Plenty long for the format here, though abbreviated by a deadline at the time. Not nearly a complete discussion. I owe you all this, though, as well as the continuation. Wait for it....
For Darrell Dooyema
21 February 2009
Bertrand Russell suggested these questions as among
those imminent in philosophy, and reserved them particularly to philosophy,
claiming that if they were ever answered conclusively they would be claimed by
empirical science and cease to be approachable by philosophy: “Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a
fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the
universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory
accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible”
(par. 5)? Many of Russell’s readers will immediately notice the proximity of
these to similar questions about the existence of God. Surprise! Great thinkers
have grappled with these fundamentals since before humans gained the ability to
convey their arguments to us across time and still we bicker over them, rarely
if ever to the satisfaction of anyone unwilling to make a leap from a logical
dead end to what they view as a conclusion based on mere convenience, or one
might say, a leap of faith.
The primary argument for or against the existence of God
is known as the “Cosmological” argument and shows up in variations such as
Kant’s “First Cause”, Leibnitz’ “Argument From Contingency,” described by Coplestone in his debate with Russell, and goes something like this:
1. The universe began to
exist.
2. Everything which
begins to exist has a cause
3. Therefore the universe
had a cause.
All of these say the same
thing, in essence, that since we are unable to account for the infinite, or for
the existence of any objects lacking a cause then we are forced to acknowledge
some self-existent being, or thing, that serves as a “causeless” cause .
Copleson puts it rather poetically while citing Leibnitz during his scuffle
with Russell, maintaining that, “in order to explain existence, we must come to
a being which contains within itself the reason for its own existence, that is
to say, which cannot not exist.” (par.16).
This line of thought is fine so far as it goes, but all
too often we seem tempted to apply our prejudices to the nature of the
undetermined Cause we come to at its conclusion. Plenty of theologians,
including Copleston use this argument as proof of God, but the reasoning does
not warrant this conclusion, even if it presents an intriguing bit of
direction. It may be that “God” cannot be defined by reason. In fact the
business of a First Cause seems an attempt to create distance between the
thinker and a closed system that is reason itself, and an insoluble problem.
This, in turn, brings to mind Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, and discussion
given by Hofstadter where he suggests we humans possess a capacity to mentally
“jump out of the system” when we find ourselves faced with an obviously
self-defeating question that nonetheless we intuit as brushing up against
truth. But as a matter of logic, this is cheating, really, and even if we allow
it and admit a first Cause, or a Causal Principle, we haven’t by any means
begun to describe it, and to label it “God” is not at all warranted.
So if we find ourselves unable to prove God in this
manner, what about some sort of undefined organizational principle, and if we
allow for such a principle, can we go so far as to label it “Conscious,” as he
asks? Well now, this is another matter and we are left to address the question of an organizing
principle in the universe, at least a slightly simpler conundrum.
First, allow that by this we mean an
undefined cause that girds an underlying impetus toward organization in
whatever exists. This prevents us from being derailed by questions about what is
real, questions of dualism versus monism, the existence of any sort of god or
gods, “multiverses”. The question is only whether or not something tending
toward complexity and organization rather than chaos and dissolution is
apparent in the structure and processes of the universe, the definition of
which we have allowed to remain rather loose. Note that to posit the existence
and functioning of such a principle, whether this involves a conscious
intervention or is merely an artifact of the way things are, would necessarily
bring argument from physicists attached to the Second Law of Thermodynamics all
the way to the level of sixth grade science classes.
Handily
enough, we can turn to Science to point us toward an answer to the matter, and
over the past thirty years or so some startling developments have occurred,
causing at least some in the scientific community to begin to sidle up to these
foundational questions that have been eschewed by their peers since the
Enlightenment gave birth to Modernism. Since 1824, when the Second Law was
formulated (Erlichson, par. 6), scientists have avoided the rather glaring
problem that living biological organisms ignore the Law with impunity. Both
live specimens and the fossil record demonstrate the very impetus toward
greater complexity one would expect if directed by our postulated organizing
principle. In fact, organizations of cells, organisms, and even societies,
rather than dispersing, persistently form ever more complicated structures and
arrangements.
Now,
this brings us to a secondary question. “Life” is defined as, “The property or
quality manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, response to
stimulation, and reproduction, by which living organisms are distinguished from
dead organisms or from inanimate matter...” (Morris 754). Without delving too
deeply into the history and technical aspects of the matter, the problem is
that there are all sorts of non-biological systems and objects, such as
crystals for example, that display all these properties. Manifold systems
throughout nature do, in fact, and are referred to as “self-organizing,” often
achieving a level of order that seems quite magical to the average observer
(Prigogine and Stengers 72). Furthermore, some objects we would certainly
think of as “live,” such as dormant seeds, display none of these properties for
many years, yet can produce viable plants or other forms we think of as
obviously live. In fact, cosmologists, chemists, physicists and others have
described innumerable systems suiting this definition just fine, most of which
we would not commonly view as “alive.” That is to say the same sorts of
processes occur in things that are living and things, including our
cosmological universe, which we generally imagine to be non-living.
