In Act 1 Scene 5 of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet says to his friend:
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Hamlet has been told by the night watch that the ghost of his father has appeared to them. Hamlet and his friend, Horatio go up to the battlements and the ghost appears. Horatio is a practical, down to earth scholar and he is stunned by this – he doesn’t believe in ghosts. He says: “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.” Hamlet replies: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” He is suggesting that the human imagination is limited and that there are many things we don’t know, things that haven’t been discovered and, in fact, things we haven’t even dreamt of.
“There are more things in heaven and earth”, Hamlet quote
Meaning of “There are more things in Heaven and Earth”
It is here that we see Shakespeare for what he is. Besides being the greatest poet who ever wrote English poetry and the most brilliant writer of stage entertainment, he also had insights far beyond those of his contemporaries: he understood that the knowledge about the world that scientists and explorers had discovered, was only the beginning of what there is that we don’t yet know about, of what is still waiting for us to discover, and that, in fact, taking into account the work being done by astronomers, a lot more beyond the earth too. He was very aware of the limitations of the human imagination and, in fact, he was right and we are still being stunned by new discoveries, both about our planet and the universe.
The discovery of what there is in Heaven and Earth
Shakespeare’s contemporary, Galileo Galilei, pioneered the use of the telescope for observing the night sky. He discovered that the earth was not at the centre of a perfect and unchanging cosmos, and that, in reality, the Earth revolved around the Sun instead of the other way round, and that it was its spinning that produced night and day. He was persecuted by the Church for his undermining of the traditional idea of how God had created the universe. Human beings had not imagined such a thing before that.
Shakespeare’s contemporaries believed that human beings had been created fully formed by God in a paradisiacal garden. Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species outlined in detail, the evolution of human beings, from a single cell entity over billions of years, to what they are now, and still evolving, to a condition in the future, which, again, is beyond our imaginations. He also showed that we are actually apes, and are closely related to the likes of chimpanzees and gorillas, having a common ancestor.
Science and religion
Scientific discoveries have put science at odds with religion. Scientists are usually agnostic concerning the existence of God, whereas religious men and women insist on His existence. The difference is that religion is based on faith – the belief in God, rather than knowing that He exists, although they will say that they know He does. Scientists say that we don’t know and it is only when he has been scientifically verified – when we have discovered Him – that we will be able to say that we know.
When Shakespeare puts “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy” into the mouth of one of his characters he is demonstrating what the scientists of our time now know. He is showing how different his thinking is from most of the people of his time, who believed what the Church insisted on: that it had everything worked out for all time.
Other wise Shakespearean sayings
Shakespeare demonstrates his timeless, universal, understanding over and over again in the profound things he puts into the mouths of his characters. Such as:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 3
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin
Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 3
The common curse of mankind – folly and ignorance.
Troilus and Cressida, Act 2, Scene 3
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them
Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 2
There is no darkness but ignorance
Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 2
We know what we are, but know not what we may be
Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5
You paint the church and Christianity with a broad brush. Individuals representing the institutional church interpreted without justification what they thought the Bible claimed. There was no scientific justification or scriptural justification for their opinion. You do a disservice to the cause of Truth to claim otherwise! The legacy of Darwin and the claim humans descended from chimps is an open question with little support from real science in my opinion as someone with an advanced degree, (PhD organic chemistry).
It seems that this quote is more aptly interpreted as man’s folly in thinking that he can figure out God. It’s true that humans are discovering more about the universe, but we are mere infants thinking ourselves clever to pull a plum out of a pie.
Please read : “The Human Condition” solved…..written by Australian Biologist— evolution at its finest……..
Of course the church “interpreted without justification what they thought the Bible claimed.” That’s not saying much. Anybody can interpret anything without justification if they so choose. The church has a habit of making claims about the Bible and “God” offering up any justification or especially evidence. But that’s fine. To each his own.
But as far as “the legacy of Darwin”, scientists who study human evolution do not claim that humans descended from chimps. No “real” science makes that claim. While you may have a PhD degree in organic chemisry apparently it hasn’t helped you acquire this commonly known scientific evidence about evolution. The claim is (and it’s backed by OVERWHELMING “support from real science”) that apes and humans share a common ancestor. The fossil record and human and ape DNA research is the essence of this evidence. And of course it’s more complex than that. Anyone can easily find this information in many of the peer reviewed scientific journals available today.
Darwin’s great insight, and the unifying principle of biology today, is that all species are related to one another like sisters, cousins, and distant kin in a vast family tree of life. The implications are breathtaking; if we could travel back far enough in time, we would find common ancestors between ourselves and every other living organism, from porcupines to flamingoes to cactuses. Our immediate evolutionary family is comprised of the hominoids, the group of primates that includes the “lesser apes” (siamangs and gibbons) as well as the “great apes” (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans). Among the great apes, our closest relatives are the chimpanzees and bonobos. And that “real science” that you talk about is the fossil record, along with studies of human and ape DNA, that clearly indicates humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos sometime around 6 million years ago (mya).
https://www.nature.com/scitable/content/ne0000/ne0000/ne0000/ne0000/89011172/Figure-1-626_1_2.jpg
Your throwing crap at the wall hoping it will stick. Doesn’t sound like you are up to speed on recent science. Extreme cherry picking at it’s finest. If that fairy tale works for you, oh well……..
I think the church tries desperately to explain the unexplainable- information written in the simplest of form so as to appeal to the masses and interpreted wherever the “person” might be….brings to mind the word tomato vs tomato….where the “a” is pronounced differently (long and short) yet meaning is the same—-mystery!!!
The tonic accent is correctly placed on “your”, not “philosophy”:
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in *your* philosophy.”
Hamlet is not questioning the limits of philosophy (science) in general, just Horatio’s version of it.
Well said, Pete!
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in this guy’s philosophy. He’s right, of course, that science has discovered much about the nature of our physical reality. But Shakespeare is speaking about things of a more supernatural sort (ghosts for instance) that the materialist Horatio wouldn’t understand.