Reinventing The Sacred Stuart A Kauffman 9781458722065 Books
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Consider the complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awesome to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell at a stroke, or to realize that it evolved with no Almighty Hand, but arose on its own in the changing biosphere? In this bold and fresh look at science and religion, complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman argues that the qualities of divinity that we revere - creativity, meaning, purposeful action - are properties of the universe that can be investigated methodically. He offers stunning evidence for this idea in an abundance of fields, from cell biology to the philosophy of mind, and uses it to find common ground between belief systems often at odds with one another. A daring and ambitious argument for a new understanding of natural divinity, Reinventing the Sacred challenges readers both scientifically and philosophically.
Reinventing The Sacred Stuart A Kauffman 9781458722065 Books
Stuart Kauffman (born 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He has also written At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity and The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution.[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 319-page standard print edition.]
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He wrote in the Preface to this 2008 book, “I will present a new view of a fully natural God and of the sacred, based on a new, emerging scientific worldview. This new worldview reaches further than science itself and invites a new view of god, the sacred, and ourselves---ultimately including our science, art, ethics, politics, and spirituality… It is not some tortured interpretation of fundamentally lifeless facts that prompts me to say this; the science itself compels it… In this book I will demonstrate the inadequacy of reductionism… I shall show that biology and its evolution cannot be reduced to physics alone but stand in their own right. Life, and with it agency, came naturally to exist in the universe. With agency came values, meaning, and doing, all of which are as real in the universe as particles in motion… while life, agency, value, and doing presumably have physical explanations in any specific organism, the evolutionary emergence of these cannot be derived from or reduced to physics alone. Thus, life, agency, value, and doing are real in the universe. This stance is called emergence…
“This web of life, the most complex system we know of in the universe, breaks no law of physics, yet is partially lawless, ceaselessly creative. So, too, are human history and human lives. This creativity is stunning, awesome, and worthy of reverence. One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures.” (Pg. ix-xi)
He adds, “I believe we need a domain for our lives as wide as reality. If half of us believe in a supernatural God, science will not disprove that belief. We need a place for our spirituality, and a Creator God is one such place. I hold that it is we who have invented God, to serve as our most powerful symbol. It is our choice how wisely to use our own symbol to orient our lives and our civilizations. I believe we can reinvent the sacred. We can invent a global ethic, in a shared space, safe to all of us, with one view of God as the natural creativity in the universe.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
In the first chapter, he explains, “Part of my goal is to disclose newly discovered limitations to the reductionism that has dominated Western science at least since Galileo and Newton but leaves us in a meaningless world of facts devoid of values. In its place I will propose a worldview beyond reductionism, in which we are members of a universe of ceaseless creativity in which life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, and the full richness of human action have emerged… we will find grounds to radically alter our understanding of what science itself appears able to tell us. Science cannot foretell the evolution of the biosphere, of human technologies, or of human culture or history. A central implication of this new worldview is that we are co-creators of a universe, biosphere, and culture of endlessly novel creativity.” (Pg. 2-3)
He admits, “Then there is the brute fact that we humans (at least) are conscious. We have experiences. We do not understand consciousness yet. There is no doubt that it is real in humans and presumably among many animals. No one knows the basis of it. I will advance a scientifically improbable, but possible, and philosophically interesting hypothesis about consciousness that is, ultimately, testable. Whatever its source, consciousness is emergent and a real feature of the universe.” (Pg. 4)
