< Back Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part II In this issue of ATM, we will finish our journey. We will visit all the remaining “seas” (I promise), plus Pepperland itself. So, hang on tight! David Cowles Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part I explored the scientific implications of the Beatles’ iconic 1968 film, Yellow Submarine , a treasure trove of cosmological insights made to order for the 21 st century convergence of Science and Theology. We watched as the Beatles (or their writers) deconstructed our ‘Universe’ into a system of ‘branes’, called ‘seas’: Seas of Time (time), Science (space), Monsters (things), Headlands (thoughts), Holes ( Le Neant ), and the enigmatic Sea of Green. We set out on a voyage that will take us through each brane on our way to a place (or state of mind) called, Pepperland . We didn’t get far! In fact, we only made it through one sea, the Sea of Time…but oh what a ‘time’ we had there! In this issue of ATM, we will finish our journey. We will visit all the remaining “seas” (I promise), plus Pepperland itself. So hang on, tight! Note to Readers : In this essay I use ‘Pepperland’ to refer to Pepperland Proper, the last stop on our journey, and ‘ Pepperland ’ to refer to reality in its entirety, i.e., Liverpool, Pepperland Proper, and the Yellow Sub itself. When our journey ends, we will discover that Pepperland, Liverpool and the Yellow Sub are just three different manifestations, three different personae , of one reality. In the end…it’s all Pepperland ! So, next stop: the Sea of Science! If the subject of the Sea of Time was Time (“it’s time for time”), then the subject of the ‘Sea of Science’ should be Science, but it’s not! It’s Space. (Perhaps the editors didn’t like the sound of ‘Sea of Space’.) This sea is characterized by its rectilinear grid and the Platonic solids that populate it. It’s ‘Plato meets Descartes’. Against this background, various waveforms undulate. This sea can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s a 2-dimensional surface or a 3-dimensional solid. Figures emerge out of a flat background and enclose a volume, only to undergo further deformations that turn them back into 2-dimensional surfaces. Years after Yellow Submarine , it was discovered during the study of black holes that there is no difference between 2-dimensional surfaces and 3- dimensional spaces. They both encode the same amount of ‘information’. A hologram, for example, is a 3-dimensional image generated from 2- dimensional film. For that purpose at least, the 3rd dimension is superfluous. Now the voyage to Pepperland moves from ‘time and space’ to ‘things and thoughts’; we are entering the Sea of Monsters, followed by the Foothills of the Headlands. The first two branes probe the world as we experience it (spacetime); the remaining branes explore us as the ones who experience that world. The ‘Monstrous Sea’ is populated, well, by monsters. The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore; or if we do, we don’t recognize them. We Liverpudlians have done a pretty good job of purging ‘monsters’ from our immediate vicinity…but only our immediate vicinity. Believe me, monstrosity is alive and well in our world, as the Beatles were only too well aware! The Sea of Monsters is populated by a variety of creatures that exhibit some physical traits similar to ours but others that are very, very different. Most striking is the wide combination of ‘organs’ that ‘Beatle-Biology’ allows. In Liverpool, we are still just experimenting with Bionics. In the Sea of Monsters, most creatures exhibit a combination of organic and mechanical features. D’Arcy Thomas in On Growth and Form found parallels between biological and non-biological patterns. R. Buckminster Fuller did something similar in his two-volume work, Synergistics . Ultimately, technology and biology are not incompatible: if a form works in one realm, there’s no reason it might not work in the other as well. Yellow Submarine is an example of ‘ontological democracy’: it treats organic and mechanical forms as equals. Form is form and that’s an end to it. Organic vs. artificial is a false distinction. Our jealously guarded ‘ontological categories’ are reduced to ‘ontological soup’. One of the creatures in this ‘monstrous sea’ is the ‘dreaded vacuum’. Like a black hole, this creature sucks into itself everything in its environment. “We’ll be sucked into oblivion…or even further,” says Young Fred, the newly appointed admiral aboard HMS Yellow Submarine; and sure enough, they are! The ‘dreaded vacuum’ not only sucks up all objects in its path, including our yellow sub and its crew, but it also sucks up the fabric of spacetime itself. Ultimately, it even sucks itself, tail first, into oblivion: The Beatles’ universe is an ouroboros . The vacuum leaves us with precisely nothing, nothing that is except Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD (JHB). But that’s ok because the Boob is ‘nothing’, quite literally, as expressed in this formula: 1 + (~1) = Boob At the time Yellow Submarine was produced, it was generally believed that black holes annihilated information as well as objects, fields, etc. Years later, Stephen Hawking suggested that information was not destroyed by black holes, but was conserved after all, albeit in a form that renders it useless for any ‘work’. Astoundingly, Yellow Submarine proposed the exact same theory, 6 years earlier. JHB is Hawking radiation! That’s what the Boob is! Information without order. If Stephen Hawking got his ideas from the Beatles, he should have given them proper credit…and maybe he meant to do just that when he famously said, “We stand on the shoulders of giants”. After the vacuum has done its worst, we are left with JHB. Jeremy consists of all the information that existed in the universe prior to its implosion. As Hawking proposed, information is conserved but disorganized in the Boob. Take this snippet of dialog for example: “Do you speak English? “Old English, Middle English, a dialect pure. “But do you speak English? “You know I’m not sure.” But back to our journey. We need to pick-up the pace if we’re to reach Pepperland by nightfall. The first three ‘physical seas’ have been wiped out by the vacuum monster. The ‘physicality’ of Liverpool served us well through the Seas of Time, Science and Monsters but it won’t be much use to us going forward. ‘Physicality’ itself has vanished. What remains? Information (Booby)…and the sub itself. Even though the submarine was sucked up by the vacuum monster, it avoids ‘oblivion’ because, turns out, the sub is the Eternal Present that we’ve been looking for at least since the days of Ponce de Leon. Therefore, the sub can never be erased, annulled, or destroyed. As long as there is anything that is, it is. Next stop: the Foothills of the Headlands. Do people tell you that you “live too much in your own head”? Or do you sometimes wish that you could live life ‘virtually’ rather than physically? Either way, this is the sea for you! Headlands is the domain of pure thought. It takes the form of transparent heads unencumbered by functioning bodies. In the Headlands, thoughts lack orientation, consistency, coherence, purpose, and effect. (Hmm, sounds like we’re ‘inside the Beltway’!) In the Headlands, we see the consequences of an ‘all-in-the-mind’ ontology (e.g. Philosophical Idealism) and believe me, it’s not pretty. Bottom line: “mind matters but mind matter” - another bumper sticker to buy as a souvenir of our trip. After the Headlands…the Sea of Holes! We’ve passed through bodies & ideas, forms & concepts; what’s left? Nothing…but that’s a good thing. In Beatle-World, something and nothing have a complementary and dialectical relationship. Now we are passing into the realm of ‘negative space’. The usual relation of figure and ground is reversed. The sea itself is the ground and the holes in that sea (ground) constitute the figure. Nothingness ( Le Neant ) has now become concrete…so concrete that Ringo is able to put a ‘hole’ in his pocket, quite literally. The Sea of Holes is the inflection point in our journey. The ‘figure-ground’ relationship has reversed; for the rest of the voyage, it’s ‘ground-figure’. Something similar happens in Dante’s Divine Comedy . There, the travelers (this time, Dante & Virgil), having reached the lowest rung of Hell (Inferno), witness Satan, encased in ice. Dante begins the ascent of Mount Purgatory, but when he looks back, he is surprised to see that Satan is now hanging ‘upside down’ in his block of ice. The topology of the Sea of Holes is radically non-orientable. There is no consistent sense of directionality, no spatial ordering. It’s like an Escher drawing on steroids. In fact, the Sea of Holes is a paradigmatic example of non-orientability. Any system ( Pepperland ) that contains a ‘locally non-orientable’ component (like the Sea of Holes) must be ‘globally non-orientable’ as well. It turns out that the orientable universe familiar to us muggles is just a special configuration within a sea of non-orientability. In a non-orientable universe, there are no privileged vantage points, no privileged directions. In fact, there are no beginnings, middles or ends at all. However, every ‘point’ has two distinct and opposite orientations (like ‘up and down arrows’ on a Mobius strip). “Go for a walk?” Ok, where do you want to go? “Doesn’t matter just head out.” Pretty soon we get to our ‘destination’ but there are a couple of problems: our journey has brought us right back to where we started except that now everything is somehow inverted or reversed. In the Netflix series, Stanger Things , they call this ‘Upside Down World’. “So, what now? Turn around and head back?” No need, just keep walking ahead. Sure enough, we’re soon back ‘home’ and this time everything is back to normal. We are in ‘Right Side Up World’ again…and ready to cross into Pepperland at last…if only we could find it. First, we must pass through one more sea, the Sea of Green; but there’s a catch: out of a seemingly infinite array of holes in the Sea of Holes, only one hole connects the Sea of Holes to the Sea of Green…and on to Pepperland. This is a problem for our Argonauts! As we know from the study of Black Holes, all holes look the same so we can’t examine the holes for clues. How about the surroundings? Any helpful signs there? Nope! Remember, the ‘surroundings’ are ‘nothing’. There is only one possible way out: stochastic trial and error…which has an infinitesimal likelihood of success. Infinitesimal…but not quite zero. Fortunately, our Argonauts do find the one and only hole that functions as a passageway to the Sea of Green, but the Sea of Green is not like the other seas. It’s merely a featureless, ultra-thin membrane separating the other branes from Pepperland. So full speed ahead! Once the Beatles arrive, they discover that they bear an “uncanny” resemblance to four of its permanent residents, “the originals”, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course, we later learn that the Beatles are the Sergeant Pepper band! Initially, “the originals” are separated from the rest of the Pepperland by the dome of a “big glass bowl”. It is as if the cosmos were censoring itself. If the Beatles are Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then both ‘copies’ cannot coexist. The ‘big glass bowl’ maintains the ‘cosmic order’. But that order is about to be shattered! Remember, Ringo has a ‘hole’ in his pocket (from the Sea of Holes). Ringo applies the hole to the side of the “big glass bowl” and through the medium of nothingness the ontological barrier dissolves and the two realities merge onto the same extensive plane. Just as the branes connect Liverpool with Pepperland, so Ringo’s hole (anti-brane?) connects the temporal Beatles with their eternal alter-egos. Is this an illustration of the Christian doctrine known as Resurrection of the Body – the ultimate unification of ‘heaven and earth’? Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the Beatles under the aspect of eternity (Parmenides’ Aletheia ) while the Beatles are Sergeant Pepper’s Band under the aspect of history ( Parmenides’ Doxa ). When Ringo’s hole connects the two realms, we learn that the division of Universe into ‘temporal’ and ‘eternal’ rests on a false distinction. Temporality and eternity are complementary aspects of a single phenomenon. So it turns out that Liverpool and Pepperland are really the same place! We never left the Pier after all. Liverpool is the spatiotemporal aspect of Pepperland and Pepperland is the eternal aspect of Liverpool. Nothing that happens in Liverpool stays in Liverpool. Whatever happens in Liverpool happens in Pepperland and vice-versa. In the language of John Bell (Bell’s theorem, 1964), Liverpool and Pepperland are ‘entangled’. In the language of Jesus of Nazareth, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. And what about the sub itself? That also is Pepperland …in its aspect of Presence: Spacetime (Liverpool), Eternity (Sub), and Presence (Pepperland), the 3 faces of reality, Pepperland . If we were writing in the 4 th century CE style of the Nicene Creed , we might say that the Yellow Submarine ‘proceeds from Liverpool and from Pepperland’. The sub (Present) never leaves Liverpool…or Pepperland for that matter. Nevertheless, it continually shuttles between them. In any event, the ontology of Yellow Submarine is overtly ‘Trinitarian’. I hope you enjoyed our two part voyage to reality’s core. I apologize if the music and the graphics are not up to the Beatles’ original. But I hope my marginalia may have made your trip worthwhile. I hope to see you soon on our next all-inclusive cruise. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next

