Time, Creation, and the Mirror of Narcissus Author(s): Lenn E.

Goodman Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 69-112 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1399692 . Accessed: 24/11/2012 03:27
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TIME, CREATION,

AND THE MIRROR OF NARCISSUS

LennE.Goodman

"If Bergson believed anything," Charles Hartshorne writes, "it was the asymmetry of time, the openness of the future and determinateness of the past."' But Bergson, Hartshorne argues, too readily forgot that the denial of determinism, so central to his project, rests on the denial of the symmetry of time. Determinism, Hartshorne urges, following Peirce and Bergson himself, takes an essentially symmetrical view of time. That is why, on Laplace's model, one can as readily retrodict the past as predict the future, given an adequate knowledge of the present state of the world and its unchanging laws. The core of Bergson's message was that the determinism that negates human freedom and closes the open future arises in a false analogy between time and space: Space is an affair of mutual exclusion of elements, "whereas time is an affair of mutual inclusion." By preserving a certain symmetry in both space and time, Hartshorne argues, Bergson compromises the ultimate asymmetry of time and falls into "The most glaring confusion in Time and Free Will." The purpose of this essay is to examine the idea that there is a kind of symmetry in time, the symmetry that Bergson described in terms of the mutual inclusion of temporal moments. I want to appraise some of the consequences of the denial of that claim. What I will argue is that Bergson's idea of the mutual interpenetration of temporal moments allows expansion of the idea of the specious present from a brief span of subjective immediacy to the full duration needed in nature for the unfolding of an event. This expanded view of duration will accommodate actions sustained over long periods, including extended collaborations by members of a community or a culture over history. I want to defend the coherence of Bergson's thinking here by pointing out that time can be asymmetrical in one respect and symmetrical in another: The interpenetration of temporal moments is not a denial of the unalterable differentness of the future from the past. Rather, it is an affirmation of continuity. But my motive in taking up this topic goes beyond the affirmation of that simple fact. The idea that there is a certain symmetry among the moments of time will prove critical in relating traditional ideas of creation to Bergson's own emphasis on ongoing creativity. The attempt simply to discard creation for more recently favored notions of process, by contrast, endangers many of the insights and values, both scientific and moral, that Bergson sought to preserve within his broad conceptions of creativity, duration, and the asymmetry of time. Following the thrust of some of the more stridently eternalist recent readings of the outcome of a debate that has continued since Western speculation about cosmology began, we find a starkly scientistic outlook that seems to be insepa-

Professor of Philosophy of Hawaii University

PhilosophyEast&West Volume 42, Number1
January 1992 69-112 ? 1992

of by University
Hawaii Press

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rable from the endeavor to cut off the future from the past, whether in human or in cosmic terms. Toward the end of this article, I will examine the rhetoric and the consequences of this outlook, after first offering some counterarguments to its claims. i. Is There Symmetry in Time? Surely it is true that time is asymmetrical at a profound level. The unlikeness of the future to the past is critical to its being future. Even if Nietzsche, Plotinus,2 and the Stoics are right about eternal recurrence, recycled events are not the same as what they repeat, or there would be no meaning to the claim that the same events recurred:there must be at least the fact that this Socrates, Xanthippe, and Meletus are repetitions of those. But are there some respects in which time is symmetrical, or is it simply a confusion on Bergson's part to speak of interpenetration, the mutual openness of temporal moments to one another? In Matter and Memory, Bergson discovers the same interpenetration in space that he had earlier found in time and used to break down the linearity of events. Zeno's paradoxes rest on the assumption that time and events are either a Euclidean continuum or a Pythagorean pointillistic series. But, in fact, Bergson argued, the moments of time are neither the dimensionless knife edge that temporal analysis invokes as a virtual limit, nor the static freeze-frames of a misplaced spatial analysis. On the contrary, each particular moment of change involves an onwardness-what Plato called 'becoming', and Bergson 'duration'which no merely geometric model can capture and which static abstractions only deaden, in fictive denial of the fact of change, as anatomical sections or microtomes arrest and thereby negate the processes of life they are meant to reveal.3 Time itself is denied by the analysis that seeks to compose it in the Augustinian way, of a vanished past, an unborn future, and an infinitely diminishing present.4 The present, Bergson saw, cannot be instantaneous or atomic. It must have duration-both asymmetrical, melting into the future even as it emerges from the past, and blurry edged, not bounded sharply by dimensionless points, since the dimensionless point is a mere fiction of geometry. The same is true of space: it is impossible to compose what will have magnitude out of what has none, whether in space or time. So Bergson's real quarrel was not with space but with overreliance on a fiction most familiar from its use in the analysis of space: the fiction of discrete and frozen moments that are at once fully determinate (thus fixed) in their character, yet somehow (paradoxically) determinative-each of the character of the rest and holding, without omission, all that ever was or will be in all the rest. Bergson first expressed what was misleading about this fiction by saying that time is not like space, but he came to see that space itself is not like space in

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the sense that the economies and abstractions of geometry would have it. The Cartesian project of geometrizing nature is as much an underrepresentation of matter as it is of time. To render time atomic is to render change impossible and, as Hume saw clearly, to arrest causality. Thus Hume's cunning insistence that time is a succession of infinitesimal instants:5 the static, durationless instants of Humean time prejudge the question of causality in favor of a kind of logical atomism. But suppose (like true empiricists) we had begun from the fact of change. Or suppose we were to understand change not in terms of succession but in terms of the conditionedness of one moment or event by another. Then causality would be a given,6 and the simple sensa of extreme empiricism would be recognized for what they are, elaborate constructs, achievements of perceptual and cognitive synthesis and selection. Only if the moments of time themselves have real duration is change conceivable,7 and only in such duration is there the theater of action for causality, which will not merely determine the future out of the givenness of the past, but also allow actors to differentiate the future from that givenness-allow genuine change, and indeed evolution, the emergence of what is conditioned by the past (to use Spinoza's word), but never pre-contained in it, or locked in place by what is already over and done with. When Leibniz held that the past was great with the future, and the future laden with the past,8 he knew better than to imagine sheer pre-formation: It was because mere geometric figures could not explain the forces of cohesion or mutual exclusion among bodies that Leibniz remedied the Cartesian reduction of bodies to extension, by proposing intensive qualities that would allow the emergence of events not yet present in their causes.9 Similarly Bergson, in admiring the cosmogony of Lemaitre, settled on the fact that the primitive datum of energy/mass from which the world emerges cannot, in the nature of the case, contain or determine all that it will engender. As Lemaitre wrote, "Clearly the initial quantum could not conceal in itself the whole course of evolution; but, according to the principle of indeterminacy, that is not necessary. Our world is now understood to be a world where something really happens; the whole story of the world need not have been written down in the first quantum like a song on a phonograph record."10 Bergson's early arguments about time relied on the phenomenology of felt duration. His descriptions were of consciousness, and his paradigm case of duration was our awareness of a melody. Bergson's father was a musician, and the son knew well that our hearing of a melody cannot be composed of durationless instants if we are ever to hear it as a melody, hear its notes in relation to one another, as parts in a whole, or even as rhythmic or tonal contrasts to one another." The same, we must say, of the rich complexity of an orchestral chord; the same, we now know, of

Lenn E. Goodman

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002 seconds. whether dimensionless or instantly evanescent. and exclusion. interpenetrate as much as subjective ones do.222 on Sat. Bergson's reference to subjective experience here was quite unnecessary. as in consciousness. and must be if they are to have unity as events. Strictly speaking. it will last as long as those events require. which was such a mystery for Humean epistemology. then. and the inevitable referentiality of the present to the future and the past. has the character of duration. If the present is the locus of events. but that even the "simplest" patches of color are complexly constructed syntheses of very complex events. and it seriously attempted to measure that present. 72 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. is no mystery at all when we recognize that there are no atomic sensa. time is not a series of atomic instants. marking it off against public timedespite its recognition that spans of time are not strictly superposable. of course. Natural time no more requires anchoring in phenomenal time than phenomenal time requires natural time to authorize it. a temporal act. Bergson's theory of time set up a sharp contrast between public or cosmic time and subjective time.12The ability to conceive (or even perceive!) a hitherto unknown particular shade of blue. indeed evolutionary epistemology. Thus Bergson's central thesis about time is as true of physical as of psychological events.PhilosophyEast& West our perception of colors: they are perceived relationally. filtration. In nature. the briefest event that seemed accessible to sense perception. That reference is made by the events themselves. as in thought. must be structured in the same way as phenomenal time: the dissolving of sugar in his coffee was a sequence of natural events isometric with his own impatient expectation of its outcome. which saw perception as an act not only of synthesis but of abstraction. But Bergson himself came to see that public time. and a minimum of . and no reliance on Kantian or post-Kantian phenomenology is needed to validate it: time in nature. the time of natural events. Values were assigned between a maximum of 12 seconds.'3 Thus a psychological dissolving of the conundrums of dogmatic empiricism was a byproduct of Bergson's biological.72. Objective moments. the longest span that James believed consciousness could hold together as a single now. against a contextual background. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . and the comparative process in which this is done is. and this will be denied only by those who bear a metaphysical animus against the notion that events occur. cosmic time. the moment which is immediate for consciousness. and the asymmetry in it is not a matter of perception or intuition but a fact of nature. but the inexorable onwardness of change itself.'5 Committed followers of Bergson still take seriously this confounding of psychological temporality with real duration. the inevitable qualitative differentness of the future from the past. It relied heavily on James' idea of the specious present.168.'4 Because of its pioneering reliance on phenomenology.

determinate.'6 The specious present. is just a special case of the nature of time at large.72. Then and only then the present lapses into past. The present is not over until all that can give determinacy to the whole has occurred. then. but by the more properly Bergsonian recognition that the parts of space make reference to one another and can do so only through the medium of differentiated time. the present (like an Aristotelian place) is of any size.20Bergson's philosophy achieves this end not by the Kantian expedient of arguing that space can be apprehended only in a temporal tour by consciousness through its parts and regions. and the dependence of the outcome as a whole upon what happens now. In the writing of a book or the birth of a volcano. There are many presents of varying durations and with no more perfect discreteness than events themselves possess. For what Bergson first saw in terms of memory and anticipation is equally true without the mediation of consciousness.17 that there is nothing false or illusory or even secondary about it. For. or Virginia Woolf.and the flow or stream of consciousness that loomed so large for Proust. universe-wide simultaneity.168. translators and interpreters. or Joyce. the event is a whole not because of any imagined discreteness from other events. or of painters with those who view or scorn their works. Thus the events of a war or of history in general. is misnamed not only on the ground that Capek gives. and the collusion or falling out of authors and their readers.19the composition of a Bible or a Talmud through an intricate dialogue or continuing discourse across the generations. Time is thick because events are nested within one another. but because of the organic connectedness of its parts. the conditioning of what comes later by what went before. What follows LennE. the indeterminate. but also on the ground that there is nothing essentially subjective about it: the thick temporal present necessary to the occurrence of any event is the time the event requires to unfold. or many sizes. the effect of Bergsonism on relativity is not at all to wreck or seek to derail but to complete Einstein's project of discovering the ultimate temporality of space itself. the real impact of relativity on Bergson's philosophy is to exclude the notion of instantaneous. for causes and effects. If so. from a duration much shorter than consciousness can capture to one that spans the centuries. the imperfect becomes perfect. where Bergson and his many critics were never perfectly clear.Goodman 73 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.18By that standard. And Bergson's pedagogical explanation that time is unlike space because in time there is no simultaneity of mutually excluding parts is only a first approximation. preconditions and aftermaths. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .222 on Sat. the subtle collaboration across the centuries between Edward Fitzgerald and the many poets whose quatrains were gathered under the name of Omar Khayyam. much as places are. all reveal that the idea of a single definitive present (let alone a rapidly passing one) is a sham. as Capek makes clear.

biological-indeed physical-asymmetry of duration and the collapsing of time into a series of strata or slices whose relations of mutual implication made them in principle undistinguishable from one another-thus eliminating time altogether. The intuitive. in a single inertial frame and with middle-sized objects that may or may not be observed. or longeur of an event.222 on Sat. Where mechanism collapses the present and thus time itself. each one of which was ultimately static and each one of which uniquely determined and was determined by any of the rest. its largeur. the cross talk of referentiality-the linear dimension. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . in the multifacetedness of the same event. Bergson reclaims time. To dissolve time in such a fashion was a desideratum perhaps for Megarian or Stoic would-be monists of the stamp of Diodorus Cronus. it would prove a disaster for those scientific or scientistic determinists whose tight grip upon the twentieth century Bergson sought to relax. naturalistic core of Bergson's insight about time rests in the fact that time is not truly one-dimensional. he argued."21Phenomenology or analogy. through the recognition that consciousness and ultimately everything present makes itself what it is through retention of the past: "There is no consciousness without memory. The result was the denial in effect of the fundamental psychological.PhilosophyEast& West 74 is the recognition that despite all Eleatic wishes. time cannot be excluded from the most fleeting snapshot of the universe-or rather. to the present feeling. the nows which represent the present are not isolated and dimensionless instants but interpenetrating and persistent spans that afford a platform to action and so to freedom. we should say.72. since time is nothing if there is no present. But if achieved. Bergson's brief was the overcoming of determinism. but also. broadens the claim to a fact not merely about consciousness but about the character of the cosmos: time is "the indivisible and indestructible continuity of a melody where the past enters into the present and forms with it an undivided whole which remains undivided and even indivisible in spite of what is added at every instant or rather thanks to what is added. from the universe itself. of the memory of past moments. and ultimately the pure analysis of the anatomy of natural events. recapturing the past. beginning here in one respect before it has begun otherwise elsewhere. Here and now. A false analogy between time and space. led mechanists to suppose that time was a continuum of atomic instants. by the very expedient Proust would adopt from Bergson's teaching. which in turn involves the temporality of space. without reference to Einsteinian relativity. we find the thickness of duration. Bergson's strategy was to argue that time is not a discontinuous continuum of discrete moments. the need for time in which the parts of an event or act come together as a whole occurrence. no continuation of a state without the addition. That is what duration consists of."22 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. Space allows an event to occupy a durational present.168.