He suggests, “We appear to need a new conceptual framework to see and say this, then to understand and orient ourselves in our ever creative world. We will find ourselves far beyond reductionism, indeed. It is, then, more amazing to think that an Abrahamic transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient God created everything around us, all that we participate in, in six days, or that it all arose with no transcendent Creator God, all on its own? I believe the latter is to stunning, so overwhelming, so worthy of awe, gratitude, and respect, that it is God enough for many of us. God, a fully natural God, is the very creativity of the universe. It is this view that I hope can be shared across all our religious traditions, embracing those like myself, who do not believe in a Creator God, as well as those who do. This view of God can be a shared religious and spiritual space for us all.” (Pg. 6)
He concludes, “Some secular humanists are spiritual but most are not. We are thus cut off from a deep aspect of our humanity. Humans have led intricate and meaningful spiritual lives for thousands of years, and many secular humanists are bereft of it. Reinventing the sacred as our response to the emergent creativity in the universe can open secular humanists to the legitimacy of their own spirituality… If we are members of a universe in which emergence and ceaseless creativity abound, if we take that creativity as a sense of God we can share, the resulting sense of the sacredness of all of life and the planet can help orient our lives beyond the consumerism and commodification the industrialized world now lives, heal the split between reason and faith, heal the split between science and the humanities, heal the want of spirituality, health the wound derived from the false reductionist belief that we live in a world of fact without values, and help us jointly build a global ethic. These are what is at stake in finding a new scientific worldview that enables us to reinvent the sacred.” (Pg. 8-9)
He (perhaps surprisingly) argues against the concept of a “multiverse”: “The weak anthropic principle, with its possibility of multiple universes, raises troubling questions about how well our scientists are adhering to the fundamentals of science. If we are to postulate multiple universes yet can have no access to them and cannot confirm their existence, have we actually explained anything at all? Perhaps someday we will manage to find evidence of multiple universes. Until then, the weak anthropic principle seems to stand on shaky evidential grounds.” (Pg. 30)
He proposes, “My own theory of collectively autocatalytic sets suggests that their formation is highly probable… If correct, the routes to molecular reproduction may be much easier than we have imagined, and constitute a form of fully emergent, spontaneous self-organization of a chemical-reaction system. Such emergence would not be reducible to physics. And life, in the sense of molecular reproduction, would be expected, not incredibly improbable. If so, our view of life changes radically. Not only does life not need special intervention by a Creator God, it is a natural, emergent expression of the routine creativity of the universe.” (Pg. 59)
He asserts, “We cannot write down the laws of the evolution of the biosphere. Nor can we simulate the evolution of our specific biosphere, because we can neither carry out the infinity of simulations that would be required nor confirm which is correct with respect to the throws of the quantum dice that occurred in our actual biosphere. In addition, the principle of natural selection can apply to many versions of life capable of heritable variation. So natural selection cannot be reduced to any specific physical basis---the philosophical multiple-platform argument.” (Pg. 86) Later, he adds, “emergence is not rare. It is all around us… We truly need a new worldview… self organization, order for free, is as much a part of evolution and natural selection as historically frozen accidents. We must rethink evolution.” (Pg. 119)
He summarizes, “we appear to move… beyond the spell… that ‘all’ would someday be covered by sufficient natural law. In its place we find a profound partial lawlessness… we will find ceaseless creativity in the universe, biosphere and human life. In that creativity we can find one sense of God that we can share. This is, I believe, the core of why we have wanted a supernatural God. Such a God may exist, but we do not need that supernatural God. The creativity in nature is God enough… From that new sacred, we can hope to invent a global ethic to orient our lives, and our emerging global civilization.” (Pg. 142) He adds, “God as the creativity in the universe can, I believe, offer us a view in which the sacred and the moral remain utterly valid. So I want to say that I am sympathetic with the feelings and beliefs of those who espouse intelligent design. But as science, it fails.” (Pg. 144)