< Back The Probability of Nothing David Cowles “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Riddle : How is language like Willie Mays? Answer : It rules center field! Of course, I am referring to ontological ‘center field’: the tiny, daily transactions (like photon exchange) that bind society (or the world) together. But language can play tricks on us…especially when it deals with stuff at the ends of the ontological spectrum. Take the word itself, ‘nothing’, for example. ‘Nothing’ is a noun and, as we know from primary school, a noun represents a ‘person, place, or thing’. Which of these does ‘nothing’ represent? None, obviously. The word itself tells you all you need to know about its meaning: ‘nothing’ = ‘no thing’. Now we have a word that fails to meet the definition of a noun playing the role of a noun in ordinary speech. What could possibly go wrong? Well, because we use the word, ‘nothing’, as a noun, we could begin to think of Nothing per se as something (some ‘thing’). This is an instance of what Alfred North Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” - the fundamental fallacy of Western metaphysics. Then what is ‘nothing’? Today, we have a number for it: zero. But we didn’t have that number until the 13th century (Fibonacci) and it wasn’t universally accepted into arithmetic until the 18th century (Leibniz). If zero is a real number like other real numbers, then is nothing something? We also have another mathematical symbol for Nothing, ø, the null set. This notation insulates Nothing from the domain of real numbers. We are used to the idea of ‘Ineffable God’: God so far transcends our world that nothing we say about God can be true or even meaningful. Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, “God is outside the numbers.” We’re not used to the idea of ‘Ineffable Nothing’. And yet, ‘nothing’ transcends all things just as God does. God, aka Being, Value, Love, is the ontological opposite of Nothing, which is the absence of ‘I am’ ( Exodus ), ‘it is’ ( Genesis ), ‘you are’ ( Gospel of John ). We begin, as all serious philosophical essays must, with Robert Frost , the ‘Quantum Poet’. In his best known poem, The Road Not Taken , he sets out the quintessential existential dilemma: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” Happens a million times a day, every day! Frost, subject to the human condition , must pick a path, ‘sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler’. Frost makes his choice, ‘I kept the first for another day’; but hero that he is, Frost realizes that this is a forever decision, that the universe bifurcates at this point: ‘Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted I should ever come back’. Nor does our hero hide behind the rationalization of ‘objectivity’; he knows that the road chosen is in no way superior to the other, for ‘both that morning equally lay’. Standing at the point of divergence, at the moment of choice, both roads are equally real, equally attractive, equally effective, and therefore ontologically identical. Frost’s choice is apparently unconditioned. He is as likely to choose A as he is B. Initially, each option has a probability of P ≈ 50%. Since each P > 0, both exist! But whenever Frost’s choice of one path becomes irrevocable (P = 100%), then the alternate route (P = 0) ceases to exist…for Frost. It is no longer part of his Actual World. Proposition : ‘X exists, iff P(x) > 0’. Once P = 0, the alternate path no longer meets Gregory Bateson’s existential criterion: it’s no longer ‘a difference that makes a difference’. When there was no longer an option for Frost to pursue ‘the road not taken’, it ceased to exist… chez Frost. Much of Western philosophy is based on a false conception of Nothing. When we say ‘nothing’ we often have in mind something: a void or a vacuum, ‘nothing’ relatively speaking, but not absolutely nothing . Our ‘nothing’ tends to be ‘something…dimly lit’, a bit like Hades in Homer’s Odyssey . It’s even been called ‘a receptacle’, ‘a womb’, an ‘ether’, ‘pure potentiality’. Today, the cognoscente call it ‘negative vacuum pressure’. Nothing can’t be any of those things, not even metaphorically. Nothing can only be nothing. Nothing has no hair. It’s not a depression left in the fabric by ‘something’ when it departs. It’s not negative space, negative energy or negative vacuum pressure; it’s not positive or negative, it’s nothing. It’s good to know that we are not alone in our thinking. Perhaps we’re not mainstream (yet) but we’re definitely not flying solo . In fact, we share our perspective with Parmenides of Elea, the father of Western philosophy: “It is not to be said or thought that ‘it is not’…It is or it is not…let go the one (it is not) as unthinkable, unnamable, for it is not a real route.” ‘The road not taken’ cannot be ‘said or thought’ or even named because ‘it is not a real route’. When Frost reaches his destination, he is surrounded by reporters all with a single question: “Why did you choose that path?” To which Frost answered, “There was more than one path?” Parmenides viewed the World as both the ‘Realm of Things as they Appear’ ( Doxa ) and the ‘Realm of things as they Are’ ( Aletheia ). In the realm of Doxa , Frost confronts an apparent existential choice. In the realm of Aletheia , the apparent ‘choice’ is without consequence and so does not ‘exist’; it’s not a ‘difference that makes a difference’ because ‘both that morning equally lay’ and both led to the same destination. There was no objective reason to prefer one over the other. So there never was an existential dilemma because there was really only ever one path (a path and its mirror image). This perspective pops up all across ‘the fruited plain’ of Western philosophy, but for now, let’s stick with Quantum Mechanics (QM)! Hugh Everett’s ‘Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’ states (roughly) that everything that can happen does happen…in its own universe. Corollary : Whatever did not happen could not have happened, because if it even might have happened, it would have happened. Try saying that 10 times! An entity’s worldline is its ‘route’ but apparent routes that pass through ‘counterfactual space’ are not real routes; their probabilities are all equal to 0. If it isn’t now, it never was, it could not have been, and it cannot come to be in the future. Only real routes are ‘real’. Everett channels Parmenides…2400 years later. There is ‘is’ and that’s all there is…no might, no should, no would, no could, just is. Let’s apply this way of reasoning to questions involving probabilities, beginning with a traditional Hasidic folk tale: Once upon a time, a certain Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when he encountered an elderly widow crawling on her hands and knees under a streetlamp. Not wanting to play the part of passer-by in a future production of The Good Samaritan and eager to perform one last mitzvah before going to bed for the night, the Rabbi offered to assist. "I've lost my shiny penny, the only thing I have left in the world," the widow wailed. "And is this where you lost it?" the Rabbi inquired innocently. "No," she replied. "I lost it over there." The quizzical Rabbi, still hoping to be helpful, asked, "Then why are you looking for it here?" "Because the light is better!" This story is often presented as a commentary on the widow's folly, but in fact, the widow is the hero of the story. She defies conventional wisdom. Why look for a lost penny in pitch darkness where there's no hope of finding anything? Unlit space is not part of the widow’s world; from her perspective it is Nothing. So the only ‘rational’ thing for her to do is to search under the lamplight where P > 0. Let’s rephrase: the probability of the penny being under the light is actually 100% (P = 1) because the penny has to be somewhere (P=1), and every other possibility has zero probability (P = 0): 1 – 0 = 1. But the probability of her finding the penny under the light is much, much less (P < 1)…but not zero (P > 0). Ok, this sounds officially crazy. How can the probability of the penny being under the lamp be 100% when we said earlier that the penny is probably not there? Once again, we find our answer in Quantum Mechanics. According to QM, everything is everywhere all the time and anywhere you look there is a finite possibility (however low) that you will find your quantum there…as long as you’ve confined your search to places that exist for you. Now that we’re comfortable applying Parmenides’ ontology to situations involving probabilities, we’re ready to apply it to the greatest floating craps game of all: ‘Pascal's Wager’ (1670 CE). Confronted with the God Question , French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, employed a forerunner of what is today called ‘Game Theory’. Pascal divided a sheet of paper into four quadrants. Across the top of the page, he wrote, “I believe that God exists;” down the left-hand margin, he wrote, “God does exist;” and then he filled in the appropriate truth values: (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), (1,1). Pascal reasoned that one of four things must be true: (1) I do not believe that God exists, and he doesn’t; (2) I do not believe that God exists, but he does; (3) I believe that God exists, but he doesn’t; (4) I believe that God exists, and he does. So God is ‘free’ to exist or not and you are free to believe or not. Yet, scenarios 1, 2, and 3 are effectively identical. They amount to the same thing. Believe whichever one you choose; it makes no difference. They are interchangeable because they each produce the same incremental value: (0*0) or (0*1) or (1*0), i.e. Zero. Only #4 (1*1) is different; only #4 generates incremental value. Quadrants 1, 2, and 3 do not meet Gregory Bateson’s criterion (for ‘being’, above). They produce zero incremental value so there is no ultimate value difference among them and their contribution of value to the world is null (ø). Since all other options generate 0 incremental value, P(4) must be 100% (P=1): 1 – (0 + 0 + 0) = 1. To quote a medieval Irish poet, “Naught (0) is all else to me save than Thou art!” Centuries later, Pascal proved that this is not just a statement of subjective faith…it’s a statement of objective reality. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