since it is nothing actual.222 on Sat. to imagine exact duplicates of actual particulars and baptize them as antecedent possibilities (or group them as denisons [sic] of possible worlds)." What Hartshorne objects to is Bergson's sense of continuity.72. But Hartshorne overstates the implications of this insight. a possible dollar."23There is a profound and important point here. between the future and the past. not its rebaptizing as 'actual.24 But he both departed from Bergson and in a way enshrined what Bergson had taught by the special emphasis he gave to what Aristotle had called 'passing away'. This Bergson saw but failed to follow up on: "It is absurd. grounding the sense we may sometimes have "that what we are is of infinite importance. he insists. Potentiality. as Bergson sees. dependent on the suspension of some but not all of the assumptions we characteristically make about the world we live in. Becoming is creation of particularity.. is the mark of space and asymmetry. it allows for creativity. There is.. It does not imply that the past has no purchase on the present or that virtualities are found wholly in the future. On the contrary. Objecting to any form of symmetry between past and future. he denounces the notion of mutual inclusion as vociferously as the notion of mutual exclusion. to overcome the atomization of mutual implication only to fall into a new atomization of radical isolation and absolute indeterminism. like apples from a tree. Whitehead adopted and assiduously adapted Bergson's concept of duration. nothing mutual in the case: "Nowhere does Bergson make clear that symmetry.Goodman 75 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. somehow to be plucked from there ad libitum. Possibilities are always more or less general. or a possible tiger. he insists. a creativity that is emergent-neither locked within the past. to make that assumption would be to re-atomize time. But this is not sufficient for Hartshorne. Agents act in the present. is mere virtuality. indeed community. no determinant at all." Whitehead once claimed to have tried to do for perishing what Aristotle had done for becoming. against the background of conditions they inherit from the past. rather than dependence or its negative. and he argued that the very fixity of what is over and done with makes it an inextricable element of the future. Indeed. Surely the future does not create itself. a notion forecast in Plato and central in Philoponus (for similar Christian reasons to those that move Whitehead-or the cinemateurs of Places in the Heart) that Hartshorne wants faithfully LennE. nor radically severed from it."25It is this special emphasis on perishing. Because it allows actors to differentiate the future from the past. an abstract generality.The strength of Bergson's account is that it leaves room-he would say time-for the emergence of the future.' whatever that could add if particularity were already there. of time. called "perpetual perishing.. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . is not a thing at all but a notion. and what Whitehead himself. of much relevance to modal logic in general and the ontological argument in particular: a possible dollar is not the same sort of thing in the least as the actual dollar that might replace it.168. following Locke.

PhilosophyEast& West to preserve when he castigates Bergson for overlooking the asymmetry of the future with the past: "Bergson shows no sign of realizing that a definite plurality of unit cases of becoming . It is only the unity of past with present that must be rejected. can be combined with emphatic acceptance of the unity of present with past. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . Where in my childhood was there any unity with my present state? I might have died long ago. The notion that they are was causing trouble long before the time of Kant. It is true that "possibles" are not ready-formed particulars lacking only some key of entry called actuality in order to emerge as real entities or events. What we call a past event is in some of its aspects far more lasting than the event that in other contexts we might identify by the same name. and not in any mystic or subjective. over and done with.. but he can hardly fail to admit that the choices I make now contribute to what I will be. and indeed are not over. is that while the past does influence the present the present cannot affect the past: "Nothing we do will ever change the career of Shakespeare between his birth and his death. not in the sense conveyed in natural languages by the use of the perfect tense. as the constituents of (actual) possible worlds. whether for consciousness or for nature. When the past is active."28This seeming truism is meant to be as damaging to Bergson's conceptualization of time as Hartshorne's telling comment about possible worlds is damaging in fact to those members of the current Princeton school who imagine that possibilities live somewhere else than this world.29But that does not mean that there is no mutuality between past and future. It is true that efficient causes cannot touch the past.. Indeed. can be much longer than Bergson supposed. in memory. even if only as a springboard or dialectical antithesis. there is no such task as education. it becomes part of the present and is distinctively affected. Carthago fuit. it is not as past but as present actuality that it acts. there is nowhere in the 76 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. do not remain what they were. If this be false.27 The radical asymmetry of time that Bergson missed. does not agree that the child is father of the man. The continuing presentness of what is in some senses and for some purposes past is the very meaning of the idea of duration.222 on Sat.72. as we have observed. But it is true as well that much that we call past is not past at all in the sense of this precise asymmetry. Retrospective unity does not entail prospective unity. and no such event as a life. is made other than what it was. Past events. where World War II has not yet ended. as causes or as matter for creativity. but in the sense that the significance of what is past. and have been. Hartshorne argues.168. and in playing a role in the formation of the future. Carthago ruit."26 Hartshorne. and duration. not in the sense that the facticity of what is truly past is altered retroactively. or legalistic sense. evidently. ever since I was a child. They are registered in my character. There are some places. in some respects. or in causality.

or concern. or a system of actions that constitute a history. of those who perpetrated and underwent the Holocaust. to the generation.world where it is over fully. and God is anything but hampered by limited LennE. and not merely of the subjective we. how.Goodman 77 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. continues to be influenced and changed (thus its impact as a whole is changed) by the responses of living subjects now. It is certainly of consequence to the careers of Shakespeare. is a relative notion capable of indefinite expansion: It is the expansion characteristic of the ever-enlargeable conception of the we. does damage a Whiteheadian dogma of great centrality to Hartshorne. like many another sequence.168. their cross-referentiality. or future. In cultural or communal terms. an economy. but also of the equally expansible objective it.32God is more than an album for the storage of past occasions. but is its prologue. present. Time. the dogma of the consequent nature of God. of course. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . Horace. as well as setting the stage for creativity and the emergence of what is genuinely novel. And its outcome. amount to strict or comprehensive symmetry of the future with the past. But the level at which there is in fact a mutuality. we still belong. our actions affect the achievement of their projects. for that very reason. It is for this reason that it is relevant to late comers to determine which if any of those projects deserve to be taken up. Recognition of the interpenetration of the moments of time. does show in just what sense the present time. like the present place in Aristotle. is symmetrical in some respects and asymmetrical in others. if at all. action. to the same historic present. happy or unhappy turnings of later evolutionary or cultural actors are as consequential to the success or failure of their predecessors' efforts as the latter are to the former. The living present may involve participants in a single action that endures over centuries. Insofar as we constitute a community with other beings. it is of moment whether those efforts fall on barren soil or are taken up and carried forward.222 on Sat. and to anyone who has made efforts or sacrifices for posterity. laying out conditions and parameters that can influence and indeed in their measure determine the future. past.31Such mutuality or community in a project only inchoately given in its earlier stages does not. as Yehuda Bauer rightly argues. within systems of presentness defined only by the relevance of their components to a given event. The War continues to exercise its effects. and in what respects. they are to be carried forward. yet grounded in what has gone before.30 Our actions affect the fulfillment of the hopes of our forebears in many crucial ways. For it means that the past is not merely antecedent to the future. and Thucydides whether their work continues to be read. a progress or progression of culture or civilization. individuals who are centuries apart may participate in a single action. say between those living now and their forebears. and their nestedness in one another. The wise or ignorant choices.72.

since the present is the platform or worktable of events. that the future is not yet future but is seized in the same present with the past.72. and from which it draws significance when identified by other criteria.I am referringto moments whose discreteness from one another is purely notional. We see divine efficacy as much in the determination of the future by the past as in the emergence of the genuinely novel. its duration is as long as their occurrence requires. as identified by one set of criteria. of course. and by so doing take and up appropriate the past and define the potentiality of the future (whose limitations are indeed the parameters assigned it by the past34). as a virtuality to be appropriated and (here Hartshorne is quite right)given definition in the very act of being given actuality. like the fighting of some wars. This is what we mean when we say that God is present not only in all places but also at all times.168. Rather. nor an atomic fragment of consciousness which does not linger even long enough to be noted as a temporal now. But what it does imply is that divine agency is apprehensible under different aspects in the acts of finite agents: both in the certitude of the outcomes of proximate causes and in the creativity of emergence in nature and in art. It reinstates the false linearity from which Bergson sought to show us how to escape and sunders the connectedness of duration. Time is neither a razor edge of instantaneity whose end is simultaneous with its beginning. For the moment has the determinacy of actuality only insofar as it is past. does not imply the unreality or illusoriness of the time in which we live and act. Hartshorne's attempt to discover an absolute asymmetry of time behind the level of symmetry that Bergson finds thus vitiates a part of the truth Bergson sought to explain. In referringto the present in which agents act. and the miracle of that creativity is nowhere more evident than in the emergence of actuality out of virtuality at every present moment.222 on Sat. all for the sake of a rather trivial point about the doneness of what is done and some rather dubious theological claims that amount to a preference for natura naturata over natura naturans."It isn't over 'til it's over. might be completed long before the larger sequence in which it forms a part.PhilosophyEast& West potency in the way that Whiteheadians of Hartshorne's school like to claim. Both aspects authentically represent divine creativity. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . or the building of cathedrals or civilizations. 78 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. It clearly does not imply that time is symmetrical in some all-engulfing sense. and the actions undertaken now play their role in determining the ultimate meaning or effect of the whole." As long as an event goes on-even if it takes years or centuries. But that. in fact. or revolutions in human relations or consciousness-every moment remains intimately and organically connected to the rest. In the deathless words of Yogi Berra. A given event.33Of course the future can influence the past only in a very limited and retrospective way-only to the extent.

" Thus. made the difference. not reason or necessity. The argument is causal at the root: if all events need an objective determinant. and Leibniz. 1). among the prospective temporal moments.72. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . so that it cannot come to be or perish but remains forever fully actual." not merely spatially but temporally. but all collapse into nullity. For it befits what is seated at the center and equally disposed toward the extremes not to be borne a whit more up or down or to the side-and it is impossible for it to move in opposite directions at once-so it stays fixed by necessity. 145. since no potential moment was any better than the rest as the first moment of creation. at a later time rather than an earlier?"(ap. Phys. Anaximander enshrined the symmetry that gives stability to change in his idea of the justice of time. the world's imagined coming to be would never come about. Anaximander (ap. in the words of Aristotle: "In order for generation not to fail it is not necessary for perceptible body to be infinite actually. that voluntarism offered the only escape from such fixity:35 the world was indeed created.. but will. It was on that basis that Parmenides. they do not exist. Maimonides. The rejection of radical creation has been a thesis of philosophers almost from the beginning. Proclus. De Caelo II 13. starting from nothing.II.Goodman 79 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. 295b 10) held that the earth's position and stability depend on symmetry: "It stays still because of its equilibrium. since it is possible for the destruction of one thing to be the generation of the other. since "it must either completely LennE.168. as what "holds reality fast." It was probably Anaximander himself who adapted this argument from symmetry to apply to time as well as the directions. He even alludes to Anaximander's Justice. Aristotle. al-Ghazal. The determinant was not objective but subjective: God decided to create a world and chose the moment and the manner. Aristotle. Simplicius. And what need would have driven it on to grow. by overseeing the coming to be of all things out of the Indefinite and their passing away into their proximate sources "according to the assessment of time. Averroes. Forjust as he sought to sketch the figure of the earth and sea in his map and to chart the rhythm of the seasons with his gnomon. Creationists from Philoto Avicebrol. 208a 8).. saw ponus to al-KindT. while the sum of things remains limited" (Physics III 8. which maintains the equilibria of change and thereby obviates an absolute creation..222 on Sat. where none was found. choosing one as the first. and Spinoza sustained the eternity of the world: moments undistinguishable because they are empty possess neither anteriority nor posteriority.Creation and Symmetry Surely there is one sense in which temporal moments are symmetrical with one another: the moments (or virtual moments) before the world began (if it began) are undistinguishable from one another. Parmenides will argue explicitly from the likeness of each moment to the next that being can have no origin: "Forwhat creation will you seek for it.

