about it.

The Osu system survives because a groundswell of opinion among Ndigbo has not emerged to destroy it.  A system of silence, of quiet support, of fear, of repression of dissent,  keeps it alive, and lately, self deluding fictions  by an Obi Nwakanma that must not be allowed to check the honest appraisal of this evil.  Such fictions will not work among Ndigbo who live the reality of Osu, but those who are not informed beyond Ndigbo need to help to escalate the pressure to destroy this evil system of intra-Igbo apartheid.

thanks
toyin

11. OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

       

      subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 11:35 AM

How does one respond to a blatant falsehood, propagated as unassailable truth by a self declared expert?

How does one respond to a falsehood which the so called expert claims to back up with proof that shows clearly that what he  is stating is false?

How does one respond to what looks like desperation in the effort to implant a falsehood by presenting evidence that actually shows one is not being truthful?

I am almost shaking with trying to grapple with the implications of Obi Nwankanma's argument that the Osu caste of Igboland are equivalent to Catholic monks, being a particularly privileged group who withdrew from the community to act as their intermediaries with divinities.

I am shaking because anyone who has read the research on Osu, anyone who is Igbo and has encountered the Osu phenomenon as victim, agent or plain witness, knows that claim by Nwankanma
 is not true.

I am almost at a loss for words in being further confronted by Nwakanma's efforts at bolstering this fiction.

He states that Christianity and misinformation have distorted the reality of Osu.

I am disturbed because  the scholarship on Osu, both academic and beyond academia,  plus the voices of contemporary Osu unequivocally declare the system in all its heinousness predates  Christianity and is rabidly perpetuated by many Igbos in a spirit that has nothing to do with Christian belief but everything to do with ancient Igbo history and culture.

He goes further to claim his view on Osu is supported by Sylvia Leith-Ross' "Notes on the Osu System amomg the Ibo of Owerri Province" (Journal of the International African Institute," 1937,[ attached]  while the article actually debunks his claim.

The article describes Osu as a despised group among Ndigbo dedicated as servants to divinities and, stating that the origin of the system is unknown, gives a number of accounts of origin and of how people become Osu and presents among various claims of its origin,  the claim Nwankanma latches on as the past and present reality of Osu, a claim presented by an Osu informant.

In the light of the fact that the very essay Nwankanma refers to   shows that the Osu phenomenon is ancient and pre-Christian in its denigration of Osu and choosing  to ignore the complete account given by Leith-Ross I describe Nwakanma as a making a deliberate effort at distorting reality.

 Why?

Why try to propagate a falsehood which is obviously untrue?

An effort at avoiding  ethnic embarrassment?

Why try to perpetuate an obvious falsehood by referring to a text that clearly debunks your efforts at falsification?

Desperation?

Carelessness?

Hubris?

Is it something personal, a deep seated emotional wound that must be palliated by loudly proclaiming a fiction, even in the face of the evident fictiveness of one's declaration?

Clearly, we are faced here with a profound irony represented by an individual's efforts to distort history, though it is impossible and he knows it.

It suggests the horror of the Osu phenomenon, that someone can try so hard to escape its realities by engaging in transparent  fictions.

I will continue by examining the implications of Nwankanma's claim that Osu are equivalent to Catholic monks, a claim that foregrounds most powerfully the absolute untruth in the unqualified valorisation of the Osu system by Nwankanma.

Thanks
Toyin

 
    
         12. Chidi Anthony Opara

       to: USA Africa Dialogue Series

     

   subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM


("A Scion Of A Sacred Order" By Chidi Anthony Opara)

On the priestly podium
He stands firm.
He proclaims aloud;
“I am an Osu!”
“I am a scion of a sacred order!”
“I am sanctified for sacred service!”
His voice firm,
His face
With pride aglow.

Eyes
Dart for signs of curse,
Nostrils
Nose for whiff of Satan,
None is found.

His priestly ancestry
Pokes
At the veil of ignorance,
The veil falls.