< Back Pronouns David Cowles Next time someone asks you for your ‘pronouns,’ try telling them, ‘you/you’…see what happens. I hadn’t thought much about the English language pronouns since third grade; now it seems I think of little else. Suddenly, the lowly pronoun is uppermost in everyone’s mind, be they eight…or 80. For more than a decade now, ‘they/them’ has been gradually replacing ‘she/her,’ ‘he/him,’ and ‘it.’ If this trend succeeds, and to a large extent it already has, English will lose distinctions of gender (M, F, N) and of number (S, P). Apparently, ‘case distinctions’ (they/them) will be retained. I said ‘case distinctions,’ not ‘class distinctions;’ but wait! Will “they/them” make it into the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies? Or will it become another one of the many markers we use to distinguish ‘us’ from ‘them?’ Eliza Doolittle was permanently excluded from the upper rungs of English society because of her accent, that is, until Henry Higgins came along and ‘fixed it.’ Thanks to the good professor, aided no doubt by the post-war ubiquity of television, accent is no longer reliable in the service of our deeply treasured, if much maligned, ‘snap judgments.’ Regrettable because there is no knowledge quite so satisfying as a good stereotype confirmed! I mean, “How am I supposed to know how to treat someone if I don’t know what social class they belong to?” It’s quite a dilemma! Well, you know, you’re posh . Will the pronoun war be co-opted by our social gatekeepers to keep old barriers in place…or even rebuild them where they’re worn with age and misuse? Only time will tell…but back to the task at hand. This is not the first time that our attention has been directed toward the lowly pronoun. 100 years ago, existentialist philosopher and Jewish theologian Martin Buber focused on the distinction between “I – Thou (you)” and “I – It” relationships, the latter appropriate for certain interactions with the ‘inanimate world,’ the former more appropriate to human relationships. Self-explanatory? But the problem comes when I impose an “I – It” structure onto an “I – Thou” opportunity. Ideally, my relationships with ontological equals will always be of the “I – Thou” sort…but of course, they’re not. Unfortunately, most of us do not have “I – Thou” relationships with our grocers, for example. Yet, most of us would accept the proposition that ‘grocers’ are our ontological equals. In fact, most of us today are comfortable with the idea that all (or almost all) human beings are our equals. This was not always so. Until very recently, in fact, it was entirely acceptable to consign other tribes, other races, other nationalities, etc. to an ontological level inferior to our own: “They’re not really human.” While the founding fathers were building a society “with liberty and justice for all,” they were also reinforcing the institution of slavery. In order to reconcile these apparently exclusive priorities, the southern slaveholders had to separate the concept of ‘slave’ from the concept of ‘all humans.’ Implicitly, or even explicitly, they dehumanized and reified their slaves. Slavery is a paradigm of ‘I – It’ relatedness. Commonwealth is, at least arguably, a paradigm of ‘I – Thou.’ But to quote the immortal Cars, “You can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong,” and sure enough, 75 years later, the institution of slavery was on the ropes: the institution, not its hateful legacy. Reification is like skunk: once it’s in the fabric, it’s almost impossible to get out. Buber challenges us to expand the ‘Universe of Thou.’ It’s not just our kids, our spouses, our Higher Power, as many of us would prefer. It’s the guy across the street, the woman on life support, the homeless family…you know the drill. Implicit in Buber, and empowered by our reluctantly expanded collective consciousness, is the call to push the envelope of ‘ontological parity’ (or ‘congruence:’ I’m not insisting on pure equality here) beyond the species barrier. What about sea mammals? Apes? Pets? What about bees…and forests? I could go on. (“Please don’t!”) What do Hasidic Jews and Native Americans have in common? They both live in an enchanted world. For them, and others, the earth, the entire universe in fact, is ‘Thou:’ a living entity for us to nurture and enjoy…not injure and destroy. Sticking with Buber’s terminology, we have an opportunity to have an ‘I – Thou’ relationship with the Universe, through its creator and through each and every entity in it. But most of us don’t come close to realizing this potential. We take the so-called inanimate world for granted and guiltlessly rape it to satisfy our own immediate needs. We carefully cultivate plants and husband livestock, but only so that we can harvest and slaughter them down the road. Worst of all, though, we allow the poison of ‘I – It’ to seep into relationships with our fellow human beings, even those closest to us. 100 years on, I suspect that society is no better positioned today on the ‘It – Thou’ scale than it was when Buber started writing. And yet, Buber didn’t go nearly far enough. Traditionally, English has distinguished pronouns according to three ‘persons’ and two ‘numbers’ (singular/plural): I, me, we, us (‘I’ for our purposes); You, including thou and thee (‘you’); He, she, or it (‘it’). Both of Buber’s dyads begin with the pronoun, ‘I;’ but that ‘I’ is only stable as a placeholder, a catalyst. Implicit in the concept of ‘I – Thou’ is the potentiality for reciprocity. Of course, we all know about ‘unrequited love;’ but even then, the possibility of reciprocity remains, albeit unrealized. That’s what makes these situations so tragic. A fully developed ‘I – Thou’ relationship must also be ‘Thou – I’. A reciprocal ‘I – Thou’ relationship is really a ‘Thou – Thou’ relationship. In the context of that relationship, I am because you are, and you are because I am. We are two ‘thees’ in a pod. When I enter into an “I – It” relationship with another entity (human, sentient or otherwise), I immediately preclude the possibility of reciprocity. I have substituted an active voice vector for the middle voice resonance arrow of ‘I – Thou.’ The communication is all one way, and when I relate to an entity in a way that precludes reciprocity, then I make myself inert, I turn ‘me’ into ‘it.’ So, whether it’s ‘I – Thou’ or ‘I – It’, the ‘I’ is unstable in every relationship. As soon as ‘I’ comes in contact with any potential relatum , it decomposes like a subatomic particle into either a ‘Thou’ or an ‘It.’ ‘I’ is the still coherent wave function in Quantum Mechanics: it decoheres ‘on contact’ to become a ‘Thou’ or an ‘It.’ This is an admittedly ‘off label’ use of C.S. Lewis’ notion of the “Great Divorce.” We are all living in two worlds, not one. One world is a world populated only by ‘It(s),’ the other only by ‘Thou(s).’ While the two worlds are entirely coincident, they do not interact. They are ships passing in the night. Between these coincident worlds, there lies an infinitesimal, non-orientable membrane (called the ‘Sea of Green’ in the Beatles’ 1968 movie, Yellow Submarine ). ( Read "Yellow Submarine Part II" here. ) When we pass from the ‘It – It’ universe to the ‘Thou – Thou’ universe, we pass from Liverpool to Pepperland (in the movie) and from ‘this world’ to the Kingdom of Heaven. ‘Thou – Thou’ relationships, to the extent that we can foster them on earth, are a foretaste of eternal life. This is precisely the state of affairs we long for when we pray, “on earth as it is in heaven.” Challenge : Next time someone asks you for your ‘pronouns,’ try telling them, ‘you/you’ or even ‘thou/thou;’ see what happens and let us know. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back May Day David Cowles “This one day converges mythology (Norse), cosmology (Pagan), theology (Christian) and ideology (Marxist) with ancient fertility rites. And for my next trick…” A very, very long time ago, when I was young, our favorite days of the year were Christmas and Halloween, not necessarily in that order. At Christmas, we were dependent on the kindness of others; but on Halloween we were allowed to make our own fun and express our primal pagan spirits, perhaps for the only time that year. So what is the most important day of the year? For lovers, it might be Valentine’s Day; for veterans, Memorial Day; for patriots, the 4th of July and for gourmands, Thanksgiving: all worthy to be sure, but perhaps all wide of the mark. A survey of western traditions suggests that the most important day of the year might be May Day. That’s right, May Day! This one day converges mythology (Norse), cosmology (Pagan), theology (Christian) and ideology (Marxist) with ancient fertility rites. And for my next trick… Quite a feat! Or is it? As we shall see, it is a common concern with economic justice that ties all of these May Day traditions together; but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The May Day tradition, in all its forms, is a celebration of Natural Law, a fundamental ordering principle in Universe that underlies astronomical phenomena, natural processes, cultural expression and ethical behavior. In recent centuries, the Zeitgeist has focused on ‘man’s conquest of nature’; this is far removed from the idea of Natural Law. In Judaism, the law is twice manifest, once in the Written Torah, once in the Oral Torah. The Written Torah consists of 613 mitzvah found in the first five books of the Old Testament, traditionally attributed to Moses. The Oral Torah is natural law. It is the same law as before, but instead of 613 precepts, it is inscribed in the processes of nature and on the hearts of men and women. According to the Hasidic tradition, there is one law (written and oral) and that law governs the cosmos, the earth and everything that happens on Earth. According to the pre-Christian calendar of Northern Europe, May 1 is the first day of summer (and November 1, the first day of winter). While this may not make sense from the point of view of weather, it makes great sense astronomically. The summer solstice falls right in between May 1 and August 1, so why shouldn’t that 91-day period be labeled “summer”? They are two of the Cross Days that divide the pagan calendar into its eight seasons. In pagan lore, the eves of May 1st and November 1st are special times because that is when the spirit world is closest to our physical world. On those two eves, it is as though a ‘portal’ opens that allows direct communication between the two realms. The Christian celebrations of All Hallows Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are extensions of this theme. Many of the activities that we now associate with October 31 were once also associated with April 30: bonfires, wild merry-making, and trick-or-treating, for example. Robert Graves ( The White Goddess ) wrote: “Christmas was merry in the Middle Ages, but May Day was still merrier. It was the time of beribboned maypoles…” And why not? Roughly, maypoles are to May Day what Christmas trees are to Christmas. Each links the respective festival to fertility ( phallus ). Like Christmas trees, a maypole may be a living tree or one that has been cut down for the occasion. It can even be ‘artificial’ in the sense that a bare log (or some aluminum wire?) may be decorated with greenery to suggest a living tree. Trees are powerful symbols and important examples of the fertility of the earth, and the Maypole’s shape connects human sexuality and reproduction with the more general fertility theme represented by trees. In Tudor England, it was customary for people to spend May Day Eve making love in the fields to promote the fertility of the land. Children conceived on such occasions were known as ‘Merry-be-Gots’. In Norse mythology, a single tree, Ygdrasil , structures the entire cosmos. Separate ‘homelands’ are allocated to humans, gods, elves, giants, trolls, and others, but the branches of one giant tree, Odin’s ash tree (Ygdr = Odin or Woden), link these semi-autonomous regions into a coherent universe. The Maypole symbolizes Ygdrasil, the