He explains, “I am hardly the first person to assert that consciousness may be related to quantum phenomena… I will … suggest that consciousness is associated with a poised state between quantum ‘coherent’ behavior and what is called ‘decoherence’ of quantum possibilities to ‘classical’ actual events… I warn you that this hypothesis is highly controversial… Yet as we will see, there appear to be grounds to investigate it seriously.” (Pg. 197) He continues, “Yet if it should turn out that quantum mechanics is deeply involved in conscious experience, it might help resolve … longstanding philosophical problems. First is the problem of free will… Even if these issues are resolved, we still face the central difficult problem: awareness itself…” (Pg. 198-199)
He states, “The cornerstone of my theory is that the conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum-coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior… mind, consciousness… is identical with quantum coherent immaterial possibilities, or with partially coherent quantum behavior, yet via decoherence, the quantum decoherent mind has consequences that approach classical behavior so very closely that the mind can have consequences that create actual physical events by the emergence of classicity. Thus… Immaterial mind has consequences for matter.” (Pg. 209) But later, he admits, “this is still no answer, as least as yet, to the hard problem [of consciousness]. Perhaps one day, I will become part of an answer.” (Pg. 227)
He concludes, “In the face of this unknowing, many find security in faith in God. We can also choose to face this unknown using our own full human responsibility, without appealing to a Creator God, even though we cannot know everything we need to know. On contemplation, there is something sublime in this action in the face of uncertainty. Our faith and courage are, in fact, sacred---they are our persistent choice for life itself.” (Pg. 245) He adds, “Seeking a new vision of the real world and our place in it has been a central aim of this book---to find common ground between science and religion so that we might collectively reinvent the sacred.” (Pg. 281) He adds, “The view I discuss… sees nature itself as the generator of the vast creativity around us. Is not this new view… based on an expanded science, God enough? Is not nature itself creativity enough? What more do we really need of a God, if we also accept that we, at last, are responsible to the best of our forever-limited wisdom?” (Pg. 283) He summarizes, “This sense of God enlarges Western humanism for those who do not believe in a Creator God. It invites those who hold to a supernatural Creator God to sustain that faith, but to allow the creativity in the universe to be a further source of meaning and membership. I hope this sense of God and the sacred can be a safe, spiritual space we can all share.” (Pg. 285)
This book illustrates a fascinating new and creative direction in Kauffman’s thought. (Although I certainly wouldn’t “hold my breath” waiting for religious believers to embrace his concept of God…) It will interest those studying the contemporary philosophy, progressive forms of religion/spirituality, and perhaps even fans of Kauffman's earlier books.
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Reinventing The Sacred Stuart A Kauffman 9781458722065 Books Reviews
Stuart Kauffman (born 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He has also written At Home in the Universe The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity and The Origins of Order Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution.
[NOTE page numbers below refer to the 319-page standard print edition.]
\
He wrote in the Preface to this 2008 book, “I will present a new view of a fully natural God and of the sacred, based on a new, emerging scientific worldview. This new worldview reaches further than science itself and invites a new view of god, the sacred, and ourselves---ultimately including our science, art, ethics, politics, and spirituality… It is not some tortured interpretation of fundamentally lifeless facts that prompts me to say this; the science itself compels it… In this book I will demonstrate the inadequacy of reductionism… I shall show that biology and its evolution cannot be reduced to physics alone but stand in their own right. Life, and with it agency, came naturally to exist in the universe. With agency came values, meaning, and doing, all of which are as real in the universe as particles in motion… while life, agency, value, and doing presumably have physical explanations in any specific organism, the evolutionary emergence of these cannot be derived from or reduced to physics alone. Thus, life, agency, value, and doing are real in the universe. This stance is called emergence…
“This web of life, the most complex system we know of in the universe, breaks no law of physics, yet is partially lawless, ceaselessly creative. So, too, are human history and human lives. This creativity is stunning, awesome, and worthy of reverence. One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures.” (Pg. ix-xi)
