A Convergence of Cosmologies:
Personal Analogies in Modern
Physics and Modern Metaphysics
by Simon Smith
At the heart of recent conflicts
between science and religion lie profound concerns about the nature of the
universe and our place in it. Just how
deep divisions go, however, remains to be seen. Formerly adversarial discourses have begun to converge, their
conceptions of the universe increasingly drawn from a common storehouse of
personal analogies. This study concerns
that convergence.
It begins with
two of the twentieth-century’s last great metaphysicians, both of whom accepted
the challenge of modern science. Alive
to the implications of Einstein’s discoveries, Austin Farrer and Alfred North
Whitehead used the language of human experience to reconstruct cosmological
theism. Since then, scientific cosmology
has followed suit, with scientists such as Carl Sagan, Rupert Sheldrake, and,
most recently, Brian Cox being drawn to the tropes and metaphors of personal
identity. Their anthropic developments
do not merely parallel religion; a deeper synthesis is narrowing the gap
between personal and impersonal conceptions of the universe.
Scholars in
either camp have yet to fully recognise the implications of this
synthesis. Constrained by
‘closed-category’, disjunctive thinking, science and religion remain
deadlocked. Under such conditions, the
integration of finite and infinite within the physical universe cannot
succeed. The vital overlap between
science and religion thereby fails of application, reinforcing the estrangement
of ‘personalism’ and ‘impersonalism’ in speculative cosmology.
I apply,
therefore, to the Jacobsen Fellowship to support my research into this fertile
use of personal analogies in diverse forms of cosmological thinking. A philosophical analysis of this will explore
the effect of such language on the development of consciousness and, moreover,
our understanding of the universe to which consciousness belongs, quite
possibly as the vital element. The result,
I submit, will be better-integrated conceptions of mind and nature, science and
religion, than philosophical categories presently allow.
This
rapprochement necessitates a radical revision of ontology. Accordingly, Farrer and Whitehead exchanged
Newtonian ‘substance-metaphysics’ for interpenetrating physical processes,
mutually conditioning patterns of activity.
Echoing Einstein, Farrer designated ‘[e]nergy, rather than stuff,…[as]
our ultimate’.[1] ‘Process’ and ‘activity’ are, of course,
analogies borrowed from the experience of active agents. They are also essential to scientific
exploration. Without them, we cannot
think or talk intelligibly about the universe.
Such talk is a co-efficient of our conceptualising activities, the
result of interactivities in the universe at large. Cosmological metaphors tell the tale; the
explorer is one element in the matrix of agencies constituting a universe of
mutually complementary discourses.
Modern physics
and modern metaphysics both teach that ‘interconstitutive’ activities, and the
analogies on which they are built, are integral to human mentality. Consciousness plays its part in the universe
and vice versa. That, too, is the lesson
of Jean Piaget’s developmental psychology.
Ludwig Feuerbach had previously reached the same conclusion. Crucially, he, like Farrer, emphasised the
aspirational structure of our development, its orientation ‘upwards’ towards
evolving humanity.
These
complimentarities point the way for ‘anthropocism’ in science and
religion. Consciousness plays its part,
realising itself in and as participation in the realisation of other
realities. Therein lies the coherence
and unity we ‘discover’ in the constant collision of forces which, in truth, is
our universe. Neither imposed by the
mind nor impressed upon it, coherence and unity belong to participative acts. The
unity of the ‘uni-verse’ is transacted between consciousness and the
universe.
Such are the
transactions of speculative cosmologists and theists alike. Being analogical projects, they are coherent
(in both senses) only as extensions of conscious, personal action. As Sagan pithily remarked, ‘[w]e are a way
for the cosmos to know itself’;[2]
and knowing minds, as Farrer, Feuerbach, and Piaget remind us, are essentially interpersonal. The most fruitful analogies are those with
fullest extension of interpersonal application.
Sagan’s evocative words are reflections of consciousness conceiving
itself, not as pure thought (as in antiquated metaphysics), but consciously
participating in its own projects. The
transformative potential of our involvement in the universe becomes clear: it
is a fundamental component of human development.
[1] Austin
Farrer, The Freedom of the Will (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 52.
[2] Carl
Sagan, ‘The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean’, Cosmos:
A Personal Voyage, Television Series.
Dir. David Oyster et al. (Los Angeles. KCET, 1980) 6 minutes, 40
seconds.
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