The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It

The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It
by Jean F. Drew

The Ancient Heritage of Western Science
The history of science goes back at least two and a half millennia, to the pre-Socratics of ancient Greece. Democritus and Leucippus were the fathers of atomic theory — at least they were the first thinkers ever to formulate one. Heraclitus was the first thinker to consider what in the modern age developed as the laws of thermodynamics. Likewise Plato’s Chora, in the myth of the Demiurge (see Timaeus), may have been the very first anticipation of what later would be referred to as the quantum world. Plato’s great student Aristotle was the first thinker to put science, or “natural philosophy” as it was then called — and ever after was called, until the 17th century, when philosophical positivism became influential — on an empirical, experimental basis.

Thus science was born in the ancient world of the classical Greeks. What motivated the great thinkers of this yet-unsurpassed era of human intellectual achievement was the irrepressible, inexhaustible eros, or desire, to understand the Universe, and thereby to understand man’s place in it. In this process the Greeks confronted a two-fold problem which Plato spent a lifetime elaborating. On the one hand, the original “pull” that drew these thinkers into their quest for knowledge of the Universe — or Cosmos as the Greeks termed it — was ontological. On the other hand, in order for the quest to become intelligible to the thinking subject and thus communicable to others, the engagement of epistemological issues was totally unavoidable.

By ontology we mean “the science of being”: that is, the science of what “is” or what exists, how it came to be, and by what rules or laws it is organized. By epistemology we mean the “science of knowledge”: that is, what can the human mind know, how does it know it — and by what means can such knowledge be verified.

To the Greek mind, the Cosmos was a single, unified, living Whole that is ever so much more than the mere sum of its parts. Rather, all of its parts were thought to be ordered and ultimately harmonically, dynamically unified into a single universal body according to a single universal blueprint. Likewise the sum total of true knowledge, or episteme was thought to be an undivided whole.

Fast-Forward to the Sixteenth Century….
According to Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos, “The most fundamental aspect of the Western intellectual tradition is the assumption that there is a fundamental division between the material and the immaterial world or between the realm of matter and the realm of pure mind or spirit. The metaphysical framework based on this assumption is known as ontological dualism. As the word dual implies, the framework is predicated on an ontology, or a conception of the nature of God or being, that assumes reality has two distinct and separable dimensions. The concept of Being as continuous, immutable, and having a prior or separate existence from the world of change dates from the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. The same qualities were associated with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and they were considerably amplified by the role played in theology by Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy….

“Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton were all inheritors of a cultural tradition in which ontological dualism was a primary article of faith. Hence the idealization of the mathematical ideal as a source of communication with God, which dates from Pythagoras, provided a metaphysical foundation for the emerging natural sciences…. [T]he creators of classical physics believed that doing physics was a form of communion with the geometrical and mathematical forms resident in the perfect mind of God.”¹

In the 16th century the great French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Rene Descartes still recognized an ontological dualism that distinguished between body and mind, matter and spirit. And as Wolfgang Smith points out, Descartes, like Galileo and Newton, “is sometimes willing to resolve philosophical difficulties by recourse to Deity.”²

Descartes was a passionate champion of the idea of universal mechanics. He strove to lay down the theoretical foundations for “a rigorous mechanical science, based upon mathematical principles which would be able to explain the workings of Nature, from the movements of planets to the fine motions associated with animal bodies.”³

Descartes’ world is a mechanical world, “…made up entirely of ‘res extensa’ (the later Newtonian ‘matter’), moving in space according to mechanical laws. All the rest is to be relegated to ‘res cogitans’ or thinking substance, which exists in its own right as a kind of spiritual entity.”⁴

On this point Wolfgang Smith observes, “It is noteworthy that Descartes came to this res cogitans at the outset of his meditations through the famous ‘cogito ergo sum.’ It appeared to him as the one and only immediate certainty, whereas the existence of a mechanical universe, external to the res cogitans, was to be arrived at later through a logical argument, in which the idea of God and His veracity plays the leading role.”⁵

As Wolfhart Pannenberg writes, Descartes maintained that the idea of God “is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of every other idea, even that of the ego itself.”⁶

Thus Smith exclaims, “It is indeed a remarkable irony that the basic premise of modern materialism should initially have been founded upon theology!”⁷

Descartes’ model of the universe as essentially mechanistic — constituted only by “matter in its motions” moving according to the physical laws — was taken up by Newton and, in due course, became the preeminent idea in all of modern science up to recent times.

