Ordered Towards Evolution

Saint Thomas and the Big Bang

Note that in the history of the cosmos, Thomas was a recent phenomenon.  The development of thinking about the world has, itself, been one of the most explosively rapid developments which has occurred.  Thomas lived and died about 800+ years ago, a mere eyeblink in the world’s history.

Now, one might be tempted to say that the intellectual world of Thomas and the intellectual world of modern science are simply apples and oranges, and that any attempt to mix them together is silly, or at worst, simply wrong.  Medieval theology and modern cosmology, one might opine, have nothing in common, and to mention them in the same breath is simply to miss the point of cultural development.

But that would be to misunderstand the precise point of this paper.

There is much about the world view of the medievalist which is untenable intellectually.  We have made essential progress since then.  We never could, nor would we want to, go back to the mentality of the 13th century.  To move ahead, we needed badly to discover what could be discovered about the universe through empirical investigation and mathematics.  And this project has been shoutingly successful.

But – and here’s the point.  When we moved away from medieval thinking, we lost sight of some very important insights.  These insights were – and are – metaphysical in nature.

The organization in the world – ordered towards evolution

It is not as though, having said what we can, that all the difficulties in understanding the universe at core are resolved.  Obscurities remain.  The human approach to knowledge and understanding is incremental and progressive over time.  However, as we go, it is necessary to keep things as clear as possible.

Analysis of existence arrives at the conclusion that any material thing – any accumulation of matter – is limited, and does not exist of itself.  The ultimate reality in the universe must exist by itself, otherwise there would be nothing.  The basis of reality and existence in the universe must be a mode of being the essence of which is existence itself.  And, this mode of existence is what peoples from the beginning of civilization have referred to as God, although typically people and religions tended to anthropomorphize subsistent being.

The visible world presents as organized, and ordered towards evolution.

Studying the world, it is clear that later phases have developed, according to ordered principles, from earlier stages.  In its very constitution, then, the universe we inhabit is ordered towards evolution.  This is what has been referred to as the anthropic principle.  We cannot (do not) know all the aspects of orderedness in the universe, but it at least is ordered enough to have produced us.

Was evolution “foreseen” and “planned” by God

The visible universe originated from God, understood as uncreated, self-subsistent being.  We cannot understand God in himself (itself), since God has no determining specifications.  God has tended to be anthropomorphized by peoples – a human way of understanding the infinite.

Evolution emerged as a result of the order in the universe.  Was this order consciously planned by anything?  Was this order intended by the God we argue to because of a need for necessary being?

That has to be ansered “yes,” but explanation is necessary.

Conscious in God (self-subsistent being) cannot be “like” the primary instance of consciousness we find in ourselves.  The “consciousness” of God would need to be non-discursive but super-eminent.

However, we are forced by the evidence to conclude that in a non-discursive way, the order making evolution possible was “foreseen” and “planned” by God, though in a non-discursive way.  God did not sit on an elevated throne, taking council with himself in a human fashion and make a humanoid decision to create a world ordered to evolution.  But, we are led to the necessary conclusion that God planned the universe to be so ordered as to evolve discursive intelligence, such as manifested in man (and supported by the operations of the material brain).

Saying that does not by any means bring us to the end of the investigation.

In a planned system, in what sense is the end captured in the plan?

The universe, then, is a planned system, evolution being the result.  That raises an even stickier problem.  In what sense is the end contained in the plan?

And, if the end is somehow “there,” in what sense can it be said to exert an effect on earlier stages in what is a quite complex process?  Can the end (which seems to be, in this case, intelligent functioning in an organized brain) be said to “draw” continuing activity out of the complexity of a prior state?

Is there a relatedness that makes the thing move at the gaps?

There are many places in the complex chain of causalities that makes the process of evolution work which are not understood.  Why, for instance, is it that one biological line moves into a dead end on the road to intelligence, while another line somehow keeps the developmental channel “open” to further developement.  Presumably, there is something, which should be identifiable, in a cross-sectional study of the intelligence-bound line which in some positive way allows the animal to continue its development.

Not a helpful step to claim that certain things are “irreducibly complex”

It does not seem to be helpful to say that things at the difficult places are “irreducibly complex.”  That seems to be an unwarranted conclusion.  And, as a heuristic maneuver, that seems to be an invitation to abandon investigation.  The historical reality is that many, if not most, of the areas of discovery in science, have, prior to their elucidation, seemed inexplicable, or “irreducibly complex,” or even magical – but, with time and imaginativeness and hard work, have ultimately yielded up their obscurity, and were shown to have readily comprehensible explanations, once the mechanisms were understood.

Heuristic hypothesis:  explanation for steps currently unseen

There are steps in the complex operations of nature which currently seem obscure.  We are far from having an intellectual handle on everything.  We need to define more and more clearly the difficult areas, but heuristically, the only embraceable position if to assume that probably, there is an explanation for the “gaps,” since obscure after obscure horizon has yielded to an incessant press of investigation.

Hypothesis:  The entire plan present in the primordial construct

There is no evidence at all to support the idea that creation, once it got going, was tinkered with by the creative force in the universe.  In fact, all the available evidence points to the conclusion that things have worked themselves out from the beginning according to inherent laws (cf. the basic forces of nature and Rees’ 6 numbers).

