|
Email
|
If you enjoy this article, consider making an online donation to support the Global Spiral.
|
| A Natural Philosophy of Human Suffering
Introduction
In addition to the evil directly due to human perversity, we also witness the cruelty of nature. In addition to the victims of the ravages of war, we see those caused by the violence of hurricanes and earthquakes, or by the malignant nature of so many diseases. And it is by no means so easy for the rational mind to accept the many faces of nature itself, the beauty and order of which, according to many, are the expression of a creative divinity.
Unquestionably, the harmony of the universe requires the changing of its parts, and St. Augustine identifies the fundamental limitation of being confined to a temporal existence as the metaphysical root of all evil. But St. Augustine himself, when recounting the death of Tagaste's twenty-year-old friend, expresses desperation, and an inability to attribute any meaning to it (Confessiones, IV).
It is indeed comprehensible that the process of becoming and of being in time may already be a form of dying and suffering, but what is outrageous "is often the absurd way people die. Death does not always come about simply as a natural biological process, as when a ripe fruit drops from the bough, but often it occurs in circumstances which our sense of piety finds most repugnant" (Moschetti, 1989). It is this aspect of pain and suffering that we wish to address in this paper.
"The tragic thing (...( is indeed tragic, in that, whenever an incomprehensible calamity occurs, it profoundly undermines any religious sentiment, giving rise to the suspicion of a profound disconnection of being ....". (ibid).
The Darwinian response
The Darwinian response is precisely along these lines.
Natural philosophy, as suggested by post-Darwinian biology, is, in fact, mainly a philosophy of human desperation. As Jacques Monod says (1972), it is true that science attacks values; not directly, since it is no judge of values and has to ignore their existence, but it destroys all the ontogenetic myths or philosophies on which the animistic tradition has founded its values, morality, duties, rights and prohibitions. The ancient alliance is shattered; man is at long last aware of being alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe from which he has emerged by chance.
In effect, there is no reason to wonder at the coexistence of harmony and precariousness if everything is governed by chance and the universe is accidental.
The same philosophy has been voiced more recently by D.C. Dennett (1995) when he says: Darwin has changed forever what it means to ask and answer the question Why? There is no future for any of our sacred myths. And he cites a passage from Locke, defining it as the "conceptual block" existing prior to the Darwinian revolution ..."Matter can never begin to be; if we assume that it exists ab aeterno as Matter pure and simple without Motion, Motion cannot begin to be; if we assume that Matter and Motion are pre-existent or eternal, then Thought can never begin to be". Darwin, on the other hand, says: give me time, and I will produce evolution, complexification, design, and thought through a process of selection among mutations produced by chance.
In the generalisation of the use of the algorithm (selection among equally probable variants) discovered by Darwin and which was then to become, in its application to prebiological and cosmological evolution, "omnivorous" (according to the definition suggested by Dennett himself) (Dennett, 1995), lies the reason for the evolution of Darwinism itself from a scientific model to a fully fledged philosophy of chance and necessity.
According to Atkins' application of this algorithm (Atkins, 1997) "...universes are created all the while and the present collection of universes is infinite". One deduces that it is necessary that our apparently ordered universe should exist, because, Atkins claims, "any event occurs, whatever its likelihood, so long as it is not absolutely impossible", or, in other words, the selection among infinite variants is a game where success is assured, a game in which the Darwinian algorithm leads to a kind of metaphysics which is the metaphysics of material actual infinity. [1]
But with such arguments, i.e. invoking the condition of infinite time and/or matter, the concept of probability is annulled and everything can be demonstrated (Dembski, 2002).
Intrinsic laws of order of complex unities
Darwinism ignores inner causes of evolution, preferential laws for the stability of structures without which, even if they formed, their permanence would not be explained, - forms, archetypes, attractors.
The fundamental integration, for a theory of evolution, requires the acknowledgement of the unity of sets capable of self-organisation: thus, life may have originated in a kind of sudden phase change, in which a network of molecules, replicating by virtue of their interdependence, arose from a primitive set of independent chemical reactions (Kauffman, 1993). The emergence of collective behaviours allows the generation of new forms in the context of complexification.
