R.E. Slater - Quotes & Sayings on Whiteheadian Metaphysical Cosmology

Alfred North Whitehead

 Quotes & Sayings on Whiteheadian Metaphysical Cosmology

by R.E. Slater

Whitehead questioned Western philosophy's most dearly held assumptions about how the universe works — but in doing so, he managed to anticipate a number of 21st century scientific and philosophical problems and provide novel solutions." - Wikipedia

Who is the metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead?

Alfred North Whitehead OM FRS FBA (15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas.

In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–1913), which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.

Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to the philosophy of science, and finally to [cosmological] metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of Western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another. Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy.

Whitehead's process philosophy argues that "there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us." For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead's thought in recent years has been in the area of ecological civilization and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb.

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One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy.

Whitehead’s master work in philosophy, Process and Reality, propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality [exist in a consistent relationship to one another.] It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant.

The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality, is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds. 

 

On the value of curiosity and speculation

when working with scientific facts...

"Imagination is not to be divorced from the fact;: it is a way of illuminating the facts. It works by eliciting the general principles which apply to the facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities which are consistent with those principles. It enables men to construct an intellectual vision of a new world." - A.N. Whitehead

"This is my journey into the world of men. In its study of the bible, church, church history, tradition, and folklore. Of literature, anthropology, psychology, even that of intersectional sociology (as referring to the interrelational web of humanitarian, ecological, economic, political, and legal interaction of societies with one another). 

To this journey we must have a working knowledge of religion, the sciences, philosophy, and importantly, theology itself. Like a working poet, without imagination, without creativity, there can be no movement within the transdisciplinary education and beliefs of men and societies, or into any possible constructionism for the future." - R.E. Slater

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"Whitehead regarded metaphysical investigations as essential to both good science and good philosophy." Let's also include Christianity, religion in general, and all our beliefs, opinions, folklores, superstitions, common logic, and such like. Without investigation, critique, and unorthodox thinking nothing good may come however sincere or deeply believed." - R.E. Slater

"You cannot step twice into the same stream. All things change. It is in their nature." - Heraclitus

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The Ontology of Reality, of Beingness, of Becoming

The Ontology of Being

by R.E. Slater

"We are of the earth, the skies, the heavens.

All that we are was already present."

- re slater

Reality is as indefinable without event

as Time and Conscience are as byproducts

of particulate forces dancing around

interacting with each other

as the unreal consequences

of relational event.

Event depends upon relationality to be real.

Each, taken together, create

a cosmic processual organism in

intra/inter-relational complex of

panexperiential,

panrelational, and

panpsychic

transient processes...

all in motion...

all in intricate dance...

all dependent on one another.

Processual reality,

like processual events,

are incomplete in themselves alone.

Each require the other,

and without the other,

there is neither event nor reality.

These insubstantive elementa

we may call particle, force, or quanta,

are the building blocks

of creation,

the cosmos,

the world.

One cannot simply say the

fundamental forces of the cosmos

are the foundational structures of reality.

No. That was yesteryear.

These quanta bits of

forces,

energies, and

matter,

whizzing around

smashing into one another

mixing chaos with wonder

must interact which each other

else they are not,

ever,

not even alone. 

Nor may the form of our universe,

or relational world,

or that of nature itself,

possibly form the structures

we know as the cosmos today

invested in momentary motion

giving life to that which dances.
without a nature of beingness

devoted to dance.

R.E. Slater

March 22, 2022

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

Process philosophy, as described by Alfred North Whitehead, might be stated as the "Metaphysics of ontology in the process of becoming." Or, more simply, the state of relational processualism resulting from events in motion" moving from states of being-ness to states of becoming-ness. - R.E. Slater

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Process philosophy, as described by Whitehead, might be stated as the "Metaphysics of ontology in the process of becoming." Or, more simply, the state of relational processualism with events in motion" moving from states of being-ness to states of becoming-ness. - R.E. Slater

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The Metaphysics of Being and Becoming

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

• Process philosophy is an approach to cosmological metaphysics which identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects or [immaterial] thoughts) as abstractions from - or ontological dependents on - processes.

• In opposition to the classical view of "change as illusory" (as argued by Parmenides) or "accidental" (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.

• Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

• "Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments. However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.

• Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as...

• "Process thought describes truth as "movement" in and through substance (Hegelian truth), rather than substances as fixed concepts or "things" (Aristotelian truth). Since Whitehead, process thought is distinguished from Hegel in that it describes entities that arise or coalesce in becoming, rather than being simply dialectically determined from prior posited determinates. These entities are referred to as 'complexes of occasions of experience'. It is also distinguished in being not necessarily conflictual or oppositional in operation. Process may be integrative, destructive or both together, allowing for aspects of interdependence, influence, and confluence, and addressing coherence in universal as well as particular developments, i.e., those aspects not befitting Hegel's system. Additionally, instances of determinate occasions of experience, while always ephemeral, are nonetheless seen as important to define the type and continuity of those occasions of experience that flow from or relate to them."

• "In his book 'Science and the Modern World' (1925), Whitehead noted that the human intuitions and experiences of science, aesthetics, ethics, and religion influence the worldview of a community, but that in the last several centuries science dominates Western culture. Whitehead sought a holistic, comprehensive cosmology that provides a systematic descriptive theory of the world which can be used for the diverse human intuitions gained through ethical, aesthetic, religious, and scientific experiences, and not just the scientific....Whitehead's influences were not restricted to philosophers or physicists or mathematicians...."