Voices proclaim aloud;
“You are indeed
A scion of a sacred order!”
“You are indeed
Sanctified for sacred service!”

13. OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU

to: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com

       

      subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Henry Louis Gates is Wrong about African Involvement in the Slave Trade

date: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 12:59 PM

Chidi,

I salute you.

You have spoken much that evokes what I suggest.

Where do we go from here?

It is one thing to engage in creative rethinking of the character and history of the Osu phenomenon, as your poem suggests.

It is another thing to pretend that the denigrative dimension of  Osu culture is not a fundamental part of Igbo history past and present.

It is one thing, and a positive act, in spite of a culture of "... signs of curse" and "whiff of Satan" in terms of which Osu has  been cast in Igbo culture since time out of collective Igbo memory, to affirm its positive potential:

“I am an Osu!”
“I am a scion of a sacred order!”
“I am sanctified for sacred service!”
His voice firm,
His face
With pride aglow.

but it is another thing, and an example of deliberate falsehood, not to acknowledge that in Igbo culture, for as long as the majority remember, that dedication to deity  has been  a vilified and not a valoristic  dedication.

You demonstrate creativity in    your imaginative contextualization of the current effort on this group to grapple with this  sad phenomenon.

Even though it is not true that no whiff of dissent is found, and it is not true that

Voices proclaim aloud;
“You are indeed
A scion of a sacred order!”
“You are indeed
Sanctified for sacred service!”

since no one  is able to justify Nwakanma's claim about Osu dedication to divinity as valoristic rather than vilified, as honorable rather than scorned, since none have even tried in the first place, your approach can be seen as an imaginative effort to heal a harrowing breach in the Igbo body politic  through a imaginative projection of what you hope will happen.

I would suggest that what is in order is an honest description of the reality of Osu as it is and has been practiced by Ndigbo for as long as  Ndigbo can  collectively  remember, and then a deliberate choice to remove the stigma associated with being Osu  by representing their  dedication to deity as honorable service, not ignoble servitude, as uplifting  dedication, not bondage, of their  isolation as consecrated  dedication not a  pariah status as is the case now.

Along with that, people should be encouraged to stop discriminating against Osu.  To stop preventing their  children from marrying Osu. To stop blocking Osu from opportunities and leadership roles  because they are Osu.

Thanks
Toyin

Also posted in

Scribd (PDF) : http://www.scribd.com/doc/131965883/The-Osu-Phenomenon-Denigrated-Outcast-or-Venerated-Isolate-A-Debate-Part-1

 

 Facebook :

https://www.facebook.com/notes/oluwatoyin-vincent-adepoju/the-osu-phenomenon-denigrated-outcast-or-venerated-isolate-a-debate-part-1/10151349804559103#!/notes/oluwatoyin-vincent-adepoju/the-osu-phenomenon-denigrated-outcast-or-venerated-isolate-a-debate-part-1/10151349804559103

 

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Science, Technology, the Arts and Nation Building in Nigeria : Part 3

In my secondary school days, the science students were seen as the brighter students. Interestingly, though, Nigeria is better known through her artists than through her scientists.

Dominic Ogbonna sums up what is a  realistic assessment, validated by history,  of the role of  the study and practice of the arts, the social sciences and the sciences in creating civilisation, particularly the beacons represented by Western civilisations :

"...a successful and civilized  nation is NOT just any one thing only [It] is also a nation that respects the freedom of the individual, and the freedom of the press, and the freedom of association, and property rights.  It is a nation with Jurisprudence, and universal suffrage, and all kinds of other ideological and sociological intangibles that are clearly NOT reducible to Abba's "science and technology". Some  of these non-scientific aspects of civilization are just as critical to civilization, and to the quality of human society, as the things that come from science and technology...  [ Their ]  very presence... makes science possible in the first place."

I  present a similar perspective but with precise historical references across a range of disciplines as evident in Nigerian and Western history.