This is not at all to say that the 18th century idea of Deism is necessary, or a good thought:  that God in effect made the world at one time, but then left it alone to work out its destiny.  There may be aspects to this which have some merit, but this, among other things, is too much of an anthropomorphism – the idea of God walking away from his world or not caring about it makes of God too much of a humanoid agent.  It seems much better, at this point, to say that the creative and informing force in the universe (God) is intimately involved in the process, and present to it profoundly.  What this would mean in detail, however, may be very difficult to state.

Intelligent Design – rejected at that level

It does not seem to be necessary, or to make much sense, to say that we can find intelligent design in the universe at critical developmental points.

Such critical points might be the origin of life, the development of certain highly complex biological phenomena such as the eye or the hominid brain, or, for that matter, the human soul.  Evolution seems to have been a constant and remarkably flexible process, one that we have only begun to understand, but a process that, in the aggregate, has been what has produced the entire complex phenomenology with which we are presented.

The “plan” for evolution seems to have been present in nature from the beginning, and in that sense the universe seems to have been “intelligently designed,” but as yet we cannot say that we fully understand what that means, in all its applications.

Other hypotheses:

There are other theories which exist concerning the origin of the world.  One of the chief theories is that reality consists of an infinite number of possible worlds, some of which would work, while others would not.  In this theory, there would be no special intelligence going into our world; it just happened to be the one that had the qualities that allowed the development of our world.  This is one of a number of “Multiverse” theories.  The problem with this theory is that it places no special urgency in the quality of being, or in a theory of adequate cause.

To accept a multiverse theory, in which worlds can come into existence spontaneously, it is necessary to accept that universes can “just happen” – that universes could come into existence without an adequate cause.

Some cosmological thinkers have speculated that an existing universe could emerge from some internal mathematical or physical quality which would result in its own generation.  This would falter on the basis of an internal redundancy, and because of a failure of the insight that “ex nihilo nihil fit. (Nothing comes from nothing.)”

Summary

The question, then, is what is entailed by the order we find in the universe, and, behind that, what can we know and say about ultimate causality?

To answer these questions, it is important to understand a good deal about the nature of knowledge, and, additionally, about the development of knowledge and consciousness on planet Earth – as an evolutionary phenomenon.

The mindset that had been produced in antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up to the European Renaissance opened up broad vistas of philosophical and historical thinking.

Systematic deficiencies during these early centuries of the discovery project were occasioned by two broad facts.  First, our ancestors arrived at the launching point of investigation not having retained or carried with them any realistic sense of their actual history.  Second, these early thinkers thought that living beings (and everything else, for that matter) could be understood at face value, with no appreciation of the depth of complexity it took to produce surface phenomenology (organs, cells, molecules, and atoms).  They are not to faulted for this.  It was necessary to start somewhere, and they started where they could.

With these limitations as background, the “ancients” nonetheless made huge achievements in fields of intellectual endeavor.

Areas opened and commented on in depth:  formal logic, mathematics, zoology, metaphysics, politics, ethics, cosmology, and literature.  The Greeks were the most inventive and prolific contributors to serious achievement in these areas.  The Hebrews gave us a moralistic, theocentric account of human life and history, without a great deal of investigation into the natural constitution of things.

The Western mind, through the Middle Ages, was a rich amalgam of these vast thought tributaries.  This heritage in general was long on abstract thinking, but short on an empirical or measured base of observation.

This mindset gave man a clear sense of identify and the nature of the human animal in the universe.

The importance, within this matrix, of observation and measurement became more and more evident.  This led to a broad and systematic challenging of the world view of pre-Renaissance man.

As the empirical view of the universe developed, sight was generally lost of important metaphysical truths.

The core metaphysical truth was that contingent being – which we see – demands necessary being as its source.  Self-subsistent being – a mode of being the very essence of which is to exist – is the most basic reality in the universe – and is what peoples since the beginning of time have referred to as God.

Human characterizations of God tended to be anthropomorphic.  The universe demands God as its uncaused cause, but such a being is not anthropomorphic.

The universe from the beginning was deeply informed – not haphazard, but such as to allow evolution to occur within its compass.  How this information occurs and expresses itself is a major current topic of discussion and explanation.

At issue is the existence and nature of relationships in cross-sectional reality.  In what way is the urge to evolve contained in the creative matrix?

Intelligent Design – in the entire overall – not inserted at steps

The evidence points to the fact that it is an evolutionary universe – and that the mechanics of evolution have been contained in the creation from the beginning.  Where there are gaps in our understanding, it is reasonable to believe that with further study and investigation, we can continue to identify and comprehend the mechanics.

Creation emanated from God – uncaused cause, subsistent being, not an anthropomorphic person.  The information of the universe derives from the intelligence implied in the original creation.

This is not a scientific issue – nor yet a religious one, although it has religious implications.  It is basically a philosophical issue.  Philosophy is more than abstract argument – it is specific knowledge about the real world.  It is not a matter of how language can be used – that is putting the cart in front of the horse.  Language is a flexible tool, and is unlimited in its capacity.

Mind in the universe