• "... Actual entities are spatiotemporally extended events or processes. An actual entity is how something is happening, and how its happening is related to other actual entities. The actually existing world is a multiplicity of actual entities overlapping one another...."

• "...The ultimate abstract principle of actual existence for Whitehead is creativity. Creativity is a term coined by Whitehead to show a power in the world that allows the presence of an actual entity, a new actual entity, and multiple actual entities. Creativity is the principle of novelty."

• "The one exceptional actual entity is at once both temporal and atemporal: God. God is objectively immortal, as well as being immanent, in the world. He is objectified in each temporal actual entity; but He is not an eternal object" in the process sense of non-Platonic eternal "objects". God is however, persistently eternal (Thomas Oord perfers the term, 'everlasting') and is eternally informing, urging, partnering with creational concresences of being towards a valuative becoming of wellbeing in the events taking place within an indeterminate, freewilled creation. All of which requires a relentlessly churning pan-en-theistic (not pan-theistic nor classic theistic) structure of operative consequence across events, aesthetics, ethics and being. Consequently, free will is essential and inherent to a panentheistic universe of panexperiential, panrelational, and panpsychic experience of itself in response to the very God whose "imago dei" dwells within its indeterminate and freewilled structure, essence, forms, compositions, or reulting telos. The hope of the cosmos rests not only in its relationship to the divine but in the very indwelling of the divine throughout all its everlasting spaces and concreascing realities as given to it by its Maker.

• Beginning with an examination of religious (or mythological) cosmologies vs. philosophical cosmologies, the logical synthesis is that of a philosophic theology leaning equally into both perspectives dependent upon the approach used.

• "Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation and eschatology.

• "Philosophical cosmology deals with the world as the totality of space, time and all phenomena. Historically, it has had quite a broad scope, and in many cases was found in religion. In modern use "metaphysical cosmology" addresses questions about the Universe which are beyond the scope of science. It is distinguished from religious cosmology in that it approaches these questions using philosophical methods like dialectics. [Meta]modern metaphysical cosmology tries to address questions such as:

• 1- "What is the origin of the Universe? What is its first cause? Is its existence necessary? (see monism, pantheism, emanationism, creationism, [and panentheism]);
• 2 - "What are the ultimate material components of the Universe? (see mechanism, dynamism, hylomorphism, atomism);
• 3 - "What is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Universe? Does the cosmos have a purpose? (see teleology);
• 4 - "Does the existence of consciousness have a purpose? How do we know what we know about the totality of the cosmos? Does cosmological reasoning reveal metaphysical truths? [See panpsychism]."

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As a metaphysical cosmology, "Process Philosophy and Theology" does this very thing providing to all religions - including that of Christianity - with a number of real world sympathies and perspectives as a better explanation than can be found elsewhere in lesser, non-integral, philosophies. Which is why Whiteheadian thought may be ascribed the place of an Integral Theory of all things, whether Western, Continental, African, Middle Eastern, or Oriental. - R.E. Slater

 

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The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed. Except for the few stars in the foreground (which are bright and easily recognizable because only they have diffraction spikes), every speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 2 trillion galaxies.

Cosmology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Cosmology (disambiguation).

Cosmology (from Ancient Greek κόσμος (kósmos) 'world', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of') is a branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's Glossographia, and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher Christian Wolff, in Cosmologia Generalis.

Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation myths and eschatology.

In the science of astronomy it is concerned with the study of the chronology of the universe.

Physical cosmology is the study of the observable universe's origin, its large-scale structures and dynamics, and the ultimate fate of the universe, including the laws of science that govern these areas.

It is investigated by scientists, such as astronomers and physicists, as well as philosophers, such as metaphysicians, philosophers of physics, and philosophers of space and time.

Because of this shared scope with philosophy, theories in physical cosmology may include both scientific and non-scientific propositions, and may depend upon assumptions that cannot be tested.

Physical cosmology is a sub-branch of astronomy that is concerned with the Universe as a whole. Modern physical cosmology is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which attempts to bring together observational astronomy and particle physics; more specifically, a standard parameterization of the Big Bang with dark matter and dark energy, known as the Lambda-CDM model.

Theoretical astrophysicist David N. Spergel has described cosmology as a "historical science" because "when we look out in space, we look back in time" due to the finite nature of the speed of light.

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Metaphysics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Metaphysics (disambiguation).

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility.

It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.

The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among [the study of] the natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).

Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions:

• What is there?
• What is it like?

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.

Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.

“Philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term civilization. In each case there is reference to form beyond the direct meanings of words. Poetry allies itself to metre [to music!], philosophy to mathematical pattern.” – Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 174

Process philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes.

In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, classical ontology has posited ordinary world reality as constituted of enduring substances, to which transient processes are ontologically subordinate, if not denied [completely]. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, and devoid of primary reality, whereas the substance is essential.

Philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heraclitus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Iain McGilchrist, Thomas Nail, Alfred Korzybski, R. G. Collingwood, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, William E. Connolly, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics, Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments. However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.

Andrew Davis - The Organic, Processual Development of Process Philosophy & Theology

The Organic, Processual Development

of Process Philosophy & Theology

Intro by R.E. Slater

People Can, and Do, Change

I come from a fundamental Baptist, and later, conservative evangelical Christianity. My training was at first dispensational through bible churches, and later, covenant Reformed theology from a Baptistic evangelical bible college and seminary (GARB, ABWE, et al). I carry an undergraduate major in Psychology with an extensive minor studies in biblically-informed inductive and systematic theology. In a previous state university which I attended through my junior year, I held substantial studies in applied mathematics, organic chemistry, classical physics, literature and humanities, ancient bible cultures, Attic Greek, and basic engineering courses. In another life I would've completed my mathematics studies and moved into the quantum physics realm which years later I have taught myself.