The Arts and Cultural and Economic Development

            The Cultural and Economic Colossus that is  the  Western Arts

 The  arts play a central role in building the contemporary dominance of Western civilisation, as well as its leadership in creating the template that forms the basis of contemporary global science. The role of the narrative arts- the story telling Abba looks down on-  and other  arts, is evident in the contemporary global  dominance of Western culture which permeates all corners of the globe, projecting the self perception of the West through its imaginative and social values, as well as earning the US a huge amount of money through foreign screenings  and purchases of its films, which, along with its music,  are still the global standard. 

Are there any films or musicians who cross national boundaries the way these art forms from the US permeate the globe?

Michael Jackson died the other day and the whole world changed beceause he was no longer in it. From Asia to Africa and Europe, people were openly changed by his passing. Whitney  Houston died recently and the world took note.

Which artiste, anywhere else, has passed away and the whole world took note? One will have to look much further back to a personality like Bob Marley and his kind is rare outside the US.

A lady from Saudi Arabia told me a few years ago that they suffer there from Western cultural dominance, in which the West is perceived as the culture of preference. 

Can anyone point to any non-US film of the last 20 years that has a global presence? Yet US films are routinely global presences. Can you imagine the sheer economic power this pervasive penetration of the world through the arts  means, plus the sheer cultural heft it gives the US as flag bearer of the West? Can you imagine the sheer economic power they are raking in from all over the world, concentrating it in their corner of North America?

        The Domestic and Global Achievement of the Story Telling of  Nigeria's Nollywood 

In the whole of Nigerian history, the one collective achievement of a body of Nigerians that has registered on the global stage is the story telling of Nollywood. As far as I know, Nollywood is the first original and still the only achievement of Nigerians as a group on the global stage. Is there any other creative activity, from the arts to the sciences, in which Nigerians have excelled as a group and has achieved such economic force in the history of this country? 

The US has Hollywood and their technology companies Microsoft , Google and Yahoo as their most prominent global brands. Nigeria has Nollywood. I cannot identify any other collective Nigerian achievement of global renown and perhaps such domestic and global economic  force, equal to the achievement of Nollywood. Nollywood is basically the story telling Abba describes as not being central to national development. Nollywood story telling  is described as the  second largest film industry in the world, in terms of annual number of films produced, ahead of Hollywood and behind India, with a distinctive character of its own.

 I discount the Nigerian oil industry because I cannot see the creativity in that industry in Nigeria. 

Economic and social development is demonstrated, among other values, by being able to create jobs that enrich the populace and project its image positively. Nollywood could have contributed to those achievements  more than any other Nigerian industry in the last  20 or more years.

The Cultural Framework of Western Civilisation

Some contributors on this thread are mistakenly conflating  Asian social, technological  and scientific development with the kind of total cultural construction represented by Western civilisation.   Ogbonna provides an  insightful listing of the ideas that form the bulwark of US political and economic existence:

1. The Democratic System of Government
2. The Rule Of Law
3. The Bill of Rights
4. The Separation Of Powers
5. The Separation of the Church and the State
6. The Abolition of slavery

Abba responds that "What you listed are government policies/interventions...and not ``arts".  What you listed are interventions that create a conducive atmosphere for science and technology to flourish (you forgot to mention many other measures taken to encourage, promote and reward excellence; the US built a culture of meritocracy and competence; a culture that recognizes and salute these).

But all these ain't ``arts"...or are they? "

These "government policies/interventions", however, were enabled by the work of the arts, political and economic philosophy, political activism, political oratory  and religious vision, among other domains of the arts, expressing  ideals people fought and died for across centuries stretching from ancient Greece to the present and enshrined in canonical writings ranging from the philosophies of Plato to Adam Smith, to Martin Luther and Thomas Paine, to name a few, and which have been central to ideas about the role of knowledge in human life, which, in relation to determined  social struggles, created an environment where science and technology have thrived. 

                Faith, Religion and Reason

Interestingly, the people who determine the environment that enables science and technology to thrive   are less  scientists  than they are politicians and others directly involved in  public life. If not for the desperate struggles of Martin Luther and his supporters at the Protestant Reformation, the stranglehold of the Church on scholarship is less likely to have been broken, enabling the Church to continue to dictate the boundaries of scholarship, as it  tried to in harassing Galileo Galilei  for insisting that the earth  revolves round the sun. 

