And possibly also suggestive of an amazingly elegant "interface" between the non-physical (i.e., "spiritual") and physical worlds. Just an idea that occurred to me....
Perhaps such an idea would be resisted by scientists as smacking of metaphysics or some other "subjective" modality of analysis/interpretation. But the problem of how the immaterial can affect/effect the material — which definitely seems to be the observational case, based on developments in information theory and complex systems theory, not to mention common sense — will not go away.
In short, it appears that tangible things arise from intangible causes. The problem is, it seems to me, that we never observe "causes" (because of their sheer intangibility), only "effects."
That is, only effects are observables; thus only effects are accessible to the scientific method.
The great skeptic philosopher David Hume outright says that the connection between a cause and its effect is not ever something that can be demonstrated. To put it another way, there is no observable evidence of such a connection, no observable/demonstrable "facts" between a cause and its putative effect. Thus, the cause–effect relation is something we take on faith. For Hume, the very attribution of causes is an act of ex post facto induction which is then passed on and publicly accepted, in due course becoming "conventional."
Well, that's how Hume tells the tale! Though I find him a remarkably attractive human being in so many respects, I think he was too much a "child of the Enlightenment" on this question — the Enlightenment which basically has shed so precious little light.... He is heir to the Baconian scientific revolution, which bottom-line marks the profound shift from deductive to inductive analytical methods.
But it seems to me the current development of theoretical biology is not helped by recourse to such abstractions. Nowadays in theoretical biology, the issue of the "interface" between information (non-physical) and biological function (physical) is commanding considerable attention.
But what is science to do in this situation? The current state of theoretical biology seems to be catching on to the idea of biological function as an end-directed and purposeful, not a "random," phenomenon. The problem seems to be: If there is purpose in biology — informed purpose at that — Whose "purpose" is it?
It seems Science definitely does not want to "go there"....
I think a way out of this epistemological impasse has been well proposed by Jacob Needleman, Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State, and once-upon-a-time clinical psychologist:
...[T]here exists a world of ideas — ideas which are of an astonishingly different quality from the concepts and theories of science, yet which retain the element of objectivity. [Scientists] are being asked to use their mind, that mind which has led them through the problems of their scientific investigations — yet it is not the same mind, not the same part of the mind. They try with their scientific, familiar mind to answer the questions of philosophy, but it is not possible. (It is not possible to approach the questions of philosophy with the scientific/scholarly mind alone: that is what academic philosophy does not understand.) Some of them attempt to convert the questions to intellectual problems, but I know that at the other end of the problem they find the question still waits for them.... The scientist, the student of science, comes from his laboratory where he has attempted to abandon the hindrances of subjectivity and emotion in order to see the real world. In front of authentic philosophy, he is astonished to find that the emotion evoked in him by great ideas is actually the same thing as freedom from emotion. — The Heart of Philosophy, 1982, p. 12–13.Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for sharing your beautiful insights!
Non-physical world? ... First God created the dimensions, then He used light to get physical things going. Anything in God’s universe will have a where/when realm, whether we can now sense it or not. You might be better off stating non-visual, as in non-visual with our present physical configuration. But Jesus has told us that He is preparing a place for us and He shall come again to take us ‘there’, to that where/when. We have hints of that possibility with the fifth chapter in Daniel, the Old Testament/Tanakh. Whomever wrote on Belshazzar’s wall at palace party central was in a where/when and reached into Belshazzar’s where/when. Angels exist in some sort of where/when.
In short, it appears that tangible things arise from intangible causes. The problem is, it seems to me, that we never observe "causes" (because of their sheer intangibility), only "effects."
And as you further explain, only the physical had been recognized for the purposes of "doing" science until very recently.
I'm very grateful for the mathematicians and physicists who have been invited to the biologists' tables.
Thank you so very much for your superb essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!