Replies

Certainly, but perhaps an admission is in order. “Parameter”, at least in the normal sense of the word, might have not been the best choice of words. Let me refer you to a section of the essay I posted, above, in response to another post:

“Early in his career Einstein’s studies of Newton and Kepler convinced him that there is no logical path to knowledge of the laws of nature, for there is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles. 34 This was greatly reinforced by his study of James Clerk Maxwell. 35 It is the extra-logical problem, he held, that is essential, namely, the ontological reference of thought to reality. 36 Within the preestablished harmony of the universe, “ideas come from God”–they are revealed to the mind tuned into the master plan of the universe, and are apprehended through intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience. “He [the scientist] has to persist in his helpless attitude towards the separate results of empirical research, until principles which he can make the basis of deductive reasoning have revealed themselves to him.” 37 “The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those elementary universal laws from which the cosmos can be built up by deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them...There is no logical bridge between phenomena and their theoretical principles; that is what Leibnitz described so happily as a ‘preestablished harmony.’” 39

Einstein used to speak of this non-logical, intuitive way of reaching knowledge, as “tapping into God’s thoughts”. 40 “The deeper one penetrates into nature’s secrets, the greater becomes one’s respect for God.” 41 Once when drawing out the implications of relativity theory in an amusing way which he hoped was in tune with the thoughts of God, he said “I cannot possibly know whether the good Lord does not laugh at it and has led me up the garden path”! 42 I think of that in connection with the fact that the equations of relativity theory predict their own limits, and thus direct us back to a zero point in the expansion of the universe from what is commonly known as “the black hole”, which, as Henry Margenau held, implied the principle of creatio ex nihilo. 43 Einstein pointed out that “one must not conclude that the beginning [of the expansion of the universe] must mean a singularity in the mathematical sense.” Then he added: “This consideration does, however, not alter the fact that the ‘beginning of the world’ really constitutes a beginning.” 44 Such a beginning, a creatio ex nihilo, was of course an idea which was ruled out by Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura notion of God as an infinite, eternal self-creating substance, and of his conception of the universe as non-contingent and completely necessary in its identification with God.

Now in order to indicate something of what “God” meant for Einstein’s science, let us consider the bearing of three of his often repeated epigrammatic ‘sayings’ about God: “God does not play dice”; “God does not wear his heart on his sleeve”; and “the Lord is subtle but not malicious.””

Here, Thomas Torrance, seems to be spotlighting that which finds a place in the equation of physics which in some ways resembles a “parameter”, yet escapes that definition.

Were there paramaters that might, indeed, vary in Newton’s Laws of Physics? Not observable to human detection, thus failing the axioms of logical positivism. Logic seemed to dictate that Newton’s “Laws” were in fact laws, inviable.

Einstein, however, had one of his “intuitions”, as Torrance describes them, and pursued the notion through the language of logic, mathmatics, beyond our observable reference frame of velocity. Math took him beyond what we had the technology to observe - long before we split the atom and could measure the velocity of sub-atomic particles.

Were Newton’s Laws then illogical? No, within the relative parameter of velocities observable by humans, Newton was perfectly logical. Outside those reference frames, the parameters morphed creating a new logic that forms the basis for Quantum Physics, explaining many mysteries baffling science heretofore.

At this point, Einstein saw light almost as the moment or bridge between a physical and spiritual dimension. Understanding light seemed to shed light on the expansion of contemporary scientific methodologies into enhanced understanding of a greater reality. He saw a universal constancy that awed him. Eventually all physical equations would integrate given the appropriate understanding of the parameters. I return to the essay:

“In their Jewish tradition both Einstein and Spinoza adhered strictly to the second Commandment that forbade thinking of God in any image or visible form. With Spinoza this was evidently reflected in his rejection of sense-perception as a mode of genuine objective knowledge. That is also the fundamental idea expressed in the statement “God does not wear his heart on his sleeve” which Einstein applied to physical science. It formulates the profound conviction that the real secrets of nature, its hidden intelligible order cannot be read off appearances, or be logically derived from the observational patterns of its phenomenal surface, but only by “tapping into the thoughts of God” as he “reveals” them to us. We cannot see God, but we may see him in the light of his own light. As the Hebrew Psalmist declared, “In thy light we see light.”

Let us recall here the point noted earlier about the central role of light in the created universe. There we were concerned with the constancy of light, but here our concern is with the invisibility of light. It is through deciphering the mathematical patterns carried by light signals that all our knowledge of the space/time universe in its vast or tiny dimensions is derived. This understanding of light initiated an immense revolution in scientific inquiry, for it meant that the invisible is not to be explained in terms of the visible, but the visible in terms of the invisible. We do not see light itself, but see only what is lit up by light–”grasping reality in its depth”, “tapping into the thoughts of the Old One”, as Einstein used to say. “God does not wear his heart on his sleeve.”

This is not to say that Einstein was concerned to look for hidden causes detached from, or of a different category from, the ordered regularity we experience in our everyday world, for he was just as concerned to reject the ‘occult’ as Bacon and Newton, and was even more concerned than they were, because he would have nothing to do with the kind of dualism upon which the occult seemed to thrive. Einstein’s concern was rather to penetrate into the deep invisible dynamic ontological structure of the ordered regularity of things to which the phenomenal patterns of that regularity are coordinated, and by which they are controlled. That is particularly evident in the epistemological revolution brought about by general relativity theory which showed that empirical and theoretical factors, being and form, belong together at all levels of nature and our knowledge of it.

Hence scientific inquiry must penetrate into the inner imageless constitutive structure of things, which is invariant through all relativity for the human knower, and which can be grasped not through observational or phenomenological investigation but only by intellective penetration or intuitive insight. While the outward shape on the surface of existence remains observable and imageable, and is variant for every observer, the invisible imageless ontological structure remains constant and invariant for all observers. As such it provides the objective frame underlying the observable variations correlated with it, and therein constitutes the integrative force of their order on the phenomenal level, even of their surface connection with appearances.

To grasp nature like that intuitively and unitively in its objective depth and inherent relatedness, and in such as way as to do full justice to the differences and relativities of our observational experience without allowing them to disintegrate into pluralistic relativism, is what rigorous science is about. But it does mean that we have to think in a dimension of ontological depth in which the surface of things is coordinated with a deep invisible, intelligible structure, and thus think empirical and theoretical factors, phenomenal and noumenal levels of reality together, if we are really to reach knowledge of things in accordance with their distinctive nature and constitutive ground. “God does not wear his heart on his sleeve”.”

I am not sure at what point we might describe such a “parameter” as secular or non-secular. Einstein seemed to see such things as continuums, much like the gradual change in mass of an object gradually approach the velocity of light. Light might be understood as the bridge over or boundary between such definitions.

Your question is estute. You asked for a specific example of a “non-secular” parameter, perhaps, sensing my over-simplification in the expediancy of communication. The discussion of light is as close to a specific as I can get, but the truth is that I suspect new mathmatics must be developed to answer the question that you ask, new ways of looking at and treating paramaters.

This new mathmatics would take the limits of our current thinking in an onion-peeling fashion, as calculus did for algebra and trigonometry, and topology did for calculus. My admission, then is that I have little idea what I am talking about. Like Einstein, though far less capable, I am trying to stretch my mind around it in awe.