Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Philosophy, Big Bang and Benedict Spinoza - Associated Content

Philosophy, Big Bang and Benedict Spinoza - Associated Content

Philosophy, Big Bang and Benedict Spinoza - Associated Content

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 02:28 PM PDT

Science and Philosophy have always fascinated me, particularly that shadowy crossing over point between the two. By this I mean that Science today would more or less begin all existence with the singularity of the Big
 Bang (Picture 2). To go beyond that incomprehensible instant when being blasted forth from apparent nothingness will always be impossible for science.

Not so for the ancients. It is this particular realm where philosophy enters the picture. Forget any notion of a Big Bang. Ancient Plato would have things pre-existing in an ideal world but brought forth into reality by the Demiurge or God. This also includes the reality of man who needs only to learn to compare things in reality with those that existed with him in his ideal world: chairs, dogs, rocks, people.

Aristotle would have the Uncaused Cause underlying every created thing. This God moved being from being in potentia to being in actu. Thus, The Uncaused Cause is the Prime Mover or God of the universe. Once again, any idea of a Big Bang was far beyond Aristotle.

But long after the ancient Greeks, a philosopher named Spinoza (1632-1677) made his own attempt to align a scientific interpretation of the world with the philosophical. Spinoza was well aware of the writings of Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, and Copernicus. Combining their thoughts about reality, Spinoza's solution for the existence of God was very simple. What is, is God. God is not an Uncaused Cause. God is not a Demiurge. God is simply All-That-There-Is. In simpler words, God is Nature.

There is no God beyond what exists. As science applies logics and mathematics to nature, they are discovering physical laws which cannot be otherwise. And even when experimentation proves some laws to be incorrect, then each time a unique corrected law bursts through a given paradigm, Spinoza would claim that mankind is that much closer to discovering the logical reality of God. Thus, all actual substances in the real world are truly the reality of God. "God is the cause of all things which are in him" (The Story of Philosophy).

Five Filters featured article: "Peace Envoy" Blair Gets an Easy Ride in the Independent. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Posted by at

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)