vol 3: Development
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... to restore theology to the mainstream of science
Is the universe divine?
Is the universe divine? Christians say no, we say yes. How are we to resolve this question? It is the purpose of this site to propose a scientific answer to this question. Science is a dialogue between ideas and evidence, or as Popper put it, conjecture and refutation. Popper
Perhaps the scientific method is alien to theology? This true within the Old Religions insofar as the data of theology are restricted to ancient texts and traditions. If, however, god and the universe are one, we may observe the universe and so obtain sure data about god. Some might still argue that no interpretation of observed data can lead us to god. This is a matter of conjecture. In the scientific way, we propose an alternative conjecture. We will try to show that this conjecture fits both the data and the notions of god that have evolved through the history of theology
History
Divinity leaves the universe
Parmenides (fl c 480 bce)
The dichotomy between god and the world enters western literature in fragments of a poem written by Parmenides of Elea. Hussey The poem begins with the poet on a chariot journey from night to daylight. In the light he is welcomed by a goddess whose words complete the poem. Burnet Feyerabend puts the story in a contemporary context:
... Parmenides claimed that the world was one, that change and subdivision did not exist, and that the lives of human beings that contained both were a chimaera. The proof (which he presents as being revealed by a goddess) rests on three assumptions said to be self evident: that Being is (estin ), that not-Being is not (ouk estin), and that nothing is more fundamental than being. The argument then proceeds as follows: if change and difference exist, then there exists a transition from Being to not-Being (which is the only alternative); not-Being is not, hence change and difference are not either. Here we have an early example of reductio ad absurdum - a kind of reasoning that extended the domain of demonstrable truths and separated it from intuition. The premiss, estin, is the first explicit conservation law - it asserts the conservation of Being. Used in the form that nothing comes from nothing, it suggested more special conservation laws such as the conservation of matter (Antoine Lavoisier) or the conservation of energy (Robert von Mayer), who started a decisive paper with this very principle. The uniformity of Being survived as the idea that basic laws must be independent of space, time and circumstance. 'For us physicists', wrote Einstein, almost repeating Parmenides, 'the distinction between past, present and future has no other meaning than that of an illusion, though a tenacious one.' Feyerabend
The rationalisation of Parmenides position evolved steadily. Zeno of Elea (c 470 bce) provided arguments against the reality of plurality and motion. His arguments "... exploit properties of the infinite and use (perhaps for the first time) infinite regress as an argumentative device". Hussey Zeno's arguments were not convincingly refuted until the mathematical developments of the nineteenth century.
Contrasting somewhat with Parmenides, we have the picture of the world developed by Heraclitus of Ephesus. Hussey About 100 sentences of his work survive. Burnet Hussey summarises Heraclitus' doctrine in five points:
1. The abstract notion of 'structure' is omnipresent, explicitly in the word harmonia, but mostly implicitly.
2. There is a parallelism or identity of structure between the operations of the mind, as expressed in thought and language, and those of the reality which it grasps.
3. In general the structure is that of 'unity in opposites' . This appears in many examples, static or dynamic, drawn from everyday life: 'People step into the same rivers, and different waters flow on to them'; ... These remarks and their generalisations are not meant to infringe the law of non-contradiction; rather they trade on it to point out a systematic ambivalence (between polar opposites) in the essential nature of things.
4. The parallelism of structure means that understanding the world is like grasping the meaning of a statement. The 'meaning of the world', like that of a statement in words, is not obvious, but yet is present in the statement and can be worked our, provided one 'knows the language'. Human reason has the power to know the language, precisely because its own operations are conducted in the very same or an analogous one. The word logos (basically 'story', 'account'; then 'calculation, proportion, reason') expresses this analogy or identity.
5. Hence the key to understanding the nature of the world is introspection. 'I went looking for myself'. The human self ('soul', psykhe ) is variously occupied: it is combatively active, physically, emotionally and intellectually; it is reflectively self-discovering and self-extending; it is constantly self-reversing in the swings of circumstances or passion or thought. Yet it needs firm frameworks (objective truths, fixed rules of conduct) to be at all, or to make sense of its own existence. All this is true of the world too; here also there is no sharp line between what it is and what it means. ...
Difficulties with reconciling movement and rest, multitude and unity, knowledge and reality and the other dualities of our experience of the world remain to this day.
Drawing on his ancient Greek and Christian heritage, Aquinas provides arguments for the distinction between God and the world that echo back to Parmenides:
The existence of God can be proved in five ways.
The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. Aquinas
Divinity returns to the universe
A decisive event, from the point of view of this proposal, was the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Newton Physics credits Newton with deriving the formal law of universal gravitation and using to unite the heavens and the earth in one magnificent system.
Newton's work ignited an explosion in the study of forms (mathematics) that continues today, particularly in the interpretation of the enormous texts (genotypes) that have evolved to guide the process of life.
