Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour
Chapter 4: Physics and Metaphysics
III. Metaphysical Implications
4. Conclusions
of a God who is intimately involved in the temporality of the world. In Hartshorne’s dipolar theism, God is unchanging in purpose but changes in experience of the world.44 We will return in a later chapter to this question of divine temporality and timelessness. At the moment I am suggesting that while timelessness is an important idea in religious thought of both East and West, we can find little support for it in current physics.
interpreters, was in using any ideas from physics in the formulation of theology. The deists tried to build a metaphysics by an unwarranted extrapolation of the physics of their day. The new epistemology can help liberate theology from bondage to mechanistic physics, but it can equally warn us of the danger of bondage to twentieth-century physics.
The chief lesson of the new physics, on this reading, is a negative one -- a warning against repeating the mistakes of the past -- not a positive contribution to the theologian’s task.
Moreover, we have seen that many of the alleged implications of recent physics appear to be questionable. The involvement of the observer in both quantum physics and relativity has often been cited as evidence of the central role of mind. I have argued that it points to the interaction of the observational system with the system observed, not to the presence of mind as such. It is evidence of interconnectedness and holism, not of the pervasiveness of mentality or consciousness. Probability waves may seem less substantial than billiard ball atoms, and matter that converts to radiant energy may appear immaterial. But the new atom is no more spiritual or mental than the old, and it is still detected through physical interactions. If science is indeed selective and its concepts are limited, it would be as questionable to build a metaphysics of idealism on modern physics as it was to build a metaphysics of materialism on classical physics. I have criticized the attempt of Capra and others to portray direct metaphysical parallels between physics and Eastern mysticism, especially with respect to timelessness and holistic unity.
We would also be guilty of a new form of reductionism if we tried to base an inclusive metaphysics on current physics, in which the lowest levels of organization among inanimate structures are studied. But I believe reductionism can be avoided in four ways. (1) We have seen that already within physics we have to look at wholes as well as parts;
reductionism is inadequate even within this discipline. (2) We will find that some of the characteristics of nature seen in physics (such as
temporality, chance, and wholeness) are also prominent in other sciences. (3) We will go on in subsequent chapters to trace the emergence of higher levels of organization, including life and mind, which cannot be reduced to physics. (4) We will seek metaphysical categories that are adequate for the coherent interpretation, not simply of scientific data, but of all areas of human experience.
This will lead us toward the last of the views in chapter 1, a concern for the Integration of science and religion.
I see three metaphysical implications of current physics, which form a coherent pattern with the implications of other sciences and other areas of human experience.
1. Temporality and Historicity
Time enters into the structure of reality in a more fundamental way in the new physics than in classical physics. The quantum world consists of vibrations which, like musical notes, are nothing at an instant and require time in order to exist. It is a world of dynamic flux in which particles come and go. It is a world of probability states; only the
passage of time will disclose which of the alternative potentialities will be actualized. Time is not the unwinding of a predetermined scroll of events but the novel coming-to-be of unpredictable events in history. In relativity, time is inseparable from space. There are no purely spatial relationships, only spatiotemporal ones. All of this is radically different from the Newtonian world of absolute space and time, in which change consisted of the rearrangement of particles that are themselves
unchanging. We will find a similar emphasis on change and the
emergence of genuine novelty in astronomy and evolutionary biology.
The historicity of nature is evident in all the sciences.
2. Chance and Law
There are alternative potentialities for individual events. In accordance with critical realism and the later views of Bohr and Heisenberg, I have interpreted the Uncertainty Principle as an indication of objective indeterminacy in nature rather than the result of subjective uncertainty and human ignorance. The choice between bifurcation paths in
nonequilibrium thermodynamics also seems to be a chance
phenomenon. We will find the same combination of chance and law in other fields, including quantum effects in the early instants of the
cosmos and random mutations in evolutionary history. Human freedom occurs at a totally different level from quantum indeterminacy, but it also exhibits the presence of unpredictable novelty. T. S. Eliot points to the importance of an open future:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in our future And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.45 3. Wholeness and Emergence
Against reductionism, which seeks to explain the activity of complex entities in terms of the laws of their components, I have maintained that higher organizational levels involve distinctive patterns of behavior. The Pauli Exclusion Principle, which links physics to chemistry -- but which cannot be derived from the laws governing separate particles -- was offered as one illustration. The inseparability of the observer and the observed was presented as further evidence of interdependence. The correlations between distant events shown in the Bell’s Theorem experiments is a dramatic example of such interconnectedness. In relativity, the unification of space, time, matter, and energy represents wholeness of a fundamental kind. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics describes the emergence of higher levels of systematic order from lower- level disorder.
Later chapters will consider the new wholes that arise with the emergence of life, mind, and society. Looking back, it will not seem unreasonable to claim that even in physics we can see the beginning of a historical, ecological, and many-leveled view of reality. I will suggest that these three characteristics -- temporality and historicity, chance and law, wholeness and emergence -- are prominent in the metaphysics of process philosophy. These reflections will take us far beyond physics, but they will form a pattern coherent with our understanding of the characteristics of physical reality.
Footnotes:
1. Readable accounts of quantum theory are given in Heinz Pagels, The Cosmic Code (New York, Bantam Books, 1982), part 1; J. C. Polkinghorne, The Quantum World (London:
Penguin Books, 1986).
2. See, for example, James Trefil, The Moment of Creation (New York: Collier Books, 1983), part 2.
3. Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), pp. 96-101;
Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, 1958), pp. 39-41, 59-61.
