Painting by numbers is one thing. Painting by Rembrandt is something else. Yet in both cases a worker with brush and pigment is seeing the world through given eyes. If beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, we have to be appropriately reticent about extrapolating admiration of the Night Watch to embrace the whole artistic perception.
Great advances in digital understanding have given new force to the idea that science – i.e. knowledge – is numerical. Knowledge is not monolithic; it may lie in the tip of a brush or a line of an epic. Rembrandt’s light and shade and Virgil’s lacrimae rerum (tears at the heart of things) may give us much to consider when we come to consider the human dilemma.
Many readers will recall a book that stimulated thought on such issues the best part of 20 years ago. It was about a boy called Christopher with outstanding mathematical ability who found himself puzzled by the adult world. John Carey, who chaired the Booker panel of judges that was considering the book, said it caused a clash of opinion but ‘I found Haddon’s book about a boy with Asperger’s syndrome breath-taking.’ So did many other people. It has sold two million copies and has been translated into 36 languages.
Christopher sees the world differently. He cannot make sense of a joke. If he hears a frivolous take on drawing the curtains and a drawn face, he finds it difficult to cope with the three meanings of ‘draw’ at the same time. The meanings collide and become unmanageable in his mind. He also notices odd details that may or may not be significant, details that we mostly miss altogether, like a leaf attached to a policeman’s boot. And he may seem deliberately awkward when he needs time to make a response to a multi-layered question; it is just that he wants to get it right.
But the really big problems he encounters are the emotional ones. He is at ease with numbers, especially the prime numbers that head his chapters and give an abrupt, disconcerting start to the book. But what moves people, disturbs them, contents them, energizes them has him slow on the uptake. He is like us when we wrestle with a foreign language we partially understand.
This constraint puts him at cross-purposes with adults (who might be described as slow-witted) and others who are even less patient. All this estranges him.
The story starts with Christopher embracing a dead dog and ends with him welcoming a puppy. Christopher encounters linguistic ambushes and misunderstandings but most disconcerting are the prevailing assumptions and complacent unawareness of everyday people. Like it or not, those assumptions are not shared by everybody.
This narrative has implications for us Christians pondering inclusiveness. If we are talking about our Church being inclusive, we have to consider those whose picture of the world we inhabit is at variance with the one we all take for granted. This book will make us feel uncomfortable as we realise our own limitations. It is an eye-opener.
GLOBAL IN LEAMINGTON
St Paul’s, Leamington Spa has nine couples or singles who are the church’s mission partners. They are busy in PNG, Argentina, Albania, Brazil and central Asia. The church also supports the homeless in the UK, orphans in western Uganda and persecuted Christians wherever.
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