Posted on 11/30/2004 6:21:11 PM PST by betty boop
On Plato, the Early Church, and Modern Science: An Eclectic Meditation
By Jean F. Drew
God, purposing to make the universe most nearly like the every way perfect and fairest of intelligible beings, created one visible living being, containing within itself all living beings of the same natural order.
Thus does Plato (d. 347 B.C.) succinctly describe how all that exists is ultimately a single, living organism. At Timaeus20, he goes on to say:
“There exists: first, the unchanging form, uncreated and indestructible, admitting no modification and entering no combination … second, that which bears the same name as the form and resembles it … and third, space which is eternal and indestructible, which provides a position for everything that comes to be.”
And thus we find a description of the universe in which Being and Existence (Becoming) — the one God and the multiplicity of things — are bound together as a single living reality whose extension is mediated by Space (which for us moderns implies Time).
Our aim in this essay is to define these ideas and their relationships, and trace their historical development from the ancient world to the present. Taking a page from the late Eric Voegelin (1901–1985, philosopher of history specializing in the evolution of symbolization), we will follow a history-of-ideas approach to these issues. Along the way we will find that not only philosophy and cosmology, but also theology and even modern science can illuminate these seminal conceptions of Platonic thought. We must begin at the beginning, that is, with God — who is absolute Being in Plato’s speculation, of whom the cosmos itself is but the image (eikon) or reflection.
When Plato speaks of God (or when Aristotle does for that matter, as in e.g., Nicomachean Ethics), he is not referring to the Olympian gods, to Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, and the rest of the gang of “immortals.” For the Olympians are like man in that they are creatures of a creating God. Not only that, but they are a second generation of gods, the first having reigned in the antediluvian Age of Chronos; which is to say that the Olympians’ rule or law is not everlasting, but contingent. Thus they are not self-subsistent, but dependent (contingent) on a principle outside of themselves. We might say that the central difference between Plato’s God and the Olympians consists in the fact that the latter are “intracosmic” gods, and the former is “extracosmic,” that is, transcending all categories and conditions of space-time reality. In contrast, the intracosmic gods are subject to change, to contingency; and so, though they may truly be said to exist in some fashion, cannot be said to possess true Being. (More on these distinctions in a minute.)
It is clear that for Plato, God is the “Beyond” of the universe, or in other words, utterly transcendent, perfectly self-subsistent Being, the “uncaused cause” of all the multiplicity of existents in the universe. In yet other words we can say that, for Plato, the cosmos is a theophany, a manifestation or “presence” of the divine Idea — in Christian parlance, the Logos if I might draw that association — in the natural world.
As Wolfgang Smith notes, “Christian teaching is based upon the doctrine of the Logos, the Word of God, a term which in itself clearly suggests the idea of theophany. Moreover, what is implicit in the famous Prologue of St. John [“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:1–5)] is openly affirmed by St. Paul when he declares that “the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world have been clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20) … The indisputable fact is that at its deepest level Christianity perceives the cosmos as a self-revelation of God.” [Wolfgang Smith, Cosmos and Transcendence, 1984]
Being and Existence (Becoming)
Being is a concept so difficult that it comes close to eluding our grasp altogether. It is utterly beyond space and time; imperishable; entirely self-subsistent, needing nothing from outside itself in order to be complete; essential; immutable; and eternally perduring. Contrast this with the concept of existence, regarding which Plato asks “how can that which is never in the same state be anything?” And this is the clue to the profound difference between being and existence: The existing things of this world are mutable and transient.
We must in my opinion begin by distinguishing between that which always is and never becomes from that which is always becoming but never is. The one is apprehensible by intelligence with the aid of reasoning, being eternally the same, the other is the object of opinion and irrational sensation, coming to be and ceasing to be, but never fully real. In addition, everything that becomes or changes must do so owing to some cause; for nothing can come to be without a cause. [Timaeus, 3:28]
Smith writes of the existing or “becoming” things that
“… they come upon the scene, we know not from whence; they grow, change, and decay; and at last they disappear, to be seen no more. The physical cosmos itself, we are told, is a case in point: it, too, has made its appearance, perhaps some twenty billion years ago, and will eventually cease to exist [i.e., finally succumbing, we are told, to thermodynamic entropy or “heat death”]. What is more, even now, at this very moment, all things are passing away. ‘Dead is the man of yesterday,’ wrote Plutarch, ‘for he dies into the man of today: and the man of today is dying into the man of tomorrow.’ Indeed, ‘to be in time’ is a sure symptom of mortality. It is indicative, not of being, but of becoming, of ceaseless flux.”
All the multiplicity of existents in the universe are in a state of becoming and passing away. But Plato’s great insight is that all things in the state of becoming — that is, all existing things — are whatever they are because they are participations in Being. That is to say, “we perceive the trace of being in all that exists,” writes Smith, “and that is why we say, with reference to any particular thing, that it is.” Existence, in other words, is contingent on Being.
But we wonder: In what way is this possible? And if existents participate in being, what is that Being in which they participate?
In Exodus 3:14 Moses has experienced a theophany: While tending his flock on Mount Horeb, suddenly he hears the voice of God issuing from a burning bush: God is speaking to him! Reverentially, Moses inquires of God what is His name (meaning: what is His nature or character).
And God said unto Moses, I AM WHO AM: and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
God has told Moses: that He is Being (“I AM”). And the strong implication is that there is no “other” being: “I alone AM.” For “I” is plainly singular in form.
Smith draws the crucial point, “God alone IS. But how are we to understand this? ‘It seems to me,’ writes St. Gregory of Nyssa, ‘that at the time the great Moses was instructed in the theophany he came to know that none of those things which are apprehended by sense perception and contemplated by the understanding really subsist, but that the transcendent essence and cause of the universe, on which everything depends, alone subsists.’ But why? Does not the world exist? Are there not myriads of stars and galaxies and particles of dust, each existing in its own right? And yet we are told that the transcendent essence alone subsists. ‘For even if the understanding looks upon any other existing things,’ the great theologian goes on to say, ‘reason observes in absolutely none of them the self-sufficiency by which they could exist without participating in true Being. On the other hand, that which is always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change whether to better or to worse (for it is far removed from the inferior and has no superior), standing in need of nothing else, alone desirable, participated in by all but not lessened by their participation — this is truly real Being.’”
