The Physics of a Creative Cosmos?

 

The following is an essay on what’s called the “creative cosmos”, as it’s seen through the eyes of the physicist and writer Paul Davies. The notion of a creative cosmos goes back over 3,000 years. Davies himself attempts to give it a justification via physics and scientific (i.e., physical) cosmology, particularly (in this essay at least) in terms of stochasticity (“randomness within rules”) and quantum mechanics.

Image by ChatGPT, under the writer’s prompts.

There is no doubt at all that Paul Davies is religious: he’s just not a Christian, Muslim or Jew. To use Davies’s own words, the God he believes in doesn’t

“bear [ ] much relation to the personal God of religion, still less to the God of the bible or the Koran”.

Davies’s creative cosmos clashes with classical theology in that his God isn’t omnipotent: he’s “persuasive”. Davies’s God didn’t create the universe and all its laws ex nihilo. Instead, he shapes eternal matter and the laws emerge. In addition, Davies’s God isn’t transcendent and static: he’s relational and changeable.

Davies believes in what he calls a “creative cosmos”. Indeed, he says that he’s “committed to the notion”. As for the precise words “creative cosmos”, Davies will have drawn inspiration from the early 20th-century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of a “creative advance into novelty”. This, in turn, has been connected to the Hindu goddess Shakti, who is deemed to be the creative power of nature (prakriti). (In physics-speak, she’s the embodiment of energy.)

All these aspects of Davies’s God and cosmology are given expression in the physics which he concentrates upon.

What role does God play in Davies’s scheme?

Davies on a Necessary Being and Brute Facts

Paul Davies. Image from Wiki Commons. Source here.

Davies tells his readers that in his

“own mind I have no doubts at all that the arguments for a necessary world are far shakier than the arguments for a necessary being, so my personal inclination is to opt for the latter”.

At this juncture, Davies doesn’t tell us why a necessary being wins out here. The notion of a necessary being is a huge historical and philosophical subject which can’t be tackled here. In any case, Davies would argue that the “arguments for a necessary world” are equally complex, if not as historical in nature.

Davies also tells his readers that he has

“no doubts at all as to the rationality of nature, I am also committed to the notion of a creative cosmos”.

Davies’s very use of the word “rational” gives the game away. Isn’t it at least possible that the world is neither rational nor irrational (except to human minds)? That said, if one does believe that the world is rational, then one must also believe that it could have been — or actually is — irrational or “absurd”.

What about Davies’s rejection of brute facts (at least in these respects)?

Here’s the thing. If we don’t “accept the existence and features of the world as brute facts that could have been otherwise”, then what if the features were (or had been) otherwise? Wouldn’t these alternative possible features face the same questions? In other words, wouldn’t they need to be taken to be brute facts too? Alternatively, wouldn’t they need to be explained? Davies may assume that alternative features could be explained, or that they are self-explainers. If they could be explained, then why would that be? (Bear in mind here that, according to Davies, the actual features of universe can’t be — or haven’t been — explained.) How does Davies get out of this bind?

The problem with brute facts is that some are rejected by scientists and philosophers, yet others are embraced by the very same people. For example, take the philosopher David Chalmers. He accepts brute facts in various areas of science, philosophy and logic, but not when it comes to consciousness. Chalmers tells us that physics “does not tell us why there is [matter] in the first place”. Consequently, it may not be able to tell us why many properties in physics “have their nature”. Such things are deemed to be — to use Chalmers’ preferred term— “primitive”. In other words, they can’t be “deduced from more basic principles”.

Davies may say here that physics doesn’t answer these questions, but religion and philosophy can. Indeed, perhaps Chalmers will agree with him. After all, Chalmers says that physics does not tell us various things. Thus, in physics, they’re taken as brute…

Davies on Stochasticity

Through physics alone, how do we arrive at Davies’s creative cosmos? Davies does so through what he calls “stochastic systems” and quantum mechanics. Indeed, stochastics can be tied to quantum mechanics, as Davies does in the following:

“A stochastic system is, roughly speaking, one which is subject to unpredictable and random fluctuations. In modern physics, stochasticity enters in a fundamental way in quantum mechanics. It is also inevitably present when we deal with open systems subject to chaotic external perturbations.”