since 'something exists' is necessarily true.. and the Muslim Aristotelians in their polemics against absolute creation. although battered by entropy and evolution and all but finally exploded by the Big Bang. 'Nothing at all' either expresses an incoherent thought or implies some qualification. as Descartes well understood. in modern as in Hellenistic times. Berdyaev is the clearest of all [about this].72. But the facts are a bit more complex: Bergson played down the centrality of an initial moment of creation because the great theme of his philosophy was the ongoing creativity of the divine. attenuated in the aesthetic of the sublime.222 on Sat. and essayists-dispersed and secularized. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . But in a way this aura is never wholly lost. the naught. he is correspondingly ready to downgrade divine transcendence: "The highest conceivable form of reality. absolutized." He writes. as Descartes observed. The only way we have of knowing that 'something exists' is phenomenological. any being. painters."37But this is sheer dogmatism. The existence that is necessary can only be of what is absolute. Parmenides' argument from the equivalence of all moments is taken up by Aristotle and elaborated by Proclus. Simplicius.. Passing from the Jewish Averroists to Spinoza. that I cannot escape the givens of my consciousness. Just as he is ready to say that some being. in the steady state thesis in cosmology. For the counterpart of mechanism. Hartshorne praises eternalism in Bergson as "the well argued rejection in Creative Evolution of the idea that 'there might have been nothing at all'.' the zero.36The idea of eternity in nature persists into the twentieth century."38 But was Bergson an eternalist? His disciple Jacques Chevalier claimed him as a creationist. It is true. but still outspoken in the spiritualism of pantheism. the idea of an immutable order loses its aura of divinity only in the mechanism of the nineteenth century." and nonbeing is impossible. and monotheists are rightly chary about assigning absoluteness of existence to just anything at random-as they are rightly chary of assigning absolute significance to just any values in general...168. where it lodges in the metaphysical certitude of the conservation of matter.' I have only admiration for Bergson's reasoning here. has only a relative meaning. it becomes nonsense. but it does not follow. was nature mysticism: the aura of eternity is diffused in the immanence of romantic and transcendentalist poets. 'Nothing. is necessary. from the time that Anaximander claimed the apeiron to be immortal and divine as well as inexhaustible. but that does not imply that it is impossible for me not to exist. such as 'nothing to the present purpose.. much as he and others were eager to claim him as a Catholic.PhilosophyEast& West be or not be. is only the highest conceivable form of becoming or duration. Hartshorne is rather casual about this.. that my consciousness is a necessary being. deity. I cannot think my own nonexistence. But Bergson's 80 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. "Hume's belief that all existential statements are contingent is incorrect. For he hints at a divine kind of time.

his rejection of the discrete. atomic matter and infinite. temporal. the world is contingent. in Bergson's case. emergent. eternalist elenchus that held it absurd to number moments in which nothing yet in nature had moved or changed or even begun to be. and others. Perhaps Eliot Deutsch's idea that time is what actions make of it43best expresses the nuance Bergson sought to give to the idea of the becoming of time. between eternity and creation. He rejected the notion of time with nothing in it. as developed.42the same position flows naturally from the deep harmony of his view of time with that of Einsteinian relativity:time has no meaning apart from events. either full or empty. Augustine. his commitment to the idea of entropy.voluntarism. for example.Goodman 81 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.72. al-Ghazal . as Capek makes clear.40 Bergson objected to the Kantian first antinomy. perhaps ephemeral. But Hartshorne fails to see that time relativism does not commit one to eternalism but takes a well-trodden route through a creationism that regards time itself as created-or.4' In Bergson's case. he took up the classical creationist view that time itself is among the features of the world that first appear with creation. This was the position of Philo. Philoponus. we might say.168. he did so in behalf of the idea of creation. who accepted the Aristotelian teaching of the relativity of time but found in it a response to the Aristotelian.44 When a Christian theist like Philoponus made the perishing of things a central thesis of his cosmology. Against the notion of absolute time. it must have been preceded by illimitable eons of eventless time. in the work of Emile Meyerson. For that asymmetry is just what is at stake in the idea of creation: only God is necessary and self-explanatory. with the constant random play of the changeless.222 on Sat. from eternity. It was against this vision of nature that Bergson's philosophy and entire life's work set its face. And the same dialectic is found in the vivid contrast of God's eternity with the world's temporality and LennE. although in the nature of the case (as Aristotle saw) there can be nothing gradual about the origin of time-the becoming of becoming. But he did not imagine (as Hartshorne does) that if the world was originated. biases. and limitations. as finitude in the world's determinations argued for its ultimate and continuing origination. Entropy seemed to him to argue unequivocally for the irreversibilityof time. albeit in a sense necessarily modified by his own predilections. absolute space of the mechanistic science of his day. his finitism. ally him squarely with the creationists. not as a counterpart or alternative to it. Democritean. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . made space absolute and time in effect reversible. ultimately Parmenidean particles. Ironically. Hartshorne's discomfort with creation actually compromises Bergson's thesis of the asymmetry of time. to Gassendi and the modern materialists.39The atomist tradition from Democritus and Epicurusto al-RazT. on the grounds that both horns of its dilemma treated the universe as a completed whole. Maimonides.

and all that is in them. evolution and extinction were impossible a priori."45The idea is formalized and universalized in the theology of the kalam (loquentes). destroyed. The logical difficulty of a thing's becoming what it was not was overcome by the logical expedient of distinguishing essence from accident. that which is immutable and (in Plotinus' term) impassive is ultimately creative. He preserved Parmenides' thesis that a thing must be what it is and made it the cornerstone of First Philosophy. ultimately. or in the discrete but unremitting fulgurations of Leibniz. and forged into systematic and coherent metaphysics by Avicenna. classification. unless denatured. and inductive hypothesis. and that essences were immutable were welcome and scientific seeming. such potentials would reside in matter. nothing ever created de novo or destroyed completely). So for centuries it silently blocked the path of inquiry by forestalling the development of controlled experimentation. and the changeable object would remain constant in the only sense that really mattered to logic-it preserved the same essence. that is. form from matter.the normative Aristotelian scheme deemed "unnatural" events uninteresting. by which investigators (using Bacon's model of Elizabethan torture) would one day take nature 82 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. as in the model of emanation. that no change was absolute or radical (that is. A key argument of creationists like al-GhazalT and Maimonides46was that the eternalist thesis rests on a determinism so strict as to debar change altogether and block emanation at the Source. not of Aristotelian becoming but of Biblicalcreation.168.222 on Sat. Matter remained constant. as by death. Similarly. But there was a price to pay: since neither essences nor matter could be altered or destroyed. But it ruled quantitative differences rather unimportant (nonessential) and so inflamed Aristotle's failure to share Plato's enthusiasm for mathematics into a general bias against the significance of measurement. the sea. and actuality from potentiality: a thing became actually what it already was potentially. they had to be dismissed as accidental. Change became possible through the conjunction of unchanging form with unchanging matter. whose existing nature would limit the scope of change. The scheme was both heuristic and limiting: it opened up vast fields for scientific observation.72. whether continuously. by introducing his distinctive model of alteration. following the lead of Plato's Timaeus:that which is temporal is evanescent and contingent. The monotheistic idea of perishing is the counterpart. the continual re-creations of the kalam-or the act of Genesis that created heaven and earth.PhilosophyEast& West contingency that is pinioned in the powerful Quranic image: "All things perish except His face. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . sports of nature were by definition nonsignificant: since they breached the essential boundaries of the species concept. Aristotle had sought to pay deference to Parmenidean logic while maintaining the reality of time and change. The corollaries that all change required a substrate.

But even here Hartshorne is unrelenting in his criticism. to which no temporally causal account was relevant. of all philosophers.168. were and remain resistant to refutation. But both views fostered a variety of science. to show both that metaphysical claims are nonempirical.47 Creationism was less rationalist. But why should Bergson's metaphysics observe Hartshorne's restrictions-especially if they bring it up against Popper's legitimate concern that unfalsifiable claims seem to say nothing about the world? It is odd to invoke Popper. It systematically devalued efficient causes in favor of formal and material causes. The complaint is that Bergson has betrayed metaphysics by appealing to experience for validation of his insights. and both were deeply religious.to the limit to make her yield up her secrets. Bergson's bent as a philosopher was always toward what could be validated in experience. Bergson. and that that is what they ought to be. whether in nature or in the events of human life and history. Hartshorne writes. and elevating Aristotle's prejudice against cosmogony as myth into an arbitrary assumption that accounts of origins were somehow not a form of explanation-making history not a real science. and it was this penchant. and treating the order observed in biology or astronomy as a flat."..72. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . finding the hallmarks of divine grace in the emergence of novelty. including human nature. The most Capek will LennE. the creationist. that creationism is not crucially refutable. atemporal schema. cataclysmically followed.. perhaps. in terms of possibilities. but more empiricist in outlook. that drew him most insistently away from creation as a unique event and toward creation as an ongoing process. Capek argues. "seems not to see Popper's point. further biasing explanation in the direction of the conceptual and qualitative in place of the mechanical and precisely measured. 1963) lay open before Bergson. the Aristotelian finding the marks of divine wisdom in the invariance of natural patterns. since all the evidence that seems to converge on a first moment of time can be taken as pointing not to an absolute origination of nature but to one first moment in what might have been a series of Big Bangs. so both.222 on Sat. It saw nature. in a way. He takes Bergson to task for ignoring KarlPopper's concern "that if no conceivable experience could falsify an existential assertion. it is not empirical in the usual sense."48 The criticism is not that Bergson has committed himself to views that are unfalsifiable but that he has given preference to the view that seems to him to be best confirmed by our knowledge and experience.Goodman 83 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. in an immense celestial rhythm. where essentialism looked to regularities. as though Popper's Conjectures and Refutations (London. by successive occurrences of a Big Crunch. Neither view was so narrowly framed as to be incapable of responding to criticisms or countercases from the other. very much in the spirit of Bergson.

For the evidence can be read not merely as compatible but as suggestive of creation: creation is a possible hypothesis. We can go a step farther. with theistic explanations. steady state existence-whatever metaphysical construction may be those facts. and of Scripture. It is in this spirit that we should relate Bergson's ideas about creativity. how deep under the carpet must experience as a whole be swept to preserve a single. harmonious or inharmonious with the consilience of experience. say. increasingly isolated notion? The most we can say of any transcendental claim is that it is confirmed or disconfirmed by the evidence. on the basis of its observed outcome.PhilosophyEast& West say is that the evidence is compatible with absolute origination. but as a way of access to the character of divine creativity. in turn.222 on Sat. and that. that nature. the act of creation. including all the factual claims of science. But. And in these terms we can say that in recent years the findings of cosmology and of physics in general tend to confirm the world's origination and to disconfirm its eternal."50 If we find creativity in all emergence and do not regard that creativity as the blind outcome of mechanics or take its immanence as the mark of self-sufficiency but as the hallmark of pervasive grace. following the hints of Saadiah. to Maimonidean creationism and specifically to Maimonides' affirmation. The real question is how much damage must be done to the fabric of our knowledge.49 Again the move is hardly unprecedented. put upon What is sound in Popper's thesis is that we ought to be suspicious of a claim for which no evidence can be specified pro or con. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . in both its rational and its arbitraryseeming aspects. how much evidence must be explained away. The daily Hebrew liturgy argues playfully "Who in His goodness reneweth each day. for His favor is eternal. a way that does not arbitrarilyconfine the divine creative act to a unique and remote occasion in the past. as it is said. When the argument takes such a turn. it was the creationists who brought concern with falsifiability (although they did not call it that) to metaphysics-when first al-GhazalT and then Maimonides52 criticized neoplatonism on the grounds that the 84 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. since any hypothesis can be modified to account for seemingly conflicting evidence. the idea of divine creation remains fruitful for us in all our inquiries. It is true that absolute creation will never be verified or falsified conclusively. continually. that is.168. But the same is true of any categorical claim. of the Rabbis. and may be argued to be the most acceptable. as I showed years ago. Such a claim is too well hedged to be taken as a commitment. Bergson's emphasis on continuing creation becomes most relevant. is the overt expression through which God's character is made manifest to us51-or. the actual character of nature. that nature is an epiphany. 'To Him who maketh great lights. not as an alternative to the unique event that most clearly manifests the absolute insufficiency of the finite and determinate to originate itself.72. in more familiar terms.

as well as he could understand it. That our knowledge is contingent (and corrigible) does not mean that its object is such.Goodman 85 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. say. This Hartshorne finds offensive. not of the sort of being that could endure forever or of its own accord-therefore. to show that the world system might run down. I wonder. transitory. are we to deal rationally with truths about existence if we cut ourselves off from any experience we may have? Limited though our experience may be. He defines metaphysics "as the attempt to deal rationally with noncontingent. ergo contingent. What such an argument has in common with the older tradition (and with Bergson) is commitment to empiric consequences of its theses. such evidence was construed to include evidence that the world or matter might be destroyed. Clearly some philosophers make more coherent sense out of experience than others LennE. but we know that the evidence might have been otherwise. or even in our talk about conscious subjects or persistent objects) to project beyond the immediate givens of sensation. We know what sort of evidence would count against origination. No thought police prevent us from so doing. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . There will be problems about making any such projection.53 Rather. "He seems to think that metaphysics is empirical. corruptible. or through the transcendent rationality that neoplatonic theists claimed to share with their more scriptural (that is. But that does not leave us without standards of appraisal. that the stars were not "simple substances" and therefore immutable. it is clear that we will not get knowledge without experience. One family of metaphysical explanations for that origination would be the world's precipitation from the fullness of God's grace. created. Thus Philoponus used entropy. Hartshorne complains that to make metaphysics empirical is to make God just another contingent being in need of explanation. an absolute creation. In classical philosophy. of an immanent rationality. destructible. Finite experience often leads us (as in morals.222 on Sat.168. as a result. But that is a plain confusion. from Plato to Philoponus to the high middle ages at least." and takes Bergson to task because. We can cite evidence from the red shift. and we can expect disagreements about rival outcomes. or from apparent "echoes" of the original cosmic boom. the whole cosmos was corrosible.neoplatonic God seemed to make no detectable difference in the world: the world seemed to be the same whether it existed eternally. creationist) coreligionists. or in causal explanations. sharply contrasting the fullness of God's being with the contingency of all finite and conditioned things.54 We say that the evidence supports creation."55But how. nonempirical truths about existence. supporting the thesis of the world's origination. and the apparent changes observable in celestial bodies. Today the account is easier. The same criticism can be returned (with a few hundred years' interest) to today's Process Theologians: creationists can cite evidence for the world's finite age in support of their theism. more voluntaristic.72.