There is a lot of merit to the argument  that the continuing strength of Islam as a political force is central to the fall of scholarship in Islamic civilisation from its previous stellar  height to its present lacklustre position in the world of learning, in which subservience  to faith has triumphed  over rationality or even a balanced relationship between rationality and other forms of knowledge, such as faith. A  decisive  point in  this defeat is described as the debate  between Al Ghazzali , Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, represented by Al Ghazzali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers and Ibn Rushd's  reply The Incoherence of the Incoherence (link to free PDF copy) , a debate between the faith  centred position of Al Ghazzali  and the more rationalistic position of Ibn Rushd, though he is described as trying to integrate faith and reason, keeping in mind that  this rough summary may be  best understood as a  simplification of these sophisticated issues. According to this view, Islamic scholarship and civilisation have  not recovered from this dominance of religion. 

Europe, on the other hand, integrated with its Christian culture the rationalistic dimension of the Greek heritage transmitted to it by the Arabs and eventually subsumed the rational within the religious  so thoroughly that  they feed each other while reason is allowed to hold  a prominent dominant  place, an  outcome of which is the spectacular success of science. Landmarks in this journey range from  the works of Thomas Aquinas on the harmony of faith and reason, built on Aristotelian philosophy, the work of the great Renaissance scientists,  artists and architects Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo  Buonarroti,  to the works that helped to foment the revolutions in Europe and the US, such as the works of Thomas Paine and those that fired the visions of the builders of modern Europe and the US founding fathers, of whom Paine was one. 

        Thomas Paine,  Political Thought and Practice and the Culture of Learning

The history of Western democratic, revolutionary and capitalist thought is profoundly affected by Paine's books and activities, such as Common Sense , the central book that gains Paine the title of The Father of the American Revolution, his book  The Rights of Man in defence of the French Revolution, arguing for citizen's  rights as source of state authority and the Age of Reason, one of the most influential advocates of a rational critique of religion and religious institutions, a mindset that is the bulwark of modern Western secular society, a secularism of which science is a central beneficiary and central standard bearer. 

           Capitalism, Democracy and Scientific and Technological Progress

There exists an intimate relationship  between capitalism, democracy and the scientific and technological  leadership of the West. Democratic systems encourage freedom of thought and speech, and scope of research and application.  Capitalism enables the accumulation of funds to invest in research and development  as well as the reaping  of financial  investments from science  and technology which are ploughed  back to create  more developments in those fields. Without a robust capitalist  environment, would we have had the Industrial Revolution and certainly  not the Information Revolution, a prominent aspect of which   runs on the economic lifelines provided by venture capitalists with money  to innovators  without money. Bill Gates, the founders of Yahoo and Google, along with Zuckerberg and Facebook all started as students without money,  money which investors provided. This match between innovative  talent and wealth is central to the success of the global technology hub that is Silicon Valley.

How did the West develop such a robust capitalist system? Through a combination of the work of business people, politicians and the sheer historical convergence of various unanticipated factors, including religion, the latter  suggested by the debate around Marx Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism. 

Cultural Foundations of Western Science and Technology

          Magic, the Occult and Science 

The arts have played a fundamental role in the development of Western science. Central to this is the contribution of religious, occult  and philosophical cosmology to scientific cosmology. Tian Yu Cao in Conceptual Developments of Twentieth Century Field Theories, argues that the modern scientific understanding of nature as constituted by laws that can be understood and even worked with by the trained expert, the scientist, was a development from Western magic, itself derived centrally from the Hermetic tradition, the roots of which are described as being  in Egypt. Cao makes this point beceause Western magic introduced to the Western intelligentsia the idea of the cosmos as not only a unified structure,   an idea already familiar to them from the Greeks   and the Arabs, but the Hermetic idea that this cosmos was organised in terms of laws that could be discovered, understood through study and cooperated with to produce results. 

