The Mind of the
Universe
Self-Organization and Divine Action
Mariano Artigas
University of Illinois, October 25th,
2000
Unpublished text.
"What is God? The mind of the
universe. What is God? The whole that you see and the
whole that you do not see. Thus we return to him his
magnitude, because we can think of nothing greater, if he
alone is everything, if he sustains his work from within
and from without". (Seneca)
"What is God? The mind and reason of the universe.
What is God? Everything that we see, because in all
things we see his wisdom and assistance, and thus we
confess his magnitude, which is so great that we cannot
think of a bigger one. And if he alone is everything, it
is he who sustains his great work from within and from
without". (Luis de Granada)
Index
- 1. The mind of the
universe
2. A new scientific
worldview
3.
Self-organization
4. The scientific meaning
of self-organization
5. The implications of
self-organization
6. Self-organization and
teleology
Texts
Notes
Yesterday I spoke at the
University of Chicago. The title of my lecture was, in
its first part, identical with the title of the present
lecture, but the subtitle was different. Yesterday I
referred to the general lines of my last book 1 ;
today I'm going to concentrate on one of its parts.
Nevertheless, I will begin with a very brief outline of
the book, which is necessary in order to understand the
rest.
 1. The Mind of the Universe
In my book I want to show that
our present scientific worldview provides a most adequate
basis for a perspective which includes purpose and
religious values, and I also want to explore the
implications of this worldview for our ideas about the
universe as God's creation, man as God's collaborator,
and God as the ground of being, creativity and
values.
Naturalism is widely
widespread in our Western societies. Very often
naturalism uses empirical science to present metaphysics
and religion as meaningless or useless. Nevertheless,
this corresponds to a misinterpretation of the methods
used by science and, besides, the new scientific
worldview suggests new concepts about nature, man and
God.
My study is divided into four
parts. The first is an Introduction in which I consider
which method should be used to study the philosophical
and theological implications of science. These
implications are analyzed in the three following parts,
which deal respectively with the ontological implications
and the corresponding image of God (second part), the
epistemological implications and the corresponding image
of man (third part), and the ethical implications (fourth
part). Then the four part includes a Conclusion in which
I examine the results of the preceding parts and the
plausibility of the naturalistic and the theistic
positions by using the criteria which we apply to
evaluate scientific hypothesis.
In my opinion, empirical
science should not be used as the basis of naturalist
approaches, because: (1) it includes not only factual
knowledge, but also its necessary conditions which can be
considered as presuppositions whose analysis constitute a
philosophical and theological task; (2) the philosophical
analysis of those presuppositions shows that the current
scientific worldview is coherent with a theistic
approach.
There are three kinds of such
presuppositions. The first refers to the intelligibility
or rationality of nature: it can be labeled as
ontological, and is closely related with natural order.
In fact, empirical science is a search for a better
knowledge of natural order, so that the very existence of
that order is a necessary condition for science to exist.
The second refers to the human ability to know natural
order: it can be labeled as epistemological, and includes
the different forms of scientific argument. For science
to exist it is not enough that natural order exists; it
is also required that we, human beings, have the
abilities necessary to know it: for example, the capacity
of representing the natural world as an object, of
creating simplified models of it that can be studied with
the intellectual and experimental means available in
every moment, of interpreting the results of the
experiments, of arguing in order to evaluate the truth or
falsity of our conclusions. The third refers to the
values implied by the scientific activity itself: it can
be labeled as ethical, and includes the search for truth,
rigor, objectivity, intellectual modesty, service to
other people, cooperation, and other related values.
Besides, there is a feedback
of scientific progress on these presuppositions, because
the progress of science retro-justifies, enriches and
refines them. Actually, as these presuppositions are
necessary conditions for the existence of science,
scientific progress is a sufficient condition for their
existence and enables us to determine their scope.
Seen under the light of that
feedback, the analysis of each one of those
presuppositions can provide a clue to the philosophical
meaning of scientific progress and, therefore, to its
theological relevance. In my book I have devoted a whole
part to each one of the three presuppositions. Here I
will concentrate on the ontological one, namely the
rationality of nature, and will try to show that the
scientific study of natural order has lead us to
represent the natural world as the result of a huge
process of self-organization, which is profoundly
coherent with an updated view of divine action in an
evolving universe.
2. A new scientific worldview
For the first time in history,
we possess a scientific worldview which provides a
unified picture, because it includes all natural levels
(micro- and macro-physical, as well as biological) and
their mutual relations. I think this is very important.
Of course I do not mean that our knowledge of the natural
world is absolutely complete. But the fact remains that
the present worldview is relatively complete because it
includes every one of the great types of natural beings.
We have begun to know the atomic level only recently.