Smith continues: “In the words of St. Gregory, ‘that which is always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change … is truly real being.’ As concerns ‘existing things,’ on the other hand, the teaching implies that these entities are always changing, always in a state of flux, so that their very existence is in a way a process of becoming, in which however nothing is actually produced. This has been said time and again, beginning with Heraclitus and the Buddhist philosophers. And there can be little doubt that it is true: even modern physics, as we can see, points to the same conclusion. Only there is another side to the coin which is not always recognized. Existent things — the very flux itself — presuppose what Gregory and the Platonists have termed ‘a participation in Being.’ The point is that relative or contingent existences cannot stand alone. They have not an independent existence, a being of their own. ‘In Him we live, and move, and have our being,’ says St. Paul….”
St. Augustine confirms the Platonic insight this way:
I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are not. An existence they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art. For only that really is, that remains unchangeably.
Space
Space is the third essential term of the Platonic cosmology: It is the matrix in which living things and all other existents participate in Being. Plato’s creation myth — the Myth of the Demiurge in Timaeus — elucidates the Platonic conception of Space.
For Plato, the God of the Beyond is so “beyond” that, when it came time for creating the Cosmos, he didn’t even do it himself. He sent an agent: the Demiurge, a mythical being endued by God to be in divine likeness of God’s own perfect love, truth, beauty, justice, and goodness. The embodiment of divine perfections, the Demiurge wishes to create creatures just as good and beautiful as himself, according to the standard of the divine Idea — a direct analog, it seems to me, of the Logos theory of the ancient Church. Indeed, Eric Voegelin sees in the Demiurge the symbol of Incarnation [Order and History Vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle, 1957]:
“The Demiurge is the symbol of Incarnation, understood not as the result of the process but as the process itself, as the permanent tension in reality between the taxis of form or idea and the ataxia of formlessness.”
Similarly to the Christian account, the Demiurge in a certain way creates ex nihilo — that is, out of Nothing. At first glance, Plato is seen specifying, not a pre-existing “material” but a universal field of pure possibility called Chora, “Space.” Perhaps we may find in this concept a strong analogy to Isaac Newton’s concept of Absolute Space (see below).
Chora seems to indicate the idea of an eternal, universal field of pure stochastic potentiality that needs to become “activated” in order to bring actual beings into existence. In itself, it is No-thing, i.e., “nothing.” This “activation” the Demiurge may not effect by fiat: He does not, for instance, “command” to “Let there be Light!” The main tool at his disposal is Peitho, “persuasion.”
And if Chora is not so persuaded, it will remain in a state of “nothingness.” It will remain unformed, in the condition of ataxia. Of itself it is “Nothing”; by itself, it can do nothing. It cannot generate anything out of itself, not even matter in primaeval form.
And thus Plato introduces the figure of the Demiurge into his creation myth, symbolizing form or idea — the principle of (formative) taxia that draws (formless) ataxia into existence. We moderns might be tempted to describe the Demiurge as constituting an “information set” together with an “energy source,” who “persuades” the pure stochastic potentiality of formless, absolute, empty space into actualized form, and thus existence. From the cosmic standpoint, he makes unity out of multiplicity, in harmony and geometrical proportion:
“The best bond is the one that effects the closest unity between itself and the terms it is combining; and this is best done by a continued geometrical proportion.” [Timaeus, 4]
Thus the Demiurge is a kind of “divine geometer,” producing the forms (or mathematical ideas) that Chora can be persuaded to conform to, and thus come into existence.
But the Demiurge does more than just get things started: As bearer of the divine Idea — as pure love and beauty and goodness and truth — he continues always persuading Chora to generate creatures as like himself as possible (i.e., reflecting his own divine qualities at whatever generic stage), throughout all eternity. Thus creation is a continuous process in space-time. Moreover, it is the source and driver of evolution as a universal natural process.
Through the ongoing activity of the Demiurge, men and the world are constantly being informed and renewed by the divine Idea; and thus a unified cosmic whole, a “One Cosmos,” a universal order comes into being at the intersection of time and timelessness, of immanent and transcendent reality, in the medium of Space (and Time).
Compare the Platonic creation myth with the philosophy of Dionysius the [Pseudo-]Areopagite, said to be the Greek converted by St. Paul in Acts, 17:34. For Dionyius, the “names of God” — the divine qualities — are goodness, being, life, wisdom, power, and justice. Joseph Stiglmayr writes [Cath. Encycl. at the entry for Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite], that for Dionysius, God is
“… the One Being (to hen), transcending all quality and predication, all affirmation and negation, and all intellectual conception, [Who] by the very force of His love and goodness gives to beings outside Himself their countless gradations, unites them in the closest bonds (proodos), keeps each by His care and direction in its appointed sphere, and draws them again in an ascending order to Himself (epistrophe) … all created things [proceed] from God by the exuberance of being in the Godhead (to hyperpleres), its outpouring and overflowing … and as a flashing forth from the sun of the Deity. Exactly according to their physical nature created things absorb more or less the radiated light, which, however, grows weaker the farther it descends. As the mighty root sends forth a multitude of plants which it sustains and controls, so created things owe their origin and conservation to the All-Ruling Deity…. Patterned upon the original of Divine love, righteousness, and peace, is the harmony that pervades the universe…. All things tend to God, and in Him are merged and completed, just as the circle returns into itself, as the radii are joined at the centre, or as the numbers are contained in unity.”
The Platonic resonances seem unmistakeable in these lines. It appears that both Platonic speculation and the Logos doctrine of the ancient Church as articulated by Dionysius are in agreement that Creator must be “beyond” Creation in order to resonate with it — which resonance is what makes the universe to be alive — i.e., a living universe.