The
mechanics involved in these associated systems can be extraordinarily complex, concentric, and overlapping, or very simple. The core features remain identical, though, with their feedback loops and processed
data and remain the same in all coherent systems from galaxies and molecules,
to bacterium and human beings, and even systems which contain information only
and no matter at all, such as computer programs and imaginary stories. When the
coherency of the information falls apart, or dissipates, one might say as a
nod to Carnot’s Second Law, we cease to recognize the structure as systemic. It
takes very little information to establish a recognizable system. For example,
if we say 2+2=4, we immediately recognize something coherent. If we say 2-17=12
the coherency disappears. If we substitute minor balancing variables to feed
back to one another, making a slightly more complex system, such as x=x2+c, we can
create a beautiful structure such as in this case is found in “fractal” artwork
(Kelley 3). This is akin to phenomena of all sorts, from weather patterns, to
crystal formation, a bacterium foraging for nutrients, or children learning to
add, as well as any noumena we might imagine. It is fully pervasive.
Because
of this difficulty in finding a distinction between life and non-life Feinberg
and Shapiro suggest that we should abandon our attempts to define life based on
what parts make up an “organism,” and readjust our definition to one based on
the amount of order and information contained in the arrangement of those
parts, with attention to the likelihood of the arrangement occurring by chance
(131). Discussing the self-organizing nature of the universe, Prigogine, who
won a Nobel for his work on this field of inquiry, and not a Theist, by the
way, stated that, “We no longer conceive of nature as a passive object. I can't
stress enough that it is an active object in our lives,” that is, matter is not inert. It is alive and active (Tucker, par. 20).
We are forced to acknowledge that due
to a lack of space, and perhaps equally because of our own limited capacity to
grasp some of the technical aspects of the discussion, a deference to authority
has necessarily taken place here. But this is not entirely a trap. Prigogene
was a highly distinguished chemist and physicist. Collaborators Feinberg and
Shapiro have distinguished themselves in the fields of physics and biology
respectively. Between them are several thousand pages describing rigorous
thought and experimental evidence. We could, if so motivated, study physics and
chemistry or other fields and pursue the evidence ourselves. Further, these
three are merely representative of a fairly large minority school of thought in
scientific circles, among whom a rather common feature is having reached their
jarring conclusions pertinent to Russell’s queries with great reluctance—hostile
witnesses, one might say. For the most part, these scientists did not approach
the material from a religious or philosophical angle, but discovered this
difficulty in defining life as an outcome of studying nature as its own end. So
if we trust that there is generally no bias from these learned figures toward
the mystical-sounding determinations they render, there is no particular reason
to assume that we would have better luck at separating objects or phenomena
into the categories at hand.
So
given that we have found systems throughout nature that follow the principles
of organization, in that the likelihood of having fallen together by chance
approaches nil, and we find additionally that we cannot distinguish these
organized phenomena from anything else we define as living by any substantive
means, then we have discovered at minimum a pair of simple philosophical identities. The
universe must be not only imbued with an organizational principle, but it must
also--an incredible postulate--be alive. But what of our musings about God?
All of this, as noted above, smacks
of Theism. One may notice similarities to the “Watchmaker” argument of the
Intelligent Design camp. It is tempting to suggest that this organized,
organizing, living thing we have made the universe out to be represents the
flesh of God. But, alas, we haven’t even begun to wonder whether this life
principle as we might call it possesses any sort of individuality or consciousness,
let alone to approach the question of just what we mean by “God,” or where the
heck God or the universe derives from. We have found no “Necessary Being” or
“First Cause,” and certainly no reason to label any such object “Allah,“ or
“Jesus,“ “Ahuramazda,” “Sophia,“ or for that matter, something like “Joe
Smith.” Nothing whatsoever in this argument supports any Theistic conclusion at
all, even if it may point in that direction somewhat. To make that stretch from
here will require an altogether new argument. Or we could “jump out of the
system.”
Works Cited
Copleston, Father F. C,
and Russell, Bertrand. A Debate on
the Argument from Contingency. Ed. Chrucky, Andrew. Blackboard, 21
February 2009
Erlichson, Herman. Sadi Carnot, ‘Founder of the Second Law of Thermodynamics’. European
Journal of Physics 20 (1999): 183-192. 21 February 2009
Feinberg, Gerald, and Shapiro,
Robert. Life Beyond Earth. New York, New York: William Morrow, 1980.
Hofstadter, Douglas. Godel,
Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. 1979. New York, New York: Random
House, 1980.
Kelley, Alice. Fractal Cosmos: The
Art of Alice Kelley 2009 Calendar. Amber Lotus Publishing, 2009.
Morris, William, ed. The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. New York, New York: American
Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1973.
Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers,
Isabelle. The End of Certainty:Time,
Chaos, and the New Laws of Physics.New York, New York: Free Press, 1999.
Russell, Bertrand. The Value of Philosophy. Problems of Philosophy, 1912. Ed.
Andrew Chrucky. Oxford
University Press: 1959. Blackboard, 21 February 2009
Tucker, Robert B.Ilya Prigogine: Wizard of Time, part 2 Omni Magazine, May 1983. 21 February 2009
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