mythological backbone of the world. Beyond mythology, the Maypole also expresses an important astronomical concept. Early on, humans discovered that the periods of Earth’s rotation and revolution were trivial compared to a cycle known as the Precession of the Equinox. Maypoles symbolize axis mundi , the earth’s axis, whose ‘wobble’ defines this 26,000-year celestial cycle. Does James Joyce reprise this theme in Ulysses , where Stephen Dedalus lives in a tower which he calls Omphalos , the belly button of the world? ( Sidebar : That S.D. lives inside the axis mundi, the navel of the universe, is a pretty good clue to the meaning of this supposedly impenetrable novel.) Finally, trees play a crucial role in early European religion and spirituality. Recall the oak-worship of Celtic Druids, for example. Across Europe, individual trees or whole species of trees were once regarded as divine and only later became associated with anthropomorphic deities alleged to live inside them (e.g. tree nymphs, hamadryas). Did this development in ontology mirror the of nominalization of Indo-European language? According to Sir James Frazer ( The Golden Bough ), Teutonic words for ‘temple’ actually derive from words denoting ‘sacred grove’, and the old word for ‘sanctuary’ is the Latin word, nemus , meaning grove or woodland glade. At one time, it seems, our groves and glades were our churches and our cathedrals. During the persecution of Roman Catholicism by the English government, Irish Catholics practiced their religion in the woodlands, reconnecting them with their pre-Christian spiritual traditions. More recently, the 20th century poet Ezra Pound recaptured the association between nature and spirit in his Cantos : “Aram vult nemus” (the grove needs an altar). This theme first appears in Canto LXXIV, the opening of Pound’s Pisan Cantos, the beginning of his Paradiso . From LXXIV on, Cantos is Pound’s blueprint for building (rebuilding?) “The city of Dioce” (i.e., Paradise). Perhaps anticipating by several decades our ‘Green movement’, Pound prescribes the reunification of nature and spirit. He would have been at home among the Druids. Along with fertility, mythology and cosmology, ancient May Day rites include an economic theme. Again, according to Frazer ( The Golden Bough ): “At Thann, in Alsace, a girl called Little May Rose, dressed in white, carries a small May-tree, which is gay with garlands and ribbons. Her companions collect gifts from door to door, singing a song… In the course of the song, a wish is expressed that those who give nothing may lose their fowls by the marten, that their vine may bear no clusters, their tree no nuts, their field no corn…” “In some villages of the Vosges Mountains on the first Sunday of May, young girls go in bands from house to house, singing a song in praise of May in which mention is made of the ‘bread and meal that come in May’. If money is given them, they fasten a green bough to the door; if it is refused, they wish the family many children and no bread to feed them.” “… In some villages of Altmark at Whitsuntide…the girls lead about the May Bride, a girl dressed as a bride… They go from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which she asks for a present, and tells the inmates of each house that if they give her something they themselves will have something the whole year through; but if they give her nothing, they themselves will have nothing.” How should we understand this pan-cultural focus on May Day giving? In few, if any, cases are the gifts substantial. They seem to be symbolic, but symbolic of what? First, there is the magical element. It is spring and over the coming months; we will be expecting the earth to give of itself for our benefit. According to the ‘principles of magic’, like begets like. If we expect nature to give, we also must give; just as in England, May merry-makers reproduced (Merry-be-Gots) to encourage the land to reproduce. (Lie quiet Malthus!) On another level, the welfare of one is understood to be dependent on the welfare of all. In a society where everyone has the necessities of life, the overall economy will be more prosperous. Obviously, the practitioners of early May Day rituals were not trained economists, but they may have intuitively grasped the nature and necessity of social solidarity. It is only in recent centuries that we have lost sight of this essential truth. As the ‘natural economy’ (fertility) benefits everyone, so must the ‘human economy’ (generosity) benefit all. It is here, of course, that these early May Day rites intersect with later day Christian and Marxist versions. In the Roman Catholic Church, for example, the month of May is dedicated to Mary, the mother (fertility) of Jesus. May 1st, May Day, stands at the head of Mary’s special month. In many Catholic areas, it has traditionally been a day of brightly colored, florid processions, reminiscent of the pre-Christian festivals (maypoles) mentioned above. Controversially, in 1955 Pope Pius XII designated May 1st as the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, underscoring yet again May Day’s universal economic aspect. Mary speaks sparingly in scripture, but when she does, she packs a punch. In her Magnificat (Luke 1: 46 – 52), for example, Mary says of Yahweh, “He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things, but the rich he has sent away empty.” Are we reading Luke…or Lenin? Mary of the Magnificat is every bit as radical as Marx of the Manifesto …in fact, much more so! Compared to Christians, Communists are wimps! (But I promised no politics, sorry.) Still, Communists and Socialists are primarily concerned with questions of economic justice, so it cannot be overlooked that they elected, ostensibly for other reasons, to schedule their own chief annual celebration ( May Day ) on the very day that pagans and Christians choose to celebrate their commitments to economic justice. We have drawn material from anthropology, mythology, cosmology, theology, and economics; out of all of these cultural expressions, we can, I think, distill a common core: there exists a body of natural law that spans ages, continents, and cultures…and economic justice is integral to that law. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

For centuries, many Christians have found support for their faith in the accounts of miracles worked by Jesus, and following Jesus, by various apostles, saints and martyrs. Others, however, have rejected these accounts as ‘impossible’ and therefore ‘unbelievable’ and this judgment has led them to dismiss all accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings as ‘suspect’. Miracles and Materialism Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Loaves and Fishes “God is where he most needs to be, doing what he most needs to do.” Loaves and Fishes II “So was the feeding of the 5,000 a miracle? Yes…and no!” Loaves and Fishes III “…The evangelists outlined an economic doctrine challenging today’s Liberal (capitalist), Marxist (socialist), and Islamic (iqtisad) models.” Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back The SETI Paradox David Cowles Aug 28, 2025 “We’ve been searching for our reflection. I suggest a team of three to five year olds to help us imagine how ET might really look and act.” Historically, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has taken place between two rather bizarre guardrails: first, an almost religious faith that life must be abundant throughout our universe (lest we be thought of as special ) and second, a superstitious expectation that any such life will closely resemble life on Earth . A toxic cocktail by any mixologist’s standards! Where did we get such strange ideas? Surprisingly, these seemingly contradictory assumptions spring from the same shared fallacy: the myopia of the familiar . The argument for a ‘biotic universe’ is based on the observation that life evolved on Earth, i.e. on one planet (out of 10?) in one solar system (out of 100 billion in the Milky Way alone) in one galaxy (out of 100 billion in the observable universe). We couple this with an infamous maxim of illogic called the Why Me Principle . More technically known as the Scandal of Particularity , it is a refusal to accept the notion that we could somehow be special, much less unique. But this ignores the obvious. We are special, not because there is anything special about us , but simply because we’re the ones making the observation. In that sense everything is special in the sense that it is unique. Known as the Anthropic Principle , this maxim holds that ‘somebody had to do it so it might just as well have been us’. Recap : We exist. We know that we exist. Others may exist but we don’t know that. All we know is that we exist and, as far as we know, only we know that we exist. But we refuse to allow for the possibility that we might be special or unique. Therefore, we conclude that there must be life elsewhere. I am looking at the reverse side of a deck of playing cards. I draw one card. It’s the Ace of Spades. It is possible that this is the only Ace in the entire deck; it is also possible that every card is an Ace of Spades. A sample of one tells us nothing about the probability of two, absent other assumptions. Still, we make a fetish of what we know at the expense of what we don’t. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “ All people think thus and so” or “ all men feel like this”. Of course, he is simply describing his own thoughts and feelings. He is a chronic victim of ontological myopia . The same pathology leads us to the further assumption that all of this abundant inter-galactic life must be more or less exactly like life on Earth. As a result, we are searching the cosmos for carbon based life forms with cellular architecture, governed by a self-replicating mega-molecule (like DNA), breathing oxygen (or carbon dioxide), immersed in water, and behaving intelligently…at least sometimes. Talk about a lack of imagination! We have set up a diabolical chain of reasoning: There is life on Earth. We are not special or unique. Therefore , there must be life elsewhere in the universe. And if something has happened more than once it has probably happened more than twice. Life is life and therefore all life is like life on Earth. Therefore, ‘life like ours’ must be abundant in the universe! We have balanced the self-deprecation inherent in the ‘Scandal of Particularity’ with an overdose of hubris. On 6/18/2025, Mark Thompson, making a similar observation, wrote in Universe Today : “Scientists are revolutionizing the search for extraterrestrial (ET) life by challenging our somewhat Earth-centric assumptions about where and how life might exist in the universe. A new review argues that we must embrace the remarkable diversity of exoplanets discovered over the past two decades and consider a much broader range of environments that could potentially host life…” The assumption that all life is like ours ignores the role environment plays in evolution. There’s no reason, for example, to assume that life forms will be less varied than their climates. That said, with 10^22 stars, each with an unspecified number of planets and moons, we should expect variations that will test our imaginations. So, we should anticipate a similar diversity among life forms…but we don’t. Take Earth, for example. As far as we know, all life evolved from a single primordial DNA molecule. From that one, very specific cell incredible biodiversity has evolved. Life inhabits almost every nook and cranny of land, sea, and sky. We find life on mountain tops and in ocean trenches, in the artic regions and in the mouths of active volcanoes. We breath oxygen, I mean CO₂, I mean methane. If ‘God’ makes it, someone will breathe it. Imagine what evolution might do on a planet like Venus, or a moon like Europa. Or in a galaxy far far away. Check it out: how different is a sponge from a mushroom, a velociraptor, a Quaking Aspen, or an orca? Expect orders of magnitude more diversity in the universe! If, and that’s a huge ‘if’, there’s anything out there at all, what makes us think that we’ll even recognize the ET forms we do encounter as alive . Let’s listen to Thompson: “The traditional focus on finding ‘Earth twins’ orbiting Sun-like stars may be too narrow, given…the incredible variety of planetary environments that exist. “The research highlights how adaptable life on Earth really is. Bacteria can survive and thrive in atmospheres rich in gases like hydrogen, helium, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, conditions once thought hostile to life. These extremophiles, organisms that flourish in physically or chemically extreme conditions, demonstrate that life's requirements may be far more flexible than previously assumed. “Perhaps most intriguingly…life might exist without any solid ground beneath it. In so-called ‘cloud biospheres’, life could potentially float in the atmospheres of planets where rocky surfaces are too hot to support traditional life forms. These aerial ecosystems might exist in the thick atmospheres of super Earths, in the cloud layers of gas giants… “The researchers also consider life in alternative solvents beyond water, and in hypothetical planetary global oceans where entire worlds are covered in (a non-aqueous) liquid (e.g. methane). “The shift represents a fundamental change in astrobiology from asking ‘Is this planet like Earth?’ to ‘Could this planet support any form of life we can imagine?’’ Any form of life we can imagine – Ah, there’s the rub: how much are we capable of imagining? How much will we let ourselves believe is possible? I suggest putting together a team of 2 – 5 years-olds to help us imagine what ET life forms must look and act like. “With thousands of known exoplanets showcasing remarkable diversity in mass, size, and orbits, this broader approach significantly expands our chances of detecting life beyond Earth.” No it doesn’t! First, the probability of our detecting ET life is entirely dependent on the existence of that life. Second, it is unlikely that any ET life form will resemble life on Earth. Third, if there is ET life and we do encounter it, there’s no guarantee we’ll know it when we see it. “As we stand on the brink of potentially discovering biosignatures in alien atmospheres, embracing this diversity may be the key to finally finding life in forms we never expected, in places we never thought to look.” Like Alice , we have been searching for our own reflection…we may find something unexpected on the other side of the glass. It may be as unlike our world as the Red Queen’s is unlike Alice’s; but it is just as likely that we will find that there is nothing there at all…once we too have traveled Through the Lookingglass . *** The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533, National Gallery, London. The painting illustrates how the familiar and the measurable coexist with the unexpected and unrecognizable, echoing the SETI Paradox’s challenge to assumptions about extraterrestrial life. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Curse of Immortality David Cowles Sep 7, 2025 “What if it is the final moment of my life…endures forever in my consciousness?” This essay is dedicated to my grandson, Owen Rotondi, whose insights about the nature of time led me to these ideas. It is fashionable these days to criticize Zeno (5th century BCE) and to make fun of his famous paradoxes. But not to worry: This has been going on for 2400 years and we’re in good company; Plato himself was among the first. Every generation of philosophers and mathematicians has conducted its own assault on Zeno’s Castle. After all, there is no way a tortoise can beat Achilles in a road race; there is no way that an arrow shot into the air can remain resting on its bow string. Something has to be wrong; but what? At the beginning of the 17th century two unrelated mathematicians (Newton and Leibniz) simultaneously ‘demolished Zeno once and for all’ when they discovered, independently, the Calculus. Well, not quite! It took none other than Bertrand Russell 200 years later to point out that Zeno’s castle still stands, as impregnable as ever, undamaged by the Enlightenment’s assault. Flashback: I spent a year of my life in a cold sweat. I had just realized that death is not something that any of us will ever experience. Of course, we may all be dead…but you’ll never know it because ‘death’ is defined as the absence of all awareness (consciousness). You cannot be aware of being dead. I reasoned, “If I don’t die, subjectively, then I must live, also subjectively, forever.” Sounds cool, but let me assure you, it’s anything but! The me that lives forever will not be me at the time of my greatest triumphs or at my one moment of clairvoyant lucidity; it will not be me “when I ruled the world.” (Coldplay) The me that lives forever will be me as I am during the final conscious moment of my life. Before Vatican II, Roman Catholics used to pray for ‘the grace of a happy death’. Appropriately so! Today, Catholics still entreat the Mother of God, “Pray for us…at the hour (i.e. moment) of our death.” Objectively, of course, I do not really expect to live forever. I expect to die just like everyone else (and too soon). But what if, subjectively, I never die? And what if it is the final moment of my life, the pain, the confusion, the regret, the despair, the fear that endures forever in my consciousness? This universal fate is literally ‘Hell’ as it was preached in some churches before Vatican II. Suddenly, I’m back in 2nd grade, hearing for the first time about the flaming Inferno, the stench of rotting flesh and brimstone, the shrieks of the damned and the cacophony of Bedlam. My life can’t end; what would come next? I cannot imagine myself not being. Once born, I can never die…to myself. I approach death, but as a limit, not as a destination. Just as Achilles is forever racing toward, but never reaching, Zeno’s finish line, so I may be hurtling toward my death, every instant ever closer, forever. Over a Sunday feast of pulled pork, sauteed field greens and corn on the cob, Owen pointed out to me that my existential problem was simply a new version of Zeno’s famous paradox. I had not yet thought to connect my own fear of dying with Achilles’ fear of humiliation at the hands of Zeno and his pet reptile. Owen made the connection for me…and an eschatological cloud was lifted. Zeno’s paradox cannot be resolved using Arithmetic (including calculus) and the set of Real Numbers…despite 2400 years of trying. Real Numbers are ‘dense’, i.e. continuous; between any two Real Numbers there is at least one other Real Number. Every interval is continuous. There is, however, a very simple, and as far as I know uncontested, solution to Zeno’s Paradoxes! But it requires us to throw Arithmetic and the set of Real Numbers out the window…or at least to put them on a shelf. And no, I’m not just reading from some naively hopeful 4th grader’s Christmas letter to Santa. Suppose instead we approach Zeno’s dilemma assuming that the number line is not continuous but made up of a sequence of discrete units. Let’s further suppose that this set of Discrete Numbers, and the new math it inspires, adequately models the real, physical world, i.e. Zeno’s race track. No matter how small we make the distance between these units, there will come a point at which the Tortoise will run out of runway; it will no longer be possible to cover half the distance to finish line because ‘halfway to the finish line’ would put him right in the middle of the abyss of non-being. Our contestants will reach the brink of annihilation and at that moment, in a ‘quantum leap’, Achilles will find himself across the line…at last. The introduction of discrete gaps, no matter how tiny, immediately resolves Zeno’s paradox and makes arithmetic linear again. Great, but how can we justify such a move? Real Numbers are called ‘real numbers’ because they’re supposed to be real, right? How can we justify pulling a set of Discrete Numbers out of thin air? If we have to use Unreal Numbers to force the result we want, then Achilles is an unreal champion…which might be worse than simply losing. Better to be humiliated by a tortoise than to go down in history as a cheat! But Achilles is no cheat! It turns out that the physical world in Athens and in New York, on Alpha Centauri and beyond, is discrete . In fact, only ‘discrete math’ (e.g. binary computer language) can adequately model real events. Achilles runs his race and collects his trophy; let everyone hold their peace. We now know, or think we know, that spacetime is made up of very tiny discrete units. How tiny are they? About 10^-35 meters across? We call this the Planck Scale. And how small is that? It’s about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than a proton. So small! Try this : the ratio of the observable universe to your slim and trim body is the same as the ratio of a hydrogen atom to the Planck length. So very, very small, like you, but big enough! Turns out, size doesn’t matter at all ! Regardless of how small we make the unit of discontinuity, the gap between numbers, the possibility of infinite regression immediately disappears and Zeno’s paradox is resolved. So we will die both objectively and subjectively in ‘ordinary (linear) time’. Now, thanks to Owen, I can smugly dust off an iconic slogan from my preteen years: “What, me worry?” (Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine) Now we just need to be sure some hot shot physicist doesn’t come along to prove Planck wrong. But I’m no longer losing sleep! We have invoked the aid of Mater Dei (‘now and at the hour of our death’) and we’re told her intervention never fails. Plus the great Achiiles has never lost a road race. Even Usain Bolt could not keep up. Rumor has it, though it is unconfirmed, that Achilles ran a 3.9 40 at the NFL Combine last year. If Planck’s wrong, then the Virgin Mary is a fraud, and Achilles is the World’s Biggest Loser . So I think we’re safe. I can relax. Thank you, Owen! *** Jack Tribeman’s Rise and Fall of Immortality (2014) is a large acrylic-on-canvas painting that contrasts humanity’s spiritual ascent—overcoming instinct to achieve creativity and freedom—with its potential decline under the weight of those same powers. The dual composition reflects both the promise of boundless ingenuity and the fragility of progress, inviting viewers to question whether immortality of spirit is sustainable or destined to erode. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