In Davies’s scheme, we enter a grey area between deterministic laws and what he calls “laws of organisation”. What explains the nature of this grey area? To Davies, stochasticity does. He refers to stochasticity as an “efficient device through which divine intentions can be carried out”. (It’s odd to call stochasticity a “device”, let alone a device which the “divine” somehow uses or employs.)

What’s important to Davies is that all this leads to a situation in which

“there is no need for such a God to interfere directly with the course of evolution [of the universe] by ‘loading the dice’”.

Here again Davies is arguing against the God of Christianity, Islam and Judaism: a God who does interfere directly with the course of the evolution of the universe by loading the dice. Indeed, Davies mentions Albert Einstein’s famous statement “God does not play dice in the universe!” here. Unlike Einstein, Davies does want his God to play dice.

There’s a problem with relying on stochastics when it comes to defending the existence of a creative cosmos. How can any process be both creative and stochastic if the latter notion implies what Davies himself calls “anarchy”? The answer is that Davies believes that “there is a difference between stochasticity and anarchy”.

Davies goes into detail about his creative - not anarchistic — cosmos in the following passage:

“The development of new forms and systems is subject to general principles of organisation that guide and encourage, rather than compel, matter and energy to develop along certain predetermined pathways of evolution.”

This is a problematic passage, and it is so for many reasons.

Firstly, it’s odd that elsewhere Davies is keen to point out that the word “law” in physics is taken from Christian theology. He also tells us that most scientists forget this. Yet here Davies tells us about “general principles of organisation that guide and encourage, rather than compel”. This position is no less God-centred or anthropomorphic. It doesn’t stop being so simply because these general principles of organisation guide rather than enforce, encourage rather than demand. And that’s in spite of working out what exactly the words “guide” and “encourage” mean in terms of physics.

Here we have an old problem when it comes to (possible) metaphors. Are the words “guide” and “encourage” (process theologians have used the word “persuade”) meant to be read metaphorically, or literally? Taking them metaphorically is fine, it’s just that we need to be clear that they are metaphors. And even if they are metaphors, we still need to work out why Davies uses these precise words.

In any case, if x (merely) guides y, then surely y can — metaphorically! — “ignore” or go against x. Similarly, if x (merely) encourages y, then y can ignore or go against that encouragement. Perhaps Davies allows all this in his creative cosmos.

Davies on Predestination vs Determinism

Whatever the case is, it’s clear that Davies is arguing against determinism, and arguing for what he calls “predestination”.

Now “predestination” is a controversial term. What does Davies mean by it? He writes:

“In The Cosmic Blueprint I used the word ‘predestination’ to refer to general tendencies, to distinguish it from ‘determinism’ (which is the sense in which Aquinas uses the term). For those, such as process theologians, who choose to see God’s guiding hand rather than genuine spontaneity in the way the universe develops creatively, then stochasticity can be regarded as an efficient device through which divine intentions can be carried out. And there is no need for such a God to interfere directly with the course of evolution by ‘loading the dice. [ ] Guidance can be through the (timeless) laws of organisation and information flow.”

From the word “predestination”, to the rejection of determinism and the words “God’s guiding hand”, this entire passage is infused with theology.

Clearly, only allowing God a “guiding hand” is still an acceptance of the importance of God within this scheme. What’s more, if God merely guides, then surely he can do much more than guide if he decided to.

Davies places limits on God through the physics of the creative cosmos. But is such a limited God actually God (with a capital ‘G’) at all? Moreover, what’s to stop Davies incorporating many gods into his scheme (as in Hinduism and other religions)?

As for “general tendencies” rather than fixed deterministic laws. What do these two words refer to? To the “laws of organization and information flow”, which Davies refers to at the end of the paragraph? Why aren’t these laws just as fixed and deterministic as the other laws of physics? (In fact, Davies argues that they are fixed, if not deterministic.)

