Synthesis

Use in the book

The Hermetic account describes the combination of intellect’s coverings in an earthen body. Soul mediates for intellect and uses spirit as a servant governing the creature. The coverings have distinct functions; synthesis does not make soul, spirit, and body interchangeable names for one undifferentiated material.

Places to read

1. I.48.3.2The combination of coverings mediates between intellect and earthly body.

Translation in this edition

“Combination” reads naturally in the garment image; “synthesis” is useful when contrasted with resolution.

Use in the book

The bundle-and-sticks comparison describes analysis as judging the whole through its components, then asserts that synthesis must deceive less before the unfinished “Why.” A fuller educational note makes synthetic observation rapid and penetrating. Some good minds lack that capacity, just as others lack the patience of analysis. The contrast does not rank every synthetic thinker above every analytical one: it warns that forcing an unsuitable method upon pupils can dislocate their intellectual gait.

Synthetic physics displays the order of the whole; analytic physics displays the apparent incoherence of separated parts. The later refusal to defend a synthetic contempt for Condillac by analysis preserves a deliberately personal, polemical use. In a further extension, a common opinion or synthesis can bind a lay association, distinguished from the shared rule and distinctive life of an ecclesiastical order. Whole apprehension, intellectual aptitude and social combination should not be collapsed into one technical definition.

Places to read

1. I, p. 276, entry 6, ¶1Analysis judges the bundle by its sticks.
2. II, p. 548, entry 9, ¶1Synthetic aptitude is distinguished from trainable analytical procedure.
3. II, p. 768, entry 8, ¶1Two kinds of physics exhibit whole and parts.
4. II, p. 866, entry 1, ¶1Synthesis can bind a lay association.
5. II, p. 898, entry 6, ¶1A synthetic verdict refuses analytical interrogation.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains synthesis and synthetic. The questioned attribution “[Locke?]” and anomalous French Le synthèse are preserved. At II.768, “the former” follows the usual distal reference of celle-là, although the nearer analytic physics remains a possible referent; the unnamed they is not identified. The fragment “Why” is not answered by the translator.