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 (19011985, 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 Platos 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 Platos 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 1:15)] 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 Platos 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. Platos 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 didnt even do it himself. He sent an agent: the Demiurge, a mythical being endued by God to be in divine likeness of Gods 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 Newtons 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 Platos, evokes a reconsideration of Isaac Newtons 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 Newtons 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. Einsteins 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. Newtons 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 Gods 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 theres 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 Christianitys 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 Martyrs, 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, mans 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. Mans 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 taxiaataxia 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 Platos 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 Pannenbergs 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 natures 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 were 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, Schröedingers 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 Oresmes solution as to why we do not feel the movement of the Earth even though in Oresmes 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.
It is not contempt, it is indifference. Do you realize that he basically stopped publishing before the "reformation" of information theory into its modern form? I don't care what he's done in other fields, but his understanding of information theory is antiquated. Incidentally, while Chaitin is famous in relation to "algorithmic information theory" (and a smart guy), his area of specialty is really kind of a tangential thing -- he has kind of google-bombed the namespace. This has been a chronic problem with the Intelligent Design "information theory experts"; from everything I've read, I was in kindergarten the last time they updated their understanding of the mathematics. They NEVER cite any of the core theory papers that make up modern information theory, nor do they exhibit familiarity with the important new concepts that are in those papers. If you compare the reference appendix of a paper by a credible leading mathematician in the field (e.g. Schmidhuber) and compare it with the reference appendix of folks like Yockey, there is almost no intersection. Yockey is not an outright fraud (unlike Dembski), but he is way past his academic prime and it shows. We have newer and better models for dealing many of these things, and simply ignoring these advancements is not helpful. It would be kind of like a physicist refusing to acknowledge post-Newtonian physics. Any derivative work would only be "correct" in a qualified sense.
As for strong AI, modern mathematical theory is almost completely derivative and deeply intertwined with the broader field of algorithmic information theory (the unified grand-daddy of all the little subfields in that general area). Yes, I do a lot of work in that area, but it is basically the same theorems and math as we are talking about here, and I've done a hell of a lot of work in this area of mathematics. Intelligence is purely a mathematical problem, and the fact that it traditionally has not been treated that way goes a long way toward explaining what has taken so long to develop an implementation theory in computer science.
Information theory, computational theory, transaction theory, decision theory, a lot of probability theory, and bits and pieces of a lot of other fields are all the same mathematical thing. You treat these fields like the blind men in the old fable about the elephant. I routinely work on the unified theoretical constructs (which is nominally described as "algorithmic" or "computational" information theory) and make no distinction between them because it would be nonsensical for me to do so, and would make my work impossible in any case.
I'm waiting for any view of this that actually applies modern information theory i.e. a perspective that understands and fully integrates the computation and transaction theoretic aspects into the simple Shannon model. Time and again, I get the impression that no one really wants to deal with the inconvenient consequences of this, metaphorically prefering to stay in the comfy Newtonian physics rather than redefining their perspective as required by acknowledging Relativity and its applicability to real problems. If all these "theorists" make no effort to stay relevant, I see no reason to treat them as though they are relevant.
IOW, a person who is not ideologically committed to atheism can take a scientific look at the subject. Elsewhere, he says that he is anti-Creationism. So the converse is true to him as well.
IOW, if a person in ideologically committed to the notion that the cosmos, the earth and everything in it was created 6,006 years ago from our space/time coordinates - then they cannot take a scientific look at the subject either.
IIRC, there was a general mathematical description and proof of this published circa 1992 by Merhav and his gang. It has since been reformulated in a half-dozen different ways by a number of folks. This is widely considered to be a very elegant mathematical basis for the concept of "free will".
But to paraphrase Mark Twain, I believe the rumors of Yockeys irrelevance may have been greatly exaggerated. The second edition of his greatest work, Information Theory and Molecular Biology is not yet available for shipment so who can say what he has or has not incorporated?
Ive been following Jurgen Schmidhuber as well as Yockey, Schneider, Chaitin, Tegmark, Penrose, Rocha and many others. But again I see a huge fork in the direction being taken by those working in artificial intelligence and those working on information theory in molecular biology.
In the biological research, at the level of the molecular machine, the issue is one of communications, semiotics. Within that research, it forks again between those like Schneider whose research with NIH is oriented to the medical implications and evolution while the likes of Rocha, Wolfram and Yockey are examining how it may have emerged. However, from what I have read concerning complex systems, those investigators are interested in both algorithm and communications.