By the eighteenth century, the idea of any metaphysical basis for “natural philosophy” had increasingly fallen into disrepute. The term itself disappeared from use, replaced by the word “science.” Mechanics was increasingly regarded as “an autonomous science,” leaving no role for God. The great French mathematician Pierre-Sinon Laplace was enormously influential in this transition. As Nadeau and Kafatos observe:

“Laplace is recognized for eliminating not only the theological component of classical physics but the ‘entire metaphysical component’ as well. The epistemology of science requires, he said, that we proceed by inductive generalizations from observed facts to hypotheses that are ‘tested by observed conformity of the phenomena.’ What was unique about Laplace’s view of hypotheses was his insistence that we cannot attribute reality to them. Although concepts like force, mass, motion, cause, and laws are obviously present in classical physics, they exist in Laplace’s view only as quantities. Physics is concerned, he argued, with quantities that we associate as a matter of convenience with concepts, and the truth about nature are only the quantities.”⁸

Thus the science of Nature is reduced to a quantitative mathematical description. This positivist vision of physical reality denies Nature any meaning other than the mathematical formalism of physical theory employed in its description.

The False “Cartesian Split”
Here we see the emergence of the full-blown body-mind, matter-spirit “Cartesian split,” as we have called it. The great success of the mathematically-describable “matter” side of the epistemological divide evidenced by a long series of brilliant scientific achievements utterly displaced the “spirit” side and eventually relegated it to virtual oblivion. Science was understood to be about the elucidation of quantities; questions of meaning were no longer relevant.

Thus the current orthodoxy of science reduces to four basis premises: “(1) The physical world is made up of inert and changeless matter, and this matter changes only in terms of location in space; (2) the behavior of matter mirrors physical theory and is inherently mathematical; (3) matter as the unchanging unit of physical reality can be exhaustively understood by mechanics, or by the applied mathematics of motion; and (4) the mind of the observer is separate from the observed system of matter, and the ontological bridge between the two is physical law and theory.”⁹

On this formalism, even “the mind of the observer” is reducible to the operations of physical-chemical laws: The modern-day scientific materialist insists that mind is only the epiphenomenon of the physical-chemical activity of the brain. This conclusion is seemingly inevitable, given the utter collapse of the “mind” or “spirit” side of the Cartesian divide, which historically has always connected man to a metaphysical, immaterial reality beyond the physical world. And yet notwithstanding (4) above, this scientific formalism evinces a paradox, a seeming self-contradiction: The formalism requires the observer to be not outside the material system he observes; for the observer himself is completely reducible to its rules. He is just another “cog” in the universal, physical machine. So how can the observer be “separate from the observed system of matter?”

I am not aware that this question has been much engaged in recent times. Suffice it to say that this formalism gives short shrift indeed to the problems of mind, consciousness, intelligence, free will, and even human existence per se. And these are the necessary qualities of “the observer,” in order for there to be an observer.

The grip this formalism has on the biological sciences seems particularly unfortunate. For example, consider a case from embryology:

“Geneticists appreciate that cell differentiation utterly depends on cells knowing how to differentiate early on and then somehow remembering that they are different and passing on this vital piece of information to subsequent generations of cells. At the moment, scientists shrug their shoulders as to how this may be accomplished, particularly at such a rapid pace…. As for the orchestration of cell processes, biochemists never actually ask the question.”¹⁰

Notwithstanding, as the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins freely admits, “Exactly how [cell division] eventually leads to the development of a baby is a story which will take decades, perhaps centuries, for embryologists to work out. But it is a fact that it does.”¹¹

It seems obvious that cells “knowing” and “remembering” are not processes that can be conveniently reduced to the comparatively simple operations of physics and chemistry. Nevertheless, this is precisely what Dawkins seems determined to do — which is why the needful explanations will take “decades, perhaps centuries” to work out. The possibility that the explanation cannot be given in terms of the force-field driven reactions of physics and chemistry alone is one that Dawkins seemingly refuses to entertain. But if this observation is valid, then maybe it wouldn’t just be decades or centuries, but maybe never, before an elucidation can be given on this basis. It seems a scientific materialist like Dawkins seemingly, simply refuses to entertain this possibility.

Reconciling Biology to the Insights of Quantum Theory
One gets the very strong impression that, today, scientific materialists working in the field of biology, and the Neodarwinists in particular, are extraordinarily resistant to the idea that quantum theory has anything at all to do with their discipline.

And yet everything that we observe in our 4-dimensional (S₁ + S₂ + S₃ + T₁) reality rests upon, depends on, what is going on in the “microworld” of quantum activity.

Quantum theory — and also relativity theory for that matter — places the observer squarely into the game of reality, in such a way that one is tempted to say that it is the observer himself who “constructs” the reality he observes.

Moreover, the microworld of quantum theory speaks the language of universal fields, of quantum indeterminacy, of non-local action, of superposition (“quantum entanglement”), of superluminal velocities, of the primacy of the observer — that is, of all sorts of “bizarre” phenomena which are not at all observable in the macroworld of four-dimensional reality.