Whatever the status of these laws of organisation is, they place limits on any “genuine spontaneity” from happening in the cosmos. Yet they’re still laws: laws which suggest “God’s guiding hand”.

Davies on Old Laws and New Laws

Here we move from the limitations Davies places on physical law to his stress on new laws. For example, he writes:

“The condition of total disorder or randomness — the ‘fairness’ of the quantum dice — is itself a law of a rather restrictive nature.”

How do we arrive at a physical law from total disorder or randomness? Davies continues:

“Although each individual quantum event may be genuinely unpredictable, a collection of such events conforms with the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics. One might say that there is order in disorder.”

To put it colloquially, it seems that Davies wants his cake and to eat it too. In other words, he wants a little bit of order and a little bit of disorder in his cosmos. Total order takes us to the cosmos of Christians, Muslims and Jews. A little bit of disorder takes us to Davies’s creative cosmos.

Can disorder exist alongside order?

Well, on Davies’s reading of quantum mechanics, it can. Not only that: the tiny examples of disorder at the level of quantum mechanics can lead to the bigger “systems” which Davies refers to. (One can imagine other related cases too, such as aleatory and stochastic music.)

Is Davies a Pantheist or a Panentheist?

Some readers may ask if this creative cosmos actually is God. Not in Davies’s scheme. That’s because Davies has already told us that God doesn’t interfere in the evolution of the universe. And he has already told us about God’s “guiding hand”. None of this suggests a literal identity (à la Spinoza) between the creative cosmos and God. The creative cosmos is as separate from God as the deterministic universe is. (One may as well throw in the winding up the universe and letting it run idea here.)

Despite the above, some commentators have labelled Davies’s worldview as pantheistic (God as the laws of nature themselves) or panentheistic, which itself apparently aligns (to various degrees) with texts and positions found in Advaita Vedanta.

Conclusion

Some readers may not find any of Davies’s interpretations and parallels with ancient religious views convincing. Moreover, he could still hold all his physical and cosmological positions without ever bringing them up. Of course, that would leave a lacuna in Davies’s eyes. In Davies’s own words:

“[T]heoretical physics became, in a sense, my religious quest, the best hope I had of making sense of the world and my place within it.”

So a purely scientific account of the cosmos would leave out “meaning”, “purpose”, and, perhaps more importantly, an emotionally and intellectually satisfying explanation of “the whole shebang”.

Metaphysics: Merely Verbal Disputes About Statues and Lumps of Clay?

 

I was always fascinated by the metaphysical debates about lumps of clay constituting statues, inpieces and outpieces, and so on. More correctly, I was fascinated by the fact that some philosophers clearly find these subjects fascinating. It’s not that they aren’t “relevant to everyday life” (I don’t know what that means): it’s that I couldn’t see what they were about at all. Very rarely are the metaphysical implications of these debates spelled out. That’s if they have any implications at all…

The Australian philosopher David Chalmers’ wrote a paper called ‘Verbal Disputes’. The following passage is part of the introduction to that paper:

“Is there a distinction between questions of fact and questions of language? Many philosophers have said no. [ ] Intuitively, a dispute between two parties is verbal when the two parties agree on the relevant facts about a domain of concern, and just disagree about the language used to describe that domain.”

Personally, I don’t entirely agree with this neat division between questions of fact and questions of language. But this isn’t the place to go into that. (See my ‘Merely Verbal Ado About Nothing: David Chalmers, Facts, Consciousness’.) More relevantly, the American philosopher Theodore Sider (to be featured in this essay) does agree with David Chalmers, at least to some degree.

According to the philosopher David Manley, the notion of merely verbal dispute is

“[m]otivated in part by intuitions of shallowness, they argue that the dispute is merely verbal, or that the disputants are not making truth-evaluable claims at all”.

Some readers will see that this passage assumes a clear position on what is and what isn’t truth-evaluable. Sider, for one, may not accept this position.

The American philosopher Craig Callender spots a specific problem with the metaphysical issues to be discussed in this essay. He writes:

“The reason is that it’s hard to imagine what feature of reality determines whether a fist is a new object or not. How would the world be different if hands arranged fist-like didn’t constitute new objects?”