C. A. Dubrey points out [Cath. Encycl. at the entry “Teleology”], that the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas makes it clear that, “Intrinsic finality [we are to think of this as a blend or merger of efficient and final causes in the Aristotelian sense] consists in the fact that every being has within itself a natural tendency whereby its activity is directed towards the perfection of its own nature…. St. Thomas does not hesitate to speak of ‘natural appetite,’ ‘natural inclination,’ and even ‘intention of nature,’ [we moderns might be tempted to add ‘instinct’ to this list] to mean that every being has within itself a directive principle of activity. Accordingly, God does not direct creatures to their ends from outside, but through their own nature…. The Divine plan of creation is carried out by the various beings themselves acting in conformity with their nature.
When, however, this finality is called immanent, this expression must not be understood in a pantheistic sense, as if the intelligence which the world manifests were to be identified with the world itself, but in the sense that the immediate principle of finality is immanent in every being…. Thus the unconscious finality in the world leads to the conclusion that there must be an intelligent cause of the world.” [Emphasis added.]
Aquinas’ insight, and also Plato’s, evokes a reconsideration of Isaac Newton’s concept of Absolute Space. Possibly this may be understood in the following terms. First, Absolute Space is “empty” space. Second, it is not a property of God, but an effect of His Presence; i.e., we advert to theophany again. The question then arises, in what “where” or “when” does this theophany take place? Perhaps Newton’s answer would be: In the beginning, and continuously thereafter. Second, it has been suggested that Newton intends us to understand Absolute Space as the sensorium Dei: “God constitutes space and time through his eternity and omnipresence” [ existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium consitutit: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 3d ed., 1726]. Wolfhart Pannenberg writes,
“Now there are a number of good reasons — suggested by both philosophical and scientific thought — to consider time and space as inseparable. Einstein’s field concept comprises space, time, and energy. It takes the form of a geometrical description, and this seems to amount to a spatialization of time. The totality of space, time, and energy or force are all properties of a cosmic field.
“Long before our own age a theological interpretation of this subject matter had been proposed, and it was Isaac Newton who offered this proposal. It too referred everything to space or, more precisely, to the correlation of force as in the case of a force like gravitation acting at a distance. Newton’s well-known conception of space as sensory of God (sensorium Dei) did not intend to ascribe to God an organ of sense perception, the like of which God does not need, according to Newton, because of divine omnipresence. Rather, Newton took space as the medium of God’s creative presence at the finite place of his creatures in creating them.” [Wolfhart Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature, 1993]
Thus the infinite takes priority over every finite experience, including intellectual experience — a position decisively argued by Descartes, as Pannenberg avers, “in his thesis that the idea of God is a prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself.”
* * * * * *
The Influence of Platonic Speculation on the Early History of the Church
D. Edmund Joaquin, an insightful and gracious Christian friend, writes, “We understand that the universe is created and sustained by the Word [the Logos], and not only that, but by the Word sounding. God sustains the universe consciously and actively. He has not gone away and left us. In fact, He reveals Himself to us, and His final revelation is in the person of Christ [the Logos]. Christ is not an abstract aspect of God, like wisdom. He is God. He is God incarnating in the world that He himself has made.”
Joaquin further observes that “[the Gospel of] John is written to the Greeks and put into words that they could understand.” It seems there’s a mystery buried in here somewhere. Consider: Socrates was the teacher of Plato, who was the teacher of Aristotle, who was the teacher of Alexander — and Alexander spread Greek culture throughout Eurasia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Add to this the fact that the great evangelist, St. Paul, had some difficulty converting the Jews to the Christian faith; but he converted the Greeks in droves. Not only St. John, but also St. Paul speaks in terms the Greek mind could readily grasp, as when he says God is He “in Whom we live and move and have our being.” These historical connections do not appear to be accidental, coincidental, nor incidental to the spread of the early Christian Church.
According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the Greeks strongly responded to Christianity for its moral beauty as well as its truth. A case in point is St. Justin Martyr. He was a man of Greek culture, born in Palestinian Syria about the year 100 A.D, who converted to the faith around 130 A.D. Justin became one of Christianity’s earliest and most powerful apologists, and ended up condemned by the Roman authority for refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, for which offense he was summarily executed by the Imperium, along with several other of his “refusnik” co-religionists. The official record of their martyrdom is extant:
“The Prefect Rusticus says: Approach and sacrifice, all of you, to the gods. Justin says: No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety. The Prefect Rusticus says: If you do not obey, you will be tortured without mercy. Justin replies: That is our desire, to be tortured for Our Lord Jesus, and so to be saved, for that will give us salvation and firm confidence at the more terrible universal tribunal of Our Lord and Saviour. And all the martyrs said: Do as you wish; for we are Christians, and we do not sacrifice to idols. The Prefect Rusticus read the sentence: Those who do not wish to sacrifice to the gods and to obey the emperor will be scourged and beheaded according to the laws. The holy martyrs glorifying God betook themselves to the customary place, where they were beheaded and consummated their martyrdom confessing their Saviour.”
Jules Lebreton writes (at the entry for St. Justin Martyr in Cath. Encycl.) “Justin tries to trace a real bond between philosophy and Christianity: according to him, both one and the other have a part in the Logos, partially disseminated among men and wholly manifest in Jesus Christ.”
Yet for all their apparent similarities and resemblances in many respects, there is a profound difference between Platonic insight and the Christian one: and this pertains to the relations between God and man.
Both Plato and Justin proclaim the transcendent God. Yet for Plato, God is so “beyond” as to be almost impossible of human grasp. Yet Plato felt the “divine pulls” in his own nature. These Plato thought could be accounted for and articulated by an act of pure unaided intellect, that is by nous, in a state of intense contemplation.
Contrast this position with Justin Martyr’s, who insisted that human wisdom was impossible without the testimony of the Prophets (whom God himself had informed and instructed) and the action of the Holy Spirit. For Plato, man’s relations with God consist of operations of the mind. For Justin, they are operations of the heart, of the Spirit. For Justin, God is not a mental abstraction: He is real Personality with whom one can have direct personal relations, in the Spirit.
