Notes

  1. . See Milton K. Munitz (ed.), Theories of the Universe (New York: Free Press, 1957), pp. 271–432.
  2. . See Stanley L. Jaki, The Relevance of Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 173–87.
  3. . This is a common distinction between matter, life, and humanity made, among others, by Paul Tillich and Julian Huxley. For the former, see Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), III, 15–21. For the latter, see Evolution in Action (New York: New American Library, 1957), pp. 9–14.
  4. . It will become evident that the point of view developed in this chapter is heavily dependent on the thought of Alfred North Whitehead, although I do not claim merely to be reproducing his views. The connections of my thought with that of Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin are also quite apparent.
  5. . Cf. Charles Hartshorne, Reality as Social Process (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1953).
  6. . A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York Macmillan Co., 1929; reprinted as a Harper Torchbook, 1960).
  7. . Tillich, op. cit., III, 11–110.
  8. . Ibid., I, 241.
  9. . See Tillich, who, instead of self‐creation, self‐preservation, and self‐transcendence, speaks of self‐creation, self‐integration, and self‐transcendence (ibid., III 30–32). Cf. also Huxley, who speaks of self‐transformation by way of referring to evolutionary advance (op. cit., pp. 10 ff.). For Whitehead, the three basic characteristics of life are self‐enjoyment, creative activity, and aim (see Modes of Thought [New York: Macmillan Co., 1938; reprinted as a Capricorn paperback, 19581], pp. 205‐8).
  10. . Tillich, op. cit., III. 11–30.
  11. . Ibid., I,181.
  12. . See IsaacAsimov, “Over the Edge of the Universe,” Harper's Magazine  (March, 1967), pp. 97–106, for a review of the latest cosmological theories.
  13. . I speak in this connection largely of organic or physical evil. In addition, there is moral evil or sin and mental or psychological evil (anxiety, meaninglessness, despair, etc.)
  14. . Cf. Ian Barbour. Issues in Science and Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐ Hall, Inc., 1966), pp. 337–47; and F. S. C. Northrop in his Introduction to Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper & Bros., 1958), pp. 19–20.
  15. . Whitehead, Modes of Thought, p. 211. My indebtedness to this whole book, especially Part III, “Nature and Life,” is obvious.
  16. . S. Wright, quoted in L. C. Birch, Nature and God (London: SCM Press, 1965), p. 49. Birch himself agrees with this statement and refers to Teilhard de Chardin and Charles Hartshorne as holding similar views. Cf. also E. W. Sinnott, Cell and Psyche (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950; reprinted as a Harper Torch‐ book, 1961), pp. 48 ff.; J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: Viking Press, 1933; reprinted by New American Library, 1949), chap. vi; and Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Last but not least, see Charles Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection (La Salle, III.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 191‐233; Beyond Humanism (Chicago: Willett, clark & Co., 1937), pp 165–210.
  17. . I. Barbour, “Five Ways of Reading Teilhard” (an unpublished paper given to me by the author).
  18. . Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959; reprinted as a Harper Torchbxook, 1961), p. 56.
  19. . Tillich, op. cit., III. 20‐21.
  20. . S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (New York: Macmillan Co. 1920), II. 44. For a sympathetic treatment of this theme in Alexander, see Errol E. Harris, The Foundations of Metaphysics in Science (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), pp. 64–84. For a full exposition and evaluation, critical but appreciative, see A. P. Stiernotte. God and Space‐Time (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954).
  21. . Whitehead, Modes of Thought, p. 184.
  22. . Ibid., p. 149.
  23. . See Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan Co., 1925); Milic Capek, The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1961). pp. 141–399; Harris, op. cit. pp. 37–159; for a brief account, see Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 273–316. Further references can be found in all of these books; and, in addition, see the bibliography in John Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1960), pp. 296–300. See also R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945; reprinted as a Galaxy paperback, 1960), pp. 9–27, 142–77.
  24. . Whitehead, Modes of Thought, p. 200. Part III of this book (pp. 173–201), contains an excellent discussion of modem physics and of the philosophy it requires.
  25. . Cf. Jaki, op. cit. pp. 141–235. See also Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1963). a book which makes clear how unsettled and complicated are the philosophical issues associated with space and time. It is not even indisputably clear that the notion of absolute space has finally been eliminated (pp. 418–24).
  26. . See Whitehead, Process and Reality: Harris, op. cit., pp. 142–59.
  27. . Barbour, op. cit., pp. 294–98. See Henry Margenau, The Nature of Physical Reality (New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Co., 1950). pp. 442–46.
  28. . Cf. J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution (New York: Macmillan Co., 1926).
  29. . See Harlow Shapley, Of Stars and Men (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958); W. H. Thorpe, Biology and the Nature of Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 1–19.
  30. . See Heisenberg, op. cit., especially the Introduction by Northrop (pp. 1–26).
  31. . Capek, op. cit., pp. 361‐99.
  32. . Alexander, op. cit. The influence of Alexander on my thought is apparent at many points.
