INSPIRATIONAL

Ultimate Inter-Disciplinary Theory

by Vikas Sharma (writer), India, January 22, 2015

Potentialism Theory’s Cosmic Goal: E+

By ron1980 | Posted November 20, 2014 | Chicago, Illinois

The Common Denominator of the Cosmic Order

By Samna | Posted June 12, 2014

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z41:

Framing Beliefs

“There are many other unprovable framing beliefs, and they have perplexed philosophers since humans first thought systematically about such things. Is there really a world out there, or are there only our sense impressions? Are there other minds? Do we have free will? Has the universe existed for billions of years, or did it come into existence five minutes ago, together with false memories and evidence? These are staple topics of any introductory course of philosophy. Framing beliefs – that there is an external world, and other minds, and free will – lie beyond the scope of proof. Nonetheless, they are what give meaning to the chaos of experience.*”

from the author –

I am proposing the Summa hypothesis/theory/paradigm –
Q4P^∞ / Extraordinariation – as a “Framing Belief”

* Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership, New York: Random House, Inc. 2011, p.33

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z42:

The Goldilocks Dilemma^***

“As we were leaving, a stranger came up to me, gentle and unassuming, and said, ‘I’ve just written a book that I think you might find interesting. If I may, I’ll send it to you.’ I thanked him and some days later the book arrived. It was called Just Six Numbers [© 2001], and with a shock of recognition I realized who the stranger was: Sir Martin, now Lord, Rees, Astronomer Royal, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and President of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest and most famous scientific association. Sir Martin was, in other words, Britain’s most distinguished scientist.

The thesis of the book was that there are six mathematical constants that determine the physical shape of the universe. Had any one of them been even slightly different, the universe as we know it would not exist. Nor would life. It was my first glimpse into the new cosmology and the string of recent discoveries of how improbable our existence actually is. James Le Fanu, in his 2009 book Why Us?, adds to this a slew of new findings in neuroscience and genetics to suggest that we are on the brink of a paradigm shift that will overturn the scientific materialism of the past two centuries.

The new paradigm must also lead to a renewed interest in and sympathy for religion in its broadcast sense, as a means of expressing wonder at the ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans’ of the natural world. It is not the least of the ironies of the New Genetics and the Decade of the Brain that they have vindicated the two main impetuses to religious belief – the non-material reality of the human soul and the beauty and diversity of the living world – while confounding the principle tenets of materialism: that Darwin’s ‘reason for everything’ explains the natural world and our origins, and that life can be ‘reduced’ to the chemical genes, the mind to the physical brain. (James Le Fanu, Why Us?, p.258)

There may be, in other words, a new synthesis in the making. It will be very unlike the Greek thought-world of the medieval scholastics with its emphasis on changelessness and harmony. Instead it will speak about the emergence of order, the distribution of intelligence and information processing, the nature of self-organizing complexity, the way individuals display a collective intelligence that is a property of groups, not just the individuals that comprise them, the dynamic of evolving systems and what leads some to equilibrium, others to chaos. Out of this will emerge new metaphors of nature and humanity, flourishing and completeness.”*

*** Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership, New York: Random House, Inc. 2011, pp.75-76

from the author –

As noted in the 2001 Sir Martin Rees book Just Six Numbers, there are at least 6 cosmological constants, (and, actually maybe a dozen+) which, if adjusted by even 1 decimal point would preclude the cosmos having life, among other things, as we know it.

Thus, “life” – and existence – exists at the “knife-edge” of the precision of these constants.

By-and-large the scientific community and the theological community is
not-quite-sure exactly how to understand this “synchronicity.”

However, from Summa’s perspective the resolution is clear. Obvious. The cosmic order orients itself – and its crucial/integral cosmological constants – to advance inter-related goals of life, potential and extraordinariation.