Along the 19 th century physicists debated
over the very existence of atoms; the famous Austrian
physicist Ernst Mach opposed the atomic theory and only
when he was close to his last days, around 1916, he
admitted that atoms really did exist. The existence of
the first subatomic particle, the electron, was
discovered one hundred years ago, in 1897. Nuclear
physics developed already in the 20 th
century. Before nuclear physics developed, we could know
practically nothing about the real nature of the stars,
which are gigantic nuclear reactors. Progress in the
knowledge of the microphysical level made possible the
emergence of molecular biology which, for the first time
in history, has permitted us to know the real mechanisms
of life.
I think that by now we can
perceive what do I mean when I say that, for the first
time in history, we dispose of a scientific worldview
which is complete because it includes all natural levels.
Until very recent times our knowledge of the natural
world not only was limited, as it is today; our ignorance
of the basic nature of large parts of the world was
enormous. This is not the case now. The more we know, the
more we discover the amplitude of what we don't know.
But, at the same time, we dispose of a reliable
representation of the basic skeleton of the natural
world.
The new worldview includes
both the synchronic perspective (which refers to the
present-day state or the natural world) and also the
diachronic perspective (the evolutionary history of the
world). The evolutionary perspective first reached its
scientific maturity in the field of biology in the
nineteenth century and in the twentieth century also
embraced genetics and molecular biology. Cosmic evolution
had seriously been proposed as early as the end of the
1920s by the Christian astronomer and priest Georges
Lemaître on the basis of Einstein's general
relativity and the follow-up work of Friedmann and de
Sitter. This became the focus of attention when some of
its empirical consequences were successfully tested in
the 1960s. If we combine cosmic and biological evolution,
we obtain a big global process that supposedly started
some ten billion years ago from a primeval state in which
all matter and energy were concentrated at enormous
density and temperature. We do not know exactly how the
different components of our world formed after the Big
Bang, but we have plausible accounts that can explain
this, at least in principle.
One of the main features of
the new worldview is to rid the concept of matter of some
of the connotations it had in the mechanistic picture of
the world. More precisely, the current knowledge of the
composition of matter and of its fundamental interactions
results in matter not being thought of as something
passive and inert, but rather as possessing an inner
dynamism at all natural levels. This dynamism is closely
related to structure and patterns, insofar as it deploys
itself according to temporal patterns and its deployment
produces spatial patterns that are the sources of new
kinds of dynamism. This scheme, repeated again and again,
explains how our world has been built up.
This view does not imply a
return to the ancient hylozoism that attributed life to
every piece of matter. But it does imply some changes in
the usual notion of matter as it has been employed in
modern times in the West. Indeed, the dichotomy between
inert and living matter interpreted as if inert matter
were a merely passive reality cannot be accepted anymore.
Of course, the distinction between living and non-living
entities is a very important one, but it cannot be
explained only by saying that whereas living beings are
self-moving, nonliving matter is completely passive by
itself.
Our present scientific
knowledge shows that the idea of matter as something
merely passive does not correspond to reality. Dynamism
is a basic characteristic of natural entities at all
levels of nature. The microphysical level is completely
pervaded by dynamism. Stable structures result from
equilibrium between different kinds of dynamism. At the
macrophysical level, natural dynamism also appears to be
a characteristic trait of nature.
Moreover, the components of
matter behave in a cooperative way, producing new
structural patterns. If we combine the dynamic character
of natural entities with the all-pervasive existence of
patterns in nature we can appreciate much better the
picture of the world that our present-day science
provides us. The present worldview stresses that dynamism
and patterns are closely connected and in some way
interwoven. Progress in synergetics shows how different
kinds of dynamism can cooperate and produce new forms of
order. Progress in microphysics shows that huge
quantities of microentities collaborate in the production
of cooperative patterns. Paul Davies shows his amazement
at this fact in this way: "It is one of the universal
miracles of nature that huge assemblages of particles,
subject only to the blind forces of nature, are
nevertheless capable of organising themselves into
patterns of cooperative activity." 2
Recent progress shows, indeed,
how synergy works even at the microphysical level. As
Davies puts it: "The unusual property for matter and
energy to self-organise into coherent structures and
patterns is only very recently becoming appreciated by
physicists... Of course, biologists have long studied
self-organisation and pattern formation. Today, however,
physicists and chemist are joining in, and
self-organisation has become a distinctive branch of the
New Physics." 3
Expressions such as "universal
miracles" and "unusual property" show the amazement this
kind of phenomenon produces in the scientist who reflects
on the new achievements of physics. Obviously,
microphysical particles know nothing about physics, but
they behave in a way that makes possible the formation of
increasingly complex patterns.
3. Self-organization
This worldview is centered
around a dynamic process of self-organization. Our world
is the result of the deployment of a dynamism that
produces different natural levels with new emergent
characteristics, and therefore with new kinds of
dynamisms, in such a way that nature is creative in a
real sense.