My working "career" existed for 30 years in the small business information services and consulting which included an additional 30/60 graduate hours completed on an MBA level at the Seidman School of Business. Too, my seminary studies carries with it a Masters of Divinity degree with a Pastoral minor (130? cr hrs). As a lay minister I taught, developed, and mentored high school, college and career, and single adult ministries, including worship ministries participation, small group development for adult ministries, and campus ministries. Also, I served as a deacon in a mega church, developed grassroots congregational ministries, and worked in evangelic street ministries of various kinds. All in all I served 34 years in Christian ministries and another 25 years in public school projects and committees; city and township boards and committees; ditto with the county and quasi-political regional ecological / environmental promotion and development with the public, area colleges, and corporations. I also served on a dozen+ environmental groups utilizing a Master Naturalist certification which I gained as part of a hands-on curricular program through Michigan State University's extension board.

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Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures

The "emerging church" movement is perhaps the most significant church trend of our day. The emerging church offers and encourages a new way of doing and being the church. While it largely resonates with an eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old audience--the first fully postmodern generation--it is also gaining popularity with older Christians and encompasses a broad array of traditional and contemporary churches. Emerging Churches explores this movement and provides insight into its success.

Filled with the latest research and interesting, anecdotal testimonies from those on the cutting edge of ministry, this book provides pastors, church leaders, and interested readers with an insightful glimpse into the thriving churches of today--and tomorrow.

The Haves and the Have-Nots

Over the past several decades I had become aware of the lack of positive movement in the local church, and nationally, in its ability to reach out to the public in any meaningful way. My last church, Mars Hill under Rob Bell, became active in the emergent Christian movement as a way of introducing to an institutionalized Christian religion a personal and community-engaged form of spiritual formation and ministry. In essence, I found a church willing to engage the public on a societal level even as I was already practicing on a personal level. And like myself, it too had become weary of the church ostracizing people by critical societal judgments and church rules which demanded a form of Christian observance which leaned into the legalizing attitudes formed within church fellowship of the haves-and-have-nots. Exclusion was never Jesus' intention. In response, the Jewish leadership persecuted Jesus unto death and in like manner church leaders have been doing the same over the past two millennia of church ministry. With the emergent Christian movement of the 90s and 10s the Christian faith was to cease from these actions and reach out to the excluded, the unwanted, and the disenfrancised. And so it did, and when it did, the conservatism of evangelicalism doubled down on its own divide of what was "truth" and what was "love" as it decided those  "Christian" qualities to be.

"Red Letter Christians director," Shane Claiborne

Time to Re-form our Un-Reformational Attitudes

Recently, about ten years ago, and after a personally difficult and extensive period of deconstructing my own sincerely-held dogmatic beliefs and stricter forms of Christianity (which actually began back in my earlier college years, though I was at that time much less religiously in-formed), the Spirit of the Lord burdened me to take my retirement and write of a "New Christianity". One which held to its "biblical" roots by leaning into God's love, and by placing Jesus back into the center of faith worship, rather than centering my faith in the bible itself per se in what can only be described as "the worship of the bible over its Author" (sic, known as bibliolatry).

Whereas my former faith system was binding me away from the world and making it wholly improbably, impractical, if not  impossible, to teach Jesus within its limiting dogmatic systems I was an active member of; and though my fellowships believed themselves to be "progressively minded" in their own ways of faith construction and observance; yet they had intentionally constructed - and were living within - a very regressive form of religion made in the image of modern-day religious man. Thus and thus, my very long period of deconstruction, both informally through my lifetime, and later formally, during the early years of writing out my dilemma on this website of my own theological dissent to evangelicalism's form of the gospel. It was un-reforming in its faith's energies, uncritical of its dogmas, and had become too separate from the world by its moralising judgments and socio-political hypocrisies. It was finally time to speak up.

By being patient to the guidance of the Spirit, and patiently examining what my Emergent (and later, Progressive) Christian fellowships were saying (even as the very short lived Emergent Christianity of the 1990s came-and-went) I was able to see more clearly what needed removing and what needed greater emphasis in a Christianity become more religion than vibrant faith and spiritual encounter. Like my more well-known compatriots, Rachel Held Evans, Shane Claiborne, and Thomas Jay Oord, Richard Rohr, and even Stanley Hauerwas, my own faith journey was joining their faith journies during those early years of reconstruction by building upon what had been laid down by Jesus and moving it forward a bit at a time.

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Are you dissatisfied with the church, unsure of how to think about the Holy Spirit's power in light of the evil in our world, or wishing that worship engaged your imagination? In "Pass the Peace: A New Paradigm for Christian Community," Dr. Chet B. Gean translates Christian theology into meaningful practice. Pastors and laypersons are encouraged to: Apply spiritual practices and disciplines. Define and work with parish dynamics. Harness the power of the Holy Spirit. Unmask evil in the world. Engage imagination in worship. Transform grace into service. Dr. Gean, denominational leader and church consultant, calls for a new paradigm of church leadership and community involvement. His message embraces the mystical energy of God, transcending religious institutions and flowing freely into the world that we are called to serve. His is a call to peace; to the mystery of inner healing; to wholeness; and to our God, who alone loves in a manner unique and perfectly suited to each one of us. Gean discloses his love, respect, and solicitude for the church in "Pass the Peace."

