Fractals & Religions
by CCD


Ioan Petru Culianu was a unique figure in the history of religions because of his attempt at renewing the methodological steps of a discipline that was going through a period of crisis.
Born in Iasi in 1950, he would graduate the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest, with a paper discussing the philosophy of the Renaissance; in 1972, he immigrated to Italy becoming, four years later, a professor at the Groningen University, in Holland. In the middle 80s he was invited by Mircea Eliade to the University of Chicago. They had previously worked together, publishing the imposing Encyclopedia of Religions and a dictionary of religions, posthumously published, which became a bestseller. He had published over 15 works at prestigious printing-houses from Italy, France, Holland and the US and hundreds of articles in specialized reviews. Ha had obtained two doctor's titles, one with Ugo Bianchi from the Catholic University of Milano, and the other one with Michel Meslin of Sorbona. He had even begun working on his third doctor's degree (with the same M. Meslin of Sorbona), but he didn't live to finish it; he was assassinated in May 1991.
The ideas promoted in his books (especially the books and articles written after 1986), Culianu set the basis of a dramatic change in the paradigm of religious studies, instituting at the same time a theoretical limit of the methodological steps within the field of the humanities. Though very close to Eliade in the beginning (he started in 1978 with a monograph of Eliade, revaluating the early works of his master, little or not at all known to the western world, emphasizing their originality and epistemological relevance for contemporary approaches to the study of religions), he would later develop a methodology which claimed, on the one hand, and interdisciplinary and integrative effort, and on the other hand, the revaluation of current epistemological theories. Afterwards, in his last writings and projects of books forwarded to publishers, Culianu would submit a vast methodological project materialized in an integral method, morphodynamic, “an overtaking of morphology by the integration of a temporal dimension”1, which was defined by H. R. Patapievici as a mathesis universalis.
Many texts recommend Culianu as a scholar whose main interest was that of promoting a new method of research for the history of religions and the philosophy of culture, and these references are not made only to his latest works, but also to his early ones. Culianu's research firmly outstrips the classical canons of this discipline, constituting a kind of frontier research, thus anticipating a new paradigm, where important things happen at the intersection of great researches, that is on the frontier. That's why it was said that after 1986 Culianu would pass from a local method (“a hermeneutic based upon explicative principles”2) to a mathesis universalis (“a universal principle of explaining any spiritual phenomenon, judging from its cognitive mechanism of engendering”3).
Some conclusions arise from the exegeses dedicated to the methodological aspect of Culianu's works: 1) His contemporaries present him as an innovator favoring metadisciplinarity; 2) compared to his youth writings, where he operates with a regional method, his last works propose an integral method responsible for any spiritual phenomenon; 3) 1986, when he published the first version of his book on gnosis, is considered to have been a turning point in his career. According to this classification, we can speak of the first Culianu (author of the works published until 1986, the most important of them being Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. 1484) and the last Culianu, author of an impressive methodology.
The first Culianu developed a methodological position closer to the philosophy of science rather than to the current reflection in the history of religions, at least from the perspective of this discipline's discourse development up to that point. Besides some notable examples (such as M. Eliade, P. Ricoeur or H. P. Duerr) most of the savants were characterized by either a positivist paradigm, whose reductionism had been many times criticized, or by old philological or sociological schools that were active within or outside the history of religions. In this context, Culianu would initiate an optical change impossible to ignore. He had been outrunning all current conceptions ever since his monograph dedicated to Eliade, when he stressed upon the fact that the latter's theory was being constructed on a different epistemological plan compared to the facts that he was studying; this explains the error committed by many of Eliade's critics, who were trying to contradict his theory starting from some facts belonging to a different epistemological class than the theory against which they had raised their comments.
