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| Ecce anthropos-When Nietzsche met Polkinghorne
In something like the metaphorical language of science fiction, M. Mitchell Waldorp in a popular book on complexity theory asks:
"How did a primordial soup of amino acids and the simple molecules manage to turn itself into the first living cell some four billion years ago? There's no way the molecules could just have fallen together at random as creationists are fond of pointing out... So was the creation of life a miracle? Or was there something else going on in that primordial soup?....Why if the universe started out from the formless miasma of the big bang and has since then been governed by an inexorable tendency towards disorder as described by the second order law of thermodynamics, [how can we explain the fact] that universe has also managed to bring forth structure on every scale?"[1]
Works like that of Waldorp lie side by side on my bookshelf together with Neuromancer, Snow Crash, the novels of Arthur C. Clarke and videos of those who ventured where none had gone before, Kirk and Picard et al. Still, it goes without saying that works of fantasy differ from popular accounts of scientific matters. Thus when physicist Steven Weinberg on the pages of the New York Review of Books inquires, whether the fine-tuning of the world with respect to physical features that lead to or allow for the emergence of human life justify or fail to justify belief in a designer, he is asking whether a given alternative is true, or to use the gold standard of reliability, can the alternative in question be falsified. Credible inquiry, on Weinberg's view, demands trained and credentialled inquirers whether one believes, as Weinberg does, that there is no reason to believe that there is a designer, or whether one holds that "a deity more or less like those of monotheistic religions or some cosmic spirit of order or harmony"[2] is responsible for the order of the whole as John Polkinghorne thinks.
Is the Weinberg/Polkinghorne exchange simply retraversing the familiar terrain of Hume versus Aquinas (or later versions thereof in John Ray or William Paley)? Let us recall Aquinas: "things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always or nearly always in the same way, so as it obtain the best result" leading to the conclusion that things act "not fortuitously but designedly"[3] and that some intelligent being directs the play. Consider Hume: "Matter may contain the source... of order originally within itself as well as mind does; and there is no more difficulty in conceiving that the several elements, from an internal unknown cause, may fall into the most exquisite arrangement" than to conceive that [they proceed from] from an unknown cause."[4] I shall not pursue these earlier formulations even if we can already discern in nuce a Nietzschean question that I shall consider with respect Weinberg and Polkinghorne: the relation of the will to truth and the will to order.
Before moving ahead to the contemporary debate, a caveat: When a paper submitted as serious science turned out to be a hoax cooked up by physicist Alan Sokal to expose what he saw as the postmodern abuse of cutting edge scientific theories in order to shore up postmodern epistemological and social agendas, non-physicists were in effect warned: "Thou shall not overstep thy competence. Stay away from debates in which technical matters are at stake" is a caution not without merit.
Yet, physicists Weinberg and physicist/theologian Polkinghorne (to their credit) engage recondite technical matters in ordinary language. Those who might wishe to do so cannot then justify prohibiting what the existence of these discussions invites: interpretation by philosophers and theologians. The move from formal signs to ordinary language opens the way for the exposure of basic metaphysical assumptions. In examining the Weinberg/ Polkinghorne debate, I do so not in the interest of calling the question -- chance or design -- but rather to show that, despite fundamental differences, they share significant underpinnings that may not be immediately apparent. In order to avoid some difficulties engendered by the Sokal affair, I shall refrain from turning to "canonical" postmodern thinkers as I might do in other contexts and as scientifically trained French commentators such as Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Paul Cillier feel free to do. Instead, I shall, in support of my "common presuppositions" hypothesis, consider some Nietzschean observations about where in this debate the bones lie buried without endorsing his conclusions.
Some Preliminaries: The Scientific Picture
As a non-physicist I cannot avoid risking (minimally, I hope) the Sokal effect if I am to ponder the question of whether or not there is a just-right interplay, a fine-tuning of forces, to allow for the emergence of life. Consider first, the formation of the carbon atom. A balance of strong nuclear forces that hold nuclei together and weak nuclear forces that cause some of them to decay is needed in order "to provide energy and make the heavier elements essential for the chemistry of life. Polkinghorne notes that "the strong force is such that there is an enhancement (a resonance) in just the right place to enable three helium nuclei to stick together and make carbon," the sine qua non for the emergence of life.... "The action of the weak nuclear force enables some stars to explode as supernovae and scatter their nuclear products so that heavier elements that cannot be created in the earlier stellar furnace are formed." [5] Weinberg argues for complex reasons bound up with the energy level of an intermediate state, that of the unstable nucleus of the beryllium isotope, that "the fine tuning of nature here does not seem so fine."[6]
The second often thought to be more powerful argument for design leans on the "energy density of empty space also known as the cosmological constant." Thus Weinberg:
"The cosmological constant could have any value but from first principles one would guess that its value would be very large and could be positive or negative. If large and positive, [it] would act as a repulsive force that increases with distance [and] prevent matter from clumping together in the early universe.... If the cosmological constant were negative it would act as an attractive force increasing with distance, a force that would almost immediately reverse the expansion of the universe and cause it to recollapse leaving no room for the evolution of life... In fact the constant is smaller than might have been guessed from first principles [its value we are told is zero to within one part in 10 to the 120th]."[7]
Although Weinberg acknowledges that we cannot explain in terms of fundamental principles why the cosmological constant is so small, he thinks it likely that with an increase in knowledge, we will be able to answer such questions.