He adds, “I believe we need a domain for our lives as wide as reality. If half of us believe in a supernatural God, science will not disprove that belief. We need a place for our spirituality, and a Creator God is one such place. I hold that it is we who have invented God, to serve as our most powerful symbol. It is our choice how wisely to use our own symbol to orient our lives and our civilizations. I believe we can reinvent the sacred. We can invent a global ethic, in a shared space, safe to all of us, with one view of God as the natural creativity in the universe.” (Pg. xii-xiii)
In the first chapter, he explains, “Part of my goal is to disclose newly discovered limitations to the reductionism that has dominated Western science at least since Galileo and Newton but leaves us in a meaningless world of facts devoid of values. In its place I will propose a worldview beyond reductionism, in which we are members of a universe of ceaseless creativity in which life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, and the full richness of human action have emerged… we will find grounds to radically alter our understanding of what science itself appears able to tell us. Science cannot foretell the evolution of the biosphere, of human technologies, or of human culture or history. A central implication of this new worldview is that we are co-creators of a universe, biosphere, and culture of endlessly novel creativity.” (Pg. 2-3)
He admits, “Then there is the brute fact that we humans (at least) are conscious. We have experiences. We do not understand consciousness yet. There is no doubt that it is real in humans and presumably among many animals. No one knows the basis of it. I will advance a scientifically improbable, but possible, and philosophically interesting hypothesis about consciousness that is, ultimately, testable. Whatever its source, consciousness is emergent and a real feature of the universe.” (Pg. 4)
He suggests, “We appear to need a new conceptual framework to see and say this, then to understand and orient ourselves in our ever creative world. We will find ourselves far beyond reductionism, indeed. It is, then, more amazing to think that an Abrahamic transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient God created everything around us, all that we participate in, in six days, or that it all arose with no transcendent Creator God, all on its own? I believe the latter is to stunning, so overwhelming, so worthy of awe, gratitude, and respect, that it is God enough for many of us. God, a fully natural God, is the very creativity of the universe. It is this view that I hope can be shared across all our religious traditions, embracing those like myself, who do not believe in a Creator God, as well as those who do. This view of God can be a shared religious and spiritual space for us all.” (Pg. 6)
He concludes, “Some secular humanists are spiritual but most are not. We are thus cut off from a deep aspect of our humanity. Humans have led intricate and meaningful spiritual lives for thousands of years, and many secular humanists are bereft of it. Reinventing the sacred as our response to the emergent creativity in the universe can open secular humanists to the legitimacy of their own spirituality… If we are members of a universe in which emergence and ceaseless creativity abound, if we take that creativity as a sense of God we can share, the resulting sense of the sacredness of all of life and the planet can help orient our lives beyond the consumerism and commodification the industrialized world now lives, heal the split between reason and faith, heal the split between science and the humanities, heal the want of spirituality, health the wound derived from the false reductionist belief that we live in a world of fact without values, and help us jointly build a global ethic. These are what is at stake in finding a new scientific worldview that enables us to reinvent the sacred.” (Pg. 8-9)
He (perhaps surprisingly) argues against the concept of a “multiverse” “The weak anthropic principle, with its possibility of multiple universes, raises troubling questions about how well our scientists are adhering to the fundamentals of science. If we are to postulate multiple universes yet can have no access to them and cannot confirm their existence, have we actually explained anything at all? Perhaps someday we will manage to find evidence of multiple universes. Until then, the weak anthropic principle seems to stand on shaky evidential grounds.” (Pg. 30)
He proposes, “My own theory of collectively autocatalytic sets suggests that their formation is highly probable… If correct, the routes to molecular reproduction may be much easier than we have imagined, and constitute a form of fully emergent, spontaneous self-organization of a chemical-reaction system. Such emergence would not be reducible to physics. And life, in the sense of molecular reproduction, would be expected, not incredibly improbable. If so, our view of life changes radically. Not only does life not need special intervention by a Creator God, it is a natural, emergent expression of the routine creativity of the universe.” (Pg. 59)