Indeed.. Justice. It is true. Agus writes: Bergsonwavers between the concepts of life and spirit. as the condition or ground of all that is contingent.Theancient festivalswere given fresh meaningin the Torah.56 Leibniz expressed it well in the idea of compossibility. conditioned in any way) need have existed..72.. conceived after the analogy of the human spirit . The rhythms agricultural of sacred historywere substitutedfor those of nature. Therewere vegetation gods... What they mean by ex nihilo is that God's ultimate creative act was conditioned by no prior limitation but only by the limitations inherent in finitude itself and in the determinate character of the things to be created. the elan vital. But creationists do not argue that the world came from nothingness but from God.. dying and coming back to life. from which they are sprung and out of which Bergson seeks escape into the cool Parisianair. and ... In Judaism. as Hartshorne argues. The premonotheisticpagans celebrated the rhythms of life in their cults. that in itself possibility is a mere abstraction. Dispensing with experience will not strengthen metaphysics but weaken it.222 on Sat. If philosophy begins in wonder. and explain.. The world is not a necessary being. cosmic life-forcewhich is unconcernedwith individuals. is Thoughtand gods representedan ethical absolute.. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . it will be exemplified in experience without exception or contradiction.. None of this (so long as this is finite. It is in the heartsand mindsof human beings that He is best revealed. He does this by translating the metaphysical propositions of a Bergsonian eternalism back into the language of ritual and myth....do.. it must be sought as the counterpart of the contingent. that is. that existence itself is a notion super-added to the given essences of all things.... it will deprive it of its subject matter.Loveand Sublimity. purposelessand ruthless. But it does not follow that we cannot abstract completely from all the conditionality and givenness of things and conceive the entire universe as contingent.58 PhilosophyEast& West The act of absolute creation captures both the moral and the metaphysi- 86 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. The tension between the representation of God as Life or as Spiritreflectsthe dichotomy between Judaismand ancient paganism.. does not contain within itself the conditions of its own perpetual existence. This precisely is what Genesis calls on us to do. the materials and values it is to interpret..168... If a necessary being is to be sought.... resting for us on the negation of something actual. in the words of Avicenna. there is no good reason why it should not at times begin with wonder about why anything exists at all. Hartshorne argues that pure potentiality is no real thing. It shows us.57 Jacob Agus shows us vividly where we would land if we followed in the direction Hartshorne approves.. None of the God . and that pure nothingness is inconceivable. organize. revealedin the progressive refinementof man'sethicalconscience and in the esthetic organon.God is not subject to the rhythmsof life. a blind. if a truth is indeed noncontingent.. But.

God of history and the moral law as well as God of nature and its laws.63 Bergson himself did not follow the elan vital in the direction of a neopagan naturalism. and to assign them value and validity not for their merit or coherence with one another in thought or in a life.168. it reduces God to the energies of nature (and culture!).59 Despite Bergson's New Testament rhetoric about God as love. depending on whose mind it falls into for interpretation. wisdom. in Creative Evolution. it pursues one good-the same law and existential deserts for all. Thought or thing-of Thou to this. as in chaste prayers and pacific meditations or ardent but conscientious visions of the working out of justice in history. or life. as ultimate Cause and ultimate Judge. but still pulsating with vernal and destructive force.Goodman 87 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.65The trouble. no longer merely cyclically conceived. "These are but the fringes of His doings. and in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. The central idea of creativity and of the asymmetry of time does not require us to abandon but in a way endorses the idea of the world's creation. As Job (26:14) expressed it. he developed the (quite Maimonidean64)idea of God as the Creator of creators. but described God. whether creative or destructive. Fortunately it is not necessary to follow Bersgon in the direction Hartshorne so warmly approves.cal absoluteness of God. death and rebirth.62For Bergson himself is uncertain on the subject and leaves alternatives open to our judgment." Toward the end of his life. Agus argues. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . He also told of his admiration for Catholicism. but for the intensity of their frissons. and how small a snatch of hearsay do we have of Him.222 on Sat. It is not the idea of immanence that is inconsistent with monotheism in Bergson's thinking. or it would hardly be appropriate for Agus to counterbalance the elan vital with the spirit in the heart of man. the moral liberation of human life from tragedy. reason. or "passage. His chief reason for rejecting LennE. does not adequately represent divine holiness.60 Monotheism seeks one God where it finds one world. Rather. is the reductionism-of God to good. justice. It is in recognizing the same one answer to the moral and the cosmological quest for ultimates that monotheism overcomes the partiality of pagan religiosity and integrates both life and the cosmos. after surveying the awesome majesty of God's rule over nature. as a kind of "supra-consciousness". the elan vital. which can as readily be a liberating as a confining idea. Bergson wrote about the special role of mystics in articulating morally and socially the meaning of divine love for humankind-taking the Hebrew prophets as paradigms of his intent.72. and neo-paganism arrogates to itself the right or power to create the energies it celebrates. rather. still to be celebrated as much in the orgiastic rites of spring and autumnal sacrifice.61But paganism celebrates all energies." power. even if we find elements of his thinking about time that we cannot leave behind. or power. even when manifested in the spirit of man.

behind. the lecture was known around Harvard. say. one part in one billion remained." Taken in reverse. all would have been annihilated in the Big Bang. all that is changed. A. beneath the cosmos. with never a nod in the direction of emergent evolution. there was a little mistake in the equality.222 on Sat. always without notes. "won in the fight" with anti-matter. the proton would not remain undisturbed by the behavior of electrons and there would be no solid matter.68 and When at least on one occasion connecting it with the name of Bergson. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .. elan vital. it was a humanistic credo about the construction of complexity out of simplicity. Wald's argument is that "we live in a life breeding universe. in recent years has developed his famous classroom lecture on nature or the world into a kind of performance piece. But the theme now is the need for consciousness within. but he just smiles and says that he hopes he is growing wiser. and that's the matter of the universe.69 I was an undergraduate in his prizewinning biology lab course for nonscientists. The Mirrorof Narcissus George Wald. let alone orthogenesis. although both of these symmetric kinds might have seemed at the start to have an equal chance.the order of exposition is identical. L-amino acids win out over D-amino acids.71 Similarly (pace R.conversion to that faith was equally telling: the rise of Hitler left him unwilling to abandon solidarity with his Jewish roots when his people were facing persecution and would soon be facing death for their connection to a common past and to one another. heard now by literally thousands of symposiasts and readily obtained in careful transcriptions of the taped voice of the speaker. and so did. about man as a few cents' worth of chemicals. with Wald's encouragement. Had the universe begun with exactly equal parts of matter and anti-matter.66 III. PhilosophyEast& West 88 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. of one part in one billion..if electrons and nucleons were not so far apart in mass. no crystals. But in the order that he gave it. The materials are much the same as in the 1960s. or complex stable compounds." that matter. lecturing familiarly. as he once put it in a thought he shared with Einstein. as "From the Electron to Hamlet.168. it would have seemed a reductionist sort of thesis. "But . Lyttleton and Herman Bondi).72. for his work on the biochemistry of rhodopsin. presenting it for the scientists at Los Alamos. or the like."70Similarly. never quite repeating the same words. the photoelectric pigment of the eye. More than one listener has asked Wald if he has changed his tune because he is growing older. a Lucretian exercise in the issuance of life and splendor out of the merest of subatomic lego-units. with some new arguments and illustrations. And when all the mutual annihilation had finished. or the Aristotelian priority of the actual to the potential. a Nobelist in biology.67for public fora in many communities including my own. In the current versions.

. socially.. But it took only a few weeks to realize that that kind of idea is not just centuries old but millennia old in Eastern philosophies. and apology. on which the existence of life depends. to serve some suggested function quite distinct from its explicit content.. but with suitable hesitation. in the great tradition of natural theology that stretches from Genesis to Paley.72. historians of ideas. "It has no location. None of this is unfamiliar to philosophers. as I had believed and most biologists tend to believe. oxygen and nitrogen have the "absolutely unique properties . "that almost infinitesimal difference in charge would be enough to overwhelm all the forces of gravitation that bring matter together in our universe. But I was also embarrassed. perennial."73and that without water's strange property of expanding when it freezes. It will never be located"-much as Socrates answered.' The idea violated all my scientific feelings. no stars. hydrogen. periphrasis. of 2 x 10-18e. ranging from matters of verification and interpretation to validation of its provenit does matter whether this is just an idea that we have ance-for to ourselves."72 Climbing the "scale of states of organization of matter.. But I want to focus on a particular application of this trend of thought: it matters very much LennE.Goodman 89 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. accumulating intolerably and making survival impossible there for life forms. I thought. preterition.74 In general.. "When this idea struck me. senility is hitting you in a big way. I enjoyed it immensely. culturally.. 'My God.222 on Sat. The thought that thought is responsible for nature is. it was there all the time... Wald argues. for connecting these thoughts with those of Bergson lies in a distinctively modern interpretation of the idea that the symmetry of time somehow brings God into contact or communion with Himself: evolution/creation is working out a plan that links mind in the universe with mind in us. mythically."75The warrant. Again.if there were a difference in the charges of a proton and electron. On the contrary. where e is the actual charge of either.168. then.. The reason this is a life-breeding universe is that the pervasive existence of mind guided it in that direction for a reason. theologians. So we would have no galaxies." and that fact. [C]onsciousness or mind is not. There are problems aplenty in the claim. I was elated. ice would sink and grow ever thicker on the bottoms of all bodies of water. a late product in the evolution of life on this planet. "we find ourselves in a very curious universe. as Wald suggests." Wald observes that only carbon.. and not just in Eastern but in Western philosophies and religions. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ." because its mass does not give it enough time on the "Main Sequence" for life to evolve. Wald. of which Wald says. a star much larger than our sun "would probably never have a planet bearing life. if you can catch me. no planets. ellipsis. is best explained by consciousness. when his students asked where he wanted to be buried: bury me wherever you like.. It possesses exactly those properties that breed life.

If we economize and have the Big Bang producing the mass for one galaxy of 1011stars. let hubris itself be damned. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . Such a move has become almost a standard topos in the literature of scientific confessions. is proud. Such protestations as those of Wald or Morowitz might seem welcome to theists. confessing that it came to scoff but stayed to pray. A similar statement to Wald's was made on the same platform by the biophysicist Harold Morowitz. ecology. "reasons from science to a cosmic intelligence that is not unrelated to our existence. intention.72. there would literally not be world enough and time for intelligent life to evolve: "For example. and hydrology now makes it clear that the detailed working of all the features of our planet is necessary for continuing life. then on Jamesian grounds. The precise workings of all the different components to make possible intelligent life on earth suggest that the plan of the universe somehow had us in mind. He speaks warmly of Bergson and Spinoza. Wheeler81 that unless the universe were of a critical size. to grace."78 This is not the place to wrestle with the curious greased logic of Gaia-ism.222 on Sat. A. especially when they bear the authority of scientism. the mass for 1011 galaxies with a total of 1022 stars. meteorology. But there is a fly in the ointment when we examine Wheeler's elaboration of the impact of this argument."76 Morowitz is a bit more blunt than Wald: he types the new covenant as pantheism and contrasts its revelations with the moral and spiritual revelations of the ancient God that was encountered as a person.PhilosophyEast& West if we begin or end our search for God by looking in the mirror. in his Gifford Lectures. the time from Big Bang to Big Crunch is reduced to 1 year!"82 Again the classic inference is to design and plan. which is still an immense universe. and the rebirth of god."77 What volumes are spoken by that academic litotes-not unrelated to our existence! "What we are discussing is the ascendancy of God. then we must proceed. The subject matter is so awesome that any attempts in this direction seem tinged with hubris. But if these matters are vital to human existence and human happiness. "is that our understanding of molecular biology. This lends great force to the argument from design and urges us one step further."80If the argument is vital to human happiness. then of Yale. and glowingly of Richard Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis as a religious opening: "The new pantheism" he writes.168." as Morowitz draws it here. who speaks of a "new covenant" emerging gradually. for it takes on a familiar but peculiarly subjectivist cast: 90 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. the waning of God. to cite the arguments of J.79"The bottom line. geophysics. a Nobel neurophysiologist. John Eccles. and ultimately (in Eccles' application of the argument). "from the experiences of individuals who seek to understand the world. gives the time scale from Big Bang to Big Crunch of 59 billion years. let Wald's hesitancy and humility. or Morowitz' response to it.