Self-organization has become
the metaphor commonly used to account for the present
scientific worldview. The concept of self-organization
began in the 1970s. It was thought as a symbol of a broad
new interdisciplinary paradigm extending to the entire
worldview and even to the field of the humanities. It can
be traced back to Kant's Critique of Judgement 4, and even further back, for
ordinary experience shows that living beings are
self-organizing systems. That is why this idea makes it
possible to recover some important features of the
ancient worldview: holism and directionality. Dislodged
by the mechanistic worldview, these concepts reappear
under the light of a much broader worldview that results
from the enormous progress in our knowledge of the
systemic aspects of nature.
Self-organization is closely
related to patterning. Some authors think that the
peculiar combinations of chance and lawfulness provide an
explanation for the creativity of nature. I would say,
however, that even if we maintain our argument on the
natural level, a third element has to be added to obtain
a more complete explanation, and it is related to natural
tendencies and cooperativity. There are good reasons to
think that many cooperative features of nature have yet
to be discovered. Our knowledge of self-organization has
probably only just begun.
This is easy to see in the
field of evolutionary theories. Despite the claims of
orthodox Darwinians who consider natural selection as the
chief cause of evolution, other scientists continue
searching for new structural laws that may help bridge
the many gaps within the evolutionary explanations.
Empirical research has found some promising clues in the
field of genetics, where the complex combinations of
different levels of genetic regulation could explain how
a particular mutation can sometimes produce a big and yet
viable change. Theoretical research, which is more
conjectural, provides new hypotheses; for instance,
Stuart Kauffman has published two works on this subject:
a specialized account 5, and one aimed at a more
popular audience. 6 In the first book, Stephen Jay
Gould argues that Darwinian theory must be expanded to
recognize other sources of order besides natural
selection.
Information occupies a central
place in the present worldview. Natural scientists speak
of information mainly when they refer to the genetic
information that contains the basic instructions for the
building and working of organisms. This concept can be
easily extended to other fields of biology and to
non-living beings insofar as they also contain an entire
set of potentialities that are displayed in definite ways
according to individual circumstances.
Natural information is stored,
coded and decoded, transmitted, and integrated. All this
can be illustrated by using as many examples as we
desire. In my book I have chosen an illustration taken
from cell communication. The 1994 Nobel Prize for
medicine was awarded to professors Alfred G. Gilman and
Martin Rodbell for the discovery of G proteins and their
role in the transmission of signals in the cells. An
article by Gilman 7 shows how biologists use
abundantly a vocabulary where the different aspects of
information play a relevant role. Molecules act as if
they had a kind of knowledge: they carry and transmit
signals, coordinate cellular responses, convey
information through intermediaries. Gilman writes about G
proteins: "We continue to be fascinated by their
machinations, as well as by the central role they
play in an ever increasing array of cellular
activities."
Obviously, G proteins do not
think. They have no watches, nor have they studied
chemistry or biology. Nevertheless, their action is
polyvalent and extremely efficient. Gilman tells us that
there are many puzzles still to be solved, an indication
that our present knowledge has uncovered only part of the
marvels that make the functioning of our organism
possible.
In the last analysis, the
world of molecular biology is no different from any other
field in nature and science, so that the use of terms
such as "information," "instructions," and others only
corresponds to the need to explain something that in
itself is anything but mysterious. I would not find it
hard to agree with this. However, when scientists explain
their discoveries, they may need to use a language full
of references that remind us of intelligent behavior.
4. The scientific meaning of
self-organization
We see that, as a result of
scientific progress, the ontological presupposition of
science has evolved in a most notable way: order has
turned into self-organization. We began with a general
idea about natural order as expressing the rationality of
nature, and this presupposition has been retrojustified,
enlarged and refined by the present worldview. It has
been retrojustified because self-organization is a
particularly strong kind of order, which shows that the
presupposition was completely correct. It has been
enlarged for that very same reason, and also because the
whole process of self-organization includes all natural
levels and their mutual relations. And it has been
refined because we have discovered the internal
potentialities of matter in all its levels, so that the
idea of a matter which is purely passive or inert has
been replaced by the much richer idea of a matter which
contains active principles of interaction that can
produce new kinds of organization.
Self-organization includes a
peculiar combination of power and subtleties, a balance
between internal sources of activity and synergy. It
consists in the production of successive levels of
organization and, therefore, it is not a once-and-for-all
process. This has been expressed by Paul Davies as
follows: "The physical world is not arbitrarily
regulated; it is ordered in a very particular way, poised
between the twin extremes of simple regimented
orderliness and random complexity: it is neither a
crystal nor a random gas. The universe is undeniably
complex, but its complexity is of an organized
variety. Moreover, this organization was not built into
the universe at its origin. It has emerged from primeval
chaos in a sequence of self-organizing processes that
have progressively enriched and complexified the evolving
universe in a more or less unidirectional matter. It is
easy to imagine a world that, while ordered, nevertheless
does not possess the right sort of forces or conditions
for the emergence of complex organization." 8
Certainly, self-organization
implies the existence of an intrinsic and spontaneous
source of organization in material entities. A basic
feature of natural entities, alive and non-living as
well, is their spontaneous dynamism which is deployed
according to temporal patterns so that it produces new
spatial patterns which are the source of new kinds of
dynamism, and so on. Natural entities possess a dynamism
that is highly sophisticated. I dare say that all
subatomic particles "know" the entirety of physics and
chemistry much better than we do. The reason is very
simple: a single electron can be found in a great variety
of circumstances, and in every one of them it will act as
corresponds to its nature of a true electron. Electrons
are an important part of every atom and molecule that
exist in the world, so that they behave in different ways
in a practically innumerable kind of circumstances.