Dive into Aletheia Today's 2024 Beach Read, where philosophy, theology, and culture collide. Explore thought-provoking articles on the nature of God, the authenticity of the Gospel of Mark, and the tension between destiny and fate. Rediscover imagination, resilience, and purpose through reflections on Ruth and Esther. Perfect for thoughtful readers seeking to blend deep contemplation with the relaxed vibe of a beach read. Inside Our 2024 Beach Read Philosophy God Is a Bother! “The reason most people don’t believe in God is that they haven’t fully considered the alternative.” Moses, Machiavelli, and Morality “The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality…every event is its own end!” Is the Universe Real? “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” Destiny Versus Fate “Your Destiny is the Fate of others; the Destiny of others is your Fate.” Theology Mark’s Marks of Authenticity “There is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark…the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance.” Jeremiah “God places his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. How can this be consistent with Jeremiah’s status as a free and independent entity?” Culture & The Arts The Owl and the Pussycat “The entire story makes no sense…unless there’s something special about that ring, something you can’t get at Harrod’s at any price.” Imagination, Please! "One way helpful in recovering the wonder of childhood and a simpler life, is to become more creative, imaginative, wonder-filled people again." Spirituality Ruth Embraced Resilience and Found Redemption "Ruth demonstrates how resilience can reward us, showing that even in the darkest of times, there is always hope to be found for those who refuse to yield to despair." You Really Were Born for This "Esther’s journey from obscurity to influence exemplifies the profound truth that individuals are often placed in specific circumstances to fulfill significant purposes, even amid uncertainty and peril." Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Gideon David Cowles Jul 13, 2023 “Gideon’s most important legacy is not what he did, but what he did not do.” It all began three millennia ago with a young man named Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress to hide the grain from occupying Midianites. Like King David 200 years later, Gideon was the ‘runt’ (last born) of his father’s litter. Unlike today’s politicians, Gideon did not seek public office. Political power was just about the furthest thing from his mind; later, he was stupefied that anyone (God or human) could want him to rule. Refreshing humility! Of course, an angel of the Lord happened to be sitting under a nearby tree and decided to make himself known to Gideon: “You are a brave man, and the Lord is with you.” Nope! Gideon was born at night but not last night. No way he was going to be taken in by this nonsense! “If the Lord is really with us, why has all this (oppression) happened to us?” Gideon confronts the angel with the classical problem of evil, but, without waiting for an answer, he cuts to the chase: “Give me a sign!” And the angel gives Gideon the sign he requested, so Gideon proceeds to do God’s bidding. Under the cover of darkness, Gideon overturns the altar of Baal, tears down its sacred pole, builds an altar dedicated to YHWH, and, using the wood from the pole, sacrifices a whole bull. According to the Midianite rulers and their collaborators, Gideon was a heretic, a blasphemer, a traitor, and a revolutionary; he must die. But Gideon is saved by his dad’s brilliant lawyering. Johnnie Cochran had nothing on Joash! Sidebar : God don’t raise up no fools! Without prompting, Gideon names the altar he just built, “Jehovah Shalom,” meaning “God is wholeness,” an important theological concept even today. Gideon carried out the will of God and survived. Now it’s back to business as usual for him, right? (If you believe that, we’d better have a long talk before you start middle school.) Bullies are never content with one-offs, and God is no exception. He’s found his ‘patsy’ and he will surely return to this ‘well’ again…starting now. Gideon has just escaped death by the whiskers of his old man’s chin, and now God wants more from him? Come on! Well, actually, God just wants Gideon to liberate Israel from the Midianites! That’s all. He was able to coax Gideon, a good boy by all accounts, into an act of adolescent vandalism. Now he asks him to step up and lead a revolution. Clearly, Gideon has risen quickly in God’s ranks, but Gideon is skeptical, to say the least, of his newfound favor. He just barely escaped death, and in the process, we can imagine, he probably promised his father that he’d ‘be good from now on’. Yet now God is asking him to take up arms and to encourage others to take up arms to overthrow Midianite rule. Gideon might have been the baby of the family, but he was certainly not naïve: he understood that God was asking him to be a martyr…and to martyr others in God’s name. A heavy burden. So, Gideon asks for another sign. Is he stalling, buying time while he decides what to do? In any event, God grants him the sign he requested, at which point Gideon calls “Best two out of three!” And sure enough, God obliges him again . Two out of three, 99 out of 100; this God never loses! Time to fish or cut bait, and, thankfully, Gideon decides to fish. He raises a rebel army of 32,000 to take on 135,000 occupying soldiers. But Gideon does not seem phased. He begins by sending 31,700 of his ‘crack’ troops home. He decides to strike Midian with a force of just 300 hand-picked soldiers. What’s Gideon up to? Has he grown too big for his britches? Is he just showing off now? Or is he testing God yet again? Daring God to work one of his patented miracles? Or is he just concerned to limit the loss of life that will inevitably result from this Quixotic campaign? Another option: Could it be that Gideon was an instinctively brilliant military strategist on par with Leonidas (Thermopylae), Washington (Yorktown), and Giap (Vietnam)? Did he understand that a huge army of ‘conscripts’ was dead weight, that he could do more with 300 trained and motivated fighters than with 32,000 ‘bodies’? If so, God chose wisely! In any event, Gideon and YHWH together proved too much for Midian. Score one for Israel! Liberation. The details of Gideon’s triumph are a bit obscure, but we know that he relied heavily on psychological warfare. He deployed his meager 300 in ways that struck panic throughout the Midianite ranks and sent them fleeing across the Jordan. If this were the end of the story of Gideon, it would be enough to secure him an important spot in the history of the Middle East…but it’s only the beginning. Turns out, Gideon’s most important legacy is not what he did, but what he did not do. Will success spoil Rock Hunter? It did not spoil Gideon. After he defeated Midian, the Israelites understandably moved to make him their hereditary monarch. In a manner reminiscent of General Sherman, but unlike most all modern politicians, Gideon demurred: “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son; the Lord will rule over you.” And so it was that “for 40 years the land was at peace, all the lifetime of Gideon.” Gideon was the first to state unequivocal opposition to the institution of monarchy. He preferred the system of Judges: YHWH rules through a succession of charismatic leaders, chosen by the people ad hoc in response to specific historical challenges, and by a semi-permanent council of elders representing the people. What’s wrong with that? Image: “Gideon and His Three Hundred” as in Judges 7:9-23; illustration from a Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company, 1907. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Middle Voice David Cowles “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” 2000 words, 8 minute read According to Benjamin Whorf, language is a record of how we see the world, and conversely, language conditions us to see the world in a particular way: a paradigmatic example of a non-linear, auto-reinforcing process. Language is distilled from experience, but it also helps define what constitutes ‘an experience’ in our minds and it prompts us to label and sort experiences according to certain pre-set parameters. For example, someone attending Super Bowl LX might describe the event as an ‘experience’ and then proceed to talk about it using terms regularly associated with Pro Football games: e.g. entertainment value, strategic acumen, proficient execution, crowd participation, quality of concessions. Events help us break down the laminar inflow of time into discrete (or quasi-discrete) quanta which we call ‘experiences’. Take English, for example. When we speak, most of the verbs we use are either active or passive . We call that the “voice” of the verb. In an active/passive voiced language, we are always doing something to someone (or something) or someone (or something) is doing it to us: eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But it’s life as we know it, or rather, it is life as language has conditioned us to know it; we’re living it: it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t have to be this way. The Lex Talionis (‘eye for an eye’), literally the law of retaliation , is the paradigmatic expression of such an active/passive world view. Scotty broke the vase: active voice. Scotty is called the ‘subject’ and my poor Ming is called the ‘object’ of his action. This construction first separates Scotty from what he’s done. Scotty’s action itself assumes the status of an object; it is something that belongs to Scotty: “ his action”. Scotty acted, and the vase ‘reacted’ (by shattering). The flow is one-directional: it’s a vector. Alternatively, the vase was broken by Scotty: passive voice. It’s the same event but this time seen from the point of view of the victim, my artifact. The vase is now the subject, but the action is still vectored. The active and passive voices appear as opposites but in fact they both communicate the exact same information. They describe the same event in terms of the same categories: e.g. the age and value of the vase, the level of Scotty’s contrition. All that changes is the point of view of the narrator. So our world, as it is constructed for us by our language, consists primarily of ‘events’ that can be adequately described using active/passive voiced verbs. This forms the basis of the logos we impose on the world and that the world reflects back to us as language. You could say that we create our experience of the world in the image and likeness of our language. In reality, however, ‘happenings’ that neatly fit the active/passive paradigm are rare, possibly even non-existent. IRL action is rarely, if ever, entirely one directional: “I hit the nail” is actually an abstract simplification of a much more complex process. When my hammer connects with the nail head, the nail resists, then moves (hopefully), and the hammer recoils, sending vibrations down my arm…and that’s assuming I didn’t also hit my thumb in the process. But does such language serve our purposes ? You bet it does! It’s hard to imagine a Golden Gate Bridge without it. Our language essentially reduces Being to a schematic. But does such a language actually meet our needs ? Not so much! Syntax unravels the unity of Being and displays it like a collection of butterflies pinned to the wall of a natural history museum. The fact is that every real action is processional and reciprocal; it affects the so-called subject as well as the object. In the example of Scotty and the vase, that reality is somewhat trivial and can probably be safely ignored…that is, unless I accept Scotty’s explanation that the vase jumped off the shelf and attacked him, breaking in the process. And why not? The very same thing happened at Billy’s house just last week. Now imagine a third class of explanation: Nothing happened! The vase just fell off of the mantle and onto the floor, shattering in the process. We have trouble swallowing this scenario even though we know that the force of gravity, imperceptible earth tremors, and the rumble of a truck passing by can all lead to such catastrophes… and that’s not even to mention butterflies flapping their wings in Borneo. ‘Either Scotty broke the vase or the vase broke Scotty’. We are instinctively (i.e. linguistically) programmed to accept such a theory because it fits snugly into our active/passive template. Notice (above) that we don’t even have an economical way to state the third option. But what if we’re trying to model a chemical reaction, or worse, a quantum mechanical process, or even worse, some sort of ecological phenomenon? How do we describe these events using just active and passive voiced verbs? We can’t. At best, we can approximate clumsily in simplified situations. “Two hydrogen atoms each lend an electron to one oxygen atom; or an oxygen atom borrows an electron from each of two hydrogen atoms.” (You call water!) When we get into even more complex interactions, language breaks down completely, and we have to resort to diagrams (e.g. Feynman diagrams) or equations or shoulder shrugs. Now imagine the difficulty of modeling complex human relationships using just active and passive voice verbs! The War of the Roses is our paradigm. And politics? Needless to say, we understand the world in terms of us and them . We conceptualize social change as class war. If someone has something then they must have acquired it at the expense of someone else. Of course, this is not