A New Christianity Needs A New Christian Foundation

What I wish to show here is a new kind of Christianity which is no longer based upon the older, out-of-date, Hellenized forms of Greek Western culture, but in essence, the retrieval and recapturing of the even older Hebraic cultures which leaned into the organic forms and movement of God's continuing actions in creation through eventful narratives and personal encounters as the God who is the Lover of our Souls.

Further, there has been a great amount of confusion within traditional church doctrine in its embrace of the Christian philosopher Kant and his Newtonian ideas of a creation working as a clock-like mechanism. Consequently, I have redirected some of my bible studies on this site to include the chaotic world of organically evolving creationism known as (quantum) evolution and (processual) societal development utilizing a Hebraically-minded, but newer, contemporay organic philosophy known as process philosophy before Roman and Greek thought had removed Hebraic thinking from the church in favor of Hellenism.

As such, neither Platonic/Aristotelian Hellenism nor Englightenment-based Modernism are worthy foundations for a "biblical" theology nor theology's future development. And though I could find parts of Continental Philosophy more helpful than Western Analytical Philosophy of the American church, I realized I needed something broader, more organic, more chaotic, less certain, even mystical. All this and more I have found in Alfred North Whitehead's development of the "Philosophy of Organism" (later to be known as Process Philosophy which naturally includes Process Theology; essentially they came together in Whitehead's Victorian form of Process Christianity in the early 1900s).

A philosophy which has steadily grown and developed over the past three of four generations of input by process philosophers, theologians, scientists (sic, metaphysical quantum cosmologies and creationally-respondent evolutions), the humanitarian arts such as psychology, sociology, metamodern medicine (neurology), technology (quantum computing and blockchain development), anthropology (both ancient and cultural), and even postmodern literature.

As with any philosophy, process thought is but a waystation leading to further studies and insights as society can move along with it (as example, should we decide to build ecological societies and cultures instead of greater industrialized cultures). But for now, its time for the church to let go of its older, unuseful philosophical foundations, and to move forward utilizing broader conceptualizing tools for such integral areas as philosophic theology, entrepreneurial eco-societal development, and the various global solidarities of pluralistic humanitarianism as can be found with one another. Which is what this site is attempting to do in its reappraisal of the Christian faith in correlation with other process theologians and thinkers, both religious and non-religious.

Conclusion

Today, Andrew Davis presents another view of Process Thought from his own perspective, even as I have attempted to illustrate through other voices and research institutions over the past recent years. If Christianity is to become a more meaningful voice with other strident voices speaking peace and love out across the world instead of imperial forms of dogmatic Christianity, then it needs to positively re-engage in the areas of metaphysics, ontology, morals and ethics, and in societal practicalities which hopefully bleed out peace, love, goodwill, equality, social and ecological justice. This is what God's love and Jesus' atonement brings to today's world.

In Christ, we are, but we are also becoming. And as we are in Christ, so we are to be in the world... as voice and witness, fellow laborer and co-servants to the love of God.

So let's hear from Andrew today, consider his approach and appraisal of a processually reforming (or reformulization of) Christianity, and see if it might help each of us towards greater solidarity within our own personal, familial, economic, political, corporate, community, social, and religious faith involvements.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

March 21, 2022

"The Global Philosophy of Religion Project"

by Andrew Davis

Subject: Process Theology

Dec 21, 2021

Today, we explore Process Philosophy and Theology with Dr. Andrew Davis, a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. We stress understanding Process Philosophy and Theology, and Metaphysics, in its own context, and then, if and where relevant, in comparison with other religions.

Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian and scholar of world religions. He is Program Director for the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology at Willamette University. He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology. An educator and advocate of cross-cultural knowledge and religious literacy, his studies have led him to a variety of religious contexts and communities around the world, including India, Israel-Palestine, and Europe.

The Global Philosophy of Religion Project aims to make the philosophy of religion a truly global field by promoting the scholarly work of researchers from underrepresented regions and religious traditions. It is led by Professor Yujin Nagasawa and hosted by the University of Birmingham. This interview was conducted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, host of Closer To Truth. Learn more about the project: https://www.global-philosophy.org/

This project was made possible in part through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this video are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

R.E. Slater - Essays with John B. Cobb: The Practical Need for Metaphysics

Photo by stein egil liland: https://www.pexels.com/photo/scenic-view-of-snow-capped-mountains-during-night-3408744/

​The Practical Need for Metaphysics

https://www.openhorizons.org/the-practical-need-for-metaphysics-john-cobb.html

by John B. Cobb, Jr.

February 9, 2012

[bracketed words are mine - re slater]

This document was prepared for a presentation on February 9, 2010 at the Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California. Used by permission of the author.

In introductions of process thought, we usually tread lightly on the topic of metaphysics. I considered avoiding the word in entitling what I want to say today. I feared that many would assume they could not understand what I would say or that, if they did, it would be of no interest.

But I decided that avoiding this unpopular word is not wise. It leaves the impression that metaphysical questions are obscure and that we can get along well without asking them. In my judgment they are not really all that obscure, and the consequences of not attending to them in the past two centuries has had seriously damaging and dangerous consequences.

The origins of metaphysics are in very simple questions. In all civilizations one is likely to find some listing of the elements of which the physical world is composed. For example fire, water, air, wood, and stone may be listed, with the supposition that other things can be seen as mixtures of these. Simply classifying things in such ways is not yet metaphysics. But suppose one asks which of these is primary or whether they are all expressions of some underlying reality. The pre-Socratics asked this kind of question. Their work is the precursor of metaphysics. These questions become truly metaphysical only when reflection about the world has advanced. Only then can one distinguish scientific inquiry from the deeper question of the nature of what science studies.