Biology also rediscovers its specificity in these concepts, above and beyond the reductionism that does not allow one to escape from a perspective of aggregates of components held together by fortunate accidental encounters in the process of environmental selection. What escapes from this perspective is the significance of formal unity, which today is understood and is increasingly the subject of thorough, in-depth investigation with the study of complex systems in their entirety (Prigogine and Stengers, 1979; Thom, 1975; Nicolis and Prigogine, 1989, Cramer, 1993; Kauffman, 1993).
Let us recall that complexity (in the technical sense) appears in non-linear systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium (so-called dissipative systems, as are living beings). The maximum complexity can be represented as that of a structure containing an amount of information which cannot be compressed in an algorithm, or rather, which can be described only by an algorithm composed of a number of bits of information comparable to that of the structure itself: i.e. complexity corresponds to the size of the calculation program needed to describe it, and what is defined as fundamental complexity is that of a structure (e.g. a sequence) which, having no limits of symmetry, periodicity or redundance, but rather an aperiodic order, possesses for that very reason the prerequisite for the maximum possible information content, though no analytical expression thereof can be found.
Monod, on failing to find it for the sequence of amino acids of a protein, deduced that it was a matter of absolute chance, taking no account of the brilliant definition which Erwin Schrödinger (1944) had used several years earlier to describe proteins, namely as "aperiodic crystals".
Monod's natural philosophy has managed to make a powerful impact on the world view of many men, both scientists and non-scientists, and continues to do so. His philosophy, however, is based on totally erroneous assumptions. Monod expressed his faith in the absence of any design in the construction of the biological order, claiming that the message, though objectively laden with significance, contained in the sequence of 200 amino acids of a protein constituted by the 20 different types of amino acids available, is written by chance, by a "completely blind game", given that, even when knowing 199 amino acids, nobody would be able to say which one would be the two-hundredth. But this means identifying the non-blind game as redundance, or symmetry: conversely, symmetry may be a factor limiting the information content, such as, for instance, in the case of a homogeneous sequence made up of the monotonous repetition of a single symbol and which is characterised by the maximum symmetry, but certainly not by the maximum intelligence and creativity. The misunderstanding is explained if we recall that the mathematical quantification of entropy (entropy is a measure of disorder and is the logarithm of the number of possible microstates) is similar to that of complexity, and, in fact, the algorithmic non-compressibility of the information program required to specify an entirely random sequence, is analogous to the non-compressibility of that required to describe a sequence which is characterised by the maximum complexity, i.e. precisely owing to the lack of symmetry limits to the information content (non computability): the message in the protein is not the product of blind chance, but of the degree of complexity achieved, which finds its explanation in the principles of self-organisation and in form fields rather than in the sufficiency of time of a blind game (Zatti, 1996).
It is for these reasons that many aspects of the development of organisms and their evolution are profoundly robust, and the evolutionary path much less contingent than the Darwinists believe, because it is constrained by the topology of its own phase space.
It is for these reasons that evolution, in a relatively short space of time, has been able to construct the sequence of 100 amino acids characteristic of cytochrome c with the 20 different types of amino acids available, choosing among all the possible sequences, and which, if one wanted to reproduce it by chance, making one attempt per second, would take 10 exp 120 years to appear. A protein with 100 amino acids takes on spontaneously and practically instantaneously a highly specific and complex three-dimensional structure, capable of an intramolecular mobility that conditions its function. It has been calculated that a super computer applying plausible rules for the molecular refolding would take 10 exp 127 years (to be added to the previous total!) to find the final form of such a protein (Casti, 1996) [2]. Nature does not find the problem of computability so difficult, and indeed it would seem clear that the self-organised states allowed by non-equilibrium physics are produced with probability one.
Order from self-organisation is the result of a morphogenetic field, of attractor archetypes (Thom, 1975), albeit through the instability of motion associated with chaotic dynamics, which enables the system to explore its phase space, finding its forms there.