Moreover, electrons carry
built into them a principle of self-organization that
plays a very important role. Indeed, the so-called
principle of exclusion of Pauli reflects the fact that
two fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state in the
same system, as a consequence, microphysical systems are
structured according to definite patterns. The basic
components of all atoms are fermions (namely, protons,
neutrons and electrons), and the successive types of
atoms that contain an increasing number of protons in
their nucleus also contain an equal number of electrons
around the nucleus, so that the peripheral electrons are
structured according to Pauli's exclusion principle and
form the characteristic patterns of each kind of atom,
which are responsible for the physical and chemical
properties of atoms and also of the larger systems formed
by atoms.
The case of Pauli's principle
is important because it shows how an extremely simple
"principle of organization" works. That principle is a
physical law that accounts for the existence of a great
variety of natural patterns. Indeed, self-organization
doubtless proceeds according to natural laws and it
should therefore be possible to know the principles which
govern it.
Paul Davies has written: "If
we accept that there exists a propensity in nature for
matter and energy to undergo spontaneous transitions into
new states of higher organizational complexity, and that
the existence of these states is not fully explained or
predicted by lower level laws and entities, nor do they
‘just happen' to arise for no particular reason,
then it is necessary to find some physical principles
additional to the lower level laws to explain them... We
seem to be on the verge of discovering not only wholly
new laws of nature, but ways of thinking about nature
that depart radically from traditional science." 9. However, Davies does not
provide examples of principles of that kind that are
generally accepted. After all, this is hardly surprising,
as he refers to the discovery of radically new ways of
thinking that do not yet exist.
In contrast to Davies, Manfred
Stöckler sees little evidence in favor of new
specific principles of self-organization. He dismisses
Davies' arguments and asserts: "processes of
self-organisation can be understood without adopting
special principles. In this sense they give evidence for
the program of reductionism." 10. The
differences between these two authors are probably due to
Stöckler's emphasis on reductionism and Davies's
emphasis on emergence, novelty and creativity.
Whether or not new principles
of self-organization will be discovered is hard to decide
in advance. Nevertheless, the affirmative answer seems
more likely than the negative. For instance, in the field
of developmental biology it is likely that new
discoveries will be made in the line of homeotic genes
and gene regulation, which will enable us to understand
development and evolution much better than we do now.
In any case, we already know
many laws that, in a broad sense, may be considered
principles of self-organization. I have already referred
to Pauli's exclusion principle, which is such a law. This
case shows that, in order to be considered a
self-organizing principle, a scientific law need not have
any distinctive feature. In some ways, all scientific
laws can be considered self-organizing principles.
Pauli's exclusion principle, like any other law of
physics, merely describes a behavior: in this case, the
behavior of fermions which belong to the same system.
However, this kind of behavior automatically provokes a
type of organization that affects all electrons of all
atoms, and therefore many other types of organization and
most properties of matter: this is why it can be
considered a principle of self-organization. Insofar as
all scientific laws intervene as conditions for the
existence of a world which has been formed through a huge
process of self-organization, every one of them is a kind
of principle of self-organization. Obviously, when one or
several laws are responsible for the regular production
of a well-determined organized result, they should be
considered self-organizing principles in a stronger
sense.
On the other hand, when
thinking about principles of self-organization we should
not represent them as having a consistency on their own.
Scientific laws and principles do not have a separate
existence. They are abstract formulations that express in
a symbolic and approximative way the behavior of natural
systems. Therefore, when we search for principles of
self-organization, we should not imagine them as a kind
of plan different or independent from the behavior of
natural systems. Such principles either exist as built-in
tendencies of natural systems or they do not exist at
all, because if they were superimposed from outside we
would no longer be dealing with self-organization.
The distinctive trait of
self-organization is, precisely, the combination of an
inner dynamism ("self") which produces a functional
result ("organization"). If we conceptualize the laws in
a quasi-Platonic way as if they had a semi-independent
existence, then we should ask, following Stephen Hawking
in his Conclusion to his book A Brief History of
Time : "What is it that breathes fire into the
equations and makes a universe for them to describe?" 11, and we could find it most
natural for Kitty Ferguson to write an entire book
entitled The Fire in the Equations. 12
Surely, Hawking and Ferguson would agree that the
equations do not have an independent existence, and also
that they are only an approximative account of what
happens in the real world. The real problem is to explain
the existence of that world, composed of systems that are
capable of combining themselves producing an astonishing
range of new patterns.