I am not speaking today primarily about the positive contributions made by metaphysics. Instead, (1) I am going to talk first about the damage done by holding to established metaphysics in the natural sciences and in theology and then (2) the damage done by dismissing metaphysical inquiry. I’ll conclude, as you will expect, (3) by proposing process metaphysics as a way forward in those two fields.

I. THE NATURAL SCIENCES AND METAPHYSICS

I begin with science because that is where "meta-physics" began. After Aristotle had sketched the best science available in his day, he wanted to go further. What implications did that science have for the nature of the physical world with which it dealt? His intention was to develop the meta-physics only after the -physics. If science had always followed this pattern the role of metaphysics would have been far more positive. Unfortunately, once a metaphysics is formulated, it is likely to take on a life of its own and to force science and theology to adjust to ideas that may not fit what is known in actual experience. This is why metaphysics has done damage.

The natural sciences are in fact tightly bound up with a particular metaphysics, namely, the one developed by Rene Descartes. This is true in two ways, (1) the self-definition and standard claims of science as a whole, and (2) the beliefs about nature that shape its inquiries.

1

Western science arose in a context dominated philosophically primarily by Aristotle and secondarily by Plato. In another place we could discuss the positive role both played in this regard. Today I will speak only of the negative. 

Although serious scientific work was done in terms of Aristotle’s metaphysics, especially in biology, the ready appeal to final causes in explaining physical phenomena blocked needed inquiry into efficient causes. This led to the emergence of modern philosophy with Rene Descartes. That Descartes’ metaphysics provided a crucial context for the further development of science is unquestionable, but I am here focusing on the negative role it played and continues to play today.

Science aims to be empirical in that it deals with the world as it is given to human sense experience. Sometimes this is called the "objective" world. Science seeks in the objective world the causes of all the events that transpire in it. This is the "nature" it studies, and it understands this nature to be self-enclosed. That is, it rejects the idea that the objective events that constitute nature could require explanations that lead outside of this objective world. This excludes the possibility that God is the cause of any natural event. It also excludes the possibility that one must appeal to subjective experience in order to explain what happens objectively.

Prior to Darwin’s work, scientists assumed that alongside the natural world they studied there was also a human one. This is the famous Cartesian dualism. Human experience is just as real and important, for Descartes and his followers, as any bit of matter. What transpires in this human sphere is to be explained by different categories than what happens in nature. Each is sufficient to itself. Mental events have no causal effect on physical ones, and material events have no causal effect on mental ones.

In my view, this was a very bad metaphysics. It was in fact strictly incredible. Given that in metaphysics my decision to type a word must be understood to have no effect on my actually typing it. And a physical wound caused by an accident has no bearing on my subjective feeling of pain. I assume that no one really believes this, but this dualism became immensely important in intellectual and cultural life.

When evolutionary theory brought human beings into nature, this kind of dualism faded. But this only made the situation worse. A common sense approach would have been to say that now that we understood that human thought and feeling are part of nature, we should no longer suppose that nature consists only of material objects in relative motion. This view has been proposed from time to time. But among scientists in general there has been no change in the understanding of nature as a result of including themselves within it. It is still the world as objectively given to human observers.

Science now assumes that human beings, like everything else, are to be fully explained without any reference to their subjective experience. Our decisions are supposed to have no causal role in the world. If the reality of subjective experience is acknowledged at all, it is held to be fully caused by physical events and to have no reciprocal causal influence on them. Strictly speaking, human beings are automata.

The only reason for holding this view is metaphysical. This is so, even though most scientists will profess to have no interest in metaphysics and to consider it scientifically irrelevant. Indeed, this metaphysics continues to shape the program of science precisely because the intended rejection of metaphysics prevents any questioning or examination of the denial that human decisions can have a role in what happens in the world.

I am quite sure that no one really believes this metaphysics, and the actions of scientists themselves certainly show that they do not. But it remains the systematic implication of what most scientists believe about the nature of science. They believe it deals comprehensively with nature, and they believe that the nature with which it deals is objective. This excludes the subjective from nature and from playing any role in nature. Thus a metaphysics that no one can believe shapes the self-understanding of science.

You may suppose that if no one believes it, its public dominance makes no difference. But that is not true. One of the few things that the culture still reveres is "science." We devote enormous resources to its advancement. This "advancement" includes the fuller and fuller demonstration that we are automata, that is, that our subjective experience and activity play no role in determining what happens in the world. Those who develop the counter evidence, showing that the subjective and objective worlds interact, have to do their research on their own time and don’t get to teach about it, at least as a part of "science."

To take just one example, the only [naturalistic] theory of evolution that is allowed is the one that excludes the role of purpose from the behavior of animals, including human beings, and, just to make sure, also excludes animal actions from having any role in evolution. The only reason I know to support this theory is that it fits with the metaphysics that has played so large a role in science.

2.

Science has been formulated in terms of a metaphysics of matter in motion. Its data are chiefly patches of color in various relations. But the explanation of these data lies in the motions of a "material substances" that are inaccessible to sense experience.

In the seventeenth century, philosophers were comfortable with positing that underlying the sensory qualities that cause us to speak of stones and chairs [speak to] "material substances" in which these sensory objects inhere [exist essentially or permanently in] and to which we rightly attribute them. But the philosophical analysis of Berkeley and Hume in the eighteenth century showed that neither the idea of "matter" nor the idea of "substance" made sense.