Some Versions of the Anthropic Principle
The generic formulation of the anthropic principle as stated by Polkinghorne reads: only a very finely-tuned universe is capable of producing systems of sufficient complexity and fruitfulness to make them compatible with the production of anthropoi. He goes on to amplify: "The interplay of chance and necessity requires the necessity to have a very special form if anything worthy (by our standards) to be called life is to emerge. It is this surprising conclusion that has been called the Anthropic Principle."[8] Crucial for Polkinghorne is his contention that the anthropic principle, if it is to be credible, must not fail as a scientific principle.
Since the devil is in the details, it is not surprising to find strong and weak versions of the anthropic principle. The strong variant as formulated by Barrow and Tipler (as cited by Polkinghorne) reads: "The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage of its history." "Must" in this account would, for Polkinghorne, smack too strongly of an intrinsic teleology to pass muster as a scientific principle. According to the weak anthropic principle, "the existence of human life imposes certain conditions on the universe and we observe that these must be consistent with our being here to do the observing." This version amounts to no more than the tautological statement: "We're here and so things are the way they are." Both versions are rejected by Polkinghorne, who cleaves instead to what he calls the moderate anthropic principle: "The contingent fruitfulness of the universe [is] a fact of interest calling for an explanation."[9]
The significance of the anthropic principle is not to be settled by science, he holds, but is "a scientific metaquestion arising in science but going beyond what science is competent to discuss."[10]
At present, I wish only to note a certain allergy to the place of teleology within the discourse of science: the protocols of scientific thought preclude the affirmation of teleology as belonging within the framework of scientific explanation whether teleology is seen in light of the transcendent creator God of biblical theology or as internal to the cosmic process as in Spinoza or (fast forward) Grace Jantzen in her account of God's embodiment in the world. Thus Polkinghorne ratchets up the discourse claiming: "We are concerned here not with physics but with metaphysics." Both Polkinghorne and Weinberg would probably agree with culture critic Zigmund Baumann's remark (cited by Raphael Sassower) that "science is indeed a language game with a rule forbidding the use of teleological vocabulary."[11]
Nietzsche: The De-deifier of Nature
Nietzsche's cosmology (insofar as he can be said to have one) could be seen as a nineteenth century anticipation of Weinberg's version of the non-teleological account of the origin of the universe. Thus in The Gay Science, Nietzsche repudiates the perspectives both of organism and mechanism as teleologically tainted. The world cannot be metaphorized as a living being. "We should not reinterpret the exceedingly derivative, late, rare accidental, that we perceive only on the crust of the earth and make of it something essential, universal and eternal" as do those who hold the organism view.[12] Nor is likening machine to world a more fitting analogy in that, unlike machines, the world is not constructed for a purpose. Yet, when Nietzsche goes on to say, "The astral order in which we live is an exception and has allowed for the emergence of the organic," is he edging towards a version of the weak anthropic principle? Think again. Nietzsche proclaims: "The total character of the world is in all eternity chaos -- in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty wisdom and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphism."[13] There are no laws in nature, he contends, but only necessities. Nietzsche does not deny the existence of regularities in nature but rather that there is a regulative divine authority in charge of the process. Thus he writes: "There is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses."[14]
But Nietzsche does not merely try to render moot through irony arguments supporting a designer universe. To understand how and in what sense he illuminates the underlying logic of this debate, we must turn to his account of the relation of science and religion Before doing so let us glance at the Weinberg/Sokal connection one last time. In contrast to Alan Sokal's political concern with postmodernism's break-in (as it were) into the house of science, Weinberg is bothered by what he sees as postmodernism's corruption of a certain order of truth and its adversarial relation to religion. Weinberg insists however that he never meant to expunge those who were personally believers from the history of science, but only to contest the blurring of the boundaries between science and religion.