5. The implications of
self-organization
Reflection on
self-organization leads to pose the following question:
Where do new natural patterns come from? Or, in other
words, how can we explain the emergence of novelties in
the natural world? John Haught rightly attributes great
importance to this question. Speaking of the new science
of complexity, Haught attributes to the supporter of
contact between science and theology (who presumably
represents himself) the following interesting assertions:
"The new sciences (if we may call them that) focus our
attention in a fresh way on the pervasive fact of
patterning. In doing so they are dealing with something
as fundamental as being itself, and not with just another
gap that could conceivably be filled in by fresh
scientific discoveries. After all, can we really separate
the deep question of a thing's existence or ‘being'
from the fact of its patterning? For anything to exist at
all would it not have to possess some degree of organized
structure? Without at least some internal ordering of its
components could anything even have actuality? Our
position, as articulated by Whitehead, is that things
simply cannot exist without being ordered in a definite
way. Indefiniteness would be equivalent to
non-existence." 13
Haught adds that science
presupposes the existence of patterning and also that the
question about the very existence of patterning has some
metaphysical connotations: "Thus, the question scientists
are asking today about why there is complexity in
the universe is only a hair's breadth away from the
theological question concerning why anything exists at
all... The very possibility of doing science in the first
place presupposes the fact of patterning as
science's field of exploration... science cannot by
itself explain the naked fact of patterning. True, it is
discovering complex designs that it never noticed
before... But can scientists ask the very deep question
as to why there is any patterning at all and pretend that
they are not thereby steering perilously close to
metaphysics? And when they wonder why complex patterning
has the features of diversity, emergence, adaptability,
and interactivity, can they pursue such inquiry to the
very end without making contact to theology?" 14
Science presupposes that
patterns exist and that they can be explained on the
grounds of other natural patterns. The present worldview
shows that nature displays an impressive array of
patterns which pertain to different levels and are
interconnected in a big system which is full of
functionality and makes possible the existence of truly
rational beings.
Seen under the present
worldview, the world is highly rational because it is the
result of a great process of self-organization where new
patterns emerge that can be integrated in a series of
progressively organized systems that provide the basis
for the existence of rational human beings. Nature is
rational insofar as it has been formed according to
rational principles, and also because it provides the
basis for the existence of rational beings.
Nature is rational because it
includes a huge series of processes which are integrated
in a very sophisticated way. One may wonder, indeed, how
is it possible to reach so many varied results with so
few elements. In the basis of natural phenomena there is
a small number of components which can be combined in
successive levels by using recursive methods so that they
finally produce highly organized systems. Three subatomic
particles are the basic constituents of ordinary matter;
ninety-two atoms are the components of a great variety of
natural systems; four nucleotides are the elements of the
highly sophisticated genetic information; twenty
amino-acids are the components of proteins. Subtlety in
the methods and sophistication in the results are the
rule in nature.
Paul Davies refers to the
entire process of self-organization with these words:
"The fact that this rich and complex variety emerges from
the featureless inferno of the Big Bang, and does so as a
consequence of laws of stunning simplicity and
generality, indicates some sort of matching of means to
end that has a distinct teleological flavor to it." 15
The rationality of nature
points towards the problems related to finality or
teleology in nature. Information can be considered as
"materialized rationality." It includes plans that are
stored in spatio-temporal structures and guide the
successive deployment of natural dynamism, and the
corresponding formation of increasingly complex patterns.
This information is stored, displayed, integrated, coded
and decoded in the different natural systems and
processes: not only in the biological level, but also in
the physical, chemical, astrophysical and geological
levels. As already noted, we could even say that an
electron ‘knows' a lot of physics and chemistry, as
it will act in all sorts of circumstances according to
the patterns we discover in the physical science.
All this is very coherent with
the existence of a divine action that respects natural
agency, because God himself has created it and has
associated it to the fulfilments of his plans. The
corresponding idea of God is that of a Creator who has
conceived the natural dynamism and uses it to produce,
according to the natural laws, a world of successive
levels of emerging novelties. Our world does not exhaust
the possibilities of the creation. God usually acts
respecting and protecting the natural capacities of his
creatures, and He has given them great and marvelous
potentialities which are never exhausted, so that new
results can always be produced or expected.
Natural order is contingent,
as it is the result of singular circumstances. However,
nature is full of organization, directionality, synergy
(cooperativity), and very sophisticated activities. All
this is most coherent with the "continuous" activity of
divine wisdom.
All this means progress in our
religious understanding. This can be seen by considering
a kind of definition of nature provided 700 years ago by
Thomas Aquinas, which is surprisingly modern. Commenting
Aristotle, Aquinas surpasses him and writes: "Nature is
nothing other than the ratio of a certain art, namely,
the divine, inscribed in things, by which things
themselves move to a determinate end: just as if the
master shipbuilder could impart to the wood something
from which it could move itself to taking on the form of
the ship." 16 Now we can say that God acts
this way and we can provide many striking examples.