Early in the nineteenth century, Immanuel Kant came to the rescue. He agreed with Hume that human beings had no basis for saying anything at all about what the real world is like. He asserted that the only world we can describe is the one [which] the human mind creates. Remarkably, he affirmed that this was just the world described by seventeenth-century metaphysics. By the time he wrote, scientists were paying little attention to philosophers anyway, but if they did care to do so, they could find justification in Kant for continuing their program, unchanged.

Through the nineteenth century physicists believed that atoms were, as the name implies, tiny pellets of matter not susceptible of further analysis or division. They were related to one another only externally. That means that the only way one affected another was by its motion. These relations were depicted as being like those of billiard balls. The task of science was to explain everything in terms of the motions of these atoms. The result was mechanistic determinism. Some physicists thought their task was almost completed when the break-up of the atom created consternation and chaos.

This break-up would not have been a threat to the metaphysics that shaped scientific research and discourse if the entities into which what had been previously identified as indivisible were found to be constituted of tinier bits of matter obeying the basic laws of motion. Then the world could still be understood to be constituted exhaustively by matter in motion. But we all know now that this was not the case. At its base, the world does not [simply] consist of matter in motion. Also the exclusion of the observer from any causal role in the nature that is observed, a principle so central to the self-understanding of science, could not be applied. The metaphysics so tightly related to science was wrong.

There were intense discussions in the early part of the twentieth century about this new situation. One response was to develop a new meta-physics in Aristotle’s sense. That is, given the scientific evidence, what answers can we now give to the question: Of what does the world consist? In my view, the failure of the scientific and philosophical communities to pursue this question is one of the tragedies of intellectual history.

A second response was to make the smallest possible changes and restrict their application to the subatomic world. This has been the practical response of the scientific community. There were two familiar concepts with which they had organized the world of matter in motion: wave and particle. They found that in some respects the mathematics they had developed for wave phenomena fit the new evidence while in other respects the mathematics of particles was applicable. They could not say whether the subatomic entities were waves or particles, and since a wave cannot be a particle or a particle a wave, they recognized they had no idea of the actual nature of what they studied. So they introduced the notion of paradox. That meant that science, which had heretofore prided itself in conceptual precision would simply acquiesce in incoherence. And it meant that it would continue to use the old metaphysics without paradox elsewhere. Also it would hold to the basic understanding of science that I explained earlier – a self-contained system that excluded any role for subjectivity or God.

Since the inherited metaphysics was discredited, and the effort to re-think metaphysics was abandoned, the culture generally began to pride itself in outgrowing any interest in metaphysics. That means we do not try to find out what really exists or occurs and to care whether one’s thought in one area is consistent with one’s thought in other areas. Science now simply develops hypotheses about the readings on meters when certain actions are taken. If predictions are successful, we should not ask what we are talking about. That different fields of study operate with different assumptions is perfectly acceptable. If one seeks comprehensive or integrated understanding, one shows that one is out of step with advanced thought. [sic, reference to metaphysical cosmologies - res]

I’m sure you understand that I consider this a serious step backward. But if you have been socialized into the modern world, you will ask, what is wrong with this? Twentieth century science added enormously to our store of information and our ability to control nature. If it could do this best by abandoning the quest for realism and coherence, was that not the right move?

In my view, on the other hand, the abandonment of both reality and reason is a very serious matter. It opens the door to irrationalism and nihilism in all dimensions of our thought. It blocks the way to real advance in understanding either the world or ourselves. It trivializes philosophy.

Most important, at a time in human history when there is urgent need for wisdom to guide us through a crisis of unparalleled proportions, it removes any interest in wisdom from the intelligentsia in general and the modern university in particular.

II. THEOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS

I will discuss this topic also in two ways. (1) Traditional theology was clearly metaphysical, and I will briefly consider the negative aspects of the metaphysics in question. (2) Then I will consider the fate of theology and the church when metaphysics is abandoned.

1.

Jewish thought of God, including that of Jesus and Paul, was metaphysical in the sense that Jews unquestioningly affirmed God as a reality with causal efficacy in the world. On the other hand, Israel did not develop philosophy and, accordingly did not articulate the implicit metaphysics. However, Jewish thinkers recognized the relevance of philosophy to their affirmations. Philo was a great Jewish thinker, a contemporary of Jesus, who made use of Greek philosophy to explain Jewish thinking. Christian thinkers followed in his path. Thus Greek metaphysics played a large role in shaping Christian thought.

To have failed to form this alliance would have left Christian thought about God naively anthropomorphic. But the categories adopted from Greek metaphysics were in sharp tension with biblical thought, so that the alliance led to major losses as well as gains.

Much of process theology has focused on some of these losses. I will now deal with just two of them. (1) The Greeks prized invulnerability. For example, if we are subject to being affected by what others say or think about us, we are at the mercy of their responses to us. We cannot be happy. Happiness requires that we have our well being in ourselves in ways that others cannot disturb. Of course, no human being can be entirely invulnerable, but when we imagine perfection, it will include this character. God’s blessedness cannot depend on anything that happens in the world. God, therefore, is conceived as a self-contained substance. For Aristotle, for example, God contemplates only God. To attend to anything else would make God vulnerable.