A book that demonstrates this occult culture in its combination of imagination and rationality, learning and experimentation, integrating broad scholarship with spiritual activity in which the magician  trains themselves to  understand natural law and work with it, but in a manner different from the instruments of modern science, is Israel Regardie's The Tree of Life : A Study in Magic( link to free PDF copy),   which is based on the sweep of the Western magical tradition, from its Egyptian appropriations, to its blend of neo-Platonism and magic, down through the Middle Ages to the present. A historical text that demonstrates how the mentality represented by ideas and practices like those described by Regardie shaped the minds of scientists in the formative period of modern science in 17th to 18th century Europe  and how it was transmitted in a modified form into modern science is Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (link to free PDF copy). More modern works take off from Yates' pioneering efforts. The relevant information is plentiful online. 

Taking inspiration from this early cosmology of human understanding and management of cosmic law, some of the most influential of the earlier Western scientists were magicians and occultists, these disciplines being central to how they saw the universe, inspiring them in their quest for knowledge and providing the ideational template which they transposed  into what is now known as modern science. Some of the most influential   modern scientists  develop along similar lines, but more in terms of philosophical and religious ideas. Useful guides in the relationships between religion, science and philosophy, particularly in exploring their roles in contemporary  scientific discoveries are the works of Paul Davies, such as The Mind of God : Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning. 

           Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Occultism and Mathematical Cosmology 

Central to the influence of the occult and religion on science is Isaac Newton, whose work in the Western esoteric school -dealing with hidden skills and knowledge not available through conventional  education- of Hermeticism along with his deep study of the Bible and theology shaped decisively his mind and his scientific discoveries. A central tenent of Hermeticism is the maxim of Hermes Trismegistus , after whom the school is named 'As Above, So Below'. Within that context, the cosmos is understood as organised in terms of the correspondence of order at various levels of existence, from the more abstract levels to the material plane.  This world view may be correlated with that of modern scientific cosmology, which understands the cosmos as organised in terms of laws  that unify its totality. 

Central to the quest to understand cosmic unity is the study of unifying laws and Newton's work in gravitational law and the laws of motion is central to that. Central to Newton's work in gravitation and laws of motion is the concept of force, which I would describe as a layperson as the impulse acting upon bodies.  The concept  of force is central to Newton's  development of gravitational theory in terms of  invisible forces acting upon each other at a distance, an idea, which,  according to Richard Westfall  in his Encyclopaedia Britannica 1992 essay on Newton, the great scientist adapted from the occult idea of invisible forces that act upon forms across space and perhaps unify the cosmos. 

Westfall describes Newton's achievement as bringing to a consummation the vision of the great Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras who understood the cosmos as organised in terms of mathematical form and whose mathematical work was related to an effort to understand that cosmic order.  Like Pythagoras, Newton was fired by the vision of grasping cosmic order through both intellectual and supra-intellectual methods, as testified to by his magnum opus Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which rounds off with Newton's celebration of his understanding of cosmic law as a demonstration of divine order as expressed through the creation and transcendence of time and space by God. 

" In the Beginning, God Geometrised" so declares an expression from an idea attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato and described as adapted by the great mathematician Friedrich Gauss stating 'God arithmeticises', thereby carrying forward the Pythagorean and Platonic vision which has become central to modern science, even though the divine justification for cosmic order in terms revealed by mathematical form is no longer canonical in science. This mathematico-cosmic vision,  as it were, has shaped Western science across the centuries, as represented, for example,  by the great astronomer Johannes Kepler, who understood the orbits of the planets as organised in terms of geometric solids as well as practising successfully the occult discipline of astrology, which is based on mathematical calculations of relationship between the celestial bodies and events in human life. 