Yet elsewhere Weinberg seems to invite a certain blurring when he compares the unavoidable limits imposed upon the act of questioning in both physical and theological inquiry. He admits that even if physicists pursue inquiry to its intrinsic limit and succeed in devising a final theory, "we will not have a completely satisfying picture of the world, because we are still left with the question 'why?' Why this theory rather than some other."[15] Although Weinberg argues that the explanatory power of quantum mechanics is not likely to disappear, he concedes that he can nevertheless envisage some other, e.g. a Newtonian universe. Lest theologians take comfort in this admission, he insists that religious theories of design are no better off. Even if, per hypothesis, a religion can offer evidence for preferring one account of God over another, it cannot explain why this should be so. It is precisely the issue of "why", an issue that may be illuminated by drawing upon Nietzsche's analysis of an underlying logic that grounds religion and science.
To see the link, consider first Nietzsche's account of the ascetic ideal, a term Nietzsche does not restrict to the context of self-mortification. What is more, the ascetic ideal must be understood not in terms of what it has done but rather in light of its meaning, "to see what lies hidden behind it, beneath it, in it."[16] The goal of the ascetic ideal is power, the power to bestow meaning, a power that is to belong solely to itself. "It believes that no power exists on earth that does not first have to receive a meaning, a right to exist, a value as a tool of the ascetic ideal."[17]
There is however a purported match for this closed system of "will, goal and interpretation," and that is modern science by which Nietzsche means both natural science and Geisteswissenschaft understood as scholarly research. Science perceives itself as the true philosophy of reality, holding "that [it] possesses the courage for itself... and has up to now survived without God, the beyond and the virtues of denial."[18] But Nietzsche, never short on surprises, declares that the very opposite is true: "Science today has absolutely no belief in itself, let alone an ideal above it -- and where it still inspires ... ardor... and suffering at all, it is not the opposite of the ascetic ideal but rather the latest and noblest form of it." Nietzsche does not deny to science a its rigor and "craftsmanship." But this concession does not subvert the allegation that "science today is the hiding place for every kind of discontentment, disbelief, ... it is the unrest of the lack of ideals."[19]
These "self-styled men of knowledge," as Nietzsche calls them, mistrust believers. They argue that "whenever the strength of a faith is prominently displayed, [one can] infer a certain weakness of demonstrability, even improbability." Faith, these "men of knowledge" contend, cannot prove anything: "It does not establish truth, it establishes probability," the probability of deception.[20] Yet, far from being liberated from the ascetic ideal, Nietzsche asserts, these "men of knowledge" are its latest embodiments. They are not the free spirits they allege themselves to be, but its most spiritualized product, for "they still have faith in truth."[21]
Nietzsche contends further that there is no science without presuppositions, "that a faith must be there first... so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning... a method, a right to exist." Despite its seeming affirmation of nature, of this-worldliness--and this is the upshot for Nietzsche--science presupposes another world. Thus they should admit "We godless men and anti-metaphysicians derive [meaning] from a faith millenia old, the Christian faith which was also Plato's, that God is truth and that truth is divine."[22]
My interest in pursuing this line of thought is not to be taken as endorsement of Nietzsche's conclusions but in his exhuming the rhizomatic nature of the will to truth. As a root that sends out underground shoots, the rhizome in this context establishes semiotic links, here between religion and science. The power of Nietzsche's analysis does not preclude my remaining wary of the contradiction in Nietzsche's conclusion: "The value of truth must... be called experimentally into question."[23]
Has Nietzsche returned to the default position of science, namely to the validation of whatever is in question via experiment, even if experiment means "Versuchen's wir," let's try it.
NOTES
1. M. Mitchell Waldorp, Complexity: The Emerging Sience at the Edge of Chaos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992) , p.10.
2. Steven Weinberg, "A Designer Universe," in The New York Review of Books, October 21, 1999, p.46.
3. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. I, trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random Hous, 1945), Q.2, Art.3, p.23.
4. David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in On Religion, ed Rochard Wollheim (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1967), Part II, p.119.
5. John Polkinghorne, Beyond Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.83.
6. Steven Weinberg, "A Designer Universe," p.46.
7. Ibid., p.47.
8. John Polkinghorne, Beyond Science, p.81.
9. Ibid., pp.87-88.
10. Ibid., p.89.
11. Raphael Sassower, Technoscientific Angst: Ethics + Responsibility (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p.78.
12. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p.167.
13. Ibid., pp. 167-168.
14. Ibid.
15. Steven Weinberg, "A Designer Universe?" p.46.
16. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), p.146
17. Ibid., p.146.
18. Freidrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, p.146.
19. Ibid., p.147.
20. Ibid., p.148.
21. p.150
22. Ibid., p.152.
23. Ibid., p.153.
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This paper was presented at a panel on the Anthropic Principle held at the American Academy of Religion in November of 2001.
Published 2003.02.07
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