Analogically speaking, it’s as if many present-day biologists wish to look only at that part of the iceberg that surfaces above the waterline, considering that the submerged yet immense depths supporting the iceberg’s visible tip are irrelevant to their concerns. And then they think they can arrive at an explanation of life and evolution by remaining blind to the deep structure of reality on which everything in the Universe is ultimately based.

-- In the 1920s, the Russian scientist Alexander Gurwitsch postulated that “a field, rather than chemicals alone, was probably responsible for the structural formation of the body.”¹²

-- Italian physicist Renato Nobili amassed experimental proof that [field-borne] electromagnetic frequencies occur in animal tissues.¹³

-- Russian Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi postulated that protein cells act as semiconductors, preserving and passing along the energy of electrons as information.¹⁴

-- F.-A. Popp postulated a field of electromagnetic radiation as the “mechanism” that somehow guides the growth of the cellular body.¹⁵

And then there is British biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who argues that biochemical processes associated with “gene activation and proteins no more explain the development of form than delivering building materials to a building site explains the construction of the house built there.”¹⁶

“…Sheldrake argues … Current genetic theory … doesn’t explain … how a developing [living] system can self-regulate, or grow normally in the course of development if a part of the system is added or removed, and doesn’t explain how an organism regenerates — replacing missing or damaged structures…. Sheldrake worked out his hypothesis of formative causation, which states that the forms of self-organizing living things — everything from molecules and organisms to societies and even entire galaxies — are shaped by morphic fields. These fields have a morphic resonance — a cumulative memory — of similar systems through cultures and time. So that species of animals and plants ‘remember’ not only how to look but also how to act. Rupert Sheldrake uses the term ‘morphic fields’ …to describe the self-organizing properties of biological systems, from molecules to bodies to societies. ‘Morphic resonance’ is, in his view, ‘the influence of like upon like through space and time.’ He believes these fields (and he thinks there are many of them) are different from electromagnetic fields because they reverberate across generations with an inherent memory of the correct shape and form. The more we learn, the easier it is for others to follow in our footsteps.”¹⁷

“One fact which led to the development of this theory is the remarkable ability organisms have to repair damage. If you cut an oak tree into little pieces, each little piece, properly treated, can grow into a new tree. So from a tiny fragment, you can get a whole. Machines do not do that; they do not have this power of remaining whole if you remove parts of them. Chop a computer up into small pieces and all you get is a broken computer. It does not regenerate into lots of little computers. But if you chop a flatworm into small pieces, each piece can grow into a new flatworm. Another analogy is a magnet. If you chop a magnet into small pieces, you do have lots of small magnets, each with a complete magnetic field. This is a wholistic property that fields have that mechanical systems do not have unless they are associated with fields. Still another example is the hologram, any part of which contains the whole. A hologram is based on interference patterns within the electromagnetic field. Fields thus have a wholistic property which was very attractive to the biologists who developed this concept of morphogenetic fields.”¹⁸

Hello, can we say “field-mediated collective consciousness,” anyone? At least as a scientific hypothesis worth pursuing?

The point is, given its presuppositions, Darwinist evolutionary theory has absolutely no use for such a hypothesis: The doctrine calls for random mutation plus natural selection — premised on the purely physico-chemical “behavior” of matter — which supposedly explains everything about the evolution of the biota. Forget about fields, forget about information: It’s a “billiard ball,” mechanistic, purely material universe governed by chance unfolding under the exclusive influence of the physical laws. And that’s that. End of story.

Which is deliberately to turn one’s back to what Niels Bohr recognized as “the very nature of quantum theory,” which

“… forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealizations of observation and definition respectively. Just as … relativity theory has taught us that the convenience of distinguishing sharply between space and time rests solely on the smallness of the velocities ordinarily met with compared to the speed of light, we learn from the quantum theory that the appropriateness of our visual space-time descriptions depends entirely on the small value of the quantum of action compared to the actions involved in ordinary sense perception. Indeed, in the description of atomic phenomena, the quantum postulate presents us with the task of developing a ‘complementary’ theory the consistency of which can be judged only by weighing the possibilities of definition and observation.”¹⁹

Classical physics — which arguably deals only with “the tip of the iceberg” of reality — is a workable approximation of the doings of Nature that seems precise only because the largeness of the speed of light and the smallness of the quantum of action give rise to negligible effects. In other words, classical physics and chemistry work just fine at the level of the macroworld.