A later writer, John Scotus Eriugina (ninth century) elaborates the Justinian position, in the process noting that there is a “downward tendency” of the soul towards the conditions of animal existence, and that this has only one remedy: Divine grace, the free gift of the Holy Spirit. “By means of this heavenly gift,” writes William Turner [at the entry for Scotus in the Catholic Encyclopedia], “man is enabled to rise superior to the needs of the sensuous body, to place the demands of reason above those of bodily appetite, and from reason to ascend through contemplation to ideas, and thence by intuition to God Himself.”
The pull of animal nature is an idea we also find in Plato, and also the countervailing pull from the divine Beyond. Man lives in the metaxy, in the “in-between reality” constituted by the two. Man’s task is to resolve this tension, and establish the proper balance that expresses the highest and best development of his human nature. But man must do this entirely by himself by means of nous or reason. There is no spiritual help “extra” to the human psyche available to facilitate this process.
In contrast, as Lebreton points out, Justin Martyr
“…admits that the soul can naturally comprehend what God is, just as it understands that virtue is beautiful … but he denies that the soul without the assistance of the Holy Ghost [Spirit] can see God or contemplate him directly through ecstasy, as the Platonic philosophers contended. And yet this knowledge of God is necessary for us: ‘We cannot know God as we know music, arithmetic, or astronomy’; it is necessary for us to know God not with an abstract knowledge but as we know any person with whom we have relations. The problem which it seems impossible to solve is settled by revelation; God has spoken directly to the Prophets, who in their turn have made Him known to us…. It is the first time in Christian theology that we find so concise an explanation of the difference that separates Christian revelation from human speculation.” [Emphasis added]
* * * * * *
Natural Law, Contingency, and the Scientific Method
The Platonic model encourages us to recognize that the universe is zoon empsychon ennoun, a living creature endowed with soul and intelligence. The myth of the Demiurge describes the world process as a type of incarnation, a dynamic relation of absolute being and contingent becoming evolving in space and time in a manner expressing a perduring taxia–ataxia relation. The Cosmos itself — the totality of all existing things — like its constituents, for example man and even the stars, is an eikon of being-in-becoming, a reflection or image of the divine Idea. Time itself is but a “moving image of eternity.” The life of the cosmos is wholly dependent, contingent on the Idea from which it manifests.
It is a lawful, orderly universe, yet one in which new occurrences are always arising. These new events are coming from, as it were, a “sea of contingency” analogous to Plato’s conception of Space, that is Chora — the infinite field of unformed, pure potentiality.
The immediately foregoing ideas, of course, are not scientific ones strictly speaking. Still, there are elements here that perhaps science would do well to consider, in order to maintain the integrity of its own method. For one thing, it seems science itself, in its disclosure of the regularities of nature, seems to have an in-built tendency to overlook contingency. We may define an event as contingent if a description of it is neither self-evident nor necessary, “if it could have happened differently,” as Ted Peters puts it in his Preface to Pannenberg’s Towards a Theology of Nature.
C. A. Dubray writes [“Teleology,” Cath. Encycl.], “The fact that the world is governed by laws, far from giving any support to the mechanistic conception, is rather opposed to it. A law is not a cause, but the expression of the constant manner in which causes produce their effects.” In other words, natural laws are expressions of observable regularities that occur in the world of existent phenomena in ordinary space-time reality. Thus, the laws themselves have no force as “causes”: they are descriptions.
Yet the focus on regularity inevitably masks the particularity and contingency of unique events. As Ted Peters notes, it is here that “we run into a problem of focus in the scientific community, because virtually all the theoretical attention is given to the regularity of nature’s laws, while the contingency of natural events slips into the nearly invisible background.” Peters continues:
“What researchers concentrate on are the uniformities that can be expressed in timeless equations. A dictionary of equations describing these uniformities allegedly constitutes scientific knowledge…. A closer examination, however, reveals that the applicability of these equations to concrete cases of natural processes requires certain initial and marginal conditions, conditions that in every case are contingent. Only when contingent conditions permit can we expect a natural law to operate as expected.”
To the extent that the scientific method of inquiry is premised on an “If/Then” logical construction — which seems ever to be the case — the method itself is an exercise in contingency, yet nonetheless one in which “Determinacy gets thematized, whereas contingency gets ignored.” Arguably this is a serious bias having epistemological implications; for e.g., “if the laws of classical dynamics are in principle temporally reversible, the actual course of natural events from which those laws have been abstracted is not. The reality of nature is first and foremost a historical reality.”
Pannenberg suggests a corrective for this “bias,” acknowledging: “That modern science so easily lends itself to abuse cannot be prevented in principle. It is one of the risks involved in the abstract study of regularities that either are inherent in nature itself or can be imposed on natural processes [e.g., as in ideological, technical, or engineering solutions]. This risk cannot be met on the level of scientific description itself but must be met first on the level of philosophical reflection on the work of science. It is on this level that the abstract form of scientific description must be considered with special attention to what it is “abstracted from” and what is methodically disregarded in the abstract formulas of science.”
And so contingent conditions — i.e, initial and boundary conditions — must be restored to their proper place in our deliberations, for they “are required for any formula of natural law to be applied. They are contingent at least in that they cannot be derived from the particular formula of law under consideration.… The mathematical formula of a natural law may be valid without regard to time. The physical regularity that is described by such a formula is not independent of time and temporal sequence. But it is only that physical regularity which makes the mathematical formula a law of nature. This suggests that the laws of nature are not eternal or atemporal because the fields of their application, the regularities of natural processes, originate in the course of time. Thus it also becomes understandable that new patterns of regularity emerging in the sequence of time constitute a field of application for a new set of natural laws….”
We may recognize that the total process of natural events presents itself to observation as a mesh of contingency and regularities. It is the task of science to pursue thematically the aspect of regularity. But, asks Pannenberg, can science “ever succeed in bringing into view the entirety of nature as determined in all details by a number of laws that are in any case not infinitely complex? This would mean at the same time that a stage of research is conceivable from which nothing more could be discovered. Many natural scientists have had this nightmare because of the successes of their own research. Fortunately it probably is not a truthful dream.”