I am not aware of any advancement in unified theoretical constructs which would change the Shannon model for communications like Einstein's special and general relativity changed Newton's theory of gravity. Considering the high profile of Schneider's work for NIH, and the fact that he has an exhaustive website - I would have expected him to make note of such things.
Of all these people listed, the only ones that can reasonably be considered theoretical experts in information theory are Schmidhuber and Chaitin. These two guys are among the half dozen that actually author the theory and who I know for a fact understand it as well as anyone else does. A couple of the other guys are physicists, but have no special understanding of information theory (e.g. Tegmark and Penrose). Most of these folks have an undergrad CS level of understanding by my reckoning.
You are correct to a certain extent about a "fork" in the theory, though it is more pragmatic than substantive. Information theory was born out of electrical engineering, which has a very limited view and use for those maths. Dealing with stuff like algorithmic predictive limits really do not have much utility for them. But as information theory matured and was theoretically generalized, it's scope has increased immensely over time. The EEs have kept their own Shannon-esque perspective, but it isn't a separate field. It is actually a narrow expression of a much broader and more general mathematical field that grew out from the original Shannon perspective. You get the Shannon version by taking the modern general theory and reducing the degrees of freedom, making certain arbitrary assumptions axiomatic.
But when you do this, you have to understand the assumptions that are taken as axiomatic when you apply it. If you develop a model that tacitly rejects an assumption of the Shannon model, you have to use the general theory. The general theory that has developed are incredibly broad in scope, completely consuming fields like computation theory and transaction theory. Many mathematicians in the field are specialists in narrow sub-regions -- I would describe Chaitin this way, for example. The number of mathematicians who truly grok the nature and scope of the general theory are relatively small subset of these folks, and I would put people like Schmidhuber in that category. Most of the really interesting work in information theory is in regards to its unification with computation and decision theory IMO, and that is where a lot of the brain power is being expended. Most of the questions you are talking about are really well-framed narrow sub-problems of the general theory.
The ID theory needs to be worked at the level of the people at IDSIA in Switzerland (Schmidhuber, Hutter, and Legg), or who at least have the level of understanding of Merhav and his crew. It is a very rich field, but poor of real experts. At the very least, I would appreciate it if discussions were cited from Li and Vitanyi as a baseline, which is the de facto bible of the field. I will occasionally make assertions that are not citable, but I can always make an argument from citable sources when I do. I don't expect most people to be current on any of this stuff -- it is the very definition of esoterica -- but I do expect any cited "experts" to be reasonably current.
I do think the Brownian motion model is good for most "random" systems in biology. In a large system, say the size of a few cells in an organism, Brownian motion provides most of the "randomness" with a small kick from QM (radioactive decay leading to mutation). Selection is more of a "relative independence" type of thing. Selection criteria for a group of individuals need not have any relation to the chemistry of the cell (lions and tigers and bears eating antelope, for example.)
I'm not a mathematician, but the above seems right to me too. I've said before that until we get to creatures like us, with some degree of free will, I suspect that -- after the moment of creation -- the whole ball-o-wax is determined.
Thanks for the ping. Well done! :-)
It seems to me the common thread between Jurgen Schmidhuber, Ming Li and Paul Vitanyi is Kolmogorov Complexity. Please let me know if I have the right guys. Heres the homepage for Paul Vitanyi and for Ming Li.
Heres a link for Lurkers wanting to know more about Brownian motion
I am very glad to see that we have put panspermia on the back burner for now, because it makes sense to deal with the pre-biotic earth first before considering any new variables which might be involved in cosmic ancestry.
However, I must insist that we not dismiss information theory especially communications and semiosis in discussing the origins of biological life. It is not enough to say the chemicals were present and catalytic; for abiogenesis to be viable, there must also be a mechanism for the rise of autonomy, symbolization (Rocha, Pattee) and very importantly successful communication (Shannon). Even that much is weak without agreeing first that biological systems are capable of self-organizing complexity once all of these are functioning.
Also, I gathered from your discussion of Shannon and modern theoretical constructs - that using Shannon in the narrow sense that Schneider et al have concerning molecular machines is not necessarily short-sighted concerning the contributions of Kolmogorov, Solomonoff, Li, Vitanyi and Schmidhuber. If that is incorrect, please let me know.