Scientific progress turns order into self-organization,
and helps us to consider the role that natural and divine
creativity play here.
6. Self-organization and
Teleology
Evolution is often invoked as
an argument for naturalism. Some people counterattack
denying the very existence of evolution or criticizing
the theories that try to explain it, but nothing of this
sort is required. Although theories of evolution contain
many unexplained enigmas, evolution is a scientifically
respectful subject. Moreover, it can help us to
understand better divine action in the world. In fact,
evolution supposes self-organization. Therefore, it
supposes the existence of a big chain of successive
potentialities, that have been actualized thanks to a
corresponding chain of adequate circumstances. All this
is, to say the least, strikingly impressive, and is very
coherent with the existence of a divine plan. In this
line, Marie George comments: "The fact that random
processes can result in living things arising from
non-living things presupposes the existence of not just
any sort of matter, but one which has the potency to be
formed into living things; further, not just any sort of
agents will do, but there must be ones apt to impart the
appropriate forms to the appropriate matter. In addition,
in order for these supposedly randomly formed living
things to survive and reproduce, there must be a habitat
favorable to them, and the possibility of its development
also needs explanation. Just as it is luck that one gets
a royal flush, but not that one can get it - the deck is
designed that way, so too it may be luck that this or
that organism appear, but it cannot be luck that it is
able to appear. And this is true even if there are many
universes. For even if the combination of factors which
gives our universe its life-bearing potential have been
‘dealt' into it alone, and not to any others, these
factors still must have a specific design if they are to
make life possible. If there are no queens and kings,
having five billion cards games going instead of just one
still won't get one any closer to drawing a royal flush."
17
Chance does not oppose to
divine plan. The role that chance plays in evolution is
sometimes interpreted as an argument against the
existence of a divine plan. I will quote again Marie
George who says on this that "a difference of levels,
however, leaves room for the same event to be both chance
and intended without this involving a contradiction." 18 Aquinas himself argued that
the divine govern of the world is compatible with the
existence of contingency, 19 and it can be
shown that chance is required for the great variety of
this world to be produced by natural means. Other typical
confusion arises when the agency of secondary causes is
seen as incompatible with divine agency.
The ultimate argument against
teleology eventually stems from the possible existence of
many worlds. We should not be surprised by the specific
organization of our world, so the argument runs, as it
would only be the chance result of evolution of an
infinity of possible worlds. This criticism has been used
routinely against a book about "the anthropic design
argument." 20 I must confess that I am not
very impressed by this argument. In fact, if our world,
as the result of an immense evolutionary process of
self-organization, has the high degree of specific
organization we perceive, this requires the existence of
the chain of potentialities and circumstances I have
already referred to: in this respect, it does not matter
whether there is only one world or many of them. 21 Actually, our world is so
specific that we could even think that God, wanting to
form it according to natural principles, created a
self-organizing universe so immense that our little world
could be formed. As Joseph Zycinski puts it:
"Cosmologists for a long time have been intrigued by the
question of why life appeared so late in a universe which
has been expanding for 20 billion years, and why the
density of matter in the universe is so small that
successive generations continually relive Pascalian
anxiety in their experience of the emptiness of infinite
spaces. Modern cosmology supplies a partial explanation.
Even if life were to develop in only one place, a large
and old universe would have been required. Billions of
years of cosmic evolution are necessary for the
appearance of carbon producing stars, an indispensable
element for the rise of known forms of life." 22
Scientific progress provides
us with a basis which is richer than ever for
teleological reasoning. The present worldview does not by
itself prove any metascientific thesis. It cannot be
used, under the form of anthropic principles, as a
substitute for metaphysical and theological reasoning. It
does, however, show that our world is full of directional
dimensions, of tendencies and synergy, of rationality. It
introduces information, which is materialized
rationality, as a concept that plays a central role in
explaining our world. It represents our world as the
result of a gigantic process of self-organization, where
successive specific potentialities have become
actualized, producing a series of increasingly organized
systems that have culminated in the human organism, which
provides the basis for a truly rational existence.
Therefore, the present worldview amplifies the basis for
teleological reasoning, which is one of the main bridges
that may connect the natural and the divine.
I refer to God as "the mind of
the universe" not in a pantheistic sense, but to express
that our universe exhibits rationality, information and
creativity; that it makes possible the existence of human
beings who are strictly rational and creative; and that
all this requires a divine foundation: a participation in
God's creativity. Old and new ideas converge. In fact, I
have borrowed the expression "the Mind of the Universe"
from the stoic Seneca who wrote: "What is God? The mind
of the universe. What is God? The whole that you see and
the whole that you do not see. Thus we return to him his
magnitude, because we can think of nothing greater, if he
alone is everything, if he sustains his work from within
and from without." 23 Seneca's words were borrowed
15 centuries later by Luis de Granada, one of the Spanish
classical writers of Christian spirituality, who adopted
them without any qualms, and even used them as a part of
the argument that leads us from the contemplation of
nature to the knowledge of its Creator. 24 In that
time only small fragments of modern empirical science
existed. The progress of science has changed our view of
nature in a number of significant ways. We can safely
conclude, however, that a philosophical reflection on
this progress goes hand by hand with a religious view of
nature and man.