But the effects produced in the microworld (i.e., the quantum world) and the world described by relativity theory are there nonetheless. It’s just that the quantum of action is so small as compared with macroscopic values that obtaining reliable results respecting the behavior of macro-objects is not affected by it. And the speed of light is so great that we need not take it into consideration in most of the “macroworld” problems that we wish to solve.

Bohr, father of the Copenhagen Intrepretation of quantum mechanics — a world-class epistemologist as well as world-class scientist — concluded that “quantum mechanics [and not classical mechanics, which Bohr regarded as a “subset” or special case of quantum mechanics] … is the complete description, and the measuring instruments in quantum mechanical experiments obey this description. Although we can safely ignore quantum mechanical effects in dealing with macro-level phenomena in most cases because those effects are small enough for practical purposes, we cannot ignore the implications of quantum mechanics on the macro level for the obvious reason that they are there. Bohr argued that since the quantum of action is always present [and always subject to Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle and likewise Cantor’s incompleteness principle] on the macro level, this requires ‘a final renunciation of the classical ideal of causality and a radical revision of our attitude toward the problem of physical reality.’”²⁰

The problems of Life, its origin, and laws; and of consciousness, informative communication, intelligence, so far have been devilishly resistant to explanation by the “rules” of the macroscopic world — that is, by the physical and chemical laws alone. Studying the behavior of a classical gas cannot give us much insight into the “mysteries” of biological self-organization, or explain the ability of living systems to be self-mobilizing, “choosing” systems. For gases and lifeforms are entirely different “orders of being.”

The “Cartesian Split” Is a Hallucination; Ergo, We Should Get Rid of It
It seems that if ever there is to be an explanation of “the tricky machinery of Life,” it will not be found in classical physics. Quantum physics is what opens up the vast new vistas needed to engage the problem of the emergence of Life, and to explain its behavior.

That, in the opinion of the present writer, is sufficient reason to recognize the so-called Cartesian Split — which attempts to divide natural science from the “spiritual sciences” — as a total illusion that we’d best be rid of, for two main reasons that presently come to mind.

(1) Quantum theory (and also relativity theory) places preeminent emphasis on the role of the “observer.” This observer is an intelligent agent. That being the case, he is firmly planted on the Geisteswissenschaften side — that is, on the “spiritual side” — and not the Naturwissenschaften side — that is the “natural sciences side” —of the Cartesian divide. It seems science needs a better method to re-integrate the observer into its formulations than it now has. It is a profound fallacy to regard the observer as the mere product of physico-chemical actions. The “problem of the observer” simply cannot be comprehensively, logically understood in such terms.

(2) Each and every one of the eminent, world-class scientists cited in this article was also a world-class philosopher, consciously or unconsciously. Not a single one of them failed to touch on the most fundamental problems of ontology and epistemology. And the insights of each of these great thinkers shaped the evolutionary course of human knowledge — of the total episteme or, in the German, the Wissenschaft — in the most profound ways.

At the end of the day, it seems profitless to split the “knower” from “the known.” For the knower — the observer — is on the one hand a part and participant of the system that he observes; and on the other, his observation constitutes — or has profound implications for the further development of — the system he observes.

Yet effecting such a division is exactly the program of the “Cartesian Split.” Thus the present writer considers the split to be false, and ultimately tending to divide a man against himself — as well as dividing man from Nature itself, of which man is plainly, ineluctibly “part and participant.”

¹Nadeau, Robert and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe, p. 83f.
²Smith, Wolfgang, Cosmos and Transcendence, p. 29.
³Smith, op. cit., p. 28.
⁴Smith, op. cit., p. 29.
⁵Smith, ibid., p. 29.
⁶Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Toward a Theology of Nature, p. 42. ⁷Smith, op. cit., p. 29.
⁸Nadeau/Kafatos, op. cit., p. 85.
⁹Nadeau/Kafatos, op. cit., p. 84.
¹⁰McTaggert, Lynne, The Field, p. 46.
¹¹McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 46.
¹²McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 47.
¹³McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 49.
¹⁴McTaggert, Lynne, ibid., p. 49.
¹⁵McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 47.
¹⁶McTaggert, Lynne, op. cit., p. 46f.
¹⁷McTaggert, Lynne, ibid., p. 46f.
¹⁸Sheldrake, Rupert, http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/morphic1_paper.html
¹⁹Nadeau/Kafatos, op. cit., p. 91.
²⁰Nadeau/Kafatos, ibid., p. 91.

OK, I'm dizzy.

YIKES!!! Me too, 2ndreconmarine!!! It’s like Dorothy said to Toto: “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” :^)

Thank you so much for your excellent, elegant presentation of the two-slit experiment. Thank you also for the book recommendation: Timothy Ferris’ The Whole Shebang. I’m looking forward to reading it!