This is profoundly different from biblical thinking about God. In the Bible God cares greatly about what happens in the world. Especially from the New Testament perspective, God’s central characteristic is love. A major aspect of love is compassion, feeling with. God rejoices with us in our joy and suffers with us in our misery. We are called to love one another in this way. Of course, we can never do this fully, but Jews and Christians affirmed that these characteristics, imperfect as they were in us, were perfect in God.

(a) Christian philosophical theologians were greatly influenced by Greek metaphysicians in their formulations about God. They affirmed that God was "impassible," not subject to suffering. [Further,] (b) they could not deny that God is love, since this was so central in scripture. So they were forced to reinterpret love in a way that omitted compassion altogether.

The Bible may be described as a long account of the many ways in which God and humanity interacted. To the Greek philosophers this seemed anthropomorphic and demeaning of God. This is partly because it meant that God was not invulnerable, but the problem was broader. It made God very much a temporal being. The Greeks thought that perfection must transcend time altogether; so the Christian philosophical theologians declared that "God was immutable and eternal." Their biblical commitments would not allow them to deny God’s role in history, but the pressure of Greek metaphysics worked against this. Augustine solved the problem for himself and many subsequent theologians by denying the ultimate reality of time as human beings experience it. For God all events happen at once, so that there is a single eternal divine act. Obviously, nothing of this sort was envisioned by the biblical authors.

With the renewed emphasis on the Bible in the Reformation and the rise of modern philosophy, the hold of Greek thought diminished. It was possible to think again without qualification of temporally sequential acts of God. Nevertheless, many of the attributes of God derived from the Greeks retained their hold. The idea that what happened in the world affected God was rarely articulated, although much worship and practical piety assumed it.

One reason was that the idea of substance retained its hold on the Western mind and may have even become more rigid. A substance is something that exists on its own and relates to other things only externally. Other substances were thought to derive their being from God, but God is the perfect substance that derives nothing from others. Obviously, there is no such notion of substance in the Bible.

From time to time, there were protests against the role of Greek metaphysics in shaping Christian thought. Some of them were really directed against critical thinking as such, but for the most part, they were directed against the Greek assumptions that shaped philosophy in ways that were in sharp tension with the Bible. Luther is a great example. Pascal also distinguished the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from the God of the philosophers. To this day many of the protests against metaphysics are directed against aspects of distinctively Greek metaphysics, with little awareness of other possibilities. They seek to free the thinking of Christians from the straightjacket of Greek metaphysics.

2

Until the work of Kant, it was assumed that there was a metaphysical dimension in any doctrine of God. God was thought to be the creator of the world. Whether this was creation out of nothing, or order out of chaos, God was explanatory of the existence of the world we know, and that world was understood to be fully real. The metaphysical affirmations involved might be made as "common sense," or simply on the basis of revelation, or on the authority of the church, but they remained metaphysical. Atheism was the denial of this metaphysical reality.

Beginning with Kant, the situation has changed. God is often not located beyond the physics, but in other contexts. In Kant, God appears as meta-ethical rather than meta-physical in Aristotle’s sense. God’s reality is posited rather than simply affirmed, and it is removed from the realm of theory and located in that of practical thought. Still, reality is posited of God as clearly as it is posited of the physical world. In that sense, God is still metaphysical.

Of course, metaphysical treatments of God reemerged in Hegel and Schleiermacher and their followers. Those who appealed to religious experience as the context for speaking of God for the most part believed that this experience was testimony to a holy reality.

But since then there have been more radical rejections of metaphysics in theology. The linguistic turn shifts the discussion from God as a reality to the word "God" and the way it functions [sic, existential phenomenology, res]. Some have insisted that the meaning of the word can only be found in its relation to other words. Others may allow that it is related also to human acts. But the traditional assumption that the word has reference to something that is real apart from language is now often rejected. This is a full rejection of metaphysics.

[re slater - As an aside, this can be a helpful distinction, and if used aright, can be helpful to a theology of metaphysics, hermenuetical linguistics, or even basic human/cultural/religious communications with one another. I suspect theses efforts might also be found in the area known as Radical Theology, or in the Symbolic Nature of Societal Mores, or even in the Orthographical, Phonological, and Morphological Challenges in Language Processing.]

Kant opened the door to radically nonmetaphysical ways of thinking of God through his emphasis on the creative activity of the human mind. The phrase, "the social construction of reality" is not his, but it grows out of his work. He thought that the human mind created a common world at all times and places. But Hegel emphasized that it creates changing worlds. In some of these there is a place for God, in others not. Thus God is real in the same way that other parts of the socially constructed world are real. But we cannot meaningfully ask about a reality that transcends and is prior to all social construction. Whereas earlier everyone assumed that God is the creator of human beings, many now suppose that human beings are the creators of "God."

Much of this reflection has been for the sake of undergirding Christian thought and worship. Nevertheless, it has in fact profoundly weakened that segment of the Christian community, chiefly to be found in liberal Protestantism [a liquid definition perhaps better described now as an atheistic theology - res], that has followed it.

Worship and trust require the belief that there is in reality something worthy of worship, something one can trust. Something humans create does not qualify.

III. PROCESS METAPHYSICS

I said that I consider the failure of scientists, theologians, and philosophers to pursue the quest for a new metaphysics in the early twentieth century to be a great tragedy. I also consider it fortunate that not everyone abandoned the quest.

