How Things Work – A Brief History of Reality
Book I – Dualism (Descartes' Influence on Theology)
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Tuesday, January 18, 2022
“Any path to knowledge is a path to God – or Reality, whichever word one prefers to use.” – Arthur C. Clarke
CONSIDERATION #14 – Descartes’ Influence on Theology
PREFACE
Welcome Everybody!
Although Descartes is the source of the mind-body paradox, he did not see it as a duality of opposites, but as a duality of complements. For Descartes, the duality of “mind” and “body” did not reflect a universe of incongruity, but a universe immutability balanced through divine ordinance. “Mind” and “body” were not so much a manifestation of contradiction as they were an expression of overall balance in the universe. Descartes’ approach to problem-solving reflected an approach that would later be used by perhaps the most important modern scientist of all time, Albert Einstein.
“For Descartes, God was the critical factor in the creation of everything; including the ‘laws of science.’”
Seeing paradoxical challenges more as two sides of the same coin, as opposed to completely incompatible possibilities, both Descartes and Einstein transcended the traditional thinking of their time regarding the reality of our existence. However, unlike Einstein, Descartes’ “theory of everything” absolutely included God. For Descartes, God was the critical factor in the creation of everything; including the “laws of science.” This conclusion was not based on Biblical, or spiritual, revelation; it was based on pure reason.
“This ontological search led Descartes to conclude, like Aristotle, that the ‘first cause’ of the process was God.”
Descartes’ mechanistic view of reality reflects a long chain of causality resulting in our present experience. Therefore, we can logically follow this chain step-by-step back to the beginning of the process. However, at some point there must have been a “first” event, or cause, that “starts” the entire process. This ontological search led Descartes to conclude, like Aristotle, that the “first cause” of the process was God. Not the Biblical God depicted in the Garden of Eden, but instead an Unmoved Mover that set the entire universe into motion. However, once set into motion, the Unmoved Mover was not a proactive God.
“God was not only the source of the universe, but also the source of our ability to access the abstract reason necessary to understand it.”
Descartes’ God represented the primal force, or consciousness, responsible for the beginning of reality and all the laws that held it together in a rational, comprehensible pattern that could be interpreted and understood through abstract human reasoning. God was not only the source of the universe, but also the source of our ability to access the abstract reason necessary to understand it. God existed, or was manifested, through the physical laws of nature; we could learn to understand the nature of God by learning to understand the truth of these laws. Descartes’ God was a detached, rational God, as opposed to the angry and wrathful God of the Old Testament. For Descartes, the way to ultimately discover and understand God was to understand the rationality of “His” creation; science offered the possibility for this discovery.
“The ultimate purpose of science was to understand God…”
In Cartesian terms, to understand God was to understand reality, and to understand reality was to understand God. God and reality were not two separate things, they were manifestations of each other. Therefore, science provided a way to better understand the universe, or God’s creation, which was a direct reflection of God’s nature. The ultimate purpose of science was to understand God, the Unmoved Mover, by understanding the principles of Its universal manifestation.
“Descartes’ God represented the very provenance of the universe and all ‘a priori’ knowledge related to it…”
To a certain extent, for Descartes, science represented a kind of mathematical theology designed to rationally reveal the existence and essence of God. Not the God of Abraham as described in the Bible, but the ultimate Unmoved Mover responsible for bringing existence into motion, the eternal spring of divine rationality. Descartes’ God represented the very provenance of the universe and all “a priori” knowledge related to it, and God’s divine reason was accessible and comprehensible to human beings through the “mind” and its ability to comprehend abstract reasoning such as mathematics.
“Descartes’ application of ‘rational metaphysics’ led to some of the most important revelations of modern science including Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.”
It was Descartes’ desire to understand this Unmoved Mover that ultimately drove his pursuit of the new science. Descartes’ application of “rational metaphysics” led to some of the most important revelations of modern science including Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. It also became the underlying principle for “Deism,” a belief held by many of the Continental Rationalists of the 18th century, in addition to a group of elite political activists in the New World of America.
CONSIDERATION #14: Descartes’ Influence on Theology
The Proof and Nature of God’s Existence
“By 'God', I understand, a substance which is infinite, independent, supremely intelligent, supremely powerful, and which created both myself and everything else [...] that exists. All these attributes are such that, the more carefully I concentrate on them, the less possible it seems that they could have originated from me alone. So, from what has been said it must be concluded that God necessarily exists.”
– Rene Descartes
One of the consequences of separating traditional Aristotelian metaphysics from the new science was to shift its emphasis from the physical world of perception to the spiritual world of religion. Although known for his break with traditional Aristotelian metaphysics in terms of knowledge coming from the mind, or intellect, as opposed to through the brain and the five senses, Descartes’ metaphysics shared many of Aristotle’s original intention. For example, Descartes felt it was necessary to establish a proof of God’s existence, particularly in terms of being the First Cause of the universe and everything in it. Here is how it works.
“Descartes argued that our very “idea” of God is innate, or a priori, and serves as additional proof of God’s existence…”
Descartes’ metaphysics, regarding the essence of God, stem directly from the Greeks’ understanding of values related to virtue and truth; particularly that God is inherently Good. In this sense, it is not in God’s nature to deceive, or support falsehood. For Descartes, Good things are true and real, stemming from the nature of God. Whereas bad things are unreal and false, stemming from the weakness and misperception of human will and desire, or in religious terms, sin. Therefore, the essence of God was truth and perfection. Descartes argued that our very “idea” of God is innate, or a priori, and serves as additional proof of God’s existence; representing the Artist’s signature on Its own creation. God’s existence was critical to Descartes because if God existed then truth and perfection could also exist and were therefore possible. Using reason, Descartes concludes that if God was a required and necessary construct needed to explain existence, then God must therefore exist.
