>Brian
>
>On Sun, 08 Mar 1998 21:59:55 -0500, Brian D Harper wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>SJ>The God-of-the-gaps argument is really based on the implicit
>>>assumption that naturalism is more likely to be true and theism
>>>more likely to be false:
>>>
>>>"Theistic evolutionists' standard use of the phrase "God of the gaps"
>>>to discourage consideration of nonnaturalistic possibilities, for
>>>example, comes straight out of their implicit MN...The problem, very
>>>briefly stated, is this: if employing MN is the only way to reach true
>>>conclusions about the history of the universe, and if the attempt to
>>>provide a naturalistic history of the universe has continually gone
>>>from success to success, and if even theists concede that trying to do
>>>science on theistic premises always leads nowhere or into error (the
>>>embarrassing "God of the gaps"), then the likely explanation for this
>>>state of affairs is that naturalism is true and theism is false."
>>>(Johnson P.E., "Reason in the Balance", 1995, p211)
>
>BH>The more likely explanation is our inability to know the mind
>>of God. The issues involved here were grapled with by theistic
>>scientists before Darwin. Design was excluded from science due
>>to the concerted efforts of many scientists, many of whom
>>were theists and many of whom were creationists.
>
>SJ>Disagree entirely. Exclusion of design is "tantamount to atheism"
>as Darwin's defender, Harvard botanist and theistic evolutionist
>Asa Gray conceded:
>
Exclusion of design from science is not the same as exclusion
of design. Further, we have to be careful what we mean by
design. Does design imply intervention or only mindful
intention?
[Asa Gray's opinion noted]
>
>BH>The following quote from D'Alembert provodes a nice
>>summary of thereasons:
>>
Wow, I should have run my spell checker. "provodes" ??? ;-)
>D'Alembert quote:
>>The laws of equilibrium and of motion are necessary truths.
>
>SJ>This immediately is a false assumption from which all else follows.
Or perhaps you misunderstood what D'Alembert meant by necessary
truths. Since he is talking about mechanics, perhaps he meant
that the laws of equilibrium and of motion are the fundamental
axioms of mechanics. Being as I know something of D'Alembert's
approach to mechanics, this was fairly obvious to me. D'Alembert
is best known for reducing dynamics problems to equilibrium
problems. He also sought to remove totally the concept of
force from mechanics, preferring instead to relate everything
to the motion of bodies. Thus we see these two key elements
of D'Alembert's mechanics in his statement. The fundamental
axioms are equilibrium and motion, all else in mechanics
follows. D'Alembert's principle lives on, but his general
system of mechanics has been discarded. For one thing, D'Alembert
had a rough time dealing with statics problems :).
>SJ>A
>ncessary truth is something that *cannot* not be so (see Geisler N.L.,
>"Christian Apologetics", 1976, p239). The Bible tells us that
>everything created is contingent, ie. it *can* not be so, eg. it was not
>so before the beginning and it will not be so in the end. D'Alembert
>thus reveals himself as one who believes in some sense in the eternity
>of physical laws and/or matter, ie. he is a materialist or dualist. He
>was a rationalist sceptic who was hostile to Christianity, and is
>certainly no theist role model.
I had not intended to hold D'Alembert up as a role model
for theism, sorry if anyone got this idea. This is my
fault as I followed my statement:
"Design was excluded from science due
to the concerted efforts of many scientists, many of whom
were theists and many of whom were creationists."-- BH
with the D'Alembert quote. But as I stated previously, the
quote was intended to provide a summary of the reasons for
excluding design from science.
>SJ>Here is what the encyclopaedia says
>about him:
>
[...]
>(Grimsley R., "Alembert, Jean Le Rond d'",
>Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984, Vol. 1, p464)
>
Thanks for this info, I really appreciate it. It led me
to a book written by Grimsley [<Jean D'Alembert (1717-83)>,
Clarendon Press, 1963] which I checked out of the library
a few days ago.
Previously I had read only bits and pieces here and there
about D'Alembert. Several authors pointed out that D'Alembert
never discussed his religious or theological views in
public. Sometimes this was followed by speculations as to
what they might be, sometimes not. Grimsley also mentions
this point, but he was able to find some of D'Alembert's
unpublished private letters which other scholars had not
seen. These put the question, IMHO, beyond any doubt.
D'Alembert did believe in God, but, like Einstein would
later say, his God was the God of Spinoza. So, he would
not be a theist in any traditional sense.
I found it to be rather a sad story. Reading between the
lines it seems to me that D'Alembert may have been driven
to his rejection of Christianity due to his many and
bitter fights with the Jesuits. At one point he was even
compared with Pascal (if anyone hasn't read Pascal's
Provincial Letters, you're really missing out. Very
funny and witty satirical attack on the Jesuits).
Pascal seems to have been pushed towards a deeper relationship
with God, D'Alembert pushed to the brink of atheism. A sad
story.
[...]
>BH>...The nature of the Supreme Being is
>>too well concealed for us to be able to know directly what
>>is, or is not, in conformity with his wisdom. We can only
>>discover the effect of his wisdom by the observation of the
>>laws of nature, since mathematical reasoning has made the
>>simplicity of these laws evident to us, and experiment has
>>shown us their application and scope.
>
>SJ>This is either agnosticism or Deism. I am surprised that you
>think it OK.