the way things really work. Certainly, there are occasions where clear division is called for and there are plenty of examples of ill gotten gain but, believe it or not, these are not the norm. In the main, we are symbiotic creatures. We do better (economically) when the land does better (the Grail Legend) and the land does better when we do good (ecologically). But how could things be any different? Many older languages had a third voice, along with the active and passive voices, which linguists call the Middle Voice . The middle voice is ideally suited to model situations where relationships are between equals and where action is reciprocal. It is at least possible that the middle voice preceded the active/passive voices in the evolution of Indo-European languages. Modern linguists struggle to understand the middle voice. Conditioned by their own active/passive logoi , they want to understand this verb form as somewhere along the active/passive axis. Hence, the term ‘middle’. In fact, the middle voice has nothing to do with its active/passive cousins. It’s a completely different way of viewing the world. The middle voice verb form describes an action that impacts both subject and object simultaneously. Every subject is a co-subject…and an object; every object is a co-object…and a subject. The active voice implies a Future (post-act), and the passive voice a Past (pre-act), but the middle voice refers only to the Present. The active/passive voice sees the world from the outside; the middle voice sees it from the inside: objectivity vs. subjectivity. Imagine what our world would look like if we viewed it solely in terms of reciprocal relations and omnidirectional events! Would that change the world itself? Or would it just enable us to see it as it really is? Or both? We’d see the world through a different filter, and we’d most likely act quite differently as a result. How do we talk about love using only active/passive verb forms? The best we can come up with is something lame like, “Mary and Paul are in love with each other.” This turns love into a static state rather than a raging fire. The middle voice, on the other hand, is ready-made to describe the relationship between Mary and Paul in a way that does it justice. Thus, we have two opposing world views: an active/passive view and a middle voice view. One sees the world in terms of will, struggle, domination, and power; the other sees it in terms of mutuality. One is the syntax of war, the other of peace; one cause and effect, the other evolution. One is the syntax of past and future, the other of the present. Unfortunately, however, most Western languages have lost their middle voice. Where the middle voice has been retained (e.g. Icelandic), it has been forced to co-exist with its active/passive cousins, and it no longer conveys the strong sense of reciprocity it once did. The poverty of an active/passive voiced language and the lack of a strong middle voice alternative is not just a linguistic problem; it’s a philosophical problem and ultimately a theological problem. One way to understand ‘the Christian project’ is as an attempt to reintroduce middle-voice consciousness to the world. Of course, I am not suggesting that the New Testament authors, much less Jesus himself, were budding linguists. Yet they understood that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way folks viewed the world and, with incredible insight, they sought to change that view. When you view events and the actions that constitute them in terms of unequal, unidirectional power relations, it becomes easy to abuse or exploit your neighbor...and impossible to love her as yourself. Even today, certain sub-cultures will brand you a sucker or a wimp or a ‘goodie two shoes’ if you don’t take advantage of the weaker folks in your orbit. “It’s just business!” Active/passive voiced languages conflict with values like justice and kindness. It is difficult to inculcate an ethic of justice, reciprocity and love in folks who view the world according to the active/passive paradigm. Could ‘bad language’ be humanity’s ‘original sin’? Is the Second Commandment just an extension of the first. Christianity, especially in its early stages, sought to replace the active/passive world view with the world view that we are calling ‘middle voice consciousness’. In the Lord’s Prayer, for example, we read, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 12 centuries later, Francis of Assisi built on this insight: “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.” Whatever we do, we do to ourselves to the same degree and in the same way and at the same time as we do it to others. That goes for positive actions like forgiveness and negative actions like violence. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Why? Because in middle voice consciousness, your neighbor is yourself! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Spring 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back The Great Reveal? David Cowles Apr 25, 2026 “What if there are life forms that do not resemble anything I can describe? We probably wouldn’t know they exist… until they tap us on the shoulder and…they may have done just that.” A recent post on this site ( Aliens & The Great Reveal by David P. Bugay, PhD) argued persuasively that we may finally be on the cusp of acknowledging contact with ET - intelligent extra-terrestrials. Dr. Bugay has amassed evidence that government agencies may be about to release data that will confirm ‘close encounters’ once and for all. If so, it will be most welcome. Talk about your October Surprise ! But I remain skeptical. Lump me in with those who thought the automobile was a fad, who were certain that TV would never surpass radio as a communications medium; and please, tell me, why would anyone ever want or need a personal computer ? I have no quarrel with any of Dr. Bugay’s data; my reservations run deeper. The famous Drake Equation notwithstanding, I question the topic’s basic premise: that life ‘must have’ evolved independently elsewhere in the Universe and, if so, that we would be able to recognize it. My reticence appears ridiculous on its face. There are approximately 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and they have an average of 100 billion stars each. That’s 10^22 possible staging grounds for living organisms. It would be absurd to think that life evolved only once and we just happen to be ‘it’. But IMHO, this argument has a ‘probability problem’ of its own. Consider what we know about life on Earth: Earth is less than 5 billion years old but it took a mere ½ billion years for the first unicellular life forms to emerge. This suggests that the probability of abiogenesis is fairly high, given a reasonably hospitable environment. Yet, abiogenesis appears to have occurred on Earth only once in nearly 5 billion years. Every cell alive on Earth today (there’s 10^30 of them) is descended from the one primordial cell that evolved 4.5 billion years ago. Note : There are 100 million times more cells living on Planet Earth today than there are stars in the observable universe. As far as we know, the RNA/DNA molecule critical to all terrestrial life evolved only once. Of course, it is possible that life evolved more than once on Earth but was snuffed out by the existing germ line. Possible? Yes. Likely? Not so much. Here’s the problem: If RNA/DNA or a functional equivalent did evolve more than once, there is no reason it should have stopped twice…or thrice. Counterintuitively, it is more likely that life evolved a million times than it is that it evolved exactly twice. But the more often novel lifeforms appear, the more likely it is that some novel molecule will manage to survive and reproduce to critical population density. Or not. But even if no competing molecule ever secured a beach head, tiny bits of its failed code should still show up in today’s bacterial genome…and as far as I know, that is not the case, at least not yet. Bottom line, multiple occasions of aborted abiogenesis on Earth is not a probability that keeps me up at night. “Given a reasonably hospitable environment.” We use actual conditions on Earth as a model of hospitality. We use ‘Earth-likeness’ as the measure of extra-terrestrial habitability. But this too is a problem: Conditions on Earth have varied drastically over 4 billion years. When life first emerged, there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere, just nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and ammonia, toxic to life as we know it. The lack of an ozone layer meant the surface was bombarded by intense ultraviolet radiation. The crust had only recently solidified the molten magma of Earth's earlier phase. The surface was thin, unstable, and highly volcanic, with widespread lava flows. Some estimates put average temperatures between 122–176°F (50–80°C)…and AC wasn’t invented yet. (Climate doomsayers, take note.) The young sun was only 70% as luminous as it is today and the Moon was much closer to Earth — perhaps 2–3 times closer — causing enormous tides, possibly hundreds of meters high. Question : Would the crew of Artemis II have even recognized this planet as Earth? These conditions hardly seem ideal for the synthesis of life as we know it. And yet it happened, leading Lisa Minelli and Frank Sinatra to croon, “Make it there…make it anywhere ( New York, New York ),” giving rise to the idea that life is a fairly common phenomenon throughout the universe. Ok, so life likes a witch’s brew…no problem, different strokes. But that same life form thrives on Earth today in totally different conditions. And what are those conditions? Well, what are the limits of your imagination? Question : What do underwater hydrothermal sea vents, volcanic rims, Himalayan mountain tops, and polar ice caps have in common? Answer : Life. The ‘original’ RNA/DNA molecule, as it has evolved, thrives in each of those conditions and more, surviving ice ages, pandemics, meteor strikes, and other mass extinction events. “Give me carbon, I’ll give you plants; give me oxygen, animals; methane, methanotrophs. You make it, I’ll breathe it. Shoot me into empty space…I’ll hibernate; encase me in glacial ice…I’ll thaw. You may pick us off one by one with your antibiotics, pollutants, etc. but we are legion. Catch us if you can; kill us you can’t!” A recent (4/21/2026) headline in Popular Mechanics caught my eye: “Scientists are figuring out how flora bounced back from the only nuclear attacks in human history.” Not to mention Chernobyl. Life – you just can’t kill it. So let’s apply these tools to the question of life on Mars. One of four things must be true: (1) there are no indigenous organisms living on Mars today and there never were, (2) there was life on Mars once but now it is extinct, (3) there are primitive life forms alive on Mars today, (4) there are complex life forms on Mars today. Let’s review each in turn: How come? Mars is not all that different from Earth, even today. Heck, the wife and I were just looking at a time share there. But once upon a time, Mars was very much more like Earth. So if life evolved so easily on Earth, why not on Mars? Even today, Mars is borderline habitable. Much of the planet is more hospitable than certain areas on Earth that teem with life. And nothing has happened in Martian history that the adaptive ability of a robust biosphere would not have been able to accommodate, IMO. So far, all our Mars probes have been unable to uncover evidence of a single living microbe. Of course, that may change as we ‘dig deeper’ so to speak. But there is a bigger problem: if unicellular, prokaryotic life does exist on Mars, why hasn’t it evolved more complex structures as on Earth? Which leaves us with the obvious logical conclusion: Mars is teeming with complex life forms. Glad we finally resolved that one after 10 millennia of speculation! Just one more question: Where are they? So we are left with three options: (1) there is something wrong with our chain of reasoning (above); (2) there are