Pooh

Nevyn

Pooh and the Philosophers




Has anyone else read this wonderful book?

http://www.ucc.ie/social_policy/pooh_and_ancient.htm

Pooh and Ancient Greece

The Greek cosmologists

All students of Pooh are familiar with his balloon adventure in Chapter One and with his gift of 'a Use-fill Pot' to Eeyore in Chapter Six. All students of early Greek cosmology will remember that Anaximander put forward the theory that the earth was shaped like a cylinder, while Pythagoras, like Aristotle later, held it was round. So far, however, philosophers have disgracefully neglected the clear connections between these well-known facts. Second only, of course, to the disinterested search for truth, no task is more pleasing to scholars than exposing the negligence, ignorance and stupidity of their fellows. To both these pleasures we now address ourselves.

Let us first recall the balloon incident. It began when Winnie-the-Pooh asked Christopher Robin he had a balloon, and Christopher Robin asked why he wanted one.

Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that no*body was listening, put his paw to his mouth, and said in a deep whisper. 'Honey!'



Pooh Bear's secrecy alone should alert us that something more than mere material honey is in question Everyone who knew him at all must have known hi typically bearlike passion for that sweet substance So why the secrecy?

Hasty thinkers may jump to the obvious conclusion that Winnie-the-Pooh was simply anxious keep this particular honey to himself. Alas! rt is us such superficial reading that has blinded generations to the true depth of Mime's great work and denied him his proper place beside Plato. For he indeed is to Pooh Bear as Plato is to Socrates.

A very little thought is enough to show how implausible it is to interpret honey' in this context in its everyday sense. Why should Winnie-the-Pooh take such elaborate precautions to protect honey that was so difficult to reach? On the material level, even he, with the help of a balloon, failed to get any.

What then is the deeper meaning of 'honey'? What was Winnie-the-Pooh really seeking?

It is no surprise to find our question answered, partly at least, in St Matthew's Gospel, which tells us that John the Baptist fed on 'locusts and wild honey'; in Dean Swift, who associates honey with 'the two noblest of ~things, which are sweetness and light'; and in the hymn that describes the heavenly Jerusalem as 'with milk and honey blest'.

These quotations - chosen out of many - make it clear that there was an ancient and persisting tradition which made honey a symbol either of some spiritual quest, as in St John's case, or the reward of the successful questor, as in the other examples.

Readers who are more familiar with 'sweetness and light' in Matthew Arnold than in Swift will find it easy to apply them to Pooh Bear, who spread these admirable qualities around wherever he went.

It is not our purpose here to examine the ques*tion of Winnie-the-Pooh's spirituality or his claims to sanctity. The case for his canonization is at too early and delicate a stage for that to be appropriate. For the moment, it is enough to say Hoff has dearly demonstrated that Pooh Bear has achieved Enlightenment by listening to the voice within. We remember too that Socrates, whose similarity to the Bear we shall repeatedly recognize, has often been regarded as a mystic.

Here, though1 we are concerned with Pooh the philosopher, and so we can state confidently that the primary meaning of 'honey' in this parable philosophic truth.

So far, we have concentrated on the symbolism of the honey, but of course the balloon is equally important. We have already hinted that here symbolizes the earth. Let us now explore this idea to learn something of its full richness.

The shape of the balloon makes the elementary symbolism obvious enough, while. the picture C the balloon floating in the air is as near to the earth floating in space as the imaginative limits of this parable allow. Nevertheless, this picture prompt some questions. It even raises what the shallow minded may consider difficulties.

If, such people may object, we do, for the sake argument, accept +his rather wild theory of a hidden meaning, then surely this incident shows that Winnie-the-Pooh spectacularly failed in his quest for truth. For he did not gain the honey, and Christopher Rob had to rescue him by shooting the balloon – and Pooh Bear down.

What1 others may ask, is the connection between the shape of the earth and philosophic truth? Isn't this confusing philosophy with astronomy?

To answer the second question first, may we point out that the separation of science from philosophy is comparatively recent: Well into modern times what we now call 'science' was named natural philosophy'. The very earliest Greek philosophers were cosmologists, that is, enquirers about the nature of the universe. Row did it begin? What was it made of? What were the stars and planets? How far off were they? What shape was the earth?

Remembering, as we must always remember, that Winnie-the-Pooh was a philosopher in a truly universal sense, we can see it was perfectly natural that he should concern himself with cosmology. He would not be the unique phenomenon that he is, if he did not encapsulate the whole of Western philosophy.