Culianu's position was a Popperian one, as, in fact, had been Eliade's entire epistemological measure. As he himself said in Averse and Reverse in history, the role of an "epistemologist on duty" should have been attributed, in a certain period, to Popper, a position that was later occupied by Th. S. Kuhn. Culianu's appeal to Popper in his monograph of Eliade (who is remembered even in the Introduction to the Dictionary of Religions, in relation to the poverty of historicism, where he wrote: “Eliade's hypotheses are a kind of game, though this aspect should not deceive us. After all, logical hypotheses viewed as a game should be nothing new to a contemporary of the theory of relativity, of the quantum, of Godel's theorem, and of the logic of Popper's scientific discovery.”4).
In the context of his work, the fact that Culianu manifested since his first work a special interest for the method is not marginal. The meta-disciplinary challenge was already obvious in his monograph of Eliade: “the methods which have sustained and enriched the science of religions are the phenomenological and structuralist ones. However, we can feel today the deficiency of all these cultural contributions lato sensu that have influenced the historic-religious studies and new methods are being searched for, though nothing has been found so far. /…/ A new method of comparison, apart from phenomenology, should be found.”5
This new method, “a shocking combination of cultural history, hermeneutics and epistemology"6 would be suggested by Culianu in two very technical works, which represented the professional maturation of the historian of religions and his imposing in the academic world. Although his sources of inspiration were represented by Wittgenstein and epistemologists such as Kuhn and Feyerabend, as well as the new science of complexity, the scientific community was shocked.”7
As for the first Culianu, it has been repeatedly said that "he produced a new frame of research for the history of religions and the theory of culture, and his methodological research took over and refined patterns of thinking illustrated by Max Weber, L. Wittgenstein, Th. S. Kuhn and P. Feyerabend.
Some conclusions regarding the first Culianu can be drawn (especially related to the most important book of this period – Eros and…): 1) contrary to any type of Hegelianism, Culianu considered that the principle of change was mutation and not evolution. Implicit presuppositions of this attitude are to be found in the works of the new philosophers of science; 2) modernity is no longer perceived as the infinite progress of the quantitative science, but as a "secularized appendix of Reform"; 3) the implications of the idea of mutation are presented in a double Feyerabendian register: paradigms are not measurable but history within this context is unforeseeable.
The first Culianu is characterized by his ideas from Eros and Magic in the Renaissance. After he had sharply criticized tradition in his two works dedicated to the ascension of the soul (Psihanodia and Experiences of Ecstasy), exemplifying through the term of Copernican revolution, Culianu would orient his theoretico-methodological message starting from some current epistemological theories belonging to some thinkers who were not part of the old scientific community (some representatives of the new philosophy of science, such as Kuhn and Feyerabend). Contrary to all expectations, though Eros and Magic in the Renaissance was a book that struck by its erudition, its revolutionary character doesn't mainly consist in the quantity of information it contains but in the totally new model of approach; Culianu proposed a new model for a discipline that was in crisis (the history of religions): a multidisciplinary method, whose nucleus originates in the research of epistemology and philosophy of science, and which overran old methodological conceptions that were active in the history of religions (philological, anthropological, socio-psychological and comparatist methods).
The central theses of Eros and Magic in the Renaissance are the following: the birth of the modern world, a new perspective upon Renaissance, and the destiny of the modern world. Favoring mutation rather than evolution (in the tradition of Feyerabenden), Culianu postulated that the modern world had been much diminished by the spirit's adventure during the Renaissance at its most profound level – the mental one. This was made possible by the Renaissance's censorship of the imaginary. The metaphor of this condition is that of a wingless fly that survives, through a game of the hazard, in its own ecological niche. The modern world becomes a lessened world because of its lack of access to a category of unifying phantasms (as G. Bruno said in his On Relationships), Eros being the most powerful one. Culianu considered Bruno the precursor of modern social psychology. Discovering some obscure writings of Bruno's in the library of Vatican, Culianu would apply, in this case, too, the same method he used in his critical message against tradition and his revolt against the tradition's power of transmitting false information. Just as what is now called the Copernican revolution had been anticipated, metaphysically speaking, by Nicolaus Cusanus (the fact that the earth was not the center of the universe and, moreover, the center of the universe is everywhere and its circumference nowhere), Culianu would also, in the case of Bruno, change forever the perception that the scientific community shared upon the latter. The number of works in which Bruno deals with mythological, occult aspects, or with aspects related to the magical art of memory, clearly outrun those related to natural physics and astronomy, which convinced the scientists to perceive Bruno as a precursor of modern science and a rationalist avant la lettre. In De Vinculis, Bruno discusses the power and efficiency of phantasms (especially the erotic ones) in terms that today are rather common the psychology of the masses, to big trusts of public relations interested in manipulating the consumers with a view to gain, to top-level diplomacy or to espionage schools. Though the mechanism remains the same, as described by Bruno hundreds of years ago, contents differ in the sense that they have nothing magical or metaphysical left. Theoretically speaking, it has been considered that, at the level of methodology, Culianu followed the way of the magician described by Bruno in De Vinculis.