ad infinitum. the newly enlightened scientist is welcomed in all simplicity and innocence. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . layer after layer. does not lead back in the end to the observerhimself. He does not pause to notice how the question has been shifted from one of material composition to one of purpose. that shows the slightest prospect of providingthe rationale for the many-storiedtower of physical law.168. required the future observer to empower the past genesis? Nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously on quite other grounds the same view that the universe would be nothing without observership.. But then. in that it takes things more noble than we are-the celestial bodies-and treats them as existent solely for our sakes.."'84The dichotomy. Or.222 on Sat.but to the self as the ground of being. instead of saying that the search for explanations must expand itself to a search for other sorts of ultimates than those of physics-must embrace the search for ultimate values. One finds himself in desperation asking if the structure.. a "why?"and "wherefor" as well as an "out of what?"-Wheeler almost startlingly turns inward. or seek to examine critically whether the human mind. One fears it is also wrong to think of the structuregoing on and on.72. but the means by which he does so seem to find the meaning of the future and the power of the past in human observership. is really a matter of finding ever smaller particles and subparticles.83 Wheeler appropriately wonders whether the search for ultimate causes.. Likethe born-again athlete offering testimony in the service of muscular Christianity. When we have reached this point.. of course.. the all-judging observer. not to a critical examination of the conditions of our inquiry (as in Kant or Freud).. has the capacity for the role it is addressing. is a false one: that either the universe is an accident or it is somehow devised by or for our minds. Life is accidental and incidental to the machinery of the Universe.85 Eccles wants to link the future to the past. is the directly opposite view closer to the truth?-that the universe.Goodman 91 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. The latter view is qualified by Maimonides as indeed the height of hubris. One therefore suspects it is wrong to think that as one penetrates deeper and deeper into the structure of physics he will find it terminatingat some nth level.No search has ever disclosed any ultimateunderpinning.in some kind of closed circle of interdependencies. either of physics or mathematics. that display no particular readiness to yield an answering simplicity-and no readiness at all to provide explanatory ultimacy in any other sense. Eccles writes: "Wheeler (1977) defines two contrasting views on the genesis of the Universe: '. through some mysterious coupling of future with past. what Aristotle called first principles. or going on and on.rather than terminatingin some smallestobject or in some most basic field. the eternalism that Hartshorne prizes and elevates in Bergson's thought and the sundering of the present from the past by which Hartshorne breaks the cord that ties his philoso- LennE.

86but the deeper harmonies and rhythms of the cosmos as a whole. But in the doubling back upon itself of the human quest for explanations. For just as that eternalism threatens Bergson's broader creationism. in behalf of a kind of humanism compounds the fracture that process eternalism has begun.87 this modern version misappropriates the Bergsonian symmetry of time. Where ancient creationism sought the end product of creation in the first intention of divine thought. What process philosophy contributes here." and a corresponding and compensatory elevation of man to fill God's shoes. and the open future. The anthropic principle invoked by Wheeler.PhilosophyEast& West phy of process to the views of Bergson. and by many others. making human thought not just the aim but the condition and ultimate origin of nature. Process Socinians render divinity no more than a developing condition. on the basis of which-Bergson's theses of natural creativity and human freedom were argued. Dyson invokes the anthropic principle to find in "meta-science" a meaning and purpose for existence that science itself. has been broken.72. empiricism. A nameless mechanism stands in the wings. is a demotion of God to the role of "fellow learner. begin to reveal their character and potential. blocking it before it can reach the absoluteness of divine purpose. the eager understudy for the role of God. Hartshorne may think he hears a meaning in the songs of birds. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ."88 It is by conceiving God "on human lines. reducing supraconsciousness to subconscious memory. using the term in a sense that Leibnizdefines lucidly.168. once his break with Bergson is complete." as Leibniz puts it. The nameless mechanism has assigned itself a name. nostalgia.222 on Sat. will no longer sound as melody. as the tendency "to conceive of God (on the pretext of upholding his liberty) . or polite fiction was just the first step of a progression. as he construes it.. To explain: Hartshorne's eternalism was meant to compromise divine transcendence and push Bergson in the direction of immanence. perhaps most vividly in Hartshorne's thinking. The second step is the emergence of the self-selected surrogate for the Unmoved Mover and the Highest Aim and Good. Freeman Dyson's Gifford Lectures of 1985 are a fairly representative example of the theological appropriation of the neo-Socinian approach. seeking a heritage for it. and the groping of evolution to a rudderless themelessness that is called creative only out of courtesy. in whose behalf-or rather. as a man who takes decisions according to the circumstances. the inner intentionality of one moment toward another. Blinding God in effect. call it Socinian.. we glimpse the outcome of an immanence that is disconnected from any ultimate Goal or Source. of the world's flux. the radical and stridently defended sundering of the symmetry of time places at risk the very values of human freedom. natural contingency. seems 92 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.89that the new. Advocates of this view. a modality perhaps. since their relationality.

The image of the butterfly is lovely. the idea of taking God off His pedestal often has a marked Christian (or even Jewish) emotive appeal.and consistent with scientificcommon sense. Quoting from Dante.each one Bornto become the angelic butterfly Thatflies defenseless to the JudgmentThrone. proves anything but Judeo-Christian.He learnsand grows as the universe unfolds.but from here it is out of sight.Goodman 93 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. Rather the reason is that the blurring of the subjective boundaries and objective distinctions between humanity and divinity is eagerly appropriated by claimants to the divine role. disarming hearers who might have thought that theoretical physicists never speak of butterflies. of course. Its roots are pagan.I merelyfind it congenial. and its dynamic. "I LennE. often becomes neo-pagan. which "seems to imply an anthropocentric view of the cosmos. but subtly shifting Dante's sense.168. in the versions we are considering. but what Dyson appropriates from Hartshorne and finds vital in his thought is the ability to place God not within thought but within reach. by the divinization of man. mystical Christian (and Kabbalistic) theme of divine suffering. as Dante may have imagined. let alone quote Dante.72. But some ambiguity remains whether the soul's flight is to stand before the Judgment Throne. or we may be left behind. for to meet that purpose any surrogate would do. The reason is not just the need to fill the vacuum left by God's dethroning. or to sit upon it. "That may be an end or a beginning. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.We may later grow with him as he grows. almost Aristotelian. more to Hartshorne than this."90Dyson links his "taste" for the anthropic principle. We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage of his development. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . As Bernalsaid."91 There is. especially among its scientistic admirers. Thus Dyson's modest.222 on Sat. I do not make any clear distinctionbetween mindand God.to debar: "laws of nature can be explained if it can be established that they must be as they are in order to allow theoretical physicists to speculate about them. as appropriated here. For the humanization of God is never unaccompanied. Among Process Theologians.God may be considered to be eithera world-soulor a collection of world-souls. I do not pretend to understand the theological subtletiesto which this doctrine leads if one analyzesit in detail. since it opens up the devotional. And behind the image of the butterfly is the image of the suffering and indeed the dying god. Dyson concludes his final lecture: Can you not see that we are the worms. the main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neitheromniscientnor omnipotent. But the development of that theme." with a conception of the divine which he labels Socinian and attributes to the influence of Hartshorne: IfI remembercorrectlywhat Hartshorne said.

93 Instead of the classic idea of divine 94 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.. just as creativity is seen as creation's ever present means. as it were. comprehensive whole. with his usual astuteness. as ErrolHarrisremarks. is what leaves the door open to the Process reduction of God. the emergence of the stars and galaxies. God is not a product or a process but the transcendent Source and Aim of all. the totality of history. It discards Teilhard's use of Bergsonian duration to link the Alpha and Omega of creation/evolution into a single coherent principle joining evolution to creation and obviating the specious notion.222 on Sat." The vice and corruption of religion is always in its willingness to play the role of permission giver. And even the subsumption of the future and the past into a single vast event would not deprive the actors in that event of their agency or their freedom. the absolute Good portended in all relative goods." which is "only a facet of his constant opposition to mechanism and determination in which tout est donne. the eternal design of God and the unfolding project of creation are not alien to one another. Creation is not cut off from creativity.. seller of indulgences. to place the Omega of evolution ahead of the Alpha of creation. But Bergson clearly feared that it would. linking the whole history of creation into a single present moment. We are the chief inlets of God on this planet. far more than a sense that creativity was the modern replacement of the ancient idea of creation. evolution. Curiously enough. this is not a permission of which Bergson in fact avails himself. In such a whole. Bergson's idea of duration allows the omni-temporality of all events. Bergson's idea of the mutually interpenetrating and overlapping moments of time allows us to conceive the entirety of time as taken up to form a single. the future can be open without being severed from its connection with the past. and this fear. preacher of complacency under the name of self-acceptance or self-esteem." leaves the future open. in Plato's phrase. Pardoner.PhilosophyEast& West do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. so that meaning and direction can be assigned to each part within the whole. but by the same token gives no wholeness to the flow of time. shaped and overshaped Bergson's philosophy. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . the moving image of eternity. but is seen as its condition.92 Such an outcome was not necessary. the seemingly abstract and innocuous metaphysical issue about the symmetry or asymmetry of time becomes the key to that turnabout.168. say of Grunbaum. The new Socinianism seizes the opening. the perfect Good toward which all actions grope and by which all are guided. Bergson's "steady refusal to see the process of evolution as a whole.. motivated by the strength of his response to determinism and signaled in his desire.72. Pace Hartshorne. The failure of Bergson in this regard. that God has been idle or unemployed lo these billions of years since the world began. But. But here theology is licensing the venerable and dangerous idea that man is God. as intended. and time indeed becomes.

emergence. But when we study man's phylogeny. and indeed the creator and judge of the universe.222 on Sat.purpose as the guiding and governing beacon of the whole-the Good that all things have in them and strive to reach or realize in their instantiated particularity. creating his LennE. anxiety and fear. insofar as in them lies-the ship is now piloted by a blind creativity that seems to have our name embroidered on its cap. Like Wald. and in part because he seems to expect that the variety of idealism he finds in such philosophies (once decontextualized and so deracinated) will not prove impenetrable to his projects of transvaluation and self-empowerment.Goodman 95 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. The father God is kept on too. youth. or sustenance are found. he has developed further godlike qualities. not atypically. but man's power to invent or reinvent himself as God. the New Boss will be the one to take the credit. Rensch finds much that is attractive in Eastern philosophy. and God is just another time-server.95 He sees that the subjectivism of the anthropic principle licenses not merely man's discovery that the world was made for or by him. spring. has emerged as the crown and culmination of the whole process of evolution. life. to hear the plaints of Job. like others of that penchant. it must also seem to us extraordinary that this species. Time is now the absolute. But man is made the arbiter of values. and the return is to ourselves. But wherever vitality. but inhuman-at once dehumanized and all too human. he does not fully know the discipline such philosophies demand of their adherents. Rensch writes: "We are quite rightly brought up to think modestly of ourselves. but now of human guilt. and that step is taken. by Bernhard Rensch. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .. Not only has this strange Homo sapiens come to an understanding of himself and the universal laws..94 Rensch is not as innocent of Kant or Freud as the scientists who seek to ground an amorphous idealism of pantheistic tinge on the vaunted influence of the observer in quantum physics. perhaps in part because.72. an astute but problematic evolutionary biologist. with his 'godlike intellect. Homo sapiens. The pride of ancient and medieval theists was the discovery that the long arcing line of creative emanation from the Divine led down to us and back again through the miracle of human consciousness returning to its source in the Divine. at times. But here the world is spun forth from our own minds.168.. Speaking for the impersonality of what he will reckon as divine. since these will not be shouldered by the new man in the head office.. as traditional ideas of creation and transcendence might lead us to hope or to expect.. The suffering God becomes the bearer no longer merely of human sins.' as Charles Darwin called it.. The inability to trace time to a source beyond itself is symptomatic of the shift in roles. creativity. For hubris there is always one more step. Rensch's pantheistic drift seems somehow to render God not transpersonal.