Texts
"It is one of the universal
miracles of nature that huge assemblages of particles,
subject only to the blind forces of nature, are
nevertheless capable of organising themselves into
patterns of cooperative activity." (Paul Davies)
"The unusual property for
matter and energy to self-organise into coherent
structures and patterns is only very recently becoming
appreciated by physicists... Of course, biologists have
long studied self-organisation and pattern formation.
Today, however, physicists and chemist are joining in,
and self-organisation has become a distinctive branch of
the New Physics." (Paul Davies)
"We continue to be fascinated
by their machinations, as well as by the central
role they play in an ever increasing array of cellular
activities." (Alfred G. Gilman)
"The physical world is not
arbitrarily regulated; it is ordered in a very particular
way, poised between the twin extremes of simple
regimented orderliness and random complexity: it is
neither a crystal nor a random gas. The universe is
undeniably complex, but its complexity is of an
organized variety. Moreover, this organization was
not built into the universe at its origin. It has emerged
from primeval chaos in a sequence of self-organizing
processes that have progressively enriched and
complexified the evolving universe in a more or less
unidirectional matter. It is easy to imagine a world
that, while ordered, nevertheless does not possess the
right sort of forces or conditions for the emergence of
complex organization." (Paul Davies)
"If we accept that there
exists a propensity in nature for matter and energy to
undergo spontaneous transitions into new states of higher
organizational complexity, and that the existence of
these states is not fully explained or predicted by lower
level laws and entities, nor do they ‘just happen'
to arise for no particular reason, then it is necessary
to find some physical principles additional to the lower
level laws to explain them... We seem to be on the verge
of discovering not only wholly new laws of nature, but
ways of thinking about nature that depart radically from
traditional science" (Paul Davies)
"processes of
self-organisation can be understood without adopting
special principles. In this sense they give evidence for
the program of reductionism." (Manfred Stöckler)
"What is it that breathes fire
into the equations and makes a universe for them to
describe?" (Stephen Hawking)
"The new sciences (if we may
call them that) focus our attention in a fresh way on the
pervasive fact of patterning. In doing so they are
dealing with something as fundamental as being itself,
and not with just another gap that could conceivably be
filled in by fresh scientific discoveries. After all, can
we really separate the deep question of a thing's
existence or ‘being' from the fact of its
patterning? For anything to exist at all would it not
have to possess some degree of organized structure?
Without at least some internal ordering of its components
could anything even have actuality? Our position, as
articulated by Whitehead, is that things simply cannot
exist without being ordered in a definite way.
Indefiniteness would be equivalent to non-existence."
(John Haught)
"Thus, the question scientists
are asking today about why there is complexity in
the universe is only a hair's breadth away from the
theological question concerning why anything exists at
all... The very possibility of doing science in the first
place presupposes the fact of patterning as
science's field of exploration... science cannot by
itself explain the naked fact of patterning. True, it is
discovering complex designs that it never noticed
before... But can scientists ask the very deep question
as to why there is any patterning at all and pretend that
they are not thereby steering perilously close to
metaphysics? And when they wonder why complex patterning
has the features of diversity, emergence, adaptability,
and interactivity, can they pursue such inquiry to the
very end without making contact to theology?" (John
Haught)
"The fact that this rich and
complex variety emerges from the featureless inferno of
the Big Bang, and does so as a consequence of laws of
stunning simplicity and generality, indicates some sort
of matching of means to end that has a distinct
teleological flavor to it." (Paul Davies)
"Nature is nothing other than
the ratio of a certain art, namely, the divine, inscribed
in things, by which things themselves move to a
determinate end: just as if the master shipbuilder could
impart to the wood something from which it could move
itself to taking on the form of the ship" (Thomas
Aquinas)
"The fact that random
processes can result in living things arising from
non-living things presupposes the existence of not just
any sort of matter, but one which has the potency to be
formed into living things; further, not just any sort of
agents will do, but there must be ones apt to impart the
appropriate forms to the appropriate matter. In addition,
in order for these supposedly randomly formed living
things to survive and reproduce, there must be a habitat
favorable to them, and the possibility of its development
also needs explanation. Just as it is luck that one gets
a royal flush, but not that one can get it - the deck is
designed that way, so too it may be luck that this or
that organism appear, but it cannot be luck that it is
able to appear. And this is true even if there are many
universes. For even if the combination of factors which
gives our universe its life-bearing potential have been
‘dealt' into it alone, and not to any others, these
factors still must have a specific design if they are to
make life possible. If there are no queens and kings,
having five billion cards games going instead of just one
still won't get one any closer to drawing a royal flush."