The radical methodological change that occurred in Culianu's thinking originates in this very model of approaching history. The new method proposed by Culianu would apply to religion as well as to any other spiritual phenomenon: science, history, arts or politics.
The books written after 1986 are a proof of the change in his methodological approach. It is from this perspective that his book on gnosis (The Dualist Gnosis of the Occident), finished in 1986 and published in 1990) will be entirely reviewed and presented under a new title (The Tree of Gnosis), published posthumously: “its fundamental novelty is not to be found at the level of the information gathered, but at that of the method used. Our conception regarding history is imprecise and overrun. It needs a radical change, in concordance with what's happening in some sophisticate areas of science, whose vision upon the world began to change a century ago. The disciplines of history failed to become part of this current and therefore, history hasn't changed its general premises for millenniums.”8 What we immediately notice is that by changing the frame of research according to strategies previously developed, Culianu's intention was to find a new method, totally new, yet capable of explaining any spiritual fact. It was often said that, after 1986, Culianu became more preoccupied by the real definition of what could be called a method, that is “the way in which thinking orients towards the phenomenon under study.”9 H. R. Patapievici reviews the senses taken into consideration by Culianu when dealing with the mode in which he conceived his method. To Aristotle, it meant both the research and the theory or science. Generally, the idea of method is related to the “use of a definite direction that is to be followed in spiritual operations.”10
The amplitude of the last Culianu's methodological construction can be approximated by the projects he had forwarded to some important printing-houses just before his death. In Memories of the Future: The Combinatory Art of Raymundus Lullus and Its Mystical Use, Culianu related Giordano Bruno's Memory Art to the discoveries in the field of artificial intelligence, the theory of complexity and psychology, comparing the methods according to which cognition creates the universe. “Nowhere else in history is so clearly rendered the idea that these two systems – that of the language and that of the world – are not only analogous, but co-substantial too; by manipulating language you can manipulate the surrounding reality, both at the real and the concrete level.”11 Culianu noticed that the discoveries of the two scientists – Bruno and Lullus – represented the principle of computer functioning; logic functions by an endless repetition of the same simple digital sequences.
Culianu approached the systems of occult art from the same perspective, comparing them to an analogical computer, which, using a logic developed to its last limits, offers not necessarily predictions, but permutations of the initial data which usually are very simple. Any such closed system functioned through a quantification of the results generated by a certain situation and chose among these the ones with the highest degree of probability.
Culianu reached such a conception because of a rapid transition from a toolbox approach-like methodology to one inspired by the theory of fractals and the cognitive sciences. First, he would bring some arguments against the German school of history of religions, the most important of them being the idea that the real problem is not the provenience or the significance of myths, but the way in which they were generated. H. R. Patapievici has drawn a comparative balance sheet of what Culianu rejects or approves of at the level of research.
i. Before 1986 the main focus was upon knowledge, which is ideological and has a recurrent character, being thus subject to description, and the aim was that of identifying, cataloguing and classifying it; after 1986, Culianu's studies would focus on establishing the set of rules, that is enumerating the elementary ontological statements. The aim was to determine the engendering mechanism.
ii. The idea of determining the origin of knowledge (the study being complete only when it would identify, through a continuous diffusion, with the source of the studied phenomenon) would be rejected after 1986; the question where does it come from? was replaced by how was it generated?, and the object of study would be explained by identification of the proximal category.