The begged answer to that leading question is: No difference whatsoever.

Now we’ll rewrite that passage to make it relevant to what will follow:

The reason is that it’s hard to imagine what feature of reality determines whether a statue is a new object or not. How would the world be different if particles arranged statue-wise didn’t constitute a new object?

The Classification of x

The following essay is at least partially about different ways to classify — or even see/observe — the same thing. Sider writes:

“Imagine a takeover theorist from Mars. Instead of sorts like statue and piece of clay, beloved of Earthly takeover theorists, Martian takeover theorists speak of sorts like:

“outpiece: piece of clay located outdoors, no matter how shaped

“inpiece: piece of clay located indoors, no matter how shaped”

Sider implicitly stresses the earlier words, “the same thing”. So of course a Martian could classify any given x as an “outpiece” or an “inpiece”. People on Earth classify x as a “piece of clay” or a “statue”. Sider would argue that they’re all still classifying x — i.e., the same thing. In his own words:

“Of course, whether the clay is indoors or outdoors is irrelevant to what objects exist.”

Regardless of conceptual plurality, the object still exists… It always remains an object.

What has just been quoted includes examples which have been popular in analytic metaphysics in recent years. Is a piece of clay the same thing as the statue it constitutes? After all, the piece of clay and the (clay) statue take up the same spatial dimensions and share all their properties (unless one is a 4-dimensionalist). The takeover theorist believes that the piece of clay becomes a statue. Others argue that there are two objects in the same space at the same time. The Martian, on the other hand, sees both the piece of clay and the statue (or the clay that’s been made into a statue) as an outpiece or an inpiece, depending on whether it’s indoors or outdoors…

But none of these positions are argued for or against in this essay.

Sider himself take a metaphysically-realist position, but not on statues, pieces of clay, outpieces and inpieces.

Manley on Metaphysical Realism

David Manley captures Sider’s position (though he isn’t referring to Sider) when he writes the following:

“[M]ost contemporary metaphysicians think of themselves as concerned, not primarily with the representations of language and thoughts, but with the reality that is represented.”

In this case, then, contemporary metaphysicians are concerned with the value of the variable x.

As a metaphysical realist, then, perhaps Sider would argue that the true metaphysician is only concerned with x, not with whether the sortals “statue”, “piece of clay”, “inpiece” and “outpiece” are correctly applied to x. Yet how can Sider say anything at all about x without the use of sortals or concepts? What would he say about it?

In any case, Sider claims that “the realist picture requires the ‘ready-made-world’”, and that “there must be a structure that is mandatory for inquirers to discover”. So what have statues, inpieces, outpieces and even lumps of clay to with the this ready-made world? Moreover, in ‘Ontological Realism’, Sider writes:

“The point of metaphysics is to discern the fundamental structure of the world.”

Again, what have statues, etc. got to do with the fundamental structure of the world? Sider believes that there are “predicates that carve nature at the joints, by virtue of referring to genuine ‘natural’ properties”. He continues:

“The world has a distinguished structure, a privileged description

. [ ] There is an objectively correct way to ‘write the book of the world’.”

Sider believes that there is an objectively correct way to write the book of the world’. This means that it’s possible that a metaphysical book may well offer us the truth about the world. Yet this goes against so much which has been written against metaphysics in the 20th and 21st centuries.

More importantly, then, Sider argues that

“[e]veryone agrees that this realist picture prohibits truth from being generally mind-dependent”.

Statues are certainly mind-dependent. Inpieces and outpieces are dependent on the minds of Martians. A lump of clay is a little bit more problematic. However, a lump of clay certainly isn’t a part of either physics or metaphysics.

What is x?

We can now ask: What is this x before its classed as a “outpiece”, “piece of clay”, “statue”, etc? Perhaps Sider may admit that he couldn’t really say anything about x without relying on some “labels”. Alternatively, we can that say x is whatever is within a given set of spatial dimensions.

In a sense, it’s obvious that a Martian wouldn’t class x as either a “statue” or “piece of clay” if it has never come across statues or pieces of clay.