For, says Pannenberg, “laws always uncover what is necessary superimposed on what is contingent. Given the undeniable contingency of occurrences in natural events, can we recognize in their special character as occurrences … [that] regularity as their own element in such a way that the presence of regularity can be thought together with the contingency of occurrences, not only under abstraction from the contingency of occurrences?” [Emphasis added]
Which is why Pannenberg advocates an opening up of new viewpoints in scientific research, “not because physical hypotheses or insights can be derived from them but because they open up and enlarge the intellectual space on which the formation of physical hypotheses depends…. In physics also, horizons of questioning have to be opened up first of all in order that hypotheses that arise in them can be examined by experiment and classified theoretically.”
Perhaps we need a greater appreciation of the “fitness” of the scientific method to engage the truly great questions of life, which ever seem to involve the relations of law and contingency. Leibniz propounds two great questions of perennial interest to the human mind: (1) Why are things the way they are and not some other way? (2) Why does anything exist at all?
Such questions, scientists will readily tell you, are beyond the purview of the scientific method. But does that mean such questions have no force or meaning such that they should not be asked at all?
Perhaps the incapability of the scientific method to answer such questions owes to the fact that all the great physical laws are acknowledged to be time-reversible; but we know that existence in space and time is not a time-reversible process. As Pannenberg states, it is a historical process. We might even say it is an evolutionary process.
Which suggests an analogy that might enlighten these questions, sharpen their meanings, and suggest additional questions: an analogy to direct human experience. Pannenberg writes of human beings, who do seem to live in a “time-irreversible,” that is “historical” process:
“Human beings never live only in the now. Rather, they experience their present as heirs of the past and as its active change. They anticipate the future in fear, hope, and planning; and in the light of such anticipation of the future they return to their present and the heritage of their past. The fact that we know of historical continuity is at least also conditioned by this peculiarity of human experience with time. If there is a new event, then it modifies the context of our consciousness of time which is already found present. It throws light back on earlier occurrences which have become a part of our experience already. In the same way, ideas that occur to us throw light on our previous expectations and plans in justifying, fulfilling, modifying, or disappointing and thwarting them. Thus the contingent event always enters already into a context of experience or tradition…. The future, beginning in the present happenings, is thus the origin of the perspective in which the past occurrences are put by every new experience.”
Worldviews and Paradigm Shifts
It is perhaps a truism that we tend to find what we’re looking for by screening out any and all potential elements which do not fit the pattern of our expectation. Arguably, the scientific method may be said inherently to suffer exposure to potential danger from this side, as suggested in the above remarks. Indeed, Schröedinger’s theory of wavefunction seems to predict this. Consider these remarks from Stephen M. Barr [Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, 2003]:
“In quantum theory, as traditionally formulated, there are ‘systems’ and ‘observers.’ Or rather, in any particular case, there is the system and the observer. The observer makes measurements of the system. As long as the system is undisturbed by external influences (that is, as long as it is ‘isolated’), its wavefunction — which is to say its probability amplitudes — will evolve in time by the Schröedinger equation…. However, when a measurement is made of the system the observer must obtain a definite outcome. Suddenly, the probability for the outcome that is actually obtained is no longer what the mathematics said it was just before the measurement, but jumps to 100 percent. And the probabilities for all the alternative outcomes, the ones that did not occur, fall to 0 percent.”
Thus we might say that the “reality” we humans experience ever involves “a moving goal-post.” And as the mover of this goal-post, the human agent is most indispensably involved in this process.
Faced with such “indeterminacy” regarding the foundations of experience, it is not surprising that people usually have recourse to mediating worldviews, or organized frames of ideational reality that constitute the conceptual space in which active experience is engaged and accordingly analyzed and interpreted. Certainly Plato has offered such a model. And so has Nobel laureate Jacques Monod [in Chance and Necessity, 1971]:
“Chance alone is the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution. The central concept of biology … is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one compatible with observed and tested fact. All forms of life are the product of chance….”
Needless to say, these two models are polar opposite conceptualizations. Yet having received each on “good authority,” which do we choose?
Such are not idle considerations; for as James Hannam points out [“The Development of Scientific and Religious Ideas,” 2003], “grand theories … often suffer death by detail where it is found that up close the situation is too complicated for the theory to handle…. [Yet] in the end, after it has changed the course of the river of enquiry, the theory can end up as a mortlake cut off from the general flow….”
Hannam cites historian Thomas Kuhn, who documents an historical process he terms “paradigm shift,” describing a situation in which the findings of authoritative science move “out of science and into practically every other field of human endeavor.” Once a given, albeit partial or even defective theory becomes “dominant,” writes Hannam, “far from being thrown out, a falsified theory is enhanced to deal with new information until such time as it finally collapses under the weight of anomalous results. Then, after a chaotic period, a new theory emerges that can deal with the anomalies and normal service resumes…. A paradigm refers to but one field, say classical mechanics or health policy whereas the ideology/worldview is the general background that underpins all the paradigms.”
The worldview (or ideology, if you prefer), for better or worse, implicitly shapes the background knowledge of thinking agents to which new experiences constantly are being conformed. Hannam says that worldview “is often so deeply embedded in the psyche that it is very rarely considered explicitly except by specialists,” but that nonetheless, “the worldview is seen as [a] self-confirming fact of life and hence it is not strictly rational…. The existence of a dominant worldview does not mean that a particular individual is unable to think outside the box but rather that his ideas are unlikely to fall on fertile ground. Unless new ideas can be stated in a language that makes them comprehensible to his peers, his intention in writing will not be met.”
Which is the not-too-subtle way to put the fact that every man has a worldview, without exception, whether articulate or inarticulate; and that somehow, for the “intention of writing to be met” — that is, for accurate and meaningful (i.e., successful) communication of ideas to take place — some deeper, common ground of shared truth must first be accessed, for the purpose of providing a more capacious intellectual space in which the human pursuit of knowledge and wisdom might unfold or evolve from its present point of attainment.