iii. The recurrence of knowledge explained through psychoanalysis will be used after 1986, in a strictly cognitive manner, because “any transformation of the myth has, by origin, a cognitive basis.”12
iiii. Knowledge is put into action by “cultural presuppositions”, which form the interpretative grid, the selective will or the hermeneutic filter of a given epoch, a unique filter that becomes perceptible only in the moment when some “invisible filters” from the side scenes of the universe of ideas are perceived. After 1986, the hermeneutic filter was replaced by the cognitive transformation, “an active re-thinking of tradition based upon a simple set of rules”13 and functioning through intertextuality and cultural tradition. The cognitive transfer consists in the pointing out of the set of rules and its generative mechanism, achieved through the development of a binary arbor attached to data obtained from the material that is investigated or by packing up the alternatives in “construction bricks”14.
Culianu's method can be presented like this: by adding the temporal dimension to the morphologic measure (which studied the spatial form of phenomena), it becomes morphodynamic. Thus, the shape of an organism is no longer just a spatial configuration, but en “event in space-time”15. Starting from recent studies in topology and the theory of fractals, which were offering a perspective upon the morphodynamics of nature, Culianu would try to develop a similar methodology that could be applied to ideal subjects. (such as religion, philosophy or even science). “Ideal subjects are systems that operate within a logical dimension and cannot descend lower than their premises (which usually are as simple as possible).”16 By understanding through fractals17* “any infinite ramification that adapts to a certain rule”18 and using Rudy Rucker's mathematical terminology, Culianu would define life as “a fractal in the Hilbert space”19 (where the Hilbert space is “a mathematical space containing an infinite number of dimensions”20). These systems, which are ideal subjects, are fractal-like in nature, meaning that “they tend to produce solutions ad infinitum, according to a simple generative rule.”21
To exemplify the method of the last Culianu we should remember the christologic tree. He took account of all religious trends from early Christianity to the latest heretic sects and built, with reference to Jesus Christ's nature, the following system of binary oppositions, within which one can find any dispute related to the nature of Jesus, setting the limits of the issue at the same time: 1. Jesus is more human than divine; 2. He is equally human and divine; 3. He is more divine than human. Conformably to these hypotheses, the elaborated system displays all its combinatory possibilities (which manifested in reality through Gnostic sects) through association of the divine aspect (only divine, more divine than human, equally divine and human) with the human one (only human, more human than divine), covering the entire area within which the study of this aspect related to the nature of Jesus is non-contradictory. Starting from this system, one could study any christologic issue by associating it with the correspondent fractal. In the above-mentioned case we are dealing with a fractal that is centered around the figure of Jesus and its ramifications are formed by the binary decisions taken in connection with the divine or human aspect. In the same way, Culianu would postulate that Christianity itself develops like a fractal, just like any other religion, generating an immeasurable fractal, which tends to cover each other completely as they exhaust the possibilities of arranging their own systems.