A panentheismlike that of medievalmysticsmay linkreligion with philosophical views. Examples like these show through a rapidtransformation what can and what will happen in other countries. Romans." Evolution is completed... and "its apparently most developed of creatures. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . Inour age of space researchand increasingbiologicaland psychologicalanalysisof life. This will lead of the meaning and symbolic content of rites and custo a spiritualization toms.. blown up to the gigantic proportions of idolatry by the puffing behind and within them of our own wind.. not for unintellectual toilers.better lighted.. and who will hand down our laws. to imagineHeavenand Hell. feared. better ventilated.women have ceased to wear the veil and are now emancipated.. the worshipof a superhumanbeing to whom one may pray in straitened circumstances. Many communist countries have brokenwith religioustradition.. The gods we are to worship. the masters of human destiny. will possiblyincrease.and modern Chinahas gone of many customs. homes are healthier. the very freedom and creativity in which Bergson had found the point of contact between man and God. Hence." are ready to take charge.. in spite of rationalistic Butthe whole of mankindwillfinallybe forced to realize counter-arguments.222 on Sat. or even for "a large proportion of so-called intellectuals." This Faustian role brings responsibilities. prophesied against. in the two decades since it was written.. Japanese and Incas have done so.Ethicaland moral ideas that do not conflictwith scientificfacts are the only ones that willsurvive.72. back to the closed society that Bergson rightly named. human freedom and creativity. As Rensch writes: Medicalskill continues to improve.. The tendency to theosophy . or the BuddhistNirvana.. irony." but for "those engaged in creative intellectual work.. developing institutions: they must become gods or demigods. Religiouscustoms.168. changing almost the whole face of the earth.own new and complicated environment. and polygamy is abolished. rather than its slaves: "men have often referred to themselves as gods..or be content with Spinoza's 'deus sive mundus [sic]'or Goethe's 'God-Nature.. many humanswillabandon religionaltogether. that it will have to masterits fate by itself. or demigods.." planning for the future. our own images. are to become the banners we shall follow. many people willfind it more and more difficult angels and devils-and it will become impossibleto imagine a god who thinks like human beings. Rulers among the Egyptians. and faced with all his courage. shall be ourselves-or rather..' the HinduistBrahman. for such thinkingis absolutely bound to certain physiologicalprocesses in a complicated central nervous system..will be an urge.eating habits are more sensible. Chinese. more wishful than This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. All these processes will probablytake many centuries... willingly.96 By a consummate. The increasingtempo of scientific development will often lead to states of conflict. In modernized Islamiccountries there is a strong movement to have done with many ancient customs..... indeed Orwellian. proved tendentious. PhilosophyEast& West 96 This apocalyptic litany of unilinear progress has already.

master it or replace it with something else appears .97 This is not the place to seek agreement about who or what God is.... as an expression of hybrisfor which humans must pay a heavy price. some measure of the freedom and responsibility of gods. and potentials. Like Rensch and Morowitz. he writes: In this world. and in a sense create ourselves. and so of meaning. human beings have more skill at radical destruction than at radical creation. to judgment or accountability. It is a symbol of an epoch which denies the binding importance of personal experience . bears within it the presuppositionof the Absolute which grounds. or even some subgroup. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . perhaps a bit by a much more ancient land mystique. values. To me. courage or empathy have a wholly tangible content.prophetic. reasons.168. We know that we are not gods when we detect the bias. It is not a barrierto God. There will always be something more divine in knowing how and when to die and suffer than in knowing how and why to conquer and to kill. crashes through the bounds of the naturalworld.. friendship. in virtue of its very being. as the existentialists were fond of pointing out. any attempt to spurn it. and without which it would be unthinkable. But Havel also knows what we are not. at least in some quarters. and intolerance of the very projects by which the name of god is claimed for us. The symmetry that links the future with the past does not transform creatures into their own creators. Vaclav Havel is touched by the idea of the complex interconnectedness of the fibers in the web of life. but..98a word is in order about what God is not: God is not us. honour. We have... in the light of what is being made of the elan vital. and very little of the power.infidelity. caste. or class of us. more conflicted than coherent in its prescriptions. categories like justice. The asymmetry that divides the future from the past does not cut it off completely and is not a barrier to the holism of process. powers.the smokestack soiling the heavens is not just a regrettable lapse of technology. which it can only understandas a prison of LennE. although we do in our own ways create. personally. ignorance. causes.72. cutting off the future morally from the past. more stereotypic than incisive in its analysis of crosscurrents and alternatives to its vision. treason. The naturalworld. as did Don Juan and Faust. but much less of the authority.222 on Sat. not radically but more or less adequately. or smell the odor of the camps still lingering on the clothing of those who come forward to claim the title. lute is something which we can only quietly respect.Goodman 97 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. But even suffering and death will not make us gods. and clearly also by the spirit of the earth ethic. delimits. relatingto actual persons and actual life.. aniThisAbsomates and directs it.. Speaking of the not-yet alienated life-world that he calls our natural world. In the nature of the case (in view of entropy and the fragility and delicacy of what is complex and subtly balanced)..

The same illusion and attraction led Narcissus on to drown.222 on Sat.enamored of what we see there and desirous of getting closer to it. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . and of an abstractschema of a putative 'historicalnecessity' .. The world itself remains. The fault is not one of science as such but of the arroganceof humankindin the age of science.. the natural world. As the anthropic principle reveals most clearly..so that henceforthit mightbe science which.They are. most of all... but its realities and requirements are untouched. and ruler of the universe. The chimney 'soilingthe heavens' is not just a technologicallycorrigible designerror. rather than smash it..or a tax paidfor a bettertomorrow. judge.So. the totalitarian systems warn of something far more seriousthan Western rationalism is willingto admit. as sole legitimateguardian. some kind of an avant garde of world progress. forgetting that it is just an image. perhaps.. This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.. and technologicallyachievable 'universalwelfare.and. Only its image is blurred by the ripples we have caused on the waters. not merely dangerous neighbours. an unfortunateleftoverfromour backward of their childishimmaturity.. which ignores the naturalworld and disdainsits imperatives.. if we don't like what the mirrorshows us. The Narcissus in us vainly wants to be the author. a desire. creation.ancestors. of its own deep tendencies . too. human nature..a fantasy prejudices. to project our own image onto the surface of our object...The fact that millions of people willbe sacrificedto this illusionin scientifically directedconcentration camps is not something that concerns our 'modern person' unless by chance he or she lands behind barbed wire and is thrown back drastically upon his or her naturalworld. getting inside it.. It paints itself as such in a form of subjective idealism and moral solipsism that is predicated on forgetting that the power of an author is vitiated if his work is a delusion. even less. with its foibles and its graces. We have rejectedour responsibility its place installedwhat is now provingto be the most dangerousillusionof all: the fiction of objectivity strippedof all that is concretely human. With that. like that of Narcissus. and then.168.. blow up our image larger. it abolishesas mere fiction even the innermostfoundationof our naturalworld:it killsGod and takes His place on the vacant throne. And the self. Alas.. there is a tendency in all of us. a convex mirror.. to turn nature at large into our mirror.72. to reach into that mirror. But that is no differentfrom a plain girl which remindsher tryingto get rid of her plainnessby smashingthe mirror of it..but a symbolof a civilization which has renounced the Absolute.' demanding no more than experimentalinstitutes to invent it while industrial and bureaucratic factoriesturn it into reality. just the opposite. Perhapssomewhere there may be some generals who thinkthat it would be best to dispatchsuch systemsfromthe face of the earth and then all would be well. and playing God has cruel conseas 'subjectiveillusion' and in quences.holds the orderof being in its hand. when we look at nature.99 PhilosophyEast& West 98 Another specious remedy. of a rationalunderstanding of the cosmos. of course. is to bend and distend it to make its surface more convex... so that at least in some moods we forget that our own image is all that the shiny surface shows. Humans simply are not God.

101 What is engaging in Wald's or Wheeler's Bergsonian meditations is the endeavor of a naturalist to seek explanations for the commodiousness. intimate. But. Here the inquiries of science and religion come together-the questions of Aristotle and the of The Job.Charles Hartshorne. the milling of reality to ever finer stuff is not the only kind of quest. 1 . where ultimacy is understood in more comprehensive terms. Plotinus had a far grander and more cosmic and conceptual idea of mind than Bernhard Rensch or Freeman Dyson does. because we have nothing in common with them. coherence. but he saw clearly that the highest God cannot be mind. what we touch is not the self but the water. and an aspect that we understand in terms of matter. partitive question that seeks ultimacy in ever finer levels of analysis.102 intricate. in view of the exuberance of being-which we can never know. "Bergson's Aesthetic Creationism Compared to LennE.'03 NOTES The author thanks Milic Capek. even against Aristotle. When it rises up to meet us. Jonathan Westphal. Metaphysics requires a kind of discipline and chastity of mind that the arrogance of scientism does not prepare one for. because we have intelligence. Following the suggestive remarks of Maimonides. painted not by our minds but by the light.222 on Sat. and the anonymous readers of Philosophy East and West for their valuable suggestions. but as even Thales saw. he argues. even teleology of nature. But it is childish sophistry to pretend that such anatomies are revealed by the announcement that the stuff of those relations is there because we put it there. and toward larger questions. and success in answering its questions is no guarantee of skill in answering or even adequately framing questions of another kind.100 The move to metaphysics is the move from the reductive. Spinoza explains that there is an aspect of God or nature that we understand in terms of intelligence. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . The self (as all real mystics know) is not caught but lost by self-absorption.168. what Havel calls our natural world. Steve Odin. because.72. There is nothing wrong with the partitive type of question. although the humility of science might. at a cost of ever higher orders of abstraction from the wholeness and thickness of life. as he insisted. The image that we saw was not ourselves. It is recovered only when we "objectify"-look away from our own image and toward nature and other persons.also remains. but just an image. because we have that too. mind is not the best of things. there are infinite other aspects-as there must be. inner connectedness of things questions is somehow the stuff of the relations that respond to our whys.Goodman 99 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.

168.Confessions XI19-37. Book I.For Bergson's reflections on Zeno's paradoxes. 7 . 6 .72. there is no doubt that he would have been led to revise his views on the psychological origin of the popular idea of causality. 31. Switzerland: Harwood. 372. I was attracted equally by science and by letters. "Michotte and Hume on Mechanical Causation. 1888).Section II. Roots of Bergson's Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press. Bergson and Modern Thought (Chur. From a Bergsonian point of view. University Press of Louvain). 1974). geometrical modeling of nature in particular." For the impact on Bergson's thought of the ideas of Jules Tannery. T.1-2. see Ben-Ami Scharfstein.See Albert EduardMichotte. A. p. G. of course. And then. first French ed. Selby-Bigge (London: 1968. Papanicolaou and Pete A. Bergson came to Zeno's paradoxes and thus to the problem of time with the background of a promising mathematics student. Miles and ElaineMiles (London:Methuen.222 on Sat. Y.Enneads V 7." in Hume and the Enlightenment: Essays Presented to Ernest Campbell Mossner (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press. R. 8-19. Of his school days he writes: "it was at Condorcet that I experienced the first and perhaps the only hesitation of my life.My physicist friend David Yount has argued (in a private paper) that the temporal moment should be envisioned "as an arbitrarilyshort interval" and duration as "the sum or integral over a number of such intervals.. Emile Boutroux and others in subverting the claims of mechanistic science in general and the mathematical. Jules Lachelier. when I had decided for letters. Gunter. my teacher of mathematics came and made a scene before my parents. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). pp. 1943).p.." in Andrew C. L. Part II. 1987). telling them I was about to commit an irremediable act of folly. see his "L'lntuition philosophique. eds. it is not the immediacy of any impression of causal force that is essential to the critique of Hume but the relationality and thus temporality in the sense of duration implicit in the Humean notion of succession.Whitehead's. This relationality is concealed when Hume treats succession as the mere occurrence now of one sensum now of another. Macnabb. the fictive dialogue between Hume and Michotte by D. The Perception of Causality. ed." Cf. Michotte wrote (p. I felt an equal aptitude for mathematics and philosophy. 1963. 1946. 2 . trans. reprinted in La Pensee et le Mouvant (Paris." The profit is that the Laplacean fiction of a point instant PhilosophyEast& West 100 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. 3. 5 . C." Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale 19 (1911). 256): "If Hume had been able to carry out experiments such as ours.1934). 4 .

cf. my attention is present with me. 1976).See M. first published as Kunst der Farbe (Ravensburg:Otto Maier. 1961). billions of vibrations. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press. Loemker. 1690. March 23. 13 . February 21." 12 . Selby-Bigge. Section II.that is still somehow pregnant with the future (and indeed with all possible pasts and futures) is eliminated. 237-292. ed. "Leibniz'Thought Priorto the Year 1670: From Atomism to a Geometrical Kinetism." 8 . 11 . 10 . 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ." in Papanicolaou and Gunter. that is a series of events which. and S. Hypothesis and Perception (London: Allen and Unwin. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters (Dordrecht: Reidel. Korff(New York:Van Nostrand. Augustine.G. "Bergson's Theory of the Mind Brain Relation. ed.222 on Sat. so that through it what was future may be conveyed over to become past. to John Bernoulli. I experience a succession of visual sensations each of which is the condensation of an extraordinarily long history unrolled in the external world. pp. L. after B. able to contract them into one picturesque sensation of light" (quoted in Capek. 139-140). May 29. Bergson remarked trenchantly in his Huxley Lecture at the University of Birmingham. The Primeval Atom: An Essay on Cosmology. Part I. Book I. Section I. 16." Revue Internationale de Philosophie 20 (1966):249-256. occupy only a second of my own consciousness. to Arnauld. 18-19. cf.An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1699. 513. would take me thousands of years to count. succeeding one another. whatever I pluck off from it and let fall into the past enters the realm of memory. pp.See his Discourse on Metaphysics 13. 20-21 (from the 1777 ed. There are then. A. pp. and the causal efficacy of events at a given moment is not reduced to their logical relation to all other events via a set of ontologically mysterious "laws.Cf. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1970). trans. pp.See Johannes Itten. 1950). 6. But all the while. 1982). 1973). Bergson and Modern Thought. ErrolHarris.168. p. The Art of Color (New York:Van Nostrand. which would fill thirty centuries of a matter become conscious. 9 . but once I have begun. Lemaitre. my expectation is extended over the whole. my memory of what I have repeated and my expectation of what I am about to repeat. pp. Confessions XIxxviii 38: "Iam about to repeat a Psalm that I know. Hume has the candor to allow that one who had never seen a particular shade of blue would still notice its LennE. 360. 310. Yet these momentous events. cf. 1911: "When I open and close my eyes in rapid succession. So the life of this action of mine extends in two directions. Capek. even with the greatest possible economy of time. all in Leroy E.Goodman 101 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.).72. Before I begin.