Plato and all his successors assumed that forms were immutable, with the consequence that the world has always been as it is now, the flow of generation and corruption never deviating from a fixed set of species. The alternative flowered in the time of Darwin, who we remember for the classic exposition of descent with modification. Darwin Jones
Darwin's theory of evolution which was a seedling in 1858 has expanded to embrace all information about living systems. This has been possible because the evolutionary process is essentially recursive, that is each generation builds on what has gone before, without any obvious limit. Geophysiology takes the view the earth is one organism (christened Gaia in deference to an ancient Greek god) which evolves as the product of the evolution of its parts. Beyond this is the view that the universe itself is a single living and evolving organism Lovelock
The distinction between God and the world that began with Parmenides was entrenched formally by the arguments of Zeno. The scientific unification of god and the world must be consistent, meaning that the inconsistencies between motion and stillness noted by Zeno must be answered.
To the ancients, motion implied infinity. The introduction of calculus by Newton and Leibniz raised Zeno's problems anew, since calculus involved taking the ratios of infinitesimal quantities.
Cantor saw that the infinite set of finite natural numbers (whose cardinal number he called aleph zero) could generate (through a not-inconsistent process) a set of strictly greater infinity (cardinal aleph one), and that this recursive generation of transfinite cardinals could continue without end, like the recursive generation of natural numbers by adding one. In the transfinite case, however, the one that was added at each step was a new structure comprising everything that could be constructed from the elements of the prior set.
Cantor's ideas, which are important to mathematics, have their foundation in his theological views. Hallet writes:
It is clear that Cantor understands pure set theory as a quite general foundational theory which prepares the way for any theory which uses or relies on sets or numbers. But now we come back to theology and God, for this foundation, this understanding of what numbers are, or what sets etc. exist, is for Cantor intimately connected with the attempt to understand God's whole abstract creation and the nature of God himself. Hallett, 10
Now
Now we have the ingredients to deal with the question: is the universe divine? By divine we mean the whole, a self sufficient entity responsible for its own activity. The Christian position, defended by Aquinas, says the universe is not self sufficient. It is a puppet, moved by an invisible puppetteer traditionally called god.
To establish the alternative view, we need first to develop a convincing model of god, and then show that that model corresponds the the world of our experience.
The model used here grows from set theory and evolution. Set theory provides us with a mathematical structure big enough to describe god. Evolution provides a way to understand how god works.
We apply the model to the universe in stages, beginning with physics and biology, and then moving on to the nature of self controlling systems and the human spirit. In the course of this work, we hope show that there is no inconsistency between our model of god and the physical world, life, self control or spirit.
Now we come to talk about the universe as a whole. Is it the fullness of being? Is it divine not just in the sense that it shares in God, but in the sense that no real distinction can be made between our habitat and divinity?
This is the central question for this theology section of the site.
Further reading
Books
| Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, Gramercy 1998 Introduction: 'In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species has not been independently created, but has descended, like varieties, from other species.' (66) Amazon back |
| Feyerabend, Paul K, "science, history of the philosophy of" in Ted Honderich (editor) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995 Amazon back |
| Hallett, Michael, Cantorian set theory and limitation of size, Oxford UP 1984 Jacket: 'This book will be of use to a wide audience, from beginning students of set theory (who can gain from it a sense of how the subject reached its present form), to mathematical set theorists (who will find an expert guide to the early literature), and for anyone concerned with the philosophy of mathematics (who will be interested by the extensive and perceptive discussion of the set concept).' Daniel Isaacson. Amazon back |
| Hussey, E L, "Parmenides" in Ted Honderich (editor) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995 Amazon back |
| Hussey, E L, "Zeno of Elea" in Ted Honderich The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995 Amazon back |
| Hussey, E L, " Heraclitus of Ephesus" in Ted Honderich The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford University Press 1995 Amazon back |
| Jones, Steve, Almost like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated, Doubleday 1999 An Historical Sketch: 'The Origin of Species is, without doubt, the book of the millennium. ... [This book] is, as far as is possible, an attempt to rewrite the Origin of Species. I use its plan, developing as it does from farms to fossils, from beehives to islands, as a framework, but my own Grand Facts ... are set firmly in the late twentieth century. Almost Like a Whale tries to read Charles Darwin's mind with the benefit of scientific hindsight and to show how the theory of evolution unites biology as his millenium draws to an end.' (xix) Amazon back |
| Lovelock, James, Ages of Gaia: A Biography of our Living Earth, W W Norton 1995 'This book describes a set of observations about the life of our planet which may, one day, be recognised as one of the major discontinuities in human thought. If Lovelock turns out to be right in his view of things, as I believe he is, we will be viewing the Earth as a coherent system of life, self regulating and self-changing, a sort of immense living organism.' Lewis Thomas Amazon back |
| Newton, Isaac, The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy , University of California Press 1999 This completely new translation, the first in 270 years, is based on the third (1726) edition, the final revised version approved by Newton; it includes extracts from the earlier editions, corrects errors found in earlier versions, and replaces archaic English with contemporary prose and up-to-date mathematical forms. ... The illuminating Guide to the Principia by I. Bernard Cohen, along with his and Anne Whitman's translation, will make this preeminent work truly accessible for today's scientists, scholars, and students. Amazon back |
| Popper, Karl Raimund, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1972 Preface: 'The way in which knowledge progresses, and expecially our scientific knowledge, is by unjustified (and unjustifiable) anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.' [p viii] Amazon back |
Links
| Aquinas Summa: I 2 3: Does god exist? back |
| John Burnet Early Greek Philosophy: Parmenides of Elea: The Poem back |
| John Burnet Early Greek Philosophy: Heracleitus of Ephesus: Fragments back |
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