We’re really in a bind. Understanding the Cosmos and our place in it seems to be impossible. We’ve been throwing around the same ideas for 2,500 years without reaching an agreement. What is this place we inhabit? Why do we keep reiterating the philosophies of ancient Greeks and casting them in neologisms and new imagery?
Heraclitus, if I understand him correctly, thought that all that we see is a manifestation of some eternal fire, some “mind of God,” the Logos that is also the Pyr Aeizoon. This Eternal Fire is somehow responsible for the world as it is for us and is at the same time part of the world we know. It is the elementary substance from which The All comes and goes in a cycle. And, because fire constantly changes, the world undergoes constant change within the context of that cycle driven by Logos (or Eternal Fire). Strangely, this philosopher of Fire-as-the-primary-element is best known for his “you can’t put your foot in the same river twice” fragment. Oh! Well! why not mix the metaphors in a topic too difficult for humans to understand, a topic fraught with contradictions and mystery?
Like the mystery of space. Within half a century of Heraclitus’ birth, Zeno entered the world from another direction: Lack of change, the not-the-cycling-Pyr, but rather from the Unchanging One that his teacher, Parmenides and other Eleatics taught was responsible for this Illusory World of Motion. Zeno, in his famous tale of Achilles and the tortoise, demonstrated the impossibility of motion by dividing space into ever-smaller units. And now where are we with the Mysteries of Origin and the Makeup of the Cosmos thousands of years after Zeno and more than a century of Einstein’s unifying spacetime? We’re back wondering whether or not space isn’t smooth, but is, rather, divisible into units on some sub-quantum level smaller than the Planck Length.
And the origin of the universe? All those ancients struggled to name a Source, a primary substance so basic that everything derived from it, Heraclitus’ Fire, for example, or Thales’ Water, both of which are members of a class of four basic “elements,” the others being Earth and Air. Now, that is, today, we have an origin of All in the Vacuum, where a quantum foam of virtual particles comes into and goes out of existence without the aid of some Nous—an overarching Mind. What’s next in our attempt to understand the Cosmos? Will we go back to Empedocles to suggest that the coming into and going out of existence is the work first of Love and then of Strife, the ancient philosopher’s ideas that seem to parallel what we call gravity, Dark Energy, and quantum foam?
Is Whatever-makes-the-world part of the world it makes as Heraclitus proposed for the Eternal Fire in the sixth century BC? Is the recipe an ingredient? Apparently, those in the Hawking School think so. Or is there a corollary in the world of Christianity that puts theology on a footing equal to philosophy and physics, whose proponents reject the idea of a Creator or a Nous in favor of a “natural process”? Is it possible that what we believe to be modern, sophisticated and intellectually superior concepts are mere reworkings of ancient thought and parallels of theological concepts backed by a mathematics of convenience? Sure, our experiments in colliders work, but we don’t understand why they work, why, for example, the fundamental forces have the strengths they have or why particles like quarks come in threes.
At Easter and regardless of one’s level of belief or disbelief, a process of rethinking those ancient intellectual struggles might serve us well as we reconsider our place in Place. The Cosmos, after all, is a Place. Is that Place quantized on the level of the Planck distance or even smaller to the delight of Zeno? Does the Cosmos originate from a Nous, a Mind that is also the Logos, the Word?
If you read the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, you see another take on the Logos and the Source of the Cosmos, not as the concept of the Eternal Fire alone, but rather more like a combination of Heraclitean thought and the Eleatic School’s Unchanging Being: In some ways the same and yet different. Here’s one version of what John wrote: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made” (King James version).
You know that “made in the Image of God” thing people say? For St. Augustine of Hippo, the brilliant once-Zoroastrian-turned-Neoplatonist-Church-Father, what John wrote suggests that everything in the Cosmos is a manifestation of the Image of God because “nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” So, we’re back to the mystery, again.
Are we the Image of the Vacuum as the Hawking School would have us believe? And is that Vacuum much different from the Void of Genesis, the Nothing from which the Cosmos originated? Is there, instead, some Primary Element of a Greek philosopher that, without Mind, generates a Cosmos? Or is there some Nous, some Mind behind the change Heraclitus recognized and Zeno denied? And if we choose to accept the Nous or the Word, do we then accept that it is somehow part of its creation? Is the Vacuum of Space where the quantum foam comes into and goes out of existence part of the Cosmos it creates? Have the modern-day philosophers of physics made the equivalent of Heraclitus’ Eternal Fire, somehow both Creator and Creation? Somehow responsible for the origin of It All, and yet locked into its continued existence? And if our modern-day physics/philosophers are correct, are they really much different from John and Augustine who saw the Word as Incarnate? The recipe becoming an ingredient?
As I said above, Easter is a good time to reassess where we stand on the matter of Place, on the role of Love as synthesizer and Strife as separator. Quantum foam coming into and going out of existence? Isn’t that much like the war between Empedocles’ Love and Strife?
Those who profess a theological explanation of the Cosmos might find themselves the objects of elitist derision among their philosophical counterparts. But if one looks at the incipient beliefs built into modern physical hypotheses and theories, one might find numerous parallels. Condescension is as common among scientists as condemnation is among believers. Both need to look closely at one another’s explanations of why the Cosmos is as it is, how it continues to be as it does, and what its components demonstrate about its relationship to its recipe.