Looks pretty straightforward, StJacques. But as Denton indicates, there's a problem regarding the lower-order life, which on the one hand, needs a reducing environment in order to arise, but on the other, needs an oxygen-rich environment in order to survive (i.e., preeminently oxygen's role as constituent of the ozone layer, which protects organisms against the fatal effects of ultraviolet radiation) -- the "Catch-22" of abiogenesis. In other words, absent oxygen -- the presence of which (it is argued) would preclude abiogenesis -- the life rising by means of a methane-rich reducing environment would be wiped out almost immediately after coming into existence, presumably before it had the chance to replicate. You cautioned me that your line of progression "does not prove abiogenesis ... but it does propose a plausible theory into which abiogenesis fits as a necessary step in the evolution of life on earth." But it seems to me that in your line of progression, the term abiogenesis is acting more as a placeholder for some yet-unknown process rather than as establishing a plausible explanation for the origin of life.
You wrote, "from the perspective of the physical sciences there is nothing 'spontaneous' or 'random' about abiogenesis...." Before we can speak of a thing as being spontaneous or random or otherwise, first we have to validate that the thing is an actual process arising in nature. WRT abiogenesis, this is still very much an open question.
I really liked this:
"...the concept of 'randomness' must always be formulated as 'random relative to what?,' because it implies a perspective. To take a pertinent example relative to Stanley Miller's experiment which proved that amino acids could be generated from inorganic matter, consider the predictability of when and where lightning will strike. You can take a meteorologist and a physicist schooled in electromagnetism, position them both on the ground while a thunderstorm rages overhead, and ask them to tell you when and where the next lightning bolt will strike. In terms of simple ordinary language they cannot do it, so you might conclude that the timing and positioning of lightning strikes are 'random' relative to an explanation you would accept in ordinary language. But those same two scientists could express in the language of Physics an equation that will take into account the variables that go into cloud formation, the density of moisture within clouds, temperature, wind patterns, differentials between the electromagnetic charges of the clouds and the ground beneath, etc. and express to you an equation that will predict where and when lightning will strike and that equation will be accurate, though it will not be understood in ordinary language. Therefore; from the perspective of ordinary language, the lightning strike appears as a 'random' event, but from the perspective of the meteorologist and the physicist, it is nothing of the kind, because the location and timing of the strike is governed by the laws of physics as they pertain to meteorological phenomena and electromagnetism."
But it seems that this situation or analogy cannot shed much help on the question of abiogenesis. For the actual variables that go into cloud formation, the density of moisture within clouds, temperature, wind patterns, differentials between the electromagnetic charges of the clouds and the ground beneath, etc., are all well-known. But the actual variables applicable to abiogensis are still a matter of speculation. For even after Miller's showing that amino acids can be generated from inorganic matter, it still seems a bit of a reach (to this skeptic, at least) to say that what can be done under controlled experiments in laboratories necessarily tells us what the actual process of the rise of life on the pre-biotic Earth looked like. Or in other words, the demonstration that amino acids can be generated from inorganic matter does not constitute a proof that abiogenesis occurred; it only demonstrates that the chemical properties of matter are not inconsistent with the rise of an indispensable building block of living organisms. Which is what we would expect to find, really; for everything living and non-living is made out of the "same stuff," matter, plus whatever else might be required (e.g., information, successful communication) for existents to form as such.
In other words, to say that something might have occurred in a certain way is not the same thing as saying that it actually did occur in that way.
You wrote: "I must point out that Overman is a lawyer and for that reason I question his credentials to describe the state of scientific opinion on the early earth's atmosphere...." Overman is an international lawyer, partner in a high-power Washington law firm. But he is obviously also a deeply insightful historian of science who is avidly paying attention to breaking developments in a variety of scientific fields. If only the "experts" were allowed to discuss scientific topics, then probably very little would be publicly said about science at all; and what non-specialists are doing here, right on this thread, would be an unforgivable presumption.
Whatever. There are two things you can say about a highly successful attorney like Overman: (1) they excel at spotting logical fallacies in the other guy's argument (he devotes his first chapter to logic and the most common fallacies that crop up in scientific theorizing; the book is worth the price just for this one chapter!); and (2), they know how to qualify and analyze evidence presented in the given case, and tend to notice when evidence is "missing." FWIW.