(Marie George)
"a difference of levels,
however, leaves room for the same event to be both chance
and intended without this involving a contradiction."
(Marie George)
"Cosmologists for a long time
have been intrigued by the question of why life appeared
so late in a universe which has been expanding for 20
billion years, and why the density of matter in the
universe is so small that successive generations
continually relive Pascalian anxiety in their experience
of the emptiness of infinite spaces. Modern cosmology
supplies a partial explanation. Even if life were to
develop in only one place, a large and old universe would
have been required. Billions of years of cosmic evolution
are necessary for the appearance of carbon producing
stars, an indispensable element for the rise of known
forms of life." (Joseph Zycinski)
Notes
(1) Mariano Artigas, The
Mind of the Universe. Understanding Science and
Religion (Philadelphia & London: Templeton
Foundation Press, 2000).
(2) Paul Davies, "The New
Physics: A Synthesis", in: The New Physics, ed.
Paul Davies (Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989), p. 4.
(3) Ibid., p. 5.
(4) Immanuel Kant, The
Critique of Judgment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980),
Part II, § 65.
(5) Stuart A. Kauffman, The
Origins of Order. Self-Organisation and Selection in
Evolution (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1993).
(6) Stuart A. Kauffman, At
Home in the Universe. The Search for Laws of
Self-Organisation and Complexity (London: Viking,
1995).
(7) Maurine E. Linder and
Alfred G. Gilman, "G Proteins", Scientific
American, 267, no. 1 (July 1992): 36-43.
(8) Paul Davies, "The
Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science," in: Evidence
of Purpose. Scientists Discover the Creator, ed. John
Marks Templeton (New York: Continuum, 1994), p. 45.
(9) Paul Davies, The Cosmic
Blueprint. Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos
(Penguin Books: London, 1989), p. 142.
(10) Manfred Stöckler,
"Reductionism and the New Theories of Self-Organisation,,
in: Advances in Scientific Philosophy, ed. Gerhard
Schurz and Georg J. W. Dorn (Amsterdam and Atlanta,
Georgia: Rodopi, 1991), p. 248.
(11) Stephen Hawking, A
Brief History of Time (New York: Bentam, 1988), p.
174.
(12) Kitty Ferguson, The
Fire in the Equations. Science, Religion & the Search
for God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1995).
(13) John F. Haught,
Science & Religion. From Conflict to
Conversation (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press,
1995), p. 151.
(14) Ibid.
(15) Paul Davies, "The
Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science", cit., p. 46.
(16) "Natura nihil est aliud
quam ratio cuiusdam artis, scilicet divinae, indita
rebus, qua ipsae res moventur ad finem determinatum:
sicut si artifex factor navis posset lignis tribuere quod
ex se ipsis moverentur ad navis formam inducendam":
Thomas Aquinas, In octo libros Physicorum
Expositio (Torino & Roma: Marietti, 1965), book
2, chapter 8: lectio 14, no. 268.
(17) Marie George, On
Attempts to Salvage Paley's Argument from Design :
cfr. http://www.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/ti/george.htm
(Thomistic Institute, University of Notre Dame, 23 July
1997).
(18) Ibid.
(19) Thomas Aquinas, In
duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio
(Torino & Roma: Marietti, 1964), book 6, chapter 3:
lecture 3, nos. 1191-1222; Summa Theologiae
(Torino & Roma: Marietti, 1952), part 1, question 19,
article 8.
(20) Brian Zamulinski,
"Review of: M. A. Corey, ‘God and the New
Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument,'"
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1994), p.
405.
(21) A similar argument is
presented by Marie George (cf. op. cit.), who quotes
Arthur Peacocke in the same line.
(22) Joseph Zycinski, "The
Anthropic Principle and Teleological Interpretations of
Nature," The Review of Metaphysics, 41 (1987):
318.
(23) Lucius Annaeus Seneca,
Quaestiones naturales (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1961), I, 13: volume I, pp. 10-11: "Quid est deus? Mens
universi. Quid est deus? Quod vides totum et quod non
vides totum. Sic demum magnitudo illi sua redditur, quia
nihil maius cogitari potest, si solus est omnia, si opus
suum et intra et extra tenet."
(24) Luis de Granada,
Introducción del Símbolo de la fe,
first part, chapter I, ed. José M. Balcells
(Madrid: Cátedra, 1989), pp. 129-130:
"¿Qué cosa es Dios? Mente y razón
del universo. ¿Qué cosa es Dios? Todo lo
que vemos, porque en todas las cosas vemos su
sabiduría y asistencia, y desta manera confesamos
su grandeza, la cual es tanta, que no se puede pensar
otra mayor. Y si él solo es todas las cosas,
él es el que dentro y fuera sustenta esta grande
obra que hizo" (What is God? The mind and reason of the
universe. What is God? Everything that we see, because in
all things we see his wisdom and assistance, and thus we
confess his magnitude, which is so great that we cannot
think of a bigger one. And if he alone is everything, it
is he who sustains his great work from within and from
without).
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