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z43:

God^***

“God is the distant voice we hear and seek to amplify in our systems of meaning, each particular to a culture, a civilization, a faith. God is the One within the many; the unity at the core of our diversity; the call that leads us to journey beyond the self and its strivings, to enter into otherness and be enlarged by it, to seek to be a vehicle through which blessing flows outwards to the world, to give thanks for the miracle of being and the radiance that shines wherever two lives touch in affirmation, forgiveness and love.”*

*** Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership, New York: Random House, Inc. 2011, p.94

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z44:

Man: Mortal or Divine^***

“When I behold Your Heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and stars that You set in place,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
Mortal man that You take note of him?
Yet You have made him little less than the angels
And adorned him with glory and majesty.”

Psalm 8:3-5
(c. 1000 BCE)

“Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) was one of the moving spirits of the Italian Renaissance. Born into an aristocratic family, he was a child prodigy, mastering Latin and Greek at an early age and winning the title of papal protonotary when we was only ten. Initially intending a career in the Church, he went to the University of Bologna to study law, but widened his interests to include philosophy, which he pursued at the universities of Ferrara and Padua.

In 1486 he completed his monumental 900 Theses, Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalasticae et theologicae, on the entire range of human knowledge. To accompany them he wrote his Oration on the Dignity of Man, widely regarded as a manifesto of the Renaissance. In it he argued that the human person was the centerpiece of creation, the one being other than God himself who had no fixed nature. Endowed with freedom, he could rise higher than the angels or fall lower than the animals. This is how he imagines God addressing the first human:

Adam, we give you no fixed place to live, no form that is peculiar to you, nor any function that is yours alone… All other things have a limited and fixed nature prescribed and bounded by our laws. You, with no limit or no bound, may choose for yourself the limits and bounds of your nature. We have placed you at the world’s center so that you may survey everything else in the world. We have made you neither of heavenly nor of Earthly stuff, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with free choice and dignity, you may fashion yourself into whatever form you choose. To you is granted the power of degrading yourself into the lower forms of life, the beasts, and to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, the divine.”*

*Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), the text available at: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_1/pico.html#2. See Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall, Jr, The Rennaissane Philosophy of Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1948; M.V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

*** Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership, New York: Random House, Inc. 2011, pp.111-112

THE TRANSCENDENT DYNAMIC

APPENDIX Z45:

New Interpretations^***

“I end with a fascinating comment by the nineteenth-century Jewish mystic Rabbi Zadok haCohen of Lublin (1823-1900).

‘Every day there are new interpretations of Torah, because every day, continually, God renews the work of creation.’ Since the world was created according to the Torah…presumably, the renewal of the world comes about through new aspects of Torah. That is why after the blessing [in the morning prayers] ‘creator of the heavenly lights’ which speaks about the daily renewal of creation, the sages instituted a second blessing which is a form of blessing over the Torah…in which we ask to know the new interpretations of Torah which come about through the new aspects of creation….’

Rabbi Zadock haCohen, Tzidkat ha-Tzaddik, 92
(c. 1870)

According to Rabbi Zadok, since the God of creation is the God of revelation, and since the Torah is itself a commentary on the natural world, every new scientific discovery generates new religious insight. By daily renewing creation, God is daily renewing, our insight into his creative will.”

*** Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership, New York: Random House, Inc. 2011, pp.111-112

David Birnbaum Philosophy

David Birnbaum Cosmology

David Birnbaum Metaphysics

David Birnbaum Q4P Theory

otentialism v. Randomness/Atheism

10 Mar, 2014
by Shanaka in UNCATEGORIZED

GOD AND GOOD

FOREWORD

by D. N. Khalil

*

Jewish philosophy is often resigned to the assumption that fundamental descriptions of God and the universe are beyond the grasp of the human intellect. Questions of Jewish philosophy are generally posed in the context of a mysterious framework that is rarely examined per se. Such a mindset is often more concerned with man’s place, role, and duties in the world, than it is with the contours of the universe and the latter’s relationship to the Eternal:

“[The reason of Jewish philosophy] is the reason that we find in chess…Chess offers the greatest possible scope for calculation…But all this takes place in accordance with a set of rules that determine which moves are permitted and which are not and how the pieces are set up. The rules themselves are the limits of reason in chess. They are not questioned nor need they be justified because the rationality of chess begins after the rules have been set down…This is Jewish intelligence…[it] has a sense of limit, of the vanity involved in hurling questions at the limits…”

– Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith I, 3.
[italics mine]

Of course, there have been noteworthy attempts to defy this generalization. Maimonides is perhaps the most prominent example of a Jewish philosopher who would analyze – if not challenge – Judaism’s fundamental suppositions. In his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides describes a Judaism that dovetails seamlessly with an understanding of the universe as established primarily by Aristotle. As Maimonides holds Judaism to the light of Aristotle’s logic, he finds concordance on all topics, with merely one exception: the question of eternalism.

Aristotle is the ‘eternalist,’ believing that the universe is eternal and that God comes into existence at some point in time. Maimonides asserts the converse: that God is eternal and that the universe is actively brought into being. It is striking that Maimonides, who accepts Aristotle’s position on an array of topics, including the essence of both God and man, cannot find agreement with Aristotle on the relationship between God and the cosmos. It is even more astounding that neither Maimonides nor Aristotle claim to prove their respective positions vis-à-vis God’s relation to the cosmos. It is as if both men probe to the depths of metaphysics together in complete accord, only to resign, quite openly, to their respective presuppositions at the end
of the journey.
Both sides appear to be missing tools that are essential to complete this journey. And both sides admit their respective unpreparedness by abandoning the very thought-process that brought them to this point:

“As for the matters concerning which we have no argument or that are too great in our opinion, it is difficult for us to say: why is this so? For instance, when we say: Is the world eternal or not?”
– Aristotle, Topica I, 11

“The eternity of the world or its creation in time becomes an open question, it should in my opinion be accepted without proof… it is not in the power of speculation to accede.”

– Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, II, 16

It is at this juncture that David Birnbaum enters the forum. He does so by delineating the relationship between God and eternity in the context of a unified metaphysics that concurrently addresses the relationship of God to the cosmos and the cosmos to eternity.

Such is the philosophy expounded in his first work, God and Evil. It is this simultaneous solution that lays the foundation for the work’s understanding of the existence of gross evil in the world. Birnbaum’s is a solution that has been left almost entirely unchallenged in the eighteen years since its publication in 1988. In the current work, God and Good, Birnbaum has looked further into the implications of this metaphysics and found the individual to be central. Here the individual is revealed as the engine of cosmic evolution. The relationship of man to God, man to the cosmos, and man to eternity thus become the focus of this work.

Birnbaum feels no compulsion to obey the rules that his intellectual predecessors followed. Building on the foundation of ancient Jewish principles, particularly Kabbalistic ones, he is not afraid to draw on Eastern principles of temporal circularity, concepts from biology and physics that have yet to be applied to metaphysical issues, or insights from other scientific and humanistic disciplines that have been left untapped in philosophy.

Asserting that previous attempts to characterize the essence of the cosmos have fallen short for their lack of an adequate conceptual arsenal, as exemplified by Maimonides’ and Aristotle’s impasse, he consolidates these eclectic influences into a defined set of metaphysical ‘tools.’ Birnbaum presents these tools at the outset of God and Good. He then uses them to build a model that is applicable to all the arenas from which its influences were initially derived.

The implications of Birnbaum’s original – markedly straightforward – doctrine therefore, range from the most general to the most specific. The doctrine is unified by the central thesis that unbounded potentiality pulls both the individual and the cosmos towards a Divine ideal. Potential is universal. Potential is the nexus:

“One of the great afflictions of man’s spiritual world is that every discipline of knowledge, every feeling, impedes the emergence of the other…This defect cannot continue permanently. Man’s nobler future is destined to come, when he will develop to a sound spiritual state so that instead of each discipline negating the other, all knowledge, all feeling will be envisioned from any branch of it…No spiritual phenomenon can stand independently. Each is interpenetrated by all.”