4. Henry Folse, The Philosophy of Niels Bohr: The Framework of Complementarity (New York: North Holland, 1985), p. 237.
5. Ibid., pp. 209 and 255.
6. Ibid., p. 259.
7. C. A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1955), chap. 3. See also D.
M. MacKay, "Complementarity in Scientific and Theological Thinking," Zygon 9 (1974): 225-44.
8. See Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 292-94, and Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms, pp. 77-78.
9. Peter Alexander, "Complementary Descriptions," Mind 65 (1956): 145.
10. See Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 298-305;
also Robert Russell, "Theology and Quantum Theory," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology. A Common Quest for
Understanding, eds. R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, S.J., and G. V.
Coyne, S.J. (The Vatican: Vatican Observatory and Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). A more technical elaboration is M. Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974).
11. Albert Einstein letter quoted in M. Born, Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 122. See also A. Pais, Subtle Is the Lord (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
12. David Bohm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1957).
13. Wernel- Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (New York:
Harper & Row, 1958), and Physics and Beyond (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971).
14. See Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1983), chaps. 8,12; also Other Worlds (London: Abacus, 1982), chap. 7.
15. See Trefil, Moment of Creation, pp. 111-18.
16. Louis de Broglie, Physics and Microphysics, trans. M.
Davidson (New York: Pantheon Books, 1955), pp. 114-15.
17. Jonathan Powers, Philosophy and the New Physics (New York: Methuen, 1982), chap. 4.
18. On the Bell’s Theorem experiments, see Pagels, Cosmic Code, chap. 12; Polkinghorne, Quantum World, chap. 7; Davies, Other Worlds, chap. 6 and God and the New Physics, chap. 8;
Fritz Rohrlich, "Facing Quantum Mechanical Reality," Science 221 (1983): 1251-55. Interviews with proponents of differing interpretations are given in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, eds., The Ghost in the Atom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
19. Arthur Robinson, "Loophole Closed in Quantum Mechanics Test," Science 219 (1983): 40-41.
20. Davies, Other Worlds, p. 125. See also Henry Folse,
"Complementarity, Bell’s Theorem, and the Framework of Process Metaphysics," Process Studies 11 (1981): 259-73.
21. Polkinghorne, The Quantum World, pp. 79, 80.
22. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Boston:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980); David Ray Griffin, ed., Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time (Albany: State University of New York, 1985); Robert John Russell, "The Physics of David Bohm and Its Relevance to Philosophy and Theology," Zygon 20 (1985): 135-58 (this whole issue is devoted to Bohm).
23. See chapters by John Bell, David Bohm, and Basil Haley in The Ghost in the Atom, eds. Davies and Brown.
24. Among popular accounts of relativity are Lincoln Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein (New York: New American Library, 1952); Davies, Other Worlds, chap. 2; and William Kaufman, Relativity and Cosmology, 2d ed. (New York: Harper
& Row, 1977). A more technical exposition is Lawrence Sklar, Space, Time, and Spacetime (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1974).
25. Quoted in Davies, Other Worlds, p. 50.
26. Milic Capek, "Relativity and the Status of Becoming,"
Foundations of Physics 5 (1975): 607-17.
27. Andrew Dufner and Robert John Russell, "Foundations in Physics for Revising the Creation Tradition," in Cry of the Environment, eds. Philip Joranson and Ken Butigan (Santa Fe:
Bear & Co., 1984).
28. Karl Heim, Christian Faith and Natural Science (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1953), pp. 133-34.
29. John Wilcox, "A Question from Physics for Certain Theists,"
Journal of Religion 41 (1961): 293-300; Lewis Ford, "Is Process Theism Compatible with Relativity Theory?" Journal of Religion 48 (1968): 124-35; Paul Fitzgerald, "Relativity Physics and the God of Process Philosophy," Process Studies 2 (1972): 251-76.
30. Davies, God and the New Physics, chap. 5.
31. Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos (New York: Bantam Books, 1984).
32. James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1930), p. 186.
33. Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), p. 244.
34. Eugene Wigner, Symmetries and Reflections (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 172.
35. John A. Wheeler, "Bohr, Einstein, and the Strange Lesson of the Quantum," in Mind and Nature, ed. Richard Elvee (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982); "The Universe as Home for Man," American Scientist 62 (1974): 683-91; "Beyond the Black Hole," in Some Strangeness in the Proportion, ed. Harry Woolf (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980).
36. Holmes Rolston, Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 53.
37. Ibid., p. 52.
38. William Pollard, Chance and Providence (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958).
39. Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (New York:
William Morrow, 1979); William Talbot, Mysticism and the New Physics (New York: Bantam Books, 1981); Amaury de
Riencourt, The Eye of Shiva (New York: William Morrow, 1981); Ken Wilber, ed., Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Greatest Physicists (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1984).
40. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (New York: Bantam Books, 1977), p. 266.
41. Sal Restivo, "Parallels and Paradoxes in Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism," Social Studies of Science 8 (1978): 143-81 and 12 (1982): 37-71.
42. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, chap. 7;
"Religion as Wholeness and the Problem of Fragmentation,"
Zygon 20 (1985): 124-33.
43. Richard Jones, Science and Mysticism (Lewisburg, PA:
Bucknell University Press, 1986).
44. Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948).
45. T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton (London: Faber & Faber, 1941), p.
9. Used by permission of Faber & Faber.
32
return to religion-online
Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour
Part 2: Religion and the Theories of Science
Ian G. Barbour is Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Carleton
College, Northefiled, Minnesota. He is the author of Myths, Models and Paradigms (a National Book Award), Issues in Science and Religion, and Science and
Secularity, all published by HarperSanFrancisco. Published by Harper San
Francisco, 1990. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.