Now if the antitypes represent a breakdown in the integral dialectics of the scale of values, if such breakdown represents a movement away from the ideal path of progress and into the path of decline, then they are a manifestation of social and cultural evil, which Lonergan refers to as the social
surd. The Church does not and cannot contribute to working for the kingdom by manifesting evil in its own life and operations.
This is an example of what Lonergan calls the "social
surd." It is a consequence of the basic sin of the human misuse of freedom that has had consequences on human society.
Our situation becomes even more ab
surd when one considers how centralised Britain is.
A consistent method structured practically everything Emerson wrote--a method of phenomenological description which presupposed a modified Platonic universe in which the
surd historical facts of the material universe express the universal unchanging laws of the transcendent realm of Spirit.
In this alternative evil is not a
surd challenging the Christian notion of God.
They are a "social
surd"(107) - a mixture of intelligibility and unintelligibility, of light and darkness.
Even for the disordered self-love of modern individualists, the
surd is socially and culturally mediated.
* How do we know that pi is a transcendental number and not a
surd?
(17) "Absurd" also participates in this doubleness, incorporating Latin roots for "deaf," "silent," "mute," and "dumb," as well as the term "
surd," widely used in the early modern period to refer to irrational numbers.
The factors of a difference of two squares, for example, should be recognised in an algebraic expression but also when they occur in rationalising the denominator of a
surd expression.
"These eleven 'definities,'" explains Hassan, "add up to a
surd, perhaps absurd.