Thank you for your very fine post, StJacques. I have much catching-up to do on this thread, and so I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
So true, PH! Yet it seems that we are glossing over important distinctions here: If all things are "determined" by natural law, what is it that "determines" natural law such that it "governs" all things? In other words, if natural law operates as a cause, what caused it? Or are we even sure that natural law is a cause? I thought it was very perceptive of Wolfhart Pannenberg (in the essay at the top of this thread) to suggest that natural laws are not themselves causes; rather they are descriptions of regularies that arise in nature as the result of contingent events that are constantly taking place (e.g., Brownian motion).
I think you're on to something when you say that "given the laws of nature, one might even say that the appearance of life is inevitable." Indeed, one might say that. But in saying it, one is suggesting a certain teleology is at work in nature, that nature seeks as its goal the rise of life. If we are speaking of nature having "goals," then what do we really mean by this? Only self-conscious beings seem to have goals. Is nature a self-conscious being? Or could it be the manifold or medium in which a supernatural consciousness works to achieve its goal or purpose?
Please note this last question is not a "religious question," strictly speaking. Though it has implications for theology, and also for a consideration of the possibility whether this universe has a metaphysical extension.
So far, I'm with you. Very good.
But I would like to separate something here from within the process of natural selection, namely; "random mutations." I would think the "Brownian Motion" model is applicable here too, but I'll await comments.
Agreed. Also, I suggest that the "relatively independent" type of randomness is applicable here, because a mutation may come from some source independent of the creature. A stray cosmic ray or something. So I'm thinking of:
1. Origin of life: "Brownian Motion" type of randomness
2. Natural selection: "relatively independent" type of randomness
3. Mutations: both types of randomness
Just outstanding, Doc -- and so helpful to a non-specialist!
This fourth type of "random" system seems to go straight to the idea of contingency, which is more a philosophical idea than a strictly scientific one. The germ cell here on earth is affected by a discrete event on Sirius -- which probably no observer of the germ cell here on earth could be aware of. And yet the mutation we observe is contingent on the action of that unseen event. From the standpoint of the observer of the germ cell, the mutation may appear to be a "random" happenstance. Yet for a hypothetical observer whose view includes the cosmos in toto, there would be nothing at all "random" about the mutation: That observer would see that it had a cause on Sirius. And because it was "caused," from the point of view of the local observer it becomes fair game for scientific observation, and the natural laws are then found to apply from that point on. But the fact that the cause of the mutation was "hidden from view" means that an important predictive factor remains undisclosed to the scientific method. At least for a while. :^) If I might express it that way.
As you say, nothing in the physics or chemistry of DNA caused the volcano to erupt, or the germ cell to be bombarded by cosmic rays. But we can certainly perceive the effects.... Whereupon we may start speculating on the nature of the cause, and never even come close to actually, correctly identifying it. Which is to say, We usually don't know what we don't know. But we have to carry on any way.
Thanks so much for your excellent post.
PH, I meant to ping you to #318 but somehow neglected to do it....
I knew when I posted that piece that someone might look it over and say: "Aha! For things to be determined requires a Determiner!" This is right in line with "Natural laws require a law-giver." But neither is true. At least not necesarily true.
If, as I've said before, natural laws are inherent in the very fact of existence (a photon is a photon and thus behaves as a photon behaves), then things are merely doing what they do, and not as some external Determiner directs that they should do. In other words, a photon doesn't need to be reminded that it's a photon, and not an electron.
Indeed, one might say that [life is inevitable]. But in saying it, one is suggesting a certain teleology is at work in nature, that nature seeks as its goal the rise of life. If we are speaking of nature having "goals," then what do we really mean by this? Only self-conscious beings seem to have goals. Is nature a self-conscious being?
Not necessarily. It's not only the emergence of life which is (or which may be) inevitable. Stars are inevitable too. And planets. And rocks. Everything flows naturally from the moment of creation. Nothing is necessarily the result goal-seeking (which gratuitously introduces what may be an unnecessary Goal Seeker). Is it really required that the Great Determiner (or Goal-Seeker) must ordain that rocks shall exist?
Stars, planets, rocks, and life are all, in my (limited?) Aristotlean view, the natural (and perhaps inevitable) consequences of pre-existing conditions. I'm suggesting that only causality is at work, not teleology. Sometimes, when we look back on a long sequence of natural cause-and-effect events, teleology may seem to have been involved, but this may be an illusion of the retrospective viewpoint.
There is room in my billiard-ball, totally determined universe (and maybe also a necessity) for some kind of First Cause at the moment of creation. But after that, the apparent necessity gets fuzzy. At least in my current thinking. I'm talking about science here. Religion is a separate matter.
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