Therefore, history would appear as a general mould, of maximum complexity, that is obtained by systems of fractals representing ideal subjects in the moment of their intersection. “History is a sequential interaction of systems presenting the following characteristics: they derive from a fundamental set of logical norms; they exist within their own dimension, which is not that of history; they are activated by human minds in an unpredictable sequence.”22
Culianu's intention was that of proving that religion can be analyzed in a similar way: “though scattered through time by history, it is a combination of ideal subjects, not so different from philosophy or even science. /…/ they talk about the same things in ways that can sound differently, if not incompatibly, from a heuristic perspective, but which are identical from a systemic perspective.”23 When it comes to religion, the last Culianu thought the binary process of bifurcation and ramification was more important than the mythological content, and this model represented the fundamental vector of history. The main idea in Culianu's last works was that "actually, no sector of light or of human existence can be defined as a mental game with strict rules and, quite often, doubtful results. Among ideal objects and mental games that are centered upon ideas, it becomes predictable that not only religion but philosophy and sciences, too, are games of a perfectly similar nature, constructed upon the same binary principle. "24
Culianu's cognitive hypothesis was the following: “a simple set of rules would generate similar results in people's minds over a period of time virtually accomplished.”25 After all, everything can be defined in terms of mind game, and the fact that these games of the mind have similar mechanisms (“as the mind's way of functioning and its capacity haven't changed over the last 60,000 years”26) brings about a different fact: systems which have been sufficiently rolled will have the tendency to superpose in terms of form and substance. They become maps of the mind which, once the possibilities of combination and arranging deriving from the set of rules are exhausted, constitute total maps of the mind. From a systemic perspective, Culianu's “radical methodological monism” (H. R. Patapievici) explains the unity of creations (which comes as a consequence from the unity of the mind), but can hardly explain the differences between these creations. As differences do exist, Culianu came with the following solution: “there are differences among solutions because the programs are not sufficiently rolled. All human creations are maps of the mind. But, due to small proportions, they are infinite decimal maps. However, we can notice that some big religions, especially those which developed systematically because of the complexity and period of time they had in hand (Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islamism) partially superpose. In fact, any human creations systematically developed and reaching all the consequences of its premises tend to offer a complete map of the mind. In other words, fully developed systems cover each other.”27
The change that occurred at the theoretical level in Culianu's last writings appears to be a purely methodological one; however, judging from Culianu's perspective, it appears to be very general, covering a large area of spiritual phenomena and having some very important ontological consequences, in the sense that it can explain everything. The implicit presuppositions standing at the basis of this position are: i. the computational character of the mind (“faced with similar facts, the human mind will always produce similar results”28) and the fact that all that is mental must necessarily be located in the unity of the mind; ii. the hypothesis of genetic identity – the fact that, when it comes to generation, all systems are united in the mind; iii. all logical alternatives obtained through the generative mechanism tend to cover each other; iiii. philosophy and science are systemic transformations of religions determined by small modifications at the level of generative rules.
This leads to a skeptical consequence. Alternatives generated and developed by the possibilities of the system are neither true, nor false. One cannot establish their truth's value and, therefore, hermeneutically speaking, no interpretation is truer than another.
Let's conclude. Culianu's method is based upon a set of rules and a generative mechanism. The set of rules consists of "automatic assertions of an ontological sort "(H. R. Patapievici). In the case of travels to different worlds, they could be: 1. “there is another world”; 2. “the other world is located in the sky”; 3. “there is a body and a soul”; 4.”the body dies and the soul goes to the other world.”29 The generative mechanism represents a binary choice inside of an alternative that is formulated through the set of rules. It operates until all the possible combinations are extinguished. The result is an ideal object which exists in a dimension of the logical and systemic reality. The interaction of this ideal objects is defined as a mind game that has strict rules of development (which are simple) and unpredictable results. Thus, religion, philosophy, science, literature…are simple computational processes following fractal generative rules. “The only restraint in the existence of ideal objects is the fact that they cannot develop beyond their premises (which usually are very simple), according to the generative mechanism, that can be inferred from the cognitive structure of the transcendental subject. This is the method of Ioan Petru Culianu.”30
Although in his last book (The Tree of Gnosis) Culianu promised the use of his method in other fields than that of religion (the books he would have published being a good proof in this sense: Birth of the Infinite, The Nominalist Revolution, The History of the Mind), he didn't manage to accomplish his projects. However, he did succeed in applying his method in some fields – the genesis and the functioning of Gnostic systems, contemporary western dualisms, literary writings, European variants of the classical German Marxism – which render evident both the novelty and complexity of his method, and the fact that Culianu's methodological position represented a radical change of the theoretical instruments used in the science of religions (explaining, at the same time, any spiritual product).
