Paul Simon’s song “You Can Call Me Al” speaks of a man who sees “angels in the architecture.” The man’s vision is notable and different. He’s “a foreign man,” as the lyric goes, meaning that normal folk like you and me don’t see anything in the architecture but building supplies. So who has the better vision?
The word supernatural is a new one, at least relatively so. It started circulating around the middle of the sixteenth century, before scientific skepticism blew into vogue. It was an unfortunate coincidence. Before the advent of the word, a strange or spiritual occurrence — say, a miracle or a vision of angels — might seem wonderful or even weird. But this new term allowed us to split our world in two. Now the strange and spiritual was, as the word suggests, above or outside or apart from nature.
Read Full Article »