May I return the favor and make a book recommendation? That would be Heinz Pagels’ The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature (Simon & Schuster, 1982). His Chapter 13, “The Reality Marketplace,” is especially relevant to the present issues, since it deals with the various interpretations and constructions of what quantum physics is and what it “means.” It’s also hilariously funny in places. Just a sampler/teaser:

Pagels opens: “We are coming to the end of our road to quantum reality. The road may well go on far into the future of physics, and new insights into the quantum theory may be found. Perhaps quantum theory is experimentally wrong or incomplete, something that is not logically impossible. No doubt there are incredible things yet to be discovered on the road to quantum reality. But in the absence of a new interpretation or the experimental failure of the quantum theory, for us the road has come to a resting place. What we find here is a kind of marketplace – a reality marketplace.

“The reality marketplace has lots of shops, each with a merchant who wants to sell us his version of physical reality. The way the market is set up, we have only enough cash to buy one reality, so it is a very competitive market. We are rather sophisticated buyers now, having learned about the two-[slit] experiment, the EPR and Bell’s experiment, the work on quantum logic and Schrodinger’s cat. The merchants in the shops know about these, too, and nobody disagrees with the actual experiments. It is the interpretation of these experiments in terms of physical reality that is being sold. The interpretation of experiment is, however, not decided by experiment. To distinguish realities as buyers, we must invoke other criteria, such as paucity of assumptions, potential empirical content, and taste. There are many shops, but we need only look in a few shops with the finest merchandise. We go into these to listen to the sales pitch.”

I just want to give the names of the shops here, and also give one key statement for each:

(1) “Many Universes for Sale”: “Reality is the infinity of all those universes existing in a ‘superspace’ that includes them all.”

(2) “Quantum Logic Shop”: “The lesson of quantum theory can be interpreted to imply that the logic of the physical world is non-Boolian. Logic, usually thought to be prior to any experience, becomes empirical – depending on our experience – just like geometry.”

(3) “Objective Reality Shop”: “The basis of physics … indeed the whole of science is predicated on the existence of objective reality – a world of objects that exists independently of our knowing it.”

(4) “Local Reality Shop”: “…true randomness is unbeatable, which … means it will always defeat you if you try to detect real nonlocal influences. There’s no randomness like quantum randomness.”

By this point in the narrative “our hero,” the reality-buyer, notices that he hasn’t seen anything he really wants to buy, and his head is totally spinning. Then a rabble collects, and a riotous scene ensues, yelling and screaming that the CI is “subjective.”

And so our hero decides to exit the scene and “find a cool park, and there, on a bench smoking a pipe, sits an old man” [who speaks “in a thick Danish accent”]…. And our hero asks him, “Have you bought a reality yet?”

And the old man replies, “No, not yet, and I’m doubtful I will…. I have thought about the problem for a long time and have come to some conclusions in discussions with Einstein.”

So our hero asks, “Where is Einstein now?”

To which the reply: “Einstein left the reality marketplace a long time ago, leaving his cash to me. He would have none of it and took to wandering farther down the road, like the wanderer he was in his youth….

“What I am certain of is that quantum reality is not classical reality – there is no way you can fit it into classical reality. Quantum theory does not predict individual events and classical reality would; the two theories are logically distinct. But even in our attempt to characterize what quantum theory is not, we appeal to classical concepts such as objectivity and local causality. We have no choice in doing this, because we are macroscopic beings and live in a classical, visualizable world to which those concepts apply…. [W]ithin the framework of material possibilities your reality is a matter of choice. Once your mind accepts this, the world will never be the same again. The material world actually imposed this way of thinking on us. I cannot stop wondering about that…. That we may not always know reality is not because it is so far from us but because we are so close to it.”

There’s more; but I can’t spill the beans more than I already have. Anyhoot I thought this was a great chapter in a great book. The topics it raises seem like great grist for the mill of public discussion….

I, too, “am having a great deal of fun with this -- it brings back memories of the intellectual adventure I had when in college.” I remember such days myself. In that spirit, can I tell you what is the single most monstrously bizarre statement that I have ever come across? That would be this conjecture:

There is only one single photon in all of the Universe, “instantiated” in some 10⁸⁰ simultaneous (i.e., superluminal) occurrences at any given frame (ultimately denominated in terms of the Planck constant and Planck time) of 4D spacetime. Talk about “quantum entanglement,” or “quantum non-locality” here! If such a beastie were to exist, then my question would be: How could a denizen of 4D spacetime like me distinguish such an “omnipotent,” singular photon from a universal field?