Andison (Totowa.Capek urges that "the volume of the present. intuitions are invariably complex.Bergson. reprint of London: Allen Unwin. or in certain respects. p. 83. subjectively. 15 . or what may be called 'the mnemic span. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .d.absence from a continuous progression containing all other shades. Their givenness is not dependent on their supposed atomicity. The supposed simplicity of sensory intuitions is emblematic of their givenness.Cf. pp. 1971). p.See Capek. their all-at-onceness. 140. 20 . New Jersey: LittlefieldAdams. And he treats the case as "so singular. 141-142. 17 . Bergson and Modern Physics (Dordrecht: Reidel. But this was achieved only by ignoring the ontological unities in the case.Bergson. cf. but even phenomenologically they may be quite complex: no matter how often I have dived into cool water. Bergson and Modern Thought. and would be able to supply the missing shade. p.' is variable. L. PhilosophyEast& West 22 . and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim. The sensation is rich.In Papanicolaou and Gunter. 19 . In Search of Omar Khayyam. Physically. When medieval philosophers called cause and effect "correlatives" they were canonizing in logic the same natural relationship that Hume canonically ignored. n. 16. pp. I can never anticipate the actual sensation I feel each time I dive.It was a device of Hume's to designate the elements of a natural event by different names.72. Elwell-Sutton (New York: Columbia University Press. 30-39. Bergsonand Modern Thought. 1971). that it is scarcely worth our observing. 18 . derived from the correspondent impressions." But he applies the point strictly psychologically (Papanicolaou and Gunter.Milic Capek. Capek. in every instance. A Study in Metaphysics: The Creative Mind." Hume does not recognize how typical the case of the particularshade of blue actually is: All simple percepts are the achievements of integrative activity. 1965). He infers:"the simple ideas are not always. trans. pp. Ali Dashti. and for its moment all-engulfing. 211. The Creative Mind. 141-142). in Papanicolaou and Gunter. complex. Mabelle L. 226-236.. Bergson and Modern Physics. 21 . so as to demonstrate their logical independence on the basis of their logical discreteness. Bergson and Modern Thought. pp. P. trans.222 on Sat.See Capek.168. 14 ." But he evades the further inference that "simple ideas" and even "simple impressions" may be simple only superficially. Bergson and Modern 102 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.

appears to me as a unity of an apex of a summit to which I narrow myself by an effort of attention-an effort which is prolonged during the whole of life. 71.168. Hartshorne writes: "But Bergson is consistent in taking preservative becoming as the paradigm of reality. It is true that Bergson has a notion of the continued living presence of the actions of the past. 26 . and the discussions led by Margaret Masterman and Dorothy Emmet in The Pardshaw Dialogues: Sense Awareness and the Passage of Nature. Whitehead came in the end to quantize time. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .Cf. p. is the very essence of life." p. "Context. 28 . But. 372." p. Lenn E. 27 . 1903: "The more I try to grasp myself by consciousness. in Process Studies 16.See my Monotheism (Totowa. was not. the more I perceive myself as the totalization or Inbegriffof my own past. 1920).72. New Jersey: Allenheld Osmun. just as clearly as it is a denial of freedom to deny the power of the present to break away from the past.Hartshorne. "Bergson Compared. pp. 372.Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library. 'The unity of Self' of which philosophers speak. What Hartshorne values most highly in Bergson is the theological foundation of this point of Whitehead's. 25 . 129-130. 29 . 103-104. p.. 3 (July 1988): 307-323. 1947). for Bergson.222 on Sat. This was a great step.. 126." "Bergson Compared. not the embalming of its pastness. 24 . 54-60. but I think in so doing he lost some of the value of his original more Aristotelian and Spinozistic approach. that regards occasions as differentiated more by the interconnectedness of their active constituents than by isolation from their environment. But for Bergson what mattered most was the taking up of the past in life."To deny the purchase of the past upon the present is to deny causality. this past being contracted with a view to action. memory here had something of the sense that metallurgists give the term." Philosophy East and West 38 no.See Alfred North Whitehead. Under the influence of quantum discoveries. Bergson's letter of March 25. of course. 117.. Goodman 103 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. 377. like Leibniz' 'perception'." 373. Bergson and Modern Thought. as it seems to me. cf. since only through causality can the will effectuate its designs. 1981). Memory. pp. and which. confined to the mental realm. 23 . and Dorothy Emmet in The Pardshaw Dialogues. "Bergson Compared. no." in Papanicolaou and Gunter.Hartshorne. p. as Kant saw vividly.Physics.Hartshorne. p. 2 (1987): 91-92. moral freedom has no meaning without causality. "Bergson Compared. The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1991). Endowed with creativity. but the very activity fueling the subjects" (The Epochal Nature of Process in Whitehead's Metaphysics (Albany: SUNY Press. talents. is to substitute a metaphysical truth for an empiric one-a kind of category error.Cf. but is its complement. despite the Biblicaladmonition to remember. that admonition is accompanied by the admonition to blot out the name of Amalek. E. capacities. when we speak of dispositions.. Bradford Wallack writes: "There is nothing passive or static about objects. we are not excluding the instantiation of such potentials. How little we know of Elam or Ebla-how little we know of Amalek. and the like. Indeed.. Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (Albany: SUNY Press. Who can deny.72. ed. esp. they are in fact very forceful and energetic. Princeton University. 31 .168. and the unalterability of what is past is not the same as its persistence.D. Surely. Goodman. dissertation. on learning of the suicide of Primo Levi or the schizophrenia of some child of the camps. that Hitler. 140).To reduce the continuing presentness of the past to the unalterable facticity of past events. The ontic status of various kinds of potentiality is quite varied. not actual. Aquinas' Lost Legacy: God's Practical Knowledge and Situated Human Freedom (Ph. But it is absurd to claim that no actuality corresponds to PhilosophyEast&West 104 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. and these are virtual. blurred and averaged into forgetfulness by the interference patterns of new and other old events.Under the rubric "The creativity of the past.. or that the Holocaust left no intact survivors. Goodman. On Justice (New Haven: Yale University Press. aspects of the efficient causation of new subjects. E. Objects are not simply the passive recipients of the actions of subjects. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .The echoes of the past die. that the ability to forget is the counterpart and condition of the ability to remember.30 . David Burrell. is still exacting casualties. 1980).It is somewhat disingenuous for Hartshorne to rely on the logical contrast of potentiality with actuality to ground the claim that the potential is nothing actual. 4-5. as Bergson saw.See L. as Hartshorne tends to do. long after his demise. But consciousness is not nature.222 on Sat. all unconscious. the antecedent occasions which are the data of prehensions. Joseph Incandela. 34 . the presentness of memory is not the living presence of the past (which might lie. And it is true.. 32." F. chaps. 1991). in the genes). 1986). the aspect no longer accessible to praxis. 33. Aristotle located potentiality in matter and found the boundaries of potential change in the specificities of matter. "Why Not Pursue the Metaphor of Artisan and View God's Knowledge as Practical?"in L. p. A disposition may intend a variety of possibilities.

for example al-GhazalT. Bouyges. Bergson and Modern Thought. in Papanicolaou and Gunter. The same desire to body forth the transcendent is present in the paintings of Inness as in the essays of Emerson. the temporality of the hypostatic Soul. Monotheistic creationists. 373-374. or the use of "state of the art engineering equipment" to validate claims about psychokinesis and "precognitive remote perception. in the attempt to capture ectoplasm on film. 36. 1962). 37 ." 35 .. "Bergson Compared. Crescas. 30.72. via the temporality of discursive thinking. still more vulgarly. p. Dunne..2d ed. pp." pp.g. M. Plotinian duration. which may be considered to vary considerably. of as duration the Plotinian (created) time. is psychic rather than physical and mediates the transition from the atemporality of pure thought to the temporality of nature. G..Spiritualism reveals its materialist backdrop in its pictorialism and in other unceasing efforts to physicalize the "spiritworld"-to make it answer to the epistemic categories of materialism and the sensuous demands of empiricism. As Wolfson showed." See R. 1969. that the masa harina which might be made into tortillas or something else (but not into a chili relleno) has no actuality at the basis of its potentiality. Goodman 105 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.. ed. Quite the contrary with the new tradition. 271-307. It takes even more concrete form in the novelists' convention of the appearance of some fetish or sign from the "Beyond" at the climax of a chilling tale or. 1.. 373. Wallack writes (p. rem.See.. Lewis Ford has produced a diagram which . in a archetype adapted way anticipating Bergson's discovery that real duration is not convii 8 and H.. The object was not to engage God in temporality but to derive temporality from God. (Beirut:Catholic Press. vol. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .them. Lenn E. Saadiah. includes Philo. pp. A. the idea of duration originates with Plotinus and his project of discovering a mode of temporality that would not be the mere measure and correlative of motion. and my "Maimonides and Leibniz. Maimonides.222 on Sat.. See Enneads III The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Process of his Reasoning (New York: Schocken. in a sequence that and Albo... or to suggest that its transformation from a potential to an actual tortilla is taken simply as a "rebaptizing..'. Wolfson. There is even a debate as to the exact specious present. p.168. 197): "The time spans of actual occasions are subject to many a curious calculation. Harvard. Jahn and B. e. 1934). J.Hartshorne. The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-Falasifa). 331346."Journal of Jewish Studies 31 (1980): 214-236. 'standardizes the temporal length of an occasion. perhaps between 20 milliseconds for a human occasion and 20-24 seconds for subatomic occasions. fined to the realm of thought. 57. 38 Ibid. al-TabrizT.

2:115: "Whithersoever you turn. Bouyges (Beirut:Catholic Press. Guide to the Perplexed 11 19. so the assumption of the eternity of time is refuted" in Philoponus Against the Eternity of the World. esp. Hyman. 44 . 56. ed. 197."The Human Self: An Actual Entity or a Society?" Process Studies 5 (1975):203. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . Paris. R." in Personhood. 1169c: "time co-exists with the heavens and the world . 41 . 1959). 42 . 1987). and Rem B. 92-99: "Time is uniquely performed in art" (p. 375. p. see Bergson's review of 1909. 1990). De Opificio Mundi 7. 32. pp.Philo. 58-59.72. trans. "The Possibility of the Universe in Ibn STnaand Maimonides. pp. pp. Kate Loewenberg (London.See Eliot Deutsch. p..Maimonides.168. Apparently God is to become and perish faster than any earthly actual occasion. 1930. there is the face of God". 39 . Incoherence East & West of the Philosophers. Christian Wildberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press.1908).See Emile Meyerson. 99).Qur'an 28:88. reprinted in A.222 on Sat. 1977). "On the Being of Time.. Bergson and Modern Physics.the exact duration of the time-span of God. 1982). Burrelland B. 40 . trans." American Academy for Jewish al-FarabT. p. Identity and Reality. Creativity and Freedom (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. al-GhazalT.. Identite et Realit. see my "Three Meanings of the Idea of Creation. See The Epochal Nature. 21.Capek. 303-334.ed. see Emil Fackenheim. 368-397. cf. pp. ed. apud Simplicius On Aristotle's Physics.. Maimonides. Edwards. Philosophy 106 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. II 13. 45 .26." in D.For the values tied up in the idea of creation. in Ecrits et Paroles. p." Wallack cites discussions from Hartshorne and Cobb as to just how short the divine specious present must be for God to be present at the beginning and end of each worldly occasion to present it with a subjective aim and receive it as objectively immortal. Research 16 (1947): 39-70. Bergson and Modern Physics. McGinn. 1930). Capek. Guide to the Perplexed. cf.. Philoponus. 66). cf. esp. 108. 140. Bergson and Modern Physics. pp.originated with it" Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahafut al-Tahafut). M.. eds.Capek. Mosse-Bastide (Paris:Presses Universitaires de France. Essays in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Philosophy (New York: Ktav. God and Creation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.. Averroes reports that "Most people who hold the world to have originated hold time to be. 238-256. 46 . 85-113. 43 . al-GhazalT: "Duration (al-mudda) and time according to us are created" (Incoherence of the Philosophers.