William James and Henri Bergson were two who dared to explore new ways of thinking about the world. Many physicists engaged in fresh thinking about the implications of new findings for the understanding of the world. Even when the consensus came to be as I described it above, some scientists continued their reflections. Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist, is probably the best known. David Bohm is an example in physics; Ilya Prigogine, in chemistry; C. H. Waddington, in biology; Roger Sperry, in physiological psychology; Donald Griffin, in zoology. These remain recognized figures in their several fields, even if their break with the dominant scientific conventions is not followed by their guilds. Feminists and ecologists also introduced new creative challenges. There are many others who could be mentioned. There are also some who have been largely excommunicated by their guilds because of the new directions they have taken. Herman Daly, in economics, and Rupert Sheldrake, in biology, are clear examples.

Now it might seem that the multiplicity of people who have continued on new lines of thought would mean that there are a great number of directions in which new metaphysical developments might occur, so that process metaphysics is simply one from which to choose. That would be true if by process metaphysics we meant simply Whitehead’s version. Nevertheless, there is a commonality in the direction that most have taken. One could argue that most belong to the community of process thinkers.

This is not a matter of chance. A healthy metaphysics grows out of the best science of the day. Evolution, relativity and quantum theory are decisive forms of science in the twentieth century. There is a broad recognition, largely ignored in practice, that science as a whole should be reordered so as to take what has been learned in these new fields into account. Those who are doing so, inevitably have some emphases that were absent in the seventeenth century metaphysics that still exercises a strong hold on science as a whole.

For example, evolutionary thought cuts differently from the static vision that preceded it. We now know that even what we call physical laws evolve. The whole universe evolves. Evolution is certainly a process. Change and novelty are important features of the world. New and surprising things emerge along the way. All of this is quite different from the Cartesian vision of nature. There will be commonalities among those who take evolution seriously.

The new fields in physics in different ways emphasize relations over substances. What a thing is has to be recognized as largely a function of what other things are. The billiard ball model has little relevance to advanced physics. A meta-physics that grows out of cutting-edge findings today must be relational.

If we understand the entities that make up the world as inherently relational, we cannot consider them simply as they appear to us objectively. Constitutive relations are necessarily internal relations. Visual objects have no internality, but it is clear that the real world does. Internality means also subjectivity.

I stressed earlier that science is typically defined so as to exclude subjective experience from any explanatory role. Those I have mentioned here are restive with such demarcations and open to modifying them in various ways. A metaphysics that allows for the influence of subjective experience on objectively observable events is quite different from the seventeenth-century metaphysics that still holds sway in science. Significant variety still occurs, but the new positions belong to a single family, the one I call "process".

The next step is to choose among process philosophies. Choices can be made on various grounds. Some prefer to stay as close as possible to description of what we now know, minimizing generalization and speculation. Having rejected both Greek and modern metaphysics, they are in no hurry to formulate another one. Some are quite critical of Whitehead for having developed so complex a speculative scheme. Some are especially disturbed because Whitehead affirms the reality of God and even attributes a large role to God in what happens in the world.

[For metamodern process theologians we would attribute a decidedly conclusive role to God as Creator of the cosmos. re slater]

But one can hardly dispute that Whitehead has engaged more fully than any other in the engagement with recent physics. He has played the largest role in the development of the philosophy of mathematics. He has the most fully elaborated metaphysics. Some of us believe that these are accomplishments of great importance, and that of all the process thinkers he has the most to offer. That does not mean that his metaphysics is the final word. But for some of us it means that Whitehead’s metaphysics is the one most worthy of serious study and engagement.

Whitehead’s detailed work can lead to overcoming the basic problems of modern science. Science may be able, once again to give a coherent account of reality. It may be able to integrate relativity and quantum theory. It may be able to avoid the absurdities in which it now ends up.

Those in the Abrahamic tradition can once again have support from science and philosophy for their conviction that what they worship is worthy of their worship, that, at the base of reality is something worthy of their trust. At the same time they may be freed from destructive features of their traditions.

Explaining this and purifying the traditions from elements introduced by earlier and more alien forms of metaphysics is the task of process theology. Much of this can be done without being explicit about its metaphysical basis. But I remain profoundly grateful to Whitehead for having made this work possible.

Finally, it is my judgment that as the world as a whole enters into a time of unparalleled dangers, the contribution of Whitehead will become more and more important. Those who would guide us through these crises must see the world in its complex interrelated unity. Whitehead, as no one else of whom I know, makes that possible.

Index - Process Metaphysics

 

INDEX TO PROCESS METAPHYSICS

The Collected Papers of Process Philosopher & Theologian Andrew M. Davis  <--!

Essays by John B. Cobb, Jr - The Practical Need for Metaphysics  <-- !

Index - Process Essays by R.E. Slater  <-- !

How Process Philosophy & Theology Connects Scientific Evolution & Cosmology to God

SEOP - Process Philosophy

Philosophy and its history

Arthur F. Holmes - A Synopsis of Process Philosophy

Harry Putnam, American Philosopher

Wikipedia - Incompatibilism & Compatibilism

Wikipedia - Panpsychism

Wikipedia - German Idealism

Early Process Philosophers & Theologians:

Row 1 - Alfred North Whitehead (L), Charles Hartshorn (R)

Row 2 - David Ray Griffin (L), Marajorie Suchocki (R)

Row 3 - John Cobb, Jr.

  

Astrobiology, Exo-Philosophy and Cosmic Religion

Wikipedia - (Self) Consciousness

Wikipedia - Process Philosophy

Integral Philosophy and the Panpsychic Nature of Creation and Consciousness

Integral Philosophy & The Integral Left - Integrating Life, Nature & Politics

Alfred North Whitehead - Process and Reality: An Introduction

What Is Christianity's Relation to Metaphysics?