I'll reiterate: Easter seems to be a fitting time for that closer look.
Heraclitus, if I understand him correctly, thought that all that we see is a manifestation of some eternal fire, some “mind of God,” the Logos that is also the Pyr Aeizoon. This Eternal Fire is somehow responsible for the world as it is for us and is at the same time part of the world we know. It is the elementary substance from which The All comes and goes in a cycle. And, because fire constantly changes, the world undergoes constant change within the context of that cycle driven by Logos (or Eternal Fire). Strangely, this philosopher of Fire-as-the-primary-element is best known for his “you can’t put your foot in the same river twice” fragment. Oh! Well! why not mix the metaphors in a topic too difficult for humans to understand, a topic fraught with contradictions and mystery?
Like the mystery of space. Within half a century of Heraclitus’ birth, Zeno entered the world from another direction: Lack of change, the not-the-cycling-Pyr, but rather from the Unchanging One that his teacher, Parmenides and other Eleatics taught was responsible for this Illusory World of Motion. Zeno, in his famous tale of Achilles and the tortoise, demonstrated the impossibility of motion by dividing space into ever-smaller units. And now where are we with the Mysteries of Origin and the Makeup of the Cosmos thousands of years after Zeno and more than a century of Einstein’s unifying spacetime? We’re back wondering whether or not space isn’t smooth, but is, rather, divisible into units on some sub-quantum level smaller than the Planck Length.
And the origin of the universe? All those ancients struggled to name a Source, a primary substance so basic that everything derived from it, Heraclitus’ Fire, for example, or Thales’ Water, both of which are members of a class of four basic “elements,” the others being Earth and Air. Now, that is, today, we have an origin of All in the Vacuum, where a quantum foam of virtual particles comes into and goes out of existence without the aid of some Nous—an overarching Mind. What’s next in our attempt to understand the Cosmos? Will we go back to Empedocles to suggest that the coming into and going out of existence is the work first of Love and then of Strife, the ancient philosopher’s ideas that seem to parallel what we call gravity, Dark Energy, and quantum foam?
Is Whatever-makes-the-world part of the world it makes as Heraclitus proposed for the Eternal Fire in the sixth century BC? Is the recipe an ingredient? Apparently, those in the Hawking School think so. Or is there a corollary in the world of Christianity that puts theology on a footing equal to philosophy and physics, whose proponents reject the idea of a Creator or a Nous in favor of a “natural process”? Is it possible that what we believe to be modern, sophisticated and intellectually superior concepts are mere reworkings of ancient thought and parallels of theological concepts backed by a mathematics of convenience? Sure, our experiments in colliders work, but we don’t understand why they work, why, for example, the fundamental forces have the strengths they have or why particles like quarks come in threes.
At Easter and regardless of one’s level of belief or disbelief, a process of rethinking those ancient intellectual struggles might serve us well as we reconsider our place in Place. The Cosmos, after all, is a Place. Is that Place quantized on the level of the Planck distance or even smaller to the delight of Zeno? Does the Cosmos originate from a Nous, a Mind that is also the Logos, the Word?
If you read the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, you see another take on the Logos and the Source of the Cosmos, not as the concept of the Eternal Fire alone, but rather more like a combination of Heraclitean thought and the Eleatic School’s Unchanging Being: In some ways the same and yet different. Here’s one version of what John wrote: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made” (King James version).
You know that “made in the Image of God” thing people say? For St. Augustine of Hippo, the brilliant once-Zoroastrian-turned-Neoplatonist-Church-Father, what John wrote suggests that everything in the Cosmos is a manifestation of the Image of God because “nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” So, we’re back to the mystery, again.
Are we the Image of the Vacuum as the Hawking School would have us believe? And is that Vacuum much different from the Void of Genesis, the Nothing from which the Cosmos originated? Is there, instead, some Primary Element of a Greek philosopher that, without Mind, generates a Cosmos? Or is there some Nous, some Mind behind the change Heraclitus recognized and Zeno denied? And if we choose to accept the Nous or the Word, do we then accept that it is somehow part of its creation? Is the Vacuum of Space where the quantum foam comes into and goes out of existence part of the Cosmos it creates? Have the modern-day philosophers of physics made the equivalent of Heraclitus’ Eternal Fire, somehow both Creator and Creation? Somehow responsible for the origin of It All, and yet locked into its continued existence? And if our modern-day physics/philosophers are correct, are they really much different from John and Augustine who saw the Word as Incarnate? The recipe becoming an ingredient?
As I said above, Easter is a good time to reassess where we stand on the matter of Place, on the role of Love as synthesizer and Strife as separator. Quantum foam coming into and going out of existence? Isn’t that much like the war between Empedocles’ Love and Strife?
Those who profess a theological explanation of the Cosmos might find themselves the objects of elitist derision among their philosophical counterparts. But if one looks at the incipient beliefs built into modern physical hypotheses and theories, one might find numerous parallels. Condescension is as common among scientists as condemnation is among believers. Both need to look closely at one another’s explanations of why the Cosmos is as it is, how it continues to be as it does, and what its components demonstrate about its relationship to its recipe.
I'll reiterate: Easter seems to be a fitting time for that closer look.
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