This means that matter, as Cramer (Cramer, 1993) says, is "a priori filled with ideas". Let us return to the borderline with philosophy, which is no longer the philosophy of Monod, but that expressed in the title of Kauffman's work (Kauffman, 1995) "At Home in the Universe", a book which ends with "In the beginning was the Word".
But if, as we have said, the incomprehensible calamity is not a problem in a philosophy of chance, the same cannot be said when one believes that in the beginning was the Word, i.e. the Law.
This is a problem of meaning, and therefore philosophical and not scientific, but strictly implied by the demonstrable incompleteness of the natural order, and particularly of the biological order.
The indeterminacy of the biological order
The characteristic feature of biological machines is that they have mono-macromolecular instruments consisting of delicate, unstable organic molecules, which is fairly obvious if we think that their functional status would not be functional if it were distinctly stable.
It is well known that quantum indeterminacy plays a role in events on a submicroscopic scale at the atomic/molecular level. If, however, the DNA molecule is involved and the genetic message contained in it is altered in the indeterminacy game, the effect of the molecular "mutation" is amplified and becomes macroscopic in the living organism which depends on the genetic message, written and transcribed in the molecular alphabet, but translated and reflected in the structure and functioning or malfunctioning of cells, tissues and organs.
This amplifying action is a notable characteristic of the biological order, to the extent to which the phenotype depends on the genotype, i.e. on the informational macromolecules.
Now, the force of the chemical bonds in a macromolecule may vary with the fluctuations in vibrational energy, responsible for an uncertainty domain, which allows the mutations to take place unpredictably.
In the DNA replication process, the molecular chain that acts as a model has to form activated ternary complexes with the enzyme and with one of the four bases (nucleotides) that constitute the four letters of the alphabet of the genetic code, which are progressively mounted according to their compatibility with those of the model chain. The accuracy of the process is due to the specificity of the bonds (of intermolecular type) so that the correct coupling of a given base requires a ternary complex activation energy less than that required for the coupling of a "wrong" base.
This difference in energy (also conditioned by the structural and superstructural constraints of the DNA) can be overcome, though with low probability, by the thermal fluctuations possible at physiological temperature and in physiological conditions: in this way, the confines of the pre-existing codified order, the barrier against "mutations", may be crossed. In non-physiological conditions, mutations can be facilitated or induced by a variety of "perturbations" caused by chemical and physical agents.
The principles involved in the mutations are two:
a) the second law of thermodynamics, which promotes replication errors as ways whereby configurational randomness is increased, and this ensures that there will be mutations;
b) the quantum indeterminacy of thermal energy, for the reasons outlined above, and this ensures that the mutations occur by chance.
Hence, the opening to evolution, but also at the same time necessarily to pain and suffering because in biology mistakes mean suffering, even in the form of the most incomprehensible calamity, such as the agony and death of a child.
Submicroscopic indeterminacy has more than one way of reflecting itself on a macroscopic scale in the biological world: one way consists in the amplification that a molecular mutation of the genotype undergoes in the course of the phenotypic expression of the mutated gene. Another has to do with the statistical microevents that generate a kind of biochemical noise coupled, across a critical threshold, with cellular quantal macroevents by the law of all or nothing. This second behavioural mechanism dependent on (unpredictable) fluctuations comes into play when the number of intracellular ions or molecules involved is relatively low, and not if it is greater than 60,000 per cell. For example, the concentration of Ca(( in resting cells is approximately 100 nM, and therefore there are not more than 20,000 in any given cell. The number of membrane receptors for many agonists is even lower and the number of channels for the transmembrane transport of the main cations in many cells is of the order of only a few hundred, etc. (Hallett, 1989). To give a familiar example, the rarefied atoms of a neon tube manifest a macroscopic behaviour at ignition consisting in the fact that they are all characterised by uncertainty. In the same way, given the above-mentioned role of receptors and ions in cell behaviours, these would not appear to be deterministic, in that, though they are observable on a large scale, they are related not to a mean of very large numbers of independent submicroscopic states, but to a small number or even only one of these microstates, each of which is governed by indeterminacy. Hence, in addition to the possibility of suffering as a mistake, we also have the guarantee, for the purposes of the exercise of freedom, consisting in a certain, albeit controlled degree of indeterminacy at the level of mental action on cerebral matter.