The intelligent reader will already have realized the Bear was here reminding us that at some time between 550 and 500 BC Pythagoreans taught that the earth was round and revolved round a central fire. Two centuries later, Aristotle repeated that the earth was round, though he regarded it as stationary, and placed in the centre of the universe. And it was Aristotle's picture that was accepted by most educated Europeans until the seventeenth century, when the sun-centred system of Copernicus and Galileo took its place.

When we turn to the first objection, we must frankly admit a more real difficulty. The story of Pooh Bear, the balloon and the honey does seem to show him failing in his quest. So how should we proceed?

By now, the perceptive reader will feel every confidence in our ability to find an allegorical interpretation1 and the perceptive reader will be right. There are several interpretations, but they do not a fit easily together. We will select the more obvious ones and discuss the problems arising. Finally w will suggest a solution.

1. The first interpretation is that Pooh Bear is her warning us that the philosopher's task is long an arduous. If we attempt this task, we must not expect our first endeavours to lead us to our goal. It significant that a great contemporary philosopher, Sir Karl Popper, called his autobiography Unended Quest. We must be prepared for disappointment.' Inevitably, especially in the early stages, these disappointments will make us downcast, just as Cr exemplar was literally cast down to earth.

In its own way, the quest for truth demands a much courage as the quest for the North Pole. Cu hero rose from the earth and continued his search until he found the North Pole (Chapter Eight). In this, as in so many ways, he is our moral as we. as our intellectual guide.

2. The second explanation is similar to the first, but more precise and concrete. Whereas the first was a1 general warning about the philosopher's difficulties the second is particularly concerned with science or natural philosophy. Consider Pooh's words explain mg why he wants to come down.

'These are the wrong sort of bees - . So I should think they would make the wrong sort of honey.'

Pooh Bear had set out to bring honey (truth) and t] balloon (the hypothesis that the earth was a sphere) together. That is, to demonstrate the truth of the round-earth hypothesis. What then made him recoil? Pooh himself tells us quite explicitly: he discover that the bees that made this h6ney were 'the wrong sort of bees', and he deduced they would therefore make 'the wrong sort of honey'.

Something in his original hypothesis was incorrect. Obviously not that the earth was round. That, we know, was correct what then? Something to do with the bees.

What was it that made him decide these bees we the wrong sort? His decision came immediate1y after we learn

One bee sat down on the nose of the cloud [i.e., Winnie-the-Pooh's nose] for a moment, and then got up again

'Christopher - ow! Robin,' called out the cloud

In this situation, the only reasonable explanation of1 'ow!' is that the bee had stung Winnie-the-Pooh’s nose. Now if we ask any qualified person - in this case, anyone who has been stung by a bee - what did that person feel when stung? the answer will be, 'I felt a burning sensation.

Precisely: a burning sensation. And what is the usual cause of burning? Fire. And this of course brings us straight back to the Pythagoreans, and a serious error in their picture of the universe.

For when they said that the earth revolved round a central fire, they did not-mean the sun. According to Pythagoras, or probably his later followers, the sun itself, like the earth and other heavenly bodies, revolved round this central fire, which they called the Altar of Zeus. No human ever saw this fire, they explained, because the inhabited parts of the globe were always turned away from it.

So when Pooh Bear experienced the burning pain of a bee sting, this symbolized the philosophical pain of discarding a cherished hypothesis. We note the unhesitating courage with which he performed this painful duty.

We also see how great his anguish was when we go on to read 'his arms were so stiff from holding on to the string of the balloon all that time that they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week.' What a brilliant picture of the way in which habit and emotion may cling to a belief that evidence and reason have rejected!

But here you may object that Pooh seems to have over-reacted, abandoning the round-earth hypo thesis as well as the Pythagorean fire. For how else can we understand the shot-down balloon? Here we come to a central problem, which will meet us again and again in our study. How far dare we probe into that Enormous Brain, and - an even more delicate matter - can we claim any insight in the feelings of its owner? In this particular case, it not an impertinent intrusion to speculate on emotions at the moment his hopes, like his balloon, collapsed?

Such scruples do credit to the delicacy of those who feel them, but I think they are misguide Indeed, with the best will in the world, they are no compliment to Pooh, for they imply that h himself suffered the limited knowledge of the philosophers he expounds and explains. Can any serious Ursinologist (student of the Great Bear) believe fit our universal philosopher was, even for a moment deceived by the Pythagorean error?

Certainly not He was not experiencing error an! anguish but demonstrating them for the benefit of U his readers, who are less well informed. So even we take the deflated balloon to mean the (temporary) abandonment of the spherical-earth theory, he was not discarding it himself, but merely warning us not to discard a whole theory just because there are valid objections to part of it.