complex life forms on Mars that we are unable to perceive, or (3) the universe is playing silly buggers. #3 is always an option. It is perhaps the one option that potentially applies to every question. So let’s focus on #2 . How could there be complex life forms on Mars without our being aware of them? Are they hiding in underground bunkers? Probably not. What if we don’t see them because we’re looking for the wrong things? All speculation about extraterrestrial life assumes that life will closely resemble our own. We are looking for RNA/DNA-like organic (carbon based) molecules, organized in cells, breathing some sort of atmosphere, craving an aqueous environment. But what if life exists that is entirely unlike this prototype? The best efforts of Gene Rodenberry notwithstanding, our sci-fi writers give us only thinly disguised versions of ourselves. Sci-Fi and SETI have something in common: they both implicitly assume that all life is like terrestrial life. And that gives them a lot to work with! From slime mold to coral reefs to plankton to pachyderms, life on Earth is a many splendored thing; who could ask for anything more? But what if there are life forms that more closely resemble clouds, or rocks, or vortices? What if there are life forms that do not resemble anything I can name or even describe? Then we probably wouldn’t know they exist. At least not until they tap us on the shoulder and according to Dr. B. they may have done just that. *** This evocative painting by Luděk Pešek depicts a sprawling alien civilization nestled within a craggy landscape, characterized by organic, towering architecture and a vibrant green-hued atmosphere. The foreground features a sleek, gold-colored spacecraft hovering above a dark, textured valley where bizarre, insect-like lifeforms interact with a glowing river and crystalline flora. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back A Universe From Nothing David Cowles I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! In 2012, renowned physicist and cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, published A Universe from Nothing . The avowed purpose of the book was to debunk the idea that some sort of transcendent entity (e.g., ‘God’) is necessary to account for the universe as we experience it. Krauss subtitled his book: Why there is Something rather than Nothing . Of course, this subtitle implies a question that Krauss did not need to spell out for his readers. Anyone who might be tempted to read a book like this is already well acquainted with it. In fact, it was probably the first question serious thinkers ever asked, and it is still as relevant and thought-provoking today as it was 3,000 years ago. At least since Parmenides (b. 515 BC), Western philosophers, theologians and scientists have struggled with the subtitled question. To answer it, we need to define our terms, but that should be easy: even toddlers know the difference between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. Or do they? Is a dream ‘something’? How about an illusion…or a delusion? How about a unicorn? A squared circle? How about virtual particles that we ‘know’ exist but that, according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, must annihilate one another before they are directly detected (i.e., measured)? Turns out, Being is not as simple a proposition as we might have supposed; but what about Nothing ? Is empty space nothing? How about a perfect vacuum? What about quantities outside the Planck scale? How about the ‘potential’ my parents and teachers saw in me as a child, but that was never realized? Krauss offers us three possible definitions of ‘nothing’. He begins with the notion that ‘empty space’ is ‘nothing’ and he shows, convincingly I think that so-called empty space inexorably spawns virtual particle pairs, radiation, and various space-filling ‘fields’: “Empty space can have a non-zero energy associated with it, even in the absence of any matter or radiation… The gravitational ‘pressure’ associated with such energy in empty space is actually negative… The energy of empty space (nothing) gets converted into the energy of something.” The problem with Krauss’ argument is that it is a bit too convincing. On closer examination, it turns out that ‘empty space’ is never really empty. It cannot be conceived without its virtual particle pairs, its ‘pressure’ (albeit negative), and its radiation and fields. We do not begin with empty space and then suddenly flip a switch and ‘create’ these constituent phenomena; these phenomena are part of whatever empty space is. ‘Empty space’, then, is clearly not ‘nothing’. Krauss admits as much: “… It would be disingenuous to suggest that empty space endowed with energy…is really nothing. In this picture, one must assume that space exists and can store energy…” Actually, though, Krauss’ empty space argument is odd for a quite different reason. Sir Isaac Newton believed that space was a passive receptacle that (logically at least) preceded whatever might populate it. Few, if any, cosmologists believe this today. Einstein taught us that space and time are aspects of a single reality: 4 dimensional spacetime. Now, modern cosmologists seem to be of two minds, either: 1. Spacetime is not a primary (substructural) property of cosmos but rather a secondary (emergent) property; or, 2. Spacetime is an illusion, pure and simple, and does not exist. A summer 2018 special edition of Scientific American showcases both points of views. The issue is titled A Matter of Time but, as we now know, space and time are aspects of a single 4-dimensional reality, so the same arguments should be applicable to space. In this issue, Craig Chandler ( Is Time an Illusion? ) argues that time, if real at all, is an “emergent property” of the cosmos, not its substructure: “Space and time are secondary concepts…” But Chandler has a foot in both camps: “… Many in theoretical physics have come to believe that time fundamentally does not even exist.” He synthesizes these views using a ‘block’ model of spacetime: “Spacetime is like a loaf of bread that you can slice in different ways, called either ‘space’ or ‘time’ almost arbitrarily.” According to this model, spacetime is a 4-dimensional loaf . If you slice it vertically, you get slices of time. Everything that happens at a given ‘moment’, no matter where it happens, is captured by that one slice. On the other hand, if you slice it horizontally, you get slices of space. Everything that happens at a given ‘location’, no matter when it happens, is captured on that one slice. Slicing the loaf diagonally reveals the effects of relativity. Astonishingly, this apparently 21st century idea is nothing new. The so-called ‘father of Western philosophy’, Parmenides, had essentially the same idea 2500 years ago: “… What-is is ungenerated and imperishable…unbeginning and unceasing…whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…” In other words…a loaf of bread. In contrast, Krauss’ argument seems to rely on the discarded Newtonian model (above). Krauss grudgingly acknowledges these objections to his theory. But then he asks an even more intriguing question: ‘What if not even empty space is presumed to exist?’ What if we use ‘nothing’ to define the ‘state of things’ (whatever that might mean) before even empty space appears? “… The rules of quantum mechanics would apply to the properties of space and not just to the properties of objects existing in space… Should one consider the possibility of small, possibly compact spaces that themselves pop in and out of existence? … As Stephen Hawking has emphasized, a quantum theory of gravity allows for the creation, albeit perhaps momentarily, of space itself where none existed before…” Just as Krauss first argued that virtual matter, radiation, particle fields and negative pressure emerge spontaneously in empty space, now he argues that empty space itself emerges from an even more primitive state of being (or should I say ‘non-being’?). In this spirit, he titles his tenth chapter Nothing is Unstable . He does not mean by this that everything is stable but rather that instability is ‘ontologically substructural’, i.e., a fundamental characteristic of ‘Being’ itself. It applies to ‘nothing’ as well as to ‘something’. This argument is so challenging that the arguments against it do not come from physics, but from linguistics and philosophy. Contemporary scientists who dare wade into the waters of philosophy are invariably influenced by three men: A.J. Ayer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and John Austin. (Or if they are not so influenced, they certainly should be.) These three pillars of ‘analytic’ English philosophy (first half of the 20th century) argued that many, if not most, problems of philosophy stem from an imprecise use of language. While the three men’s views and methods differ widely, they were all laser focused on the way language is employed to frame philosophical problems. Collectively, they argued that terms used to describe everyday events (‘ordinary language’) do not suddenly acquire new and different meanings just because they are applied to cosmic and metaphysical phenomena. Red is red is red. Let’s apply that insight to Krauss’ assertion that “nothing is unstable”. Something is unstable if it possesses or exhibits the quality known as ‘instability’ (or lacks the quality known as ‘stability’). But how can the quality of instability, or stability, be possessed or exhibited by ‘nothing’? Only an entity that is ‘something’ can possess or exhibit qualities, instability included. There are no disembodied qualities, at least not where I live. “Look, there goes green arm in arm with damp as usual?” – not so much! Therefore, the sentence ‘nothing is unstable’ is (in the parlance of analytic philosophy) meaningless . By stating that “nothing is unstable”, Krauss implicitly acknowledges that his pre-existent ontological reality (‘nothing’) is really ‘something’ after all. But then what could we say about it? Perhaps we could speculate that it is something that exists solely in the mode of pure potentiality; but that is still ‘something’ – all of which works to defeat Krauss’ argument. Another lion of early 20th century English philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead, built his complex and comprehensive “Philosophy of Organism” around just three undefined terms: one, many and creativity. Perhaps Krauss’ ‘nothing’ is Whitehead’s ‘creativity’, the restlessness that lies curled up, like Kundalini, at the base of Being. Finally, Krauss offers us a third version of ‘nothing’. This version does not allow for potentiality or quantum fluctuation; it applies the definition of ‘nothing’ in the most rigorous possible way. Krauss rejects this version as ridiculous, and he claims that philosophers and theologians who insist on applying this definition are acting in ‘bad faith’: they’re simply refusing to engage in the debate at any level. In the parlance of the playground, they have picked up their ball and gone home. However, this is precisely the view of nothing that contemporary Italian philosopher, Emanuele Severino advances. Often called a Neo-Parmenidean, Severino holds that all being is eternal. Whatever is cannot not-be, nor could it ever not-have-been, nor could it come-to-be; it just is: “… It must be said of everything that, precisely because it is not nothing, it cannot become nothing (nor can it have ever been nothing), and therefore it is and reigns eternal. Everything is eternal.” Here I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton: Whatever is, is! In any event, kudos to Krauss. He dared to take on the toughest of all problems in philosophy and ultimately, he had the courage to admit that he could not prove his hypothesis: A Universe from Nothing. Bottom line, being is, nothing isn’t, whatever is not can never come to be and whatever is, cannot cease to be. “That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.” – Keats. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Previous Next