In this connection, J.C. Eccles (1986) described the quantum uncertainty demonstrable in the junctions between neurons (synapses) in which the stimulus passes from one neuron to another via the release of biochemical quanta of neurotransmitters.
These are contained in vesicles whose membrane can fuse, as a result of the actions produced by the nerve stimulus, with that of the junction (presynaptic membrane) causing the emptying of the vesicle and the emission of the neurotransmitter.
One might understand that in the cortical synapses mental events (that is to say, intentions, acts of will) interfere with the likelihood of emission of these biochemical quanta, i.e. with the vesicles and thus with the neuronal activity, if one could apply the uncertainty equation of quantum states to the relationship between these vesicles and the presynaptic grid, i.e. in the prefusion stage. The mass of a synaptic vesicle, in fact, is not such as to exceed the limits of Heisenberg's uncertainty equation and therefore could be affected by the magnitude of the effect produced by a quantum mechanics probability wave. [3]
Hameroff and Penrose (1996) suggested that consciousness may be related to a quantum wave function collapsing in structures in the brain's neurons called microtubules.
According to Penrose (1989 and 1997), Swinburne (1986) and others, even if the only source of indeterminacy in the physical world were that of the quantum states, this would be enough to guarantee scope for non-computability, the possibility of behaviour unrelated to algorithmic processes allowing the exercise of human intelligence and freedom.
This basically echoes the attempts made by the ancients Epicurus and Lucretius to describe the indeterminacy (clinamen) of the atomic motions as a justification of free will. Be that as it may, we are talking about an unpredictability related to amplifications on a macroscopic scale of submicroscopic fluctuations, whether such amplifications be related to non-linear dynamics in the presence of non-equilibrium constraints, or cellular quantal events, produced according to the law of all or nothing, as a result of a threshold effect, when the threshold is crossed by fluctuations governed by indeterminacy.
The cerebral hardware thus contains the conditions necessary for man to exercise his freedom, i.e. his creative causality freed in some way from the laws of determinism, - necessary, but perhaps not sufficient conditions for the exercise of freedom.
Thomistic philosophy justifies the possibility of freedom only if the causes per se needed for the production of an effect are in sà / contingent, with the result that "the effect in relation to the cause of a physical process, unlike the consequence in relation to the premise in a logical procedure, will not derive unequivocally from its existence. If everything is predetermined right from the outset [...] man's freedom becomes an illusion" (Basti, 1995).
If the matter of which our bodies and particularly our brains are composed totally obeyed the laws of causal determinism, as Laplace believed, every neural event would have a proportionate physical cause, in turn related to other previous causes, with the result that one could hardly postulate neural events (with their behavioural correlates) not determined by the chain of physical causes. Any exercise of freedom would be precluded.
But some domain of relative indeterminacy would appear to exist.
We have also demonstrated that these conditions of indeterminacy, being widely represented in the laws of matter, also imply the occurrence of events of the "incomprehensible calamity" type, events involving suffering and death which therefore appear to us as the hard price that the matter of this universe has had to pay in order to accommodate the existence of free subjects (Zatti, 1994).
Suffering, which is implicit in the conditions described, would be useless and absurd if there were not a subject free to exercise self-determination. The problem of freedom thus becomes crucial: if man only had an illusion of free choice, every incomprehensible calamity would, in fact, remain incomprehensible, and all suffering would be totally absurd, at least for a non-casual natural philosophy.
Physicists today talk about the "anthropic principle" to interpret the universe (Bertola and Curi Eds, 1993). According to this principle, for the presence of observers such as ourselves to be possible, this universe had to be in certain respects exactly what it is: there had to be strictly mandatory initial conditions, a series of unlikely coincidences, thermostatically regulated planets, stars capable of constant energy radiation for billions of years, etc. With a slight shift in viewpoint, one application of the anthropic principle might be the following: if the observers such as ourselves had to be subjects endowed with freedom, then it was necessary that the matter of the universe should not be strictly conditioned by deterministic laws, thereby proving as rigid as the bars of a prison; on the contrary, it would have had to guarantee a setting characterised to some extent by aleatory processes, by non-determination, with scope and means whereby the influence of free will could be exercised, so that mental events could cause neural events.