But where today in our modern world is such a common ground or field to be found? Hannam proposes the examination of the history of ideas as a possibly useful method in the search for common ground. He writes,
“To examine the history of ideas the only fair way to proceed would seem to place before ourselves the evidence and authority that the historical agents had before them and assume they acted rationally on that basis. Otherwise, there is no hope of ever tracing intellectual development because ‘cause and effect’ assumes some sort of logical causality that is impossible with non-rational agents. The best that could be hoped for would be a catalog of mental positions, with no way to say how one led to another except by being pushed by blind exterior forces. This might be precisely what determinists are advocating but they would have to give up any hope of finding causes and restrict themselves to explanations.”
Perhaps we moderns would do well to reconsider the common assumption that people living before our own time were somehow inferior in knowledge, experience, and observational powers as compared with our own status as enlightened individuals. Arguably, the ancient world produced some of the most powerful thinkers in the history of mankind, formulating ideas that were, in the words of Hannam, “the fruits of unfettered metaphysical speculation that inevitably hits on the right answer occasionally.”
Democritus, for example, proposed a theory predicting the atom as the ultimate constituent of matter, more than two-thousand years before the technical means existed to isolate atoms experimentally or, as Hannam notes, any “useful applications for them” could be found. Then it was discovered that the atom itself is an ordered constellation of even finer parts. There seems to be an historical progression of ideas here, the new building up on a framework originally laid up in the past, modifying it, improving on it in light of new insights and technical capabilities.
Hannam gives another example of more recent vintage: “Copernicus needed Nicole Oresme’s solution as to why we do not feel the movement of the Earth even though in Oresme’s time it was just a curiosity as no one thought the Earth actually was moving … each new idea, once accepted, shifts the boundaries of the worldview and makes it possible for further new ideas to be accepted into the pale.”
We can extend the examples even further. Reimann constructed a geometry, apparently because his mind could grasp the logic and beauty it revealed for its own sake. But at the time, it had no apparent “external referent” in the field of nature. It was a beautiful and glorious abstraction — until Einstein came along, and picked it up “off the shelf” as it were, to become the very language of relativity theory.
Thus it might be said that the evolution or “progress” of science depends on successive enlargements of the conceptual space it requires to do its work. In other words, science inherently is a participation in the historicity of the world.
Whatever our personal worldview, perhaps it would be well to recall that science is an historical process. Perhaps this understanding could open up additional, needed conceptual space that science itself requires in order to advance.
What I was trying to say is this:
"Visit one of the evolution threads and dispassionately observe the conduct of those whose erroneous worldview is needlessly collapsing around them because it erroneously depends on miracles in everyday biology."
Without the proof-reading marks, it's this:
"Visit one of the evolution threads and dispassionately observe the conduct of those whose worldview is needlessly collapsing around them because it erroneously depends on miracles in everyday biology."
Indeed, MissAmericanPie! The creature Man seems to figure very high in God's plans for the world, as well as in the "beyond" of this world. If I might put the matter that way.
Our Redeemer is our only hope for "fixing what was broke" in the Fall.
Thank you so much for writing!
placeholder - just saw this
One might say dualism is the way the unity of the Beyond expresses in immanent space-time reality; but that under the aspect of transcendence the "faces" or "parts" of the dualism are inseparably one.
At post 217, I offered a link as an introduction to Geometry and String Theory. A quick read will show that duality and mirror symmetry are built into space/time (that which has a beginning).
The very last page of the narrative (7 of 8) I believe will be particularly interesting to both of you wrt the concept of the inseparability of dualities, i.e. of the form and its manifestation - even in the worldview of string theory. (We saw the same kind of relationship in Tegmark's Level IV mathematical structures.)
I would love to engage both of you and several other professional mathematicians on the forum in a wide ranging discussion of complexity and evolution. But there are several different kinds of complexity involved, ditto for information, randomness and entropy - so to get the conversation started, we'll need to first agree to some definitions and meanings. On another thread, I've offered some general categories, if y'all would care to engage the debate. But, truly, I believe any discussion of origins or abiogenesis will quickly stall without taking that first step.
We have a similar need to arrive at some common understandings in the discussion of time and timelessness. As betty boop so beautifully pointed out, we who inhabit dimensionality (including one or more temporal dimensions) have great difficultly in apprehending the meaning of timelessness. That is true also of any "thing" which is non-spatial and non-corporeal.
The fact that our vision and minds are limited to four dimensions (three spatial and one temporal) although we can deduce that other dimensions likely exist - IMHO - is a good indication that there is a "beyond".
I believe StJacques is agreeing that the fact of a beginning (space/time) is also a very strong pointer. To that I would add the unreasonable effectiveness of math.
Hopefully, should we engage in the "complexity" debate, more people will agree that information (successful communication, not message) in biological systems is yet another such pointer.
At any rate, whereas such ponderings do not rise to the level of revealed Truth (Jesus Christ, the Word of God) - just doing the meditation can be important to Lurkers as well:
I am very happy to hear it, StJacques – especially about the innovation in capitalization! As already indicated, I await developments on this front with great interest. But I have to tell you: I’m not holding my breath until such time as the expected confirming “breakthrough” occurs.
Frankly, I strongly suspect that the so-called theory (or is it hypothesis?) of abiogenesis is a myth (and you can’t “prove” a myth). The myth relies on statements like this:
“The very fact that life sprang up on earth constitutes conclusive proof of a primary reducing environment since the latter is a necessary prerequisite for chemical evolution and spontaneous origin of life.” [Manfred Schidlowsky, quoted in Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, 1986]
This is a great example of circular reasoning: It turns out its conclusion is already actually implicit in its premise.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume I’m wrong about this, and abiogenesis – the spontaneous emergence of life from inorganic matter by sheer random processes – is a viable theory. Still, it would have a very steep hill to climb, and would have to overcome or explain away the following objections (a partial list):
(1) Both the above quote and your own remarks point to a main difficulty. You wrote, “[Science] will have to get a much better handle on discerning what the constraints of the atmosphere of the early earth were before they are able to move to the next step.”