Sider explains the Martian position when he says that “[t]his inpiece exists so long as the clay is indoors”, and “[w]hen an outpiece is brought indoors, they say, the sort ‘inpiece’ takes over, the outpiece goes out of existence, and a new inpiece comes into existence”. This is an odd use of the word “exists”. It is existence via classification. An x exists in all cases, whether it’s a statue, piece of clay, inpiece or outpiece. Thus, x only exists qua outpiece if it’s outdoors. Similarly, x only exists qua statue if it’s shaped into a statue. x exists throughout these changes…

But what is x?

Does this fuss and bother have any metaphysical import? Is it all merely verbal? Sider writes:

“The Earthling and the Martian agree that she holds a single object in her hand, but they disagree over what its sort is.”

Okay. Is it all about sortals? Here we have an agreement — the Earthling and the Martian are both talking about “a single object in her hand”. Perhaps Sider would stress the fact that they’re both talking about the same object or x. But where does that get us? What is this x or object? More importantly, can anything else be said about it without sortals, concepts, etc?

Sortal Pluralism

Sider adds to his argument by stating the following:

“They cannot both be right, since the same object cannot both continue and cease to exist.”

There isn’t much of a complication here. The same object exists. It doesn’t cease to exist. However, x under the sortal “outpiece” does cease to exist, qua outpiece, when brought indoors. Or, rather, the sortal “outpiece” ceases to be applicable when the object is brought indoors. So, loosely, the sortal “outpiece” ceases to applicable, even if x remains.

It follows from all this that if

“our own Earthly takeover theorist must say that the Martian is mistaken: inpieces and outpieces simply do not exist”

then the Earthling is wrong about the Martian being wrong. Not because the Earthling has a mistaken ontology, but because there is no right or wrong in this case. It isn’t wrong of the Martian to classify x as an outpiece or inpiece. It isn’t wrong of the Earthling to classify x as a “statue” or “piece of clay”. Yet perhaps if the Martian and Earthling went beyond mere naming, then either or both could be right or wrong. After all, if x is outside and a statue, then it’s still outside. The Martian isn’t required to class x as a “statue”, and the Earthling isn’t required to class x as an “outpiece”.

Metaphysical Realism?

Sider acknowledges the following:

“The Earthly takeover theorist’s choice of sorts suspiciously mirrors the words we here on Earth happen to have coined. We could have invented different words; we could have gone the way of the Martians and introduced words for inpieces and outpieces rather than statues and pieces of clay.”

Some readers may say that it’s not only about sortals of classification. All sorts of identity conditions are attached to the use of a specific sortal. But even here neither the Martian nor the Earthling are in the wrong. After all, can’t x be both an outpiece and a statue? x can be an outpiece and a statue if it is indoors. And x can’t be both an inpiece and a statue if it is outside.

So how can the Earthling say that “the true objects are pieces of clay and statues, not inpieces and outpieces” if the piece of clay and statue are outside?

Sider’s conclusion is correct:

“Believing in pieces of clay and statues to the exclusion of inpieces and outpieces would be anthropocentric.”

Why is this case problematic? Is it problematic? The solution seems obvious. x can be both a statue and an inpiece. Or x can be both a piece of clay and an outpiece. In fact, many sortals can be applied to x. It’s certainly not contradictory to label the same x as both an “outpiece” and a “piece of clay”. When we come across a contradiction, it is only then that we’d to do some deeper analysis? That hasn’t occurred yet. But readers can suppose that it could do.

All along, it can be argued that Sider believes that a metaphysician must deal with deeper issues than these mere disagreements about classification.

Ontological Nihilism

Sider gets the conceptual plurality position across when he says that

“sensory experiences do not tell us whether there exist only particles, or whether there exists in addition objects composed of those particles”.

This point is raised in relation to the position of nihilism in ontology.

Thus, yet again, we have the same x, which different beings (including Martians) classify in different ways. On the surface, and even under the surface, it seems like a simple verbal dispute to argue that there are only particles arranged statue-wise or that there is a statue. Of course