That’s probably a “crazy question.” But then, the “single photon” conjecture seems pretty nuts to begin with. Still, I think about it anyway. Actually, other people have already been wondering about the incredible natural “sympathy” that seems to obtain between what are regarded as “separate” (i.e., nonlocal) photons, and various hypotheses have been advanced to account for this. To me, the “single photon theory” might actually have explanatory power. But if it did, I wouldn’t quite know what to do next. :^)

Which just tells me, I need to take a rest! For now, anyway.

Thank you, 2ndreconmarine, for your excellent conversation and your perceptive insights.

p.s.: Truly I’m glad my last tiny screed met with your approval. I thought your more “classical” presentation was elegant on its own merits, and duly note that what you espoused therein has been the foundation of extraordinary scientific achievements in recent times.

Speaking of "reality shops": Dear Alamo-Girl, did a little digging into Whitehead as proposed on another thread (wish I could remember where). Thought I’d post the article here, for it seems to have a lot of direct relevance to the question of the so-called “Cartesian split.” Hope that’s O.K. with you; here goes….

* * * * * * *

British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was a philosopher of flux and change, and of continuity as well. He is considered by many to have produced the most impressive metaphysical statement of the 20th century. He brought to this task a tremendous knowledge of mathematics, logic, physics and other sciences, as well as “a sensitive appreciation for the varied aspects of human culture.”¹ Whitehead, in addition to his prodigious work in mathematics and logic – with Bertrand Russell he wrote the monumental Principia Mathematica [1910] -- produced both a “natural philosophy,” or history of science, and a metaphysics. The last is remarkable for incorporating his mathematics/logic and also his natural philosophy. There are aspects of his thought that are strongly evocative of ancient Greek philosophy, especially that of the philosopher of flux and constancy, Heraclitus; and also Plato. At the same time, Whitehead’s insights strongly anticipate the breakthroughs of quantum physics that would follow in the first quarter of the 20th century.

I had hoped to be able to give a very general account of Whitehead’s life and thought in the space of a very short paper. Unfortunately, given the sheer vastness of the subject matter, it seems I must be more selective than I like. So only to touch on certain main points will be my limited aim here.

We begin with Whitehead’s Cambridge days, and his collaboration with his brilliant student Bertrand Russell. The two men were proponents of Logicism, the theory that mathematics in some fundamental sense is completely reducible to logic. As A. D. Irvine points out, Logicism “consists of two main theses: The first is that all mathematical truths can be translated into logical truths or, in other words, that the vocabulary of mathematics constitutes a proper subset of the vocabulary of logic. The second is that all mathematical proofs can be recast as logical proofs or, in other words, that the theorems of mathematics constitute a proper subset of the theorems of logic.”²

Unfortunately for Logicism, however, one stormy night she came up hard against the rocky shoals of the famous Russell Paradox, foundered, broke up, and was sunk. Russell’s Paradox reared its ugly head in the course of Whitehead’s and Russell’s collaboration, and was formally elaborated in the Principia. Yet actually, the paradox is quite an ancient one. As Richard Lubbock writes,

Russell discovered his paradox shortly before the work on Principia began. The problem had slept for 2,500 years, like a cerebral aneurism waiting to burst within the skull of mathematics, ever since Epimenides the Cretan had declared that all Cretans were liars. Was Epimenides himself a liar? “Nobody treated that as anything but a joke,” wrote Russell; but he found that this hoary parlour puzzle struck at the very root of arithmetic. He had the bright idea of applying Epimenides’s reasoning to logical classes, which form the basis of numbers. In particular, he ruminated on the class of those classes that are not members of themselves. To his dismay he found both that it belonged to itself, and that it didn’t: an intolerable result. He later said that he thought at first there must be some error in his thinking. He “inspected it under a logical microscope”, without finding any mistake. In the end he mailed the bad news to Whitehead, who scrutinized it, and replied with a cheerless telegram, quoting Browning: “Never glad confident morning again”.³

In short, Russell’s Paradox lands us in the same logical limbo as Heisenberg’s uncertainty (indeterminacy) principle, and Cantor’s incompleteness principle. Who knows? Perhaps this experience was a factor in Whitehead’s finding himself increasingly drawn by philosophical questions over his life. In the progression of his work,

He took his starting point from the sciences, but for him science was merely one of the resources of philosophy, along with aesthetics, history, religious experience, and the deliveries of common sense….
His program in regard to natural philosophy, or philosophy of science, was to deduce scientific concepts from the simplest elements of our perceptual knowledge…. [T]he object of the analysis is nature, and by nature Whitehead means the world presented to our awareness. And although he speaks of percipient events, meaning the relevant bodily states of observers, individual minds are regarded as outside nature, and so outside the scope of philosophy of science. Man and value are excluded from the study. Philosophy of science, or natural philosophy, is therefore vastly different from metaphysics, which must include such considerations.”⁴