As Dean Overman points out [in The Case Against Accident and Self-Organization 1997), “A methane rich reducing atmosphere [i.e., an atmosphere that has no oxygen] is essential to the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis and the Miller and Uray experiment. Miller based his experiment on the cosmic abundance of hydrogen and the ingredients in the solar nebulae which he believed produced the earth’s early atmosphere. The current geological consensus, however, maintains the view that the interior earth, rather than the solar nebulae, produced the primitive atmosphere and that methane and ammonia were not present. Today geologists understand that chemical reactions from sunlight would have destroyed methane and ammonia within a few thousand years. The sun’s ultraviolet radiation would have converted the methane to hydrocarbons with higher molecular weight and formed an oil slick up to a depth of ten meters. Ammonia is destroyed by ultraviolet radiation, dissociating into nitrogen gas and hydrogen. This presents a stumbling block for anyone building his or her theory of the origin of life on the Oparin-Haldane foundation. As Miller himself admitted, ‘If it is assumed that amino acids more complex than glycine were required for the origin of life, then these results indicate a need for CH4 (methane) in the atmosphere.’”
Yet many scientists today are of the opinion that the earth’s primitive atmosphere was not so strongly reducing and probably contained significant amounts of oxygen. Overman notes, “The presence of even a small amount of oxygen, assiduously avoided in the laboratories of the [Miller-Urey] experiments, would prevent the formation of amino acids and nucleotides, because atoms and molecules would bond with the oxygen atoms rather than hydrogen atoms. Even if amino acids could be formed, oxygen would cause them to decompose quickly and terminate any further random processes which could eventually produce life. If the early earth’s atmosphere had oxidizing conditions, abiogenesis would have been impossible.”
Later he adds another important consideration, “Even if oxygen was not present in the early earth’s atmosphere, the absence of oxygen would present obstacles to the formation of life. Oxygen is required for the ozone layer which protects the surface of the earth from deadly ultraviolet radiation. Without oxygen this radiation would break down organic compounds as soon as they formed.” This is Michael Denton’s “Catch 22” of abiogenesis: “If we have oxygen we have no organic compounds, but if we don’t we have none either.”
Still, let’s try to answer the question whether the early-earth atmosphere was strongly reducing (methane-rich, no oxygen), or one in which oxygen was present. I guess all we’ve basically got to go on is the geological record. But this would seem to lend little support to the doctrine of abiogenesis. Here’s the problem:
“If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, amino acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like, or alternatively in much-metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes (graphite-like nitrogen-containing minerals). In fact, no such materials have been found anywhere on earth.” [J. Brooks and G. Shaw, Origin and Development of Living Systems, 1973]
Michael Denton gets the next-to-the-last word on “objection (1)” as follows, and then we must move on:
“The existence of a prebiotic soup is crucial to the whole scheme [of abiogenesis]. Without an abiotic accumulation of the building blocks of the cell no life could ever evolve. If the traditional story [i.e., myth] is true, therefore, there must have existed for many millions of years a rich mixture of organic compounds in the ancient oceans and some of this material would very likely have been trapped in the sedimentary rocks lain down in the seas of those remote times. Yet rocks of great antiquity have been examined over the past two decades and in none of them has any trace of abiotically produced organic compounds been found. Most notable of these rocks are the ‘dawn rocks’ of Western Greenland, the earliest dated rocks on Earth, considered to be approaching 3,900 million years old. So ancient are these rocks that they must have been lain down not long after the formation of the oceans themselves…. Sediments from many other parts of the world dated variously between 3,900 million years old and 3,500 million years old also show no sign of any abiotically formed organic compounds…. Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origins of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.” [Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985]
And Hubert Yockey gets the last word:
“Although the Oparin-Haldane paradigm is now just a relic of the cosmology of the time when it was invented, it certainly deserved extensive research and much has been learned in investigating it. The same can be said for many other failed paradigms. Nevertheless, like the luminiferous ether, one has to conclude that there is no evidence that a ‘hot dilute soup’ ever existed. In spite of this fact adherents of this paradigm think it ought to have existed for philosophical or ideological reasons…. I have emphasized that in science one must follow the results of experiments and mathematics and not one’s faith, religion, philosophy, or ideology. The primeval soup is unobservable because, by the paradigm, it was destroyed by the organisms from which it presumably emerged. It is most unsatisfactory in science to explain what is observable by what cannot be observed. Since creative skepticism and not faith is the cardinal virtue in science one would expect that proponents of the primeval soup paradigm would be actively searching for direct geological evidence of such a condition of the early ocean. The power of ideology to interpose a fact-proof screen is so great that this has not been done (perhaps for fear that its failure might be exposed).” [Information Theory and Molecular Biology]
(2) Abiogenesis must explain how inorganic matter, by purely random or accidental processes, can give rise to a fully living system, which George Gaylord Simpson, distinguished professor of paleontology at Harvard, defines as follows:
“A fully living system must be capable of energy conversion in such a way as to accumulate negentropy, that is, it must produce a less probable, less random organization of matter and must cause the increase of available energy in the local system rather than the decrease demanded in closed systems by the second law of thermodynamics. It must also be capable of storing and replicating information, and the replicated information must eventually enter into the development of a new individual system like that from which it came. The living system must further be enclosed in such a way as to prevent dispersal of the interacting molecular structures and to permit negentropy accumulation. At the same time selective transfer of materials and energy in both directions between organism and environment must be possible. Systems evolving toward life must become cellular individuals bounded by membranes.” [“The Nonprevalence of Humanoids,” Science 143, 1964]
Some issues arise here: (a) How does matter, which is wholly subject to the second law, get the idea to “go against the law?” That is, how can stuff wholly subject to entropy generate other stuff that is able to counter that law, which that other stuff must do in order to be alive [e.g., as seen in Simpson’s requirement of negentropy production and accumulation]? (b) What is the impulse directing random matter to give rise to something that must be much less random than it is in order to be alive? In other words, by what principle does randomness – accident -- produce less-randomness? It seems an accident of an accident is still an accident, ad infinitum. (c) The information contained in the genetic code is not material. All forms of information are not made of matter. How did matter create this “non-matter” so essential to the life, self-maintenance, and reproductive capabilities of even the simplest organism? Consider these lines from Michael Denton:
“Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10^-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world…. The recently revealed world of molecular machinery, of coding systems, of informational molecules, of catalytic devices and feedback control, is in its design and complexity quite unique to living systems and without parallel in the non-living world.” [Ibid.]