In spite of all these, the fractal hermeneutics used by Culianu had to face some criticisms mainly stressing upon the limits of such an approach: 1. The fact that the mental games resulted from the exhaustion of all possibilities of logical combinations of the rules cannot develop beyond the premises contained by the cognitive structure of the transcendental subject, thus interrupting its relation with the transcendental area; 2. Taking into consideration that he focused his attention on the generative character and the logical game of the mind, he reduced the human being to the image of a Thuring-like machine: in other words, the intentionality of the consciousness was eluded. 3. “Fully developed systems cover each other”31 only from the perspective of their generation and not from that of their diversity. 4. Culianu's approach failed to answer one essential question: “which is the real and concrete space where all human spiritual creations are valid.”32
Though the answers to these objections are to be found explicitly in Culianu's last writings, the problems raised by this type of approach still wait for their solutions.

Notes:
1. Antohi, Sorin – Imaginarul Renasterii si originile spiritului modern (The Imaginary of the Reneissance and the Origins of the Modern Spirit), postfata la I. P. Culianu – Eros si magie in Renastere. 1484, Ed. Nemira, Bucuresti, 1994, pag. 437.
2. Iricinschi, Eduard – Strategii de schimbare a unui cadru de cercetare in istoria religiilor la I. P. Culianu (Strategies for Changing a Pattern of Research in the History of Religion at I. P. Culianu), [in] Timpul, nr. 10/1997, pag. 18.
3. idem, ibidem.
4. Culianu, I. P. – Mircea Eliade, Ed. Nemira, Bucuresti, 1996, pag. 96.
5. idem, pag. 20-1
6. Antohi, Sorin – op. cit., pag. 435.
7. Iricinschi, Eduard – op. cit., ibidem.
8. Culianu, I. P. – Arborele gnozei (The Tree of Gnosis), Ed. Nemira, Bucuresti, 1998, pag. 7-8.
9. Manolescu, Anca – O mathesis universalis (A Mathesis Universalis), [in] Dilema, nr. 350, pag. 11.
10. Patapievici, H. R. – I. P. Culianu. O mathesis universalis (I. P. Culianu. A Mathesis Universalis), postface la Gnozele dualiste ale Occidentului (The Dualist Gnosis of the Occident), Ed. Nemira, bucuresti, 1995, pag. 349.
11. Anton, Ted – op. cit., pag. 295-6.
12. Culianu, I. P. – op. cit., pag 10.
13. Culianu, I. P. – Calatorii in lumea de dincolo (Out of this World)), Ed. Nemira, Bucuresti, 1996, pag. 43.
14. cf. Patapievici, H. R. – op. cit., pag. 358-9.
15. Culianu, I. P. – Arborele gnozei (The Tree of Gnosis), pag. 27.
16. idem, pag. 28.
17*. The fractal was defined for the first time by the French mathematician B. Mandelbrot, in his book Fractal objects (1975), from the Latin adjective fractus, meaning: irregular, interrupt. Intuitively Mandelbrot defines the fractal as any geometrical figure or natural object combining the following characteristics: “a). its component pars have all the same form or structure as the whole, only on a different scale, therefore they can be easily deformed; b). its form is either extremely irregular, or extremely interrupt or fragmented, no matter the scale of examining; c). it contains distinctive elements which scales vary a lot, covering a large spectrum.” (Mandelbrot, B. – Obiecte fractale (Fractal objects), Ed. Nemira, Bucuresti, 1998, pag. 184).
18. Eliade, Mircea; Culianu, I. P. – Dictionar la religiilor (Dictionary of Religions), Ed. Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1993, pag. 15.
19. idem, ibidem.
20. idem, ibidem.
21. Culianu, I. P. – op. cit., pag 28.
22. Anton, Ted – op. cit., pag. 258.
23. idem, pag. 43.
24. Culianu, I. P. – op. cit., pag 380.
25. Culianu, I. P. – Calatorii in lumea de dincolo (Out of this World), pag. 41.
26. Culianu, I. P. – Arborele gnozei (The Tree of Gnosis), pag. 380.
27. Patapievici, H. R. – op. cit., pag. 375.
28. Culianu, I. P. – op. cit., pag 24.
29. cf. Culianu, I. P. – Calatorii in lumea de dincolo (Out of this World), pag. 41.
30. Patapievici, H. R. – op. cit., pag. 374.
31. idem, ibidem.
32. idem, pag. 377.