On first view, this statement seems to affirm the “legitimacy” of the alleged “Cartesian split” between science and philosophy. It seems to support the premises of methodological (and metaphysical) naturalism, which in turn would tend to validate the premises of scientific materialism according to which all derivations of “the natural” would seem to depend these days. But do not count on it. For as Whitehead asserts,

“There persists … [a] fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism.’ Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived.”⁵

As Lubbock points out, “Many Victorians had cherished the proud hope that they could soon dissolve all the world's problems in a blaze of universal scientific reason.”⁶ Indeed, this supposition still has ardent defenders in our own time:

“During his 1998 American tour, Stephen Hawking stated while visiting the President at the White House that in a very few years scientists will be able to describe all the natural laws and processes that govern the behavior of every natural system that exists within the universe and use these laws to predict correctly such behavior. This is the basic philosophy of science that drives many scientist[s].”⁷

Suffice it to say, Whitehead has no reliance on such suppositional certainties:

“There persists,” says Whitehead, “[a] fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism.’ Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived.”
For Whitehead, as Lubbock writes, “There are no fundamental ‘things,’ or ‘objects’ in the world…. Whitehead’s ontology, or parts-list of the universe, contains only processes. Life, the Universe and Everything consists of myriads of little emotions. Only feelings exist; no particles exist; and all the feelings have the same form: that of the human mind. Atoms, electrons, bodies and brick walls arise later.”⁸
The assumption of scientific materialism is effective in many contexts, says Whitehead, only because it directs our attention to a certain class of problems that lend themselves to analysis within this framework. However, scientific materialism is less successful when addressing issues of teleology and when trying to develop a comprehensive, intergrated picture of the universe as a whole. According to Whitehead, recognition that the world is organic rather than materialistic is therefore essential, and this change in viewpoint can result as easily from attempts to understand modern physics as from attempts to understand human psychology and teleology. Says Whitehead, “Mathematical physics presumes in the first place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time. The laws which condition this field are nothing else than the conditions observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it individualises itself in the events.” … The end result is that Whitehead concludes that “nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process,”⁹

That is, for Whitehead reality is not constituted by the present configuration of discrete particles of “blind” matter moving according to the strict dictates of the physico-chemical laws only. That would be the description provided by the “least action principle” of physics, which is essentially a conservation principle. There is certainly a conservation principle at work in reality (see later discussion). But nature assumes ever new forms of manifestation not by a process of “least action,” but by constant “creative” and “adventuresome” striving, and (emotional) desiring for the fullest completion or manifestation of its own possibilities, by choosing; and by choosing, constituting a “past” which then becomes the base for the immediate present, and from thence the indefinite future. The medium of this process, which Whitehead calls the extensive continuum, bears all the hallmarks of a universal, atemporal (that is, infinite) field. Because it seems we are dealing with a universal field, we have to allow for non-local and superpositioned or “entangled” effects. The “event” or “occasion” “does not passively copy the past: in the act of self-creation it refreshes the design of the past, thereby inventing its novel present, and preparing for its possible futures. Whitehead calls these takeovers ‘prehensions’. The verb ‘to prehend’ means to engulf, perceive and transform.

“So the soul of a man, or of an electron, or of a bacillus, is a sequence of prehensions, or takeovers, each of which prehends all its predecessors.”¹⁰

In their own way sub-atomic particles copy the action of the human subject. Quantum theorists describe how the electron consults its table of transition possibilities, chooses one actual value, and makes it real. The electron’s decision, like the human being’s, is free and unpredictable, although limited by objective fact. Just as non-local effects modify the electron, so do non-sensuous and conceptual prehensions enter our own decisions.”¹¹

Whitehead states that “the cosmos is a network of ‘actual occasions’, which are pulses of feeling and acts of choice. Every factor of experience must call on all the others in order to express itself. Each occasion is a process which perishes as soon as it has asserted itself. Once dead, it forms the base, and sets the limits, for the deeds of its successors. The nodes of Whitehead's solidarity network are active, and the pattern never ceases to change.”¹²

Which leads Whitehead to the concept of “a society” – which pertains to “the soul of a man, or of an electron, or of a bacillus,” as well as to what we normally think of when we use that word.