Yet matter not completely determined in the succession of possible events, though capable of serving as a support for subjects endowed with freedom of action, is, however, a clock that may not keep good time; it is a device subject to error and therefore to pain. The application of the anthropic principle thus enables us to say: for the presence of free observers such as ourselves to be possible this universe had to be as it is; it had to be a place of pain.
Every sort of suffering is therefore causally related to freedom, either because it can be caused by potentially defective free will - the curse of Cain - or because the very existence of freedom, of free subjects, in this universe is permitted solely by that algorithmic incompleteness which also permits catastrophes to happen and which is described today by the theories of indeterminacy and chaos. The laws governing nature are not rigidly deterministic, but leave ample scope for indeterminacy and unpredictability and therefore for incomprehensible calamities (also in the case of a calamity that can only be indirectly attributed to the creativity of evolution in its more strictly Darwinian aspects, which are most certainly not annulled by the self-organizing capacities that trace the main lines of the evolutionary process). Only matter of this type, moreover, can permit the existence of subjects capable of exercising freedom in this universe (Zatti, 1994).
At this point a question arises that would appear to be harder to answer: do the flexibility, plasticity and indeterminacy permitted or amplified by chaotic dynamics and certainly necessary for the exercise of freedom also constitute a sufficient condition for it?
The question can be summed up as follows. The problem of free choice has to do with the possibility that a system possessing indeterminacy or fundamental instability, such as that of the neural networks, may be oriented in such a way that, after the choice has been made, it may find itself in one of its 2 exp n possible states, inasmuch as this compression (reduction of entropy) corresponds to the act of free will. Every time the reduction of entropy of the synaptic states, operated by a mental choice, takes place, it will necessarily be accompanied (as the laws of thermodynamics teach us) by heat exchanges with the environment or by equivalent variations of the entropy of a memory. If the system is material, in fact, it has to expend energy in order to effect the instability orientation (reduction of entropy), which hypothetically should correspond to the act of free will: that is to say, the system should want to expend energy, and therefore the free act would be prior to and different from the instability orientation and also from the related expenditure of energy itself. But what would it be? One would have to resort to infinity.
This can be avoided if we have a system that does not require physical means in the act of choosing: what is needed is an uncaused causality, an immaterial intelligence that any exclusively physical system (in which for every bit of information deleted there must simultaneously be a dissipated energy of kT log sub e 2) (Landauer, 1988) does not possess and is not. Or man is not free (Dennett, 1991).
Pain and creative omnipotence
The creative choice has proved doubly limiting in relation to original omnipotence because 1) it contemplates the existence of free subjects, and 2) it allows a measure of chance that introduces contingency and the unpredicted, thereby limiting the action of fixed mathematical laws. Man's freedom is permitted by the "freedom" of nature. The introduction of stochasticity at a fundamental level (the intrinsically statistical character of atomic events) may imply, albeit within a limited framework, a kind of attenuation of the principle of sufficient reason, given that "each individual quantistic event can be genuinely unpredictable, whereas a collection of such events conforms to the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics" (Davies, 1992).
On the one hand, there is clearly an "impressive symmetry" underlying the universe, but, on the other, we see that the symmetries "are invariably quasi-symmetries and that the minor violations we observe are just as necessary for our existence" (Barrow and Silk, 1983). There is then a small but fundamental scope left to "indeterministic causes" or - and it comes to the same thing - partially outside the principle of sufficient reason, scope for creativity left to the created, and which is also occurrence of (non creation of) evil; lack of participated being, i.e., good; penetration of the Nothingness (das Nichtige; Barth, 1950) into evolution. In view of the freedom of living creatures, God has had to leave a part of creation to chance (to dem Nichtiges).
