Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI by Gayle Rogers (review)

In an impressive work of interdisciplinary scholarship, Gayle Rogers traces the notion of "speculation" and terms denoting it from their origins in Greek and Latin philosophy through their evocations in Christianized medieval and early modern thought to their later fortunes. "Speculation" becomes a suspect and valorized agent in finance and most recently has been separated from direct human control with the advent of computer-driven algorithmic equations regulating investments. The term of choice to describe both sublime religious wonder and calculation of odds in dice games, speculation's gyrations from positive to negative connotations and back again correlate with major shifts in intellectual history, material practices, and social norms. Roger's study, engagingly and accessibly written, represents comparative scholarship at its best. Equally at home in radically different contexts and eras, its expositions are vivid and its arguments compelling.

The seemingly easy tracing of the modern English "speculation" to the Latin speculatio and Old French speculacïon, which becomes in Chaucer speculacioun, belies a complex linguistic-conceptual prehistory. Rogers calls attention to Augustine's commentary on 2 Corinthians 3:18, where Paul's describing one beholding God's glory "as in a glass" depends for its sense on awareness that in the ancient world mirrors were quite blurry. For this reason, what is seen via speculum (reflective glass, mirror) is necessarily distorted and shadowy, and thus categorically distinct from what is seen via specula (a watchtower). At stake was the difference between looking at the world as a mirror (speculum) reflecting (necessarily imperfectly) God, and looking for God's glory by assuming or ascending to a "higher" and distanced view (as from a specula). For Augustine, speculatio with its mirror associations was suspiciously proximate to vain imaginings, in contrast to visio (direct sight) and its sublimation or dematerialization as visio intellectualis. By contrast, Boethius valorizes speculatio by suggesting that "speculation," Aristotle's "contemplation" (theoria), becomes the means by which the mind lifts itself above the dross of material understandings to accede to undistorted perception of divine realities. Attending carefully to Boethius's translations of Aristotle, Rogers notes how he presents speculatio in Consolation of Philosophy as the means by which abstract, higher truth becomes for humans visible, allowing reason to attain the high vantage point figured as seeing from a watchtower (specula).

Chaucer's translation of Boethius brings speculacion into English, which he associates with lokynge in a manner that allows the hand and wisdom of Providence to be seen. In the early modern era, speculation can denote theory/contemplation in the sense valorized by Boethius, but it also may be associated with idleness of mind, mere imaginings, and consequently theologically heterodox, soul-endangering musings. Rhetoric dismissive of "vain speculations" became a key motif of Calvinist discourse. Its reiterated circulation among Puritans brought into common English usage and thought strongly anti-theoretical, anti-speculative presumptions, against which was emphatically contrasted what was taken to be "practical" (originally denoting what concerned salvation, but then expanded to worldly types of usefulness).

Once the "practical" is equated with the useful or efficacious, valorization of labor and industry follow. Just as time and energy are viewed as resources to be invested profitably or squandered foolishly, so "speculation" is figured as activity that bets on future possible events. As such, it is affiliated with wishful thinking and overestimation of human sagacity. For these reasons, "speculation" is paired with impious arrogance and desire for unearned wealth. Arrogance, greed, and imprudence fuel "manias" of speculation that create a glut of dubious investments that inflate "bubbles" which invariably burst. The early 18th-century South Seas Bubble became the iconic and well-cited exemplar. Widespread use of "speculation" as an admonitory and pejorative term expressed moral and religious unease with capitalistic wealth-creation, as did thinking of investors as parasitic profiteers. Suspicion of financial speculation aligned with thinking of "projectors" of speculative ventures as people addicted to idle imaginings or fantastical theoretical constructions.

Rehabilitating speculation was central to Adam Smith's defense...