For Whitehead, Lubbock writes: “All societies display some mental qualities, because every occasion seeks emotional delight. You stand little chance of catching a rock in a spontaneous act, though you may watch it for ages. The decisions of the rock's atoms are all chained together in the crystals; and even if a single crystal could make up its mind to tunnel somewhere else, it would have to persuade all its fellow-crystals to go with it. Most of the world appears to be dead because in non-living societies, the members' mental desires cancel each other out.”¹³

Time and space prohibit a fuller consideration here of Whitehead’s view of “societies,” though hopefully the hints given will spur the reader to investigate the matter further. Suffice it to say collections of entities collaborate in given events, and their collaboration is motivated by emotional, creative desire for self-actualization which becomes in due course a part of the “evolutionary record” going forward in time. But if we are to speak of desire, and creative fulfillment of potentialities, we must recognize that there can be no desire without an end or goal or purpose in view. What, in nature, is available to specify such creative ends as desirable in the first place?

It is here that Whitehead becomes for many moderns, controversial; for he here presents us with a view of God that neither secular philosophers nor scientific materialists are disposed to like. In fact, probably a whole lot of, say, Christian believers, would have little use for it either.

It seems to me that Whitehead handles “the problem of God” in the classical, Platonic manner: God is “Beyond” the cosmos, but his attributes are not only in the cosmos, but actually govern it – by way of providing eternal objects of creative desire towards which both living and non-living systems aspire. For Plato, the divine attributes are summed up in the Agathon -- the vision of Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Love, and Justice. Whitehead’s “agathon” is apparently composed of: Truth, Beauty, Art, Adventure, and Peace.

As to what Whitehead’s particular religious views might have been, we can only conjecture from the known facts about his life. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman; he married a devout (and high-spirited) Roman Catholic, with whom he explored in depth Thomas a Kempis, and the great Doctors of the Church. It is said he came within a hair’s breadth of converting to Rome. But then, by about age 37, he decided to chuck the whole “Christianity business” and become a Freethinker. From that point forward, his "spiritual history" goes silent.

Yet what seems clear is that Whitehead regards God as the source of the endless fecundity of possibilities in the universe, the source of “plenitude,” or of “cosmic exuberance.” “Whitehead gives us no advice for prayer, and suggests no scripts for ritual.”¹⁴

What he does do is to posit (1) the primordial nature of God; and (2), the consequent nature of God.¹⁵

The first accounts for the fact that the world never runs out of possibilities; it is the source of all novelty, of all emergence of the new in the universe. The second refers to the “retention of the novelties achieved as the contingent future becomes the actual present and the immortal past.”¹⁶

Thus Whitehead, seemingly following Plato, does not support the idea of the inception of the universe as a divine creation ex nihilo, but rather the idea of an “eternal universe.” Notwithstanding, Whitehead’s eternal universe (like Plato’s) is absolutely contingent on God. And this is not the same view as that of the eastern mystic, for though “beyond” the universe, God is still “in it” as its foundational and overarching teleological rule:

Whitehead flatly denies that God is the omnipotent creator and tyrant before whom mankind's first duty is to offer up fulsome metaphysical compliments. Though not omnipotent, God is necessary. Further, Whitehead asserts that God must be unique. What’s more, Whitehead’s God, although unique, appears to be not One, but Two. The first part of God is the Realm of Eternal Objects. I call this the Alpha-God, and it is unconscious, resembling Plato’s world of ideal forms, Aristotle's world of potentia, and Steven Hawking’s wave function of the entire universe. One is even tempted to identify this Alpha-God with the Tao. The second part of Whitehead’s God is the ‘Consequent Nature’, the Omega-God, which is conscious, in the same sense that we are conscious.¹⁷

Thus Whitehead’s God does not stand impassively “outside” the “All that there is.” Rather, he suffers and rejoices with the world.¹⁸ And this view, oddly enough, clearly resonates with the core principle of Christianity.

Must close for now; but not before citing Lubbock’s own beautiful conclusion to his outstanding essay on Whitehead [see link below]:

Many critics complain that Whitehead’s metaphysic is hard to understand. To me his writings clearly describe a cosmic net of mutually creative moments. Every moment flows to its own purpose; everything perishes; each spark of experience relies on the whole net for its value; the final cause of the cosmos is beauty in action.¹⁹

* * * * * * *

ENDNOTES:
¹W. L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. New Jersey:Humanities Press, 1980; p. 622.
² A. D. Irvine, Whitehead’s Philosophical Influence
³ Richard Lubbock, Alfred North Whitehead for the Muddleheaded
⁴Reese, p. 623.
⁵Irvine.
⁶Lubbock.
⁷ Robert A. Herrmann, The Wondrous Design and Non-random Character of ‘Chance’ Events
⁸Lubbock.
⁹Irvine.
¹⁰Lubbock.
¹¹Lubbock.
¹²Lubbock.
¹³Lubbock.
¹⁴Lubbock.
¹⁵Reese, p. 624f.
¹⁶Reese, p. 624f.
¹⁷Lubbock.
¹⁸Reese, p. 625.
¹⁹Lubbock.

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