pp. The issue Neville poses is precisely the one posed by Spinoza's insistence on the distinction between the self-caused and the uncaused.. by contrast... rather limp-wristed for- 48 . seeing in the Whiteheadian dissatisfaction with divine creation and the resultant division of God from creativity not only an arbitrarybifurcation of the divine but a descent into a kind of positivism: "The basic ontological problem. my Monotheism. Goodman 107 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. where exponents of creation traditionally welcome creativity. 61-69). finds a lasting significance in the idea of creation: "the important category at the ontological level has to do with creation ex nihilo. AntiDarwinism in the nineteenth century did not defend Biblicism but hid behind it to guard the Aristotelian essentialism in which Victorian theism was invested. "And at the cosmological level something like Plato's irreducible contrast between being and becoming exhibits more intensity for experience than the swallowing of being in becoming or vice versa" (p.168. universal history. not with creativity. Goodman and M. giving birth to the ideas of evolution... cf. Neville. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . Goodman.. 374-a mulation of Popper's falsifiabilitytest! 49 .Hartshorne. cosmic origination. Neville proposes a synthesis of creation with creativity when he writes: "God is the creator of every determinate thing. The real quarrel of today's anti-Darwinists. J. Creativity must simply be accepted as something given. of course. We rightly boggle at this. Robert Neville is trenchant at this juncture.47- Creationism proved more fruitful in these areas than steady state notions.. he might as well say that events happen with pure spontaneity and no causation. 44-45.." Zygon 18 (1983): 3-43.72. the contingency of matter.. The reason is that Plato's "irreducible"dichotomy represents a balance rather than a reduction. "Bergson Compared. and. "Creation and Evolution:Another Round in an Ancient Struggle. If Whitehead accepts the irrationality of the category of the ultimate. pp. The issue here is whether the irrationality of the category of the ultimate must be accepted. each in its own occasion of spontaneous appearance." he writes. That is. there is no decision responsible for the basic togetherness of one and many in creativity." p. It is a betrayal of rational faith" (Creativityand God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York: Seabury Press. Whitehead's response .. In contrast to God's ontological creativity.. now addressing Hartshorne. would have to be that .222 on Sat. 50).. E. see L. it dismisses creation.Classical Process Theology seems not quite so accommodating. is with a kind of neo-Spencerian triumphalism that is thought to take aid and comfort from evolutionism. 1980). "is to account for the unity of many and one through creativity." he writes.. he accepts an irrationality in one place yet does not accept it in an analogous one. Lenn E.

by stressing the use of the imperfect tense and the linking of eternal and continuous grace or favor (hesed) with the ongoing act of creating the "great lights" of the heavens. Gremil.. Paul Weiss: "To create is to make something be. 374." Mercure de France. God is utterly transcendent" (p. p. if it is not truly and fully and indelibly his. 55 ." in R. 86-97. he was well aware of the risks of vitiating or vacating metaphysical judgments by making them independent of all possible confirmation or disconfirmation.Neville writes: "Apart from the relative nature the divinity gives itself as creator in creating the world. in occasions brings unity out of multiplicity" (pp. 56 . Maimonides: "every predicate we assign to Him either designates East & West His act or.. He proudly and truthfully stated: "I have constant recourse to scientific argumentation" (M.. 8). Roots of Bergson's Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press. cited in Ben-Ami Scharfstein. Weiss' comments are made in criticism of Thomism.168.222 on Sat. The Physical World of Late Antiquity (London: Routledge. 50 . on Guide 11 20-21. pp. Richard Sorabji. 53 .cosmological creativity is the descriptive fact that the spontaneity. 1988).See my "Matter and Form as Attributes of God in Maimonides' Philosophy.ed. cf. 52 ." p.. Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman (Washington: Catholic University of America Press. ed. ka-amur: "le-'oseh orim gedolim." glossing Psalm 136:7. If Socrates' existence does not belong to him. cf. if intended to apply to Him rather than His work. and Rambam (New York:Viking. pp. 8-9). 10). 1976). 108.See my "GhazalTs Argument from Creation. 169). 54 . p. pp. 175-204. pp. 168-188. 1974).Hartshorne. 397 (1914). To explore this fully would take us far beyond the confines of the present essay. 1943). A Straight Path . the chapters by Michael Wolff and LindsayJudson. Link-Salinger.Although Bergson did not share the positivist penchant for equating meaning with verifiability or falsifiability. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . but I see a powerful affinity between Maimonides' position and Neville's partly Thomistic response to Whitehead/Hartshorne. 1962). Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ki-le'olam hasdo. 154-175.See Shmuel Sambursky. "Bergson Compared.72. "Report of a Visit to Bergson.From the blessings before the Shema: Ha-mehadesh be-tuvo be-khol yom tamid ma'aseh bereshit. then surely he was never created" (Beyond All Appearances (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1987). to give it an existence." InternationalJournal of Middle Eastern Studies 2 (1971):67-85. 51 . its Philosophy 108 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. esp.

The Whiteheadian idea of co-creation can be fruitfully compared with the idea found in Saadiah. for one. takes delight "in"'it. 63 . 1978). 66 . 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . p. and Spinoza. 6-21. that God rejoices in and through the world.222 on Sat. 262). trans. 249-251. by human nature. Exordium. III17-18. Ransoming the Time (New York: Scribners. or by the Law. as The Book of Beliefs and Opinions (New Haven: Yale University Press. we should not be surprised if the answers reason presents fail to fall within the familiar sensory categories of the realm we were seeking to explain: Choosing Critically among Beliefs and Convictions I. 59 . God's impersonality. 62 . while Process philosophy pursues the pagan thrust (Jewish Identity. 58 . trans. I would have become a convert. pp. when we seek the ultimate conditions of the world's existence. 92-94).Cf. pp. say. for I the Lord thy God am holy. Leone Hebreo.Cf.See Goodman.168. 64 . 1991). my On Justice (New Haven: Yale University Press. esp. 65 . 255-257. Rosenblatt."IfGod be the Elan Vital. Jewish Identity in an Age of Ideologies (New York: Ungar. 251-252. as taking the spiritual direction in Bergson's philosophy. Agus.See Guide to the Perplexed 11 36-37. The Mystery of Existence (New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts. which is to break upon the world.See Milton Munitz. I wanted to remain among those who tomorrow will be persecuted" (quoted in Jacques Maritain.significance is in denying the privation of such a character" (Guide I 58. S. Goodman. 101 n." Thus the Rabbis argue: we are called upon not to imitate. Jewish Identity. 38-39. in Rambam. As Saadiah argued over a thousand years ago. but His generosity and forbearance-to develop whatever would be a perfection in us.LennE. 1941). the response applies equally to Hartshorne. 1965).72.In 1937."in Jacob B. in which I see the complete fulfillment of Judaism. pp.Agus sees Teilhard de Chardin. p. 60 . pp. had I not seen in preparation for years a formidable wave of Antisemitism. Maritain was a Catholic follower of Berg. pp.Leviticus 19:2 commands "You shall be holy. Monotheism. where Bergson's (ultimately Parmenidean) argument that the idea of nothingness is somehow logically flawed is shown to be not only psychologistic but dependent on the limited capabilities of the imagination. 145-146. and the dimensions of our perfectibility are not left unspecified. Agus. pp. Bergson wrote: "My reflections have led me closer and closer to Catholicism. 1948). and loves Himself through it. 57 .Goodman 109 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. 61 .

222 on Sat. University of Western Ontario Series in the Philosophy of Science (Boston: Reidel. p. J. Rambam. 83 . Butts. p. The Wine of Life and other essays on Society.Ibid. 13.. pp. 209. 30-31." in R. pp. 78 . 77 . 29.. 1-14. p. "Genesis and Observership." in Papanicolaou and Gunter. 71 . 67 .Ibid. p.Ibid. trans.Ibid. 72 . cf." in D.son. and Living Things(New York:St. 2-3.1979). in DeLuca. 1977). M. Andison (New York:Philosophical Library. 80 . 74 ."Lifeand Mind in the Universe. Mayonnaise and the Origin of Life(New York:Scribners.. 238). pp. Energy. pp.. 73 . PhilosophyEast& West 85 . Bergson and Modern Thought. pp.Ibid. p. Cosmic Joys and Local Pain:Musings of a Mystic Scientist (New York: Scribners.168.When the Petain regime to collaborate with Hitler. The Human Mystery (Heidelberg:Springer.. 203. 84 ."Lifeand Mind in the Universe. 81 . 1987). (1955)). 82 . Martins. 4. 203.Ibid. 1986). Human Mystery. Wheeler. 3. p. 3-4. Hintikka. 1985). see his Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism. p." in DeLuca. "Modern Science and Pantheism. Essays on Creativity and Science (Honolulu: Hawaii Council of Teachers of English. L. 343-352.See Los Alamos Science 16 (1988).Wheeler (1977). A. Morowitz. "The Universe as a Home for Man. pp.SirJohn Eccles.Cf.J. cited in Eccles." American Scientist 62 (1974): 683-691. 262-277.. DeLuca. Essays. 70 . 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . 209. 10.Guide to the Perplexed III 110 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192."Consciousness and Cosmology: Their Interrelations. p. p. Bergson returned all his French agreed medals and awards: "He stood in line to register as a Jew and wore his six-pointed star with pride until the day of his death" (Agus.Morowitz. eds.. 5-7. Essays. 69 . 76. 28. 75." pp. 68 . 79 .Eccles. 1979).Harold Morowitz. p. Jewish Identity. Human Mystery.Ibid.72.. ed..

As the Hebrew liturgy puts it. 1967).222 on Sat. 93 . Das Prinzip geographischer Rassenkreise und das Problem der Artbildung (Berlin:Borntraeger. LennE. H." Philosophy of Science 56 (1989): 373-394. 14. p.See Errol Harris. p. 1954). but physics itself is hardly relevant to their quest: if subjectivism holds. instantaneous velocity and location (Bergson and Modern Physics. cf.The Leibniz Arnauld Correspondence. 94 . p. T. Goodman in International Journal of Group Tensions 19 (1989): 221-243. Nature. E. 87.. 1974) and Dobzhansky's preface. p. p. Capek's fine argumentation would hardly satisfy those who seek a free pass for subjectivism in the findings of science. 284-299. 95Capek shows how Bergson. Goodman and M.See his Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1968.Rensch's concept of the Rassenkreis gave evolutionary significance to racial variations among biological strains. 119. Race(New York:Oxford University Press.72. 19. Mason (Manchester: Manchester University Press. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . "The Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology. 295. 90 .168. 398.Freeman Dyson. 1929). 300 cites an appreciation of Bergson by Einstein on this point). 365-384. His 1928 paper and 1929 monograph on the subject were bellwethers of German biology for the 1930s. Introduced to the American reading public by Theodosius Dobzhansky as one of the most penetrating theorists of evolution in the twentieth century.See Adolf Grunbaum. p. trans. pp. Mind and Modern Science (London: Allen and Unwin. cf. Evolution Above the Species Level (New York: Columbia. 1989). 891-894.86 . who appealed to the Rassenkreis to ground the claim that it is "absolutely necessary" for scientists to obliterate "all distinction between races and species. 83 and nn.Leibniz Arnauld Correspondence.Goodman 111 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. p. John Baker. See L. 26. Infinite in All Directions (New York:Harper and Row. 296. 92 . sof ma'aseh be-mahshavah tehilla: What was last in the making was first in the design. 1974). undercuts the popular subjectivist readings of quantum phenomena: indeterminacy would reflect not the mere involvement of the observer but the impossibility in principle of fixating the ultimacy of change in a single. 89 . Rensch was taken up by the racist physical anthropologist John Baker. 1973). 91 -Ibid." See Bernhard Rensch. read in the light of de Broglie's 19281953 outlook. physics (including the indeterminacy principle) lacks the authority they seek to build on. J. 88 . p.

98 . but with applications of them.Vaclav Havel.2.5. 103 . and Republic 509B. "People. 381-398.72.. more like a cancer that must be cut out than like a blemish that may be salved or masked. Goodman (New Haven: Yale University Press. 100-119. I quote from pp. esp.See The Book of Theodicy. 386. p. 101 . 8. L. "Anti-PoliticalPolitics. 383. 158-161.Homo Sapiens: From Man to Demigod (New York:Columbia University Press. E. As I write. 102 ." "And what made the difference?" Silver.96 . 99 . cf. 389-390. Saadiah Gaon's Commentary on Job.Enneads VI 9." the young man answers. pp.168. PhilosophyEast& West 112 This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192. "What do you see?" he asks. see my review of Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. 100 . ed.1.222 on Sat. V 1. Part I."in John Keane. 392. the new Czechoslovak government that Vaclav Havel helped to found and rose to lead is contracting to sell off its excess tanks to Syria-ironic evidence of the truth in Havel's words that the smokestack staining the horizon is not just some aberration but an almost organic outgrowth of the land we live on.2. 1988).An old Hasidic story tells of the sage who instructs a young man to look through the window. CivilSociety and the State (London: Verso.I emphasize that my concern here is not with implications of Bergson's views. Propositions 9. Ethica. I 7.. 1972). Definition 6. pp. 10. 24 Nov 2012 03:27:47 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions .8. in The International History Review 8 (1986):107-111. and my introduction. Turning the youth around to face a mirror. 1988).the sage asks again.Spinoza. "Now what do you see?" "Only myself. 97For the example of the Islamic lands. trans. pp.