>
I think you have misunderstood D'Alembert's point. Remembering
that he is talking about mechanics, let me illustrate as
follows. Based on your knowledge of God and His intentions
in designing the best of all possible worlds, can you tell
me which of the following concepts of force conforms best
with His wisdom?
(a) force is proportional to mass times velocity (Descartes).
(b) force is proportional to mass times velocity squared
(Leibniz).
(c) force is proportional to mass times acceleration (Newton).
(d) force is a metaphysical concept which should be banished
from science completely (D'Alembert:).
I think Newton provides a good example of the
points I'm trying to make. Newton believed
that the laws he discovered reflect the wisdom
of the Creator and that his scientific work
represented a much clearer argument for design than
the biological contrivances of the Paley type
argument. He encouraged the use of his work
in apologetics. In a letter to Richard Bentley
Newton wrote:
#"When I wrote my treatise upon our Systeme I had
# an eye upon such Principles as might work with
# considering men for the belief of a Deity and
# nothing can rejoice me more than to find it
# useful for that purpose"-- Newton
But Newton kept a clear distinction between
science and metaphysics. He believed the laws
of nature reflect God's wisdom, but he did
not employ any views he may have had on what
types of laws a wise Creator might use (i.e.
he did not employ teleology), preferring
instead to just go look at what the Creator
created (empirical method).
Nevertheless, Newton was widely criticized for
trying to bring miracles and occult qualities
back into science, most notably by Leibniz.
Of course, the rivalry between Newton and
Leibniz is famous, but I don't think Leibniz
was being merely polemical in his attacks.
I believe he was genuinely confused by what
Newton was up to.
At issue was this really odd notion that
matter might have some innate and essential
property whereby it can attract other matter
over a distance (no contact) and through a
vacuum. Actually, this is a misunderstanding
of Newton which seems to persist to this
day. Newton did not know what gravity was,
nor would he even feign an hypothesis
"hypotheses non fingo" being one of the
most famous quotes of Newton.
That he also was disturbed by the prospect of
a force acting over a distance and through a
vacuum is shown in the following quote:
# That Gravity should be innate, inherent, and
# essential to matter, so that one body may act
# upon another at a distance through a vacuum,
# without the mediation of anything else, by and
# through which their action and force may be
# conveyed from one to another, is to me so great
# an absurdity that I believe no man who has in
# philosophical matters a competent faculty of
# thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must
# be caused by an agent acting constantly
# according to certain laws; but whether this
# agent be material or immaterial I have left to
# the consideration of my readers.
# --Newton, from his third letter to Richard Bentley.
The last sentence brings us back on topic, from
which I strayed a little :). It turns out that
Newton viewed gravity as being caused by an
immaterial agent, namely God. It's possible that
we would never have known this were it not for
a young theologian (Bentley) who had the courage
to write the great man himself to see what his
views were. In his scientific writings Newton
left such things to "the consideration of my
readers."
Unfortunately, Newton also believed that God had
to regularly intervene in order to keep the
solar system stable. I say unfortunate not to
criticize Newton but rather because of the impact
on apologetics when Laplace showed that the solar
system required no external intervention to
remain stable. And we all remember what Laplace
said to Napolean about God, "I have no need
of that hypothesis."
Let me close out on Newton with one of his most
often quoted statements about metaphysics/science:
# But hitherto I have not been able to discover
# the cause of those properties of gravity from
# phenomena, and I frame no hypothesis; for
# whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is
# to be called an hypothesis; and hypothesis,
# whether metaphysical or physical, whether of
# occult qualities or mechanical, have no place
# in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy
# particular propositions are inferred from the
# phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by
# induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability,
# the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies,
# and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were
# discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity
# really does exist and act according to the laws
# which we have explained, and abundantly serves
# to account for all the motions of the celestial
# bodies and of our sea.
# --Newton, from the General Scholium, <Principia>
# Book III
Perhaps I should have saved the trouble of all the
Newton quotes and just given this short one from
Galileo:
# "What does philosophy got to do with measuring
# anything?" -- Galileo
With apologies to philosophers of course.
>[...]
>
>BH>Richard Owen is an excellent example of the creationists
>>who opposed the use of design in biological science.
>>Owen even went so far as to use the argument from imperfection.
>>Owen's point was very much the same as D'Alembert's. It is
>>not that Owen believed organisms were not designed or that
>>they were not created (he believed both), but that this was
>>not a useful principle for doing science.
>
>SJ>You should be careful in calling Owen a "creationist". He was
>probably only a "creationist" in the Agassiz sense, ie. a
>philosophical idealist.
>
Owen not a creationist? No wonder Bishop Wilberforce did
so poorly in his debate with Huxley. He was prepped for
the debate by a non-creationist :).
Seriously, Steve, I'm very interested in this period in
the history of science. If you've seen any author who
questioned whether Owen was a creationist I would really
like to have the reference.
>>SJ>If that's the case, why be a theist?
>
>BH>Jesus.
>
>SJ>That's great but it contradicts what you posted from D'Alembert,
>about "The nature of the Supreme Being" being "too well concealed
>for us to be able to know directly what is, or is not, in conformity
>with his wisdom." Which is it to be?
>
I hope you will reconsider the implications of the choice you
offer me.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"It is not certain that all is uncertain,
to the glory of skepticism." -- Pascal