  33. . Great caution must be exercised at this point not to overstate the philosophical implications of the new physics. It would be going much too far to suggest that the contemporary view of the physical world is “spiritual,” proves “free‐will,” and re quires only “purposive” or “organismic” models of reality. While every view of physical reality assumed in physics has metaphysical connotations, the actual philosophical capital that can be gained from physical science is relatively small. The mistake of previous centuries was to take the deliverances of the physicists and the chemists as literal accounts of concrete reality. It has been argued in this study that scientific theories, particularly in physics, involve a high degree of abstraction and must be correlated with insights about the nature of reality as a whole derived from other approaches and finally from the human experience of being. Despite these qualifications, however, it does seem necessary to say that present‐day physics does have important though limited implications for metaphysics, although physics can never be the basic source of a vision of the whole of concrete reality. Philipp Frank has offered some wise observations on the tendency of philosophers and theologians to distort physics for the sake of some personal viewpoint. See his Philosophy of Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1957), pp. 232–59. Cf. Dillenberger, op. cit., pp. 269–92; Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 285616; and Jaki, op. cit., pp. 330–70. See Northrop, loc. cit., for an excellent discussion of the status of causality in contemporary physics. Cf. Rudolf Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics (New York: Basic Books, 1966), pp. 277–92; Frank, op. cit., pp. 26046, 342–48; and Louis de Broglie, The Revolution in Physics (New York: Noonday Press, 1953), pp. 216–17. There is, of course, great controversy with re spect to what indeterminacy in quantum mechanics does or does not imply for larger wholes where, presumably, statistical laws reduce the limits within which alternative outcomes are possible. Is indeterminacy relevant to the discussion of mutation, free will, and biological and cosmic evolution? The experts are divided. Suffice it to say that the reality of creativity in nature and freedom in man do not stand or fall with indeterminancy, although indeterminacy at the atomic level may be involved. For balanced statements, see Jaki, op. cit., pp. 360–65; and Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 305–14. Cf. Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection, pp. 166–70; and J. C. Eccles, The Neurophysicul Basis of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), pp. 271–79.
  34. . Standard accounts of contemporary evolutionary theory can be found in Julian Huxley, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (New York: Harper & Bros., 1942): George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949); Theodosius Dobzhansky, Mankind Evolving (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962); C. H. Waddington, The Nature of Life (New York: Atheneum Press, 1962); Simpson. This View of Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964; reprinted as a Harbinger paperback).
  35. . Quoted in Waddington, op. cit., p. 85.
  36. . Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 382.
  37. . Waddington, op. cit., p. 98.
  38. . Ernest Nagel, “Teleological Explanations and Teleological Systems,” in Her bert Feigl and May Brodbeck (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, Inc., 1953), p. 553. Cf. Harris, op. cit., pp. 259–78.
  39. . Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 337–47, 359.
  40. . See Jaki, op. cit., pp. 317–24; H. Blum, Time's Arrow and Evolution (Prince ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955); Harris, op. cit., pp. 163‐278. Huxley and Simpson agree that pure chance alone, without any other factors involved, could not have produced life and its subsequent elaboration into the scene before us today. For Huxley, see Evolution in Action, pp. 33–53; for Simpson, see This View of Life, pp. 71–84, 190–212.
  41. . See A. I. Oparin, Origin of Life (New York: Macmillan Co., 1938; reprinted as a Dover paperback, 1953); George Wald, “The Origin of Life,” Scientific American (August, 1954); George Wald, “The Origins of Life,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (August, 1964).
  42. . This is the view taken by Huxley and Simpson in the works listed in the preceding footnotes.
  43. . However, I am impressed with the objections to the prevailing biological opinions of the neo‐Darwinists put forward by such thinkers as A. N. Whitehead, The Function of Reason (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1929; reprinted as a Beacon Press paperback), pp. 3–34; Polanyi, op. cit., pp. 381405; Harris, op. cit., pp. 163–378; Jaki, op. cit., pp. 314–29; and Birch, op. cit., pp. 50–80
  44. . Harris, op. cit., p. 225.
  45. . Simpson, This View of Life, p. 21.
  46. . This account of biological life indicates my congeniality with the organismic biologists, such as Sinnott, W. E. Agar, A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1943); E. S. Russell, The Direc‐ tiveness of Organic Activities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945); SewallWright, “Gene and Organism,” American Naturalist  , Vol. LXXXVII (1953). See Bar, bour, Issues in Science and Religion, pp. 337–44.
  47. . Cf. Birch's chapter, “The Universe: A Machine or a Birth?” pp. 13–34, in his book Nature and God. I find myself in close agreement with the philosophy and theology expressed in this little volume. See also, Charles Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Co., 1941), pp. 174–211.
  48. . In his Introduction to Oparin, op. cit., p. vii, Sergius Morgulis writes, “The biologist, unlike the layman, knows no lines of demarcation separating plant life from animal life, nor for that matter living from non‐living material, because such differentiations are purely conceptual and do not correspond to reality.”
  49. . Simpson would doubtless return my compliment by insisting that it is I who beg the question and not himself. In referring to Sinnott, Simpson quotes with approval Huxley's statement with respect to Bergson that to ascribe evolution to an elan vital is like explaining the movement of a locomotive by an elan locomotif. Simpson apparently holds that every effort to attribute the forward and upward tendency of evolution to some non‐mechanistic factor is guilty of this fallacy. Now this is certainly the case, if living beings are indeed mechanisms, like a locomotive, and nothing else. If a locomotive is the model, then his view follows. But that is just the issue under debate. Obviously, each of us feels that the other would have no problems, if the other in each case would adopt the philosophy of the first. Until locomotives start deciding by themselves to which station they will go, we may at least keep the question open. See This View of Life, pp. 198–200, 219–23. Cf. Huxley, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, pp. 457–66.
  50. . See Thorpe, op. cit., p. 89: “To sum up, it seems to me that over recent decades biology has been adducing most impressive new evidence for the unity of the cosmos.”
  51. . The assumption here is that the world is made up of a plurality of entities and events and that there are relatively independent lines of causation which produce conditions and results which are random with respect to each other. Thus, sometimes conflict and destruction result. For example, a cyclone arising from a certain constellation of meteorological circumstances blows away houses, nests, etc., in which people, birds, etc., may be living. Sudden changes in environmental conditions surpassing the range of possible adaptation for certain organisms result in their deaths.