“Without the possibility of an ontological argument, it is impossible to come to a First Cause.”
Cartesian Rationalism is based on the premise that the entire world can be explained as a long chain of logical connections, and that through the reason of the mind we can gain access to this causal chain and use it to explain everything. However, the search for the original cause of this chain of events would logically never end without a first, or primary, cause. Something has to start this chain of events. Without the possibility of an ontological argument, it is impossible to come to a First Cause. Like Aristotle, Descartes recognizes an original Unmoved Mover, or God, as this Primary, or First Cause.
“In Descartes’ metaphysics, the Primary Cause is God, and the particular causes are the ‘laws of nature and motion’ that ‘He’ set into existence.”
Descartes sees the world, or existence, as being composed of a primary cause that put the original force, or energy, into the system, thereby putting everything into motion; except itself. The Unmoved Mover. Secondary, or particular causes, reveal the nature of matter, or physicality, and its unique motion. In Descartes’ metaphysics, the Primary Cause is God, and the particular causes are the “laws of nature and motion” that God set into existence. God provided the initial force of motion, through which God’s Truth and Perfection became manifested through the patterns of motion in physical bodies, or objects. Deducing that God is constant and immutable, the amount of motion, or energy, in the universe must also be constant and immutable; thereby deriving a law of conservation of motion from God’s nature. Although the world appears to change physically, the total motion, or energy, in the universe remains constant.
“This new science would later lead to the discovery of the circular motion involved in atoms and their relationship to creating matter.”
Descartes deduced, and argued, that circular motion was “perfect” motion and therefore the essence of the motion God used to start the process, making the focus on circular motion critical. Descartes, and his contemporaries such as Galileo, had already discovered the circular movements of the planets and their circular orbit around the sun. (Descartes kept much of this secret until his death to avoid problems with the Catholic Church.) This new science would later lead to the discovery of the circular motion involved in atoms and their relationship to creating matter. Descartes’ first Three Laws of Nature focus on the truth and perfection of this motion:
Descartes’ Three Laws of Nature:
THE FIRST LAW OF NATURE: each and every thing, in so far as it can, always continues in the same state; and thus what is once in motion always continues to move.
THE SECOND LAW OF NATURE: all motion is in itself rectilinear; and hence any body moving in a circle always tends to move away from the centre of the circle which it describes.
THE THIRD LAW OF NATURE: if a body collides with another body that is stronger than itself, it loses none of its motion; but if it collides with a weaker body, it loses a quantity of motion equal to that which it imparts to the other body.
Principles of Philosophy – Rene Descartes
Ironically, Isaac Newton’s Three Laws of Motion published forty-three years later is often credited with making Newton the “Father of Modern Science,” whereas they are almost entirely based on Descartes’ metaphysics:
“Not only can many of the concepts that make Newton seem ‘revolutionary’ to us already be found in Descartes’ work, I will argue that the view of the universe that Descartes espoused was the genuinely mechanistic view: it is Descartes, and not Newton, whose portrait should adorn every textbook on mechanics…
In Newton’s Principia there is no mention of Descartes. That is highly surprising, especially when we see that Newton’s famous ‘laws of motion’ are almost identical to Descartes’ three ‘Laws of Nature’. Conservation of momentum, force being proportional to acceleration, action/reaction equivalence – although sometimes in a very different guise, they can all be found in the laws of Descartes!
…I believe that Newton is undeserving of the title ‘father of modern science’. For that reason, and also to pay the tribute to Descartes which is long overdue, I propose that henceforth we refer to the laws of motion as Descartes’ Laws of Motion.”
The Father of Modern Science? – Fedde Benedict
You may recognize these laws as “An object at rest tends to stay at rest,” and “An object in motion tends to stay in motion,” in addition to, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Descartes deduced that all the matter in the universe was divided by God into indivisible particles that were given a fixed amount of motion, which remains forever constant; it is the motion of these particles that manifests the entire universe. Eventually, the new science would call these particles of matter “atoms” and “sub-atomic particles.”
POSTSCRIPT
God and science were not contradictory possibilities for Descartes. That is because science, or the physical world it studied, was not “separate” from God. Science was, essentially, the tool Descartes developed specifically to better understand God, and the reality maintained by God, by investigating and understanding God’s manifestation of the physical universe. However, Descartes’ God was a rational, mathematical, Aristotelian God; the Unmoved Mover that initiated the original motion of the particles composing physical matter and the reality we experience as the cosmos.
“…the very fact that we had a mind capable of recognizing and understanding the possibility, and even necessity, of God in the first place demonstrated even more evidence of God’s existence.”
Descartes determined that the connection between God and human beings was accessible and comprehensible because of the rational “Mind.” In addition, the very fact that we had a mind capable of recognizing and understanding the possibility, and even necessity, of God in the first place demonstrated even more evidence of God’s existence. Descartes’ proof of God was evidenced by a rational universe and a rational mind capable of understanding and interacting with it.
Next week we will consider Descartes’ understanding of “Mind” and how it affected science, religion, and social science.
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