He asserts, “We cannot write down the laws of the evolution of the biosphere. Nor can we simulate the evolution of our specific biosphere, because we can neither carry out the infinity of simulations that would be required nor confirm which is correct with respect to the throws of the quantum dice that occurred in our actual biosphere. In addition, the principle of natural selection can apply to many versions of life capable of heritable variation. So natural selection cannot be reduced to any specific physical basis---the philosophical multiple-platform argument.” (Pg. 86) Later, he adds, “emergence is not rare. It is all around us… We truly need a new worldview… self organization, order for free, is as much a part of evolution and natural selection as historically frozen accidents. We must rethink evolution.” (Pg. 119)
He summarizes, “we appear to move… beyond the spell… that ‘all’ would someday be covered by sufficient natural law. In its place we find a profound partial lawlessness… we will find ceaseless creativity in the universe, biosphere and human life. In that creativity we can find one sense of God that we can share. This is, I believe, the core of why we have wanted a supernatural God. Such a God may exist, but we do not need that supernatural God. The creativity in nature is God enough… From that new sacred, we can hope to invent a global ethic to orient our lives, and our emerging global civilization.” (Pg. 142) He adds, “God as the creativity in the universe can, I believe, offer us a view in which the sacred and the moral remain utterly valid. So I want to say that I am sympathetic with the feelings and beliefs of those who espouse intelligent design. But as science, it fails.” (Pg. 144)
He explains, “I am hardly the first person to assert that consciousness may be related to quantum phenomena… I will … suggest that consciousness is associated with a poised state between quantum ‘coherent’ behavior and what is called ‘decoherence’ of quantum possibilities to ‘classical’ actual events… I warn you that this hypothesis is highly controversial… Yet as we will see, there appear to be grounds to investigate it seriously.” (Pg. 197) He continues, “Yet if it should turn out that quantum mechanics is deeply involved in conscious experience, it might help resolve … longstanding philosophical problems. First is the problem of free will… Even if these issues are resolved, we still face the central difficult problem awareness itself…” (Pg. 198-199)
He states, “The cornerstone of my theory is that the conscious mind is a persistently poised quantum-coherent-decoherent system, forever propagating quantum coherent behavior, yet forever also decohering to classical behavior… mind, consciousness… is identical with quantum coherent immaterial possibilities, or with partially coherent quantum behavior, yet via decoherence, the quantum decoherent mind has consequences that approach classical behavior so very closely that the mind can have consequences that create actual physical events by the emergence of classicity. Thus… Immaterial mind has consequences for matter.” (Pg. 209) But later, he admits, “this is still no answer, as least as yet, to the hard problem [of consciousness]. Perhaps one day, I will become part of an answer.” (Pg. 227)
He concludes, “In the face of this unknowing, many find security in faith in God. We can also choose to face this unknown using our own full human responsibility, without appealing to a Creator God, even though we cannot know everything we need to know. On contemplation, there is something sublime in this action in the face of uncertainty. Our faith and courage are, in fact, sacred---they are our persistent choice for life itself.” (Pg. 245) He adds, “Seeking a new vision of the real world and our place in it has been a central aim of this book---to find common ground between science and religion so that we might collectively reinvent the sacred.” (Pg. 281) He adds, “The view I discuss… sees nature itself as the generator of the vast creativity around us. Is not this new view… based on an expanded science, God enough? Is not nature itself creativity enough? What more do we really need of a God, if we also accept that we, at last, are responsible to the best of our forever-limited wisdom?” (Pg. 283) He summarizes, “This sense of God enlarges Western humanism for those who do not believe in a Creator God. It invites those who hold to a supernatural Creator God to sustain that faith, but to allow the creativity in the universe to be a further source of meaning and membership. I hope this sense of God and the sacred can be a safe, spiritual space we can all share.” (Pg. 285)
This book illustrates a fascinating new and creative direction in Kauffman’s thought. (Although I certainly wouldn’t “hold my breath” waiting for religious believers to embrace his concept of God…) It will interest those studying the contemporary philosophy, progressive forms of religion/spirituality, and perhaps even fans of Kauffman's earlier books.
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