– Abraham Isaac Kook, Lights of Holiness, I, p. 22

Interestingly, in spite of its novelty, the paradigm elaborated by Birnbaum is no less firmly anchored in Biblical and Talmudic concepts than the previous Jewish perspectives that were restrained by these same influences. For instance, God’s self-identification as “I will be that which I will be” (Exodus 3:14) is perhaps the single best articulation of God and Good’s description of potentiality’s association with God.

In his first work, Birnbaum meticulously dissects Adam’s Garden of Eden dilemma (Genesis 2:17), understanding it as humankind’s choice between potential/infinite growth and bliss/limited growth. Birnbaum then goes on, throughout God and Evil and now God and Good, to reveal the theme of potential in traditional Jewish narratives and even Judaism’s specific commandments.
At the outset of God and Evil Birnbaum boldly asserts that he aims to provide an integrated and novel solution to the problem of (1) the origins of the cosmos, (2) the nature, as it were, of God, and (3) the presence of gross evil in a world governed by an omnipotent God. At this point, the expectation, at least for this reader, is for a complex, convoluted theory too abstract to be considered objectively. The result, however, a “potentiality model,” is just the opposite: profoundly discrete, yet overarching enough to satisfy the three initial aims.

With the presentation of the second book, this model now has four distinct dimensions. First, in God and Evil, it is thoroughly rooted in Biblical and academic theology. Second, in part one of God and Good, the metaphysical implications of the model are described. Third, in part two of God and Good, the model is presented in the form of 120 mythical Angels, adding texture to the metaphysics and drawing it into the realm of daily human reality. And finally, in the third section of God and Good, the ‘potentiality model’ is translated into a practical template for self-actualization.

It is difficult to recall a metaphysics as unified, yet as widely applicable, as the one presented here. The model’s foundation is concrete, while its implications are personal and thus varied. Each reader, therefore, will glean that which augments his or her own spiritual sensibility. As an Orthodox Jew, I find much in Birnbaum’s two works that bolsters my understanding of traditional Judaism.

No less sui generis than the scope of Birnbaum’s work, is its relentless appeal to profound innate human understandings that cannot be adequately explicated in standard prose. Birnbaum employs a linguistic ensemble that at times resembles the water-tight, nitty-gritty reasoning of God and Evil, while at other times feels like terse jolts to the psyche. The author has turned away from the prevalent style of philosophy that so fervently analyzes metaphysical mysteries only to expose its own limitations. In breaking from convention, Birnbaum has taken a risk. He has gambled acceptance by refusing to succumb to a more traditional framework that would inevitably fail to fully represent the depth of ideas presented here.

The test lies in the heart of the reader. For all of its details and implications, the core of this work is unabashedly simple: potential drives existence. Does this concept seem foreign? or does it feel natural? If Birnbaum is successful, the reader will detect that the idea has an inherent organic power. This power can be explained in certain general contexts using standard language, but in others – particularly in the context of the individual – traditional explanations do not suffice.

Birnbaum posits that the force driving the cosmos pulsates within the soul of each individual, and so only a visceral response from the reader can fully reflect its impact. Is this achieved? Do the grand, general, cosmic principles yield to an understanding of the self? Does this awareness, in and of itself, have meaningful and practical implications for daily life? If it does, then Birnbaum has achieved something utterly unique. He has raised a preciously simple metaphysical centerpiece and enshrined it through its intrinsic affinity for the mind and the heart of the reader.

“I will cause a new utterance to be heard in the land:
Peace peace to the far and near, said the Lord.”
Isaiah 57:19

D. N. Khalil
Cold Spring Harbor
New York

Dr. D. N. Khalil is a scientist with the National Institute of Health.
He teaches Jewish Philosophy at Long Island University.