How does “dumb matter” – ubiquitous and uniform – accidentally give rise to even such a comparatively “simple” life form as a bacterium, a creature able to transact the most sophisticated information processing upon which not only its life, but also the global governance of its extraordinarily complex system, its sensitive responsiveness, its mobility, its ability to “communicate” with its constituent subsystems and to its external environment, etc., depends? Matter itself does NONE of these things as far as we know. So, how does its “progeny” acquire these skills?
Other questions present themselves; but these three very basic ones will suffice for now. I’m interested in how you propose to answer them.
(3) You refer to James Ferris’ experiment involving the catalyzation of RNA aqueous solutions in mineral clays, seeming to regard it as a harbinger of the next great breakthrough that will validate abiogenesis. But I have a question: Since RNA in natural systems is a sort of “slave” to DNA; and since it is a human experimenter who has, in effect, taken on DNA’s role with respect to an “artificially derived” RNA under laboratory or controlled conditions; and since the entire enterprise may spring from a (perhaps) faulty initial premise (see above) – in what way can we expect this to reliably tell us anything about what’s actually going on in (untampered with) natural systems? Especially when we still have so much to learn about DNA itself – which does not even enter the purview of this experiment?
* * * * *
Must close, have run on too long. But I must add just one more thing, unrelated to the above discussion. And that is the idea that people (I gather you’re suggesting I’m one of them) come to science to validate their faith in God. From my perspective, nothing could be further from the truth; on the contrary, the truth of the matter goes the other way around. My faith in God is not in the least dependent on scientific discoveries. I believed in God long before I “believed” in science; you might say I came to science because I believe in God. I study it because I realize that the “book of nature,” of the living universe, is also a “book” sacred to God; and that being so, that I might profitably study it and find in it the glory of the Lord, as I do in the pages of the Holy Scriptures. So far, this has proven to have been a well-rewarded endeavor – and if I might add, a spiritually rewarding one especially.
Oh, one last thing that might be useful to you, StJacques, PH, and many of my other friends out there in FreeperLand: It might be profitable if you could begin to draw distinctions between such words as: religion, theology, Spirit, metaphysics, transcendence, while seeing that they all point in a direction needful for man individually, and for the human race. I think some of you guys just toss them all into a single category, the category of irrelevancy. You just flush them all away, it seems to me, without understanding what it means to do that. But FWIW, your own essential humanity goes down the dumper with them, if you do that. JMHO. But then again, nobody listens to an ersatz-Cassandra….
Thanks so much for writing, StJacques, PatrickHenry, All – this has been a marvelous discussion so far. I look forward to your replies, as ever.
One might say dualism is the way the unity of the Beyond expresses in immanent space-time reality; but that under the aspect of transcendence the "faces" or "parts" of the dualism are inseparably one. - betty boop
Does this mean that evil must exist and is, thus, inseparable from good, just as night and day, life and death, cold and hot, positive and negative numbers must exist?
I remember my mother often used to say: "There is no good without evil."
Thanks to all for this thread. I now go to the back of the room and keep a low profile.
To a Platonist, "separable form" is an inherently self-contradictory term
Exactly what Aristotle says: "It's impossible for the ousia to be separate from the ousia. For how could the formal ousia be separate from the ousia of things?" (Metaphysics 991b.1) Self-contradictory then, to both the Aristotelian and Platonist.
Aristotle knows that this problem doesn't disappear with the removal of Plato's forms. He considers form in thought as separate and that without fallacy. So, the idea of transcendence must be qualified. That is, the problem persists because as soon as any thinker posits transcendence, that thinker is still committed to show how it is related. I won't play Voegelin's Aristotle and eliminate that distance altogether with a reduction. At the other extreme of a reductive collapse is the complete alienation from what is transcendent.
Your "digression" into abiogenesis has triggered a storm of words (something unusual about it) that has pointed out the need for understanding at what point something can be considered transcendent.
At a more appropriate time I'd like to return to this aspect of monism and dualism--all to work up to the important distinction between created and uncreated existence.
Again, thanks for your reply.
bump for later read.
No, Baraonda. It is not a question of whether evil is "inseparable from the good." On first inspection, it might seem that way. But the more truthful way to put this proposition is to say that evil is, not some kind of siamese twin of the good, but that evil is the pure absence of the good.
To say that evil and good can somehow be equated is the project of our "post-contemporary innovators" (e.g., Marx and his followers, who are legion). The problem of "absence" vs. "presence," however, is an entirely different sort of question.
Granted, it's a subtle point. But I do note a distinction worthy of our attention there. FWIW.
Thank you so much for writing, Baraonda.
but that evil is the pure absence of the good.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that for me. It is not only true what you wrote above, but beautiful as well. I'll try to remember it as one of my favorite quotations.
Now I'll just stay in the background and continue reading the rest of the posts as they come along.
Again, thanks for responding and enlightening me.
But it's not because good cannot be separated from, or exist apart from, evil but rather that we can understand what good is (or better yet, Who Good Is) more fully by observing what evil is.
How would you ever know courage if you had never seen fear, health if you had never seen sickness, joy without sorrow, love without hate, etc. The contrast informs us when we observe it and can become part of us if we experience it.
An interesting meditation is that the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden was "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil". It could be observed, but not experienced.
IMHO, evil and good is like black and white. Once the black has been mixed into the white - no matter how much white you add, you only get another shade of grey. That's why we Christians must be born again.
cornelis, this thread has indeed gone into a number of different directions giving the reader a lot of "sub-threads" to follow in the dialogue. I'm game to stick to whichever subjects betty boop wants.
Excellent point, A-G!
When will there be a more appropriate time, cornelis? I'd very much like to have your thoughts on the issues of monism/dualism, of created and uncreated existence. This would actually return us back to the main theme of this thread. Please do post here, if you feel like writing.
BTW, I went ahead and posted the technical stuff on the other thread because it included a number of excerpts from the post which preceded it: Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
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