In this regard, the conceptual difficulty of omnipotence as it is habitually understood is both well-known and dates back to ancient times, from Epicurus to H. Jonas (Venturini. 2000) and is shared by R. Pannikar (1999). "Suffering exists only to the extent that God is not omnipotent ..." (Jonas, 1987). Apart from suffering due directly to the action of men, it is, in fact, not merely related to the finiteness of creation, but also a matter of privation of due perfection since the algorithmic incompleteness and indeterminacy that are the cause of it are not necessary qualities of finite matter. They become necessary, as stated above, in order to guarantee the possibility of free self-determination and it is for this purpose and for this good that the Creator has left part of creation to chance. According to N. Venturini (2000), "it is necessary that there [...] be a link between the superior good desired and the evil permitted of such a nature that it is not possible to want the one without permitting the other, but we have not been allowed to grasp the nature of this link". Isn't this pessimism perhaps excessive?
M. Ruse (2001) provides reasons and examples that demonstrate that natural ills cannot be avoided if living beings have to be part of nature as sentient beings, and concludes; "The hard nature of physical existence and being is not therefore a rebuke against an all-powerful God".
To have a metaphysics of freedom, there must be a Creator who as such is a free agent. If the creative choice has wanted man to be free, then it must have seen his suffering, i.e. the prerequisite of his freedom, as basically "a very good thing" (Gen 1, 31). According to Ruse (2001), "No sound argument has been mounted showing that Darwinism implies atheism". It seems to me, on the contrary, that the Christian believer needs (also) chance, hence Darwinism, to solve the classic problem of theology, the problem of pain.
In any event there remains a difficulty in relation to omnipotence, namely, why is pain (in the form of a calamity) not overcome by miracles? To what extent can respect of the Creator for creation and its laws be a factor? There can be no doubt that respect for the freedom of living creatures made in His image in flesh and blood must allow them the power to decide to accomplish independently determined deeds even if these entail suffering and calamities. Can there be any miraculous salvation for those who suffer ill at the hands of nature, whose "freedom" could be annulled on any opportune occasion? But if Abel cannot be saved, can one in all justice save a man who is killed by a tiger? Or by a hurricane? Can an infant child at least be saved from leukaemia? But up to what age?
Yet, if creation was a "very good thing" in the eyes of the omnipotent, one should also consider that implicit suffering could also make sense within the context of a love that saves. Pain could begin to make sense if viewed in a context that takes account of the relationships between men and between each man and the Creator. The Creator's love is bent upon perfecting man in the very midst of his suffering (Varillon, 1981).
Notes
1 A number of Darwinists claim that causally isolated new universes originate from the black holes of previous universes, from which they differ to some extent, and this "filiation" with random variations and multiplications lends itself to the application of the Darwinian algorithm, in that the physical constants that favour the formation of black holes correspond to those necessary for the formation of stars, planets and living forms (J. Maynard Smith, E. Szathmary, "On the Likelihood of Habitable Worlds", in Nature 1990, 384, 107): the most suitable universes for the appearance of life would be those which have more black holes and therefore multiply more often.
2 The age of the universe is 1.5 x 10 exp 10 years.
3 Analysis of the synaptic transmissions of the CNS has revealed possible influences of changes in the postsynaptic membrane, taking all due account, however, of the presynaptic significance of some of the parameters (n, number of active zones; l, likelihood of release of a quantal package). Cfr. H. Korn, D.S. Faber, "Quantal analysis and synaptic efficacy in the CNS", in Trends in Neurosciences 1991, 14, 439-445; cfr. also J.M. Bekkers, C.H. Stevens, "Presynaptic mechanisms for long-term potentiation in the hippocampus", in Nature 1990, 346, 724-729; R. Malinow, R.W. Tsien, "Presynaptic enhancement shown by whole-cell recordings of long-term potentiation in hippocampal slices" in Nature 1990, 346, 177-180. The critical point of the neuronal activity is activation of voltage-dependent Ca2+ channels and the subsequent presynaptic exocytosis of the neurotransmitter, contained in vesicles whose protein p65 interacts with the syntaxins of the active zone of the presynaptic membrane. The literature describes quantal variability of these junctional activities, stochastic properties of the interactions between receptors and transmitters, the possibility of interference of various types with the efficiency of communication between nerve cells (D.S. Faber et al., in Science 1982, 258, 1494; P. Greengard et al., in Science 1993, 259, 780). One of the variables consists in changes in the number of vesicles in the reserve pool compared with the number that can be released in a synaptic ending with a transition regulated by the phosphorylation/dephosphorylation of a protein. By and large, it can be said that there are multiple fluctuation settings potentially subject to the influence of a quantum mechanics probability wave. See also the interesting recent review of D. Choquet and A. Triller in Nature Rev. Neuroscience 2003, 4, 251-265 and its references.