  Frances Yates in Giodarno Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition describes  the difference between Kepler's occult and scientific work, and if I would add, that of Newton and other occult and philosopher scientists, as the ability to allow various realms of knowledge to feed each other while distinguishing   between them. Kepler and Newton were  inspired by philosophy, occultism and religion but they understood that to  demonstrate conclusively their  ideas in scientific cosmology, they needed a form of   logic, that, unlike the logic of philosophy and the occult, has to be accessible to verification by other scholars who might have little or no interest in their  occult and philosophical inspiration, those not being in the realm of science, science as it was emerging in the 17th century scientific revolution in which these men played a central role. Yates develops these ideas further in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. 

Also prominent in this emergent scientific culture was John Dee, prominent mathematician and dedicated and ambitious occultist. 

Newton describes most forcefully and poignantly his sensitivity to this correlative symbiosis and difference between various realms of knowledge in concluding his Principia with a description of his religious vision as encapsulating his scientific cosmology and describing his further vision of unity in the physical world, in which a force shapes the motion of all forms within the physical world and the human body, from electricity to blood, but concluding that there is no sufficiency  of experiments to prove this expanded vision of his, thereby  leaving that vision outside the domain of scientific proof. 

                   Alchemy 

One of the most spectacular examples of the transformation of occult theory and practice into science is the discipline of alchemy. It involved a complex of theoretical ideas and practical techniques involving material instruments. My understanding so far of this very secretive and arcane field is that it might have been a system for developing a  transformation of the human self in relation to the transformation of material substances, with this transformative process symbolised by and related with the transformation of material  forms from one state to another, centred in the idea of transforming other metals to gold and making one immortal,  through the creation or discovery of the Philosopher's Stone.

The alchemists are described as central to  laying the foundations of the relationship between scientific theory and experiment that is the defining mark of modern science. They developed elaborate laboratories and instruments for experimentation, testing their theoretical formulations, and encoding their ideas in symbols that the uninitiated would not understand, even though presented in books that were at times publicly available and written in European languages, a technique of encoding, of hiding information in plain view in a manner related to the highly specialised terminology of modern science. 

The culture of experimenting on the material  world using specialised laboratory instruments, and  correlating such experimentation with theory, passed into modern science, but the ideas of transforming the self were left behind. I would not argue for a direct influence from alchemy to nuclear science and  the Hadron Collider, but one may deduce in such efforts the persistence of the idea that material forms can be transformed from one state to another through human effort. A modern interpretation of the alchemical theory of transformation between elements  is evident  in the exploits of the alchemist Nicholas Flamel in Michael Scott's fantasy novel series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. 

Perhaps the most successful  transformer of the occult world of alchemy to science while working actively in both worlds was Isaac Newton, whose work in alchemy and religion is described as more voluminous than his better known work in physics and mathematics.  Alchemy provided for Newton a cosmology and an experimental framework which he mined diligently, adapting to his scientific discoveries, and like many  occultists, he hid the occult roots of a number of his most important scientific  ideas  so that,   along with the influence of the disdain people later had for alchemy, for centuries people were baffled as to why such a great mind should devote so much effort to what they saw as a pseudo-scientific pursuit like alchemy or why the father of modern science should be so committed to research on religion. 

Modern Newton scholarship demonstrates how these interests feed each other in his works, studying his extensive original documents  in various libraries  and posted online at such sites as The Chymistry of Isaac Newton and The Newton Project. His writings on religion and philosophy are  published online and in print as in the Newton Manuscript Project on his theological work. 

Books that are very successful at  showing how  these interests are woven together in Newton's life are Richard Westfall's,  Never at Rest : A Biography of Isaac Newton  abridged in The Life of Isaac Newton, distilled in his Encyclopaedia Britannica 1992 essay on Newton and in his Britannica online essay, and the compact but very rich and meticulous  Newton : A Very Short Introduction by Rob Lliffe. 

                20th Century  Science, Philosophy and Religion

It is very useful in  understanding  the  implications of the two great discoveries of 20th century science, Special and General Relativity and  quantum theory, to  understanding the role of philosophical ideas and ideas related to religion in forming the scientific explorations of scientists like Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, Niels Bohr, Srinivassa Ramanujan, Henri Poincare, as well the scientists’ interpretations of the philosophical implications of their work, as in Weiner Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy : The Revolution in Modern Science  ( link to free PDF copy). 

              Georg Cantor,  Kurt Godel and Philosophies  of Mathematics

Science, religion,  philosophy,  the occult and esotericism  are best understood as symbiotic because of the mutual fertilisation of these disciplines as well as the light they throw on each other even when they don't affect each other directly in the work of practitioners of these disciplines. Rene Descartes made foundational achievements in philosophy and science through his philosophical program of developing authoritative methods of knowledge, ranging from introspective self enquiry to mathematics. The great mathematicians Georg Cantor and Kurt Godel are described as understanding mathematics as existing in a  world independent of the human mind, a world into which mathematicians  penetrate to perceive these forms and make them accessible to their fellow humans, an idea manifest in Platonism, one of the earliest ways it was introduced to Western thought, but also existing in various cosmologies, from Yoruba Orisa cosmology, in the odu ifa, mathematical forms described as spirits  representing the identity of all possibilities of existence, abstract and concrete, actual and potential, to Hindu yantras, geometric forms understood as the embodiment of deities, the permutations of which demonstrate the structure  and development of the cosmos. 

         Scientific, Religious and Philosophical Cosmologies  and the  Creation of the Universe from 'Nothing'. 

Tian Yu Cao in  'Ontology and Scientific Explanation' in Explanations: Styles of Explanations in Science   describes eloquently the idea of the universe as emerging from nothing, an idea developed in quantum theory to explain the ultimate origins of the universe beyond the generally accepted scientific  theory that the universe came into existence through an explosion known as the big bang. What existed before the big bang? Cao argues that  a very good answer is ' nothing'. This 'nothing' he describes as a self created and self sustaining mode of being, having no connection with any forms in the observable universe, and therefore not susceptible to the question  "what came before what you describe as causing the universe, whether the matter that led to  the big bang or a quantum space?"

Is this idea of  "nothing" as the source of the universe not familiar from non-scientific sources? From the Biblical,  " In the beginning, the world was without form and void"  to the Buddhist idea of sunyata, Emptiness, the Void, to the Jewish and Hermetic  Kabbalistic notion of Ain Soph, No-thingness, the Unmanifest, the idea of 'nothing',  self created and self sustaining, has been central to religious  and philosophical cosmology. It is also deployed most powerfully in Soyinka's Credo of Being and Nothingness and The Man Died. 

  Literature, Recreation and Inspiration 

While developing scientific and technological innovation, whether influenced by philosophy, religion or the occult or not,  how does one relax? How does one rest the mind and body? Can body and mind remain healthy without rest, without play? May the arts not play a central role in the rejuvenation of mind and body? May the arts not be central vehicles for those very religious, philosophical and occult ideas through which people find meaning in life? Is it adequate to enjoy the wonders of science and technology without a sense of the meaning of life beyond such physical conveniences? 

Is it not relevant to learn how others have managed challenges like being deprived of their freedom in the name of a cause they understood as just? The struggle for justice is sustained by the awareness that one can survive persecution. Such awareness may be gained through learning about others' efforts in that direction, the 'fellow voyagers' as described in Soyinka's prison poem ' O, Roots'. Rather than succumb to the soul destroying culture of conformity represented by the corruption that has made the development of a scientific and technological culture in Nigeria difficult  on account of inadequate funding, one could subsist on inner wealth instead of  enriching oneself by guzzling public funds, inner wealth as demonstrated by Soyinka's meditations in solitary  confinement in prison during the Nigerian Civil War in which he drew inspiration from the most basic elements of his prison environment, lizards, flying birds, the falling feather of a bird, men being led to be hanged, the walls of his prison cell, the garden  constructed by his fellow inmates and destroyed by the warders, , rain, keyholes, etc etc,  as portrayed eloquently in The Man Died his prison autobiography and  A Shuttle in  the Crypt, his poems written in prison.

Wole Soyinka's Global Stature 

Is there any other Nigerian figure of  Soyinka's global stature?

As for the following  comment from Abba: "Besides, there are many others in Africa who are probably as, or even more, deserving of the literature prize (Achebe is surely one)."

I would like to know about such writers since I want to learn more about African writing and keeping in mind that the prize is politicised  being largely Western centred.

In terms of sheer ideational power, imaginative inventiveness and linguistic force, Soyinka has earned a unique place in world literature. Soyinka has  one work of ultimate sublimity  in poetry, A Shuttle in the Crypt; an incomparable essay collection, Myth, Literature and the African World( I refer here to the three essays "The Ritual Archetype", "Drama and the African World View" and "The Fourth Stage", excluding the other two on the history of African literature. Soyinka has many other essays but from my reading of them, even if they are up to 100 they might not be equal those three in the  immortal power of  their ability to speak to the perennial and deepest challenges of the human condition) ; a bombshell of an autobiography, The Man Died ( I have not read his three or four other autobiographies) ; a most memorable dramatic work, Death and the Kings Horseman ( I have not read some  of his plays, described as his best known works, The Road seems particularly well regarded). 

A  Nigerian writer known to me  who comes close to   Soyinka is Christopher  Okigbo, although he published  only a slim body of poems, Labyrinths, but the book's  power is like  the power contained in the atomic nucleus that can trigger an atomic bomb. Sadly, Okigbo's greater promise was not fulfilled since he died fighting in the Biafran side in the Nigerian Civil War, his body lost as he covered his men retreating from a federal advance. 

Soyinka's three essays I mentioned from Myth, Literature and the African World and The Man Died will stand till the end of time as monuments in the landscape of human achievement, as  signposts on the journey of human progress  across the ages. As long as the human mind remains what it is, as long as it is not fundamentally  restructured to a higher cognitive level, creating a different form of humanity than is evident today, I expect  these works will remain  be among those of which Hans Georg Gadamer in Truth andMethod declares can never be superseded, like ideas and achievements in science and technology can be superseded by  later developments in those fields. 

Even explorers from other worlds who are able to understand human cognition and appreciate human values are likely to revere such works as demonstrations of what the German poet Rainer Marie Rilke described as his task as a poet but which may be extended to a task on behalf of all beings in existence, on earth and beyond earth-to justify one's existence by transforming the visible world into visible art.

Soyinka on the Link Between Boko Haram and Prominent Political and Social Orientations of Northern Nigeria 

Soyinka  makes the following points on Boko Haram: 

1.Boko Haram is a manifestation of religious mania in Northern Nigeria that has gone out of control. Whatever one might  think of a direct relationship between Northern religious extremism and Boko Haram, history abounds in examples of a culture  of religious extremism in Northern Nigeria, often leading to mob actions resulting in the murder of Southerners and Christians in the North, these mob actions at times being inspired by perceived slights against  Islam originating from outside Nigeria, without any provocation from  Christians.

Such periodic murderous mob actions are the sporadic but recurrent  manifestation of a culture of extremism expressed most forcefully in Northern religious extremist groups, from the earlier examples to the more recent Maitasine and Boko Haram.

2. Northern Nigeria is prone to such murderous  mob actions and organised religious fanaticism partly because it runs an educational systen that provides ready foot soldiers  for such campaigns, these being the alamjiris, products of a system described by Zainab Usman  as based on the idea of the migrant scholars travelling in search of knowledge  but, as described by Gillian Parker  seemingly often abused  to become a collection of poor young people who are available for manipulation, and being poor and often disenfranchised by poverty and limited education  from full participation in society, are prone to flare up against perceived  enemies.

3. That Boko Haram is the tool of disgruntled  Northern politicians who are aggrieved at their loss of power. Soyinka has not proven this point conclusively  but he sums up deductions that may be made between the threats of violence by Northern politicians like Atiku on the failure of the North to secure the Presidency as expected  on the PDP platform and the eventual  escalation of Boko Haram terrorism on the swearing in  of Jonathan's government, along with the politically sharpened  thrust of Boko Haram's pronouncements  as the group openly seeks to achieve its declared goal of bringing down the government.