REFERENCES
Atkins P.W., Creation Revisited, Freeman, Oxford 1997, p. 134.
Barrow J.D., Silk J., The Left Hand of Creation, Basic Books, New York 1983.
Barth K., Gott und das Nichtige, in: Die Kirchliche Dogmatic, Theologischer Verlag, Zurich 1950.
Basti G., Filosofia dell' uomo, Edizioni Studio Domenicano, Bologna 1995, pp. 264-65.
Bertola F., Curi U. eds, The Anthropic Principle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993.
Casti J.L., Confronting Science's Logical Limits, Sci. American 275 (4), 1996, pp. 78-81.
Cramer F., Chaos and Order, VCH, Weinheim 1993.
Davies P., The Mind of God, Simon & Schuster, London 1992, pp. 192-93.
Dembski W.A., No Free Lunch, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 2002, pp. 83-100.
Dennett D.C., Darwin's Dangerous Idea, The Sciences 35, 1995, pp. 34-40.
Dennett D.C., Consciousness Explained, Little, Brown 1991.
Eccles J.C., Do Mental Events Cause Neural Events Analogously to the Probability Fields of Quantum Mechanics? Proc. R. Soc. London B 227, 1986, pp. 411-428.
Hallett M.B., Unpredictability of Cellular Behaviour, Persp. Biol. Med. 33/1, 1989, pp. 110/119.
Hameroff S., Penrose R., Orchestrated reduction of quantum coherence in brain microtubules - a model for consciousness, in: Toward a Science of Consciousness, eds Hameroff S., Kaszniak A. and Scott A., MT Press, Cambridge MA 1996.
Kauffman S.A., The Origins of Order, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1993.
Kauffman S.A., At Home in the Universe, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1995.
Jonas H.,.Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz. Eine Judische Stimme, Inserl Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987.
Landauer R, Dissipation and Noise Immunity in Computation and Comunication, Nature, 335,1988, pp. 779-84
Maynard Smith J. and Szathmary E., On the Likelihood of Habitable Worlds, Nature 384, 1996, p. 107.
Monod J., Chance and Necessity, Collins, London 1972.
Moschetti A., E Agostino mi risponde, Gregoriana, Padova 1989.
Nicolis G., Prigogine I., Exploring Complexity, Freeman, New York 1989.
Panikkar R., La pienezza dell'uomo, Jaca Book, Milano 1999, pp. 140-41.
Penrose R., The Emperor's New Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989.
Penrose R., The Large, the Small and the Human Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997.
Prigogine I., Stengers I., La Nouvelle Alliance, Gallimard, Poitiers 1979.
Ruse M., Can a Darwinian be a Christian? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, p. 128.
Schroedinger E., What is Life?, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1944.
Swinburne R., The Evolution of the Soul, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1986.
Thom R., Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, Benjamin, Reading MA 1975.
Varillion F., Joie de croire joie de vivre, Edition du Centurion, Paris 1981.
Venturini N., Perché il male?, Rubettino, Catanzaro 2000.
Zatti M., Il dolore (nel) creato, Dehoniane, Bologna 1994.
Zatti M., Il caso e la complessità, Kos XIII, 1996, pp. 36-41.
Did you enjoy this article? ... Your donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
Published 2003.05.12
|
Printer-Friendly |
Email This Article
©1997-2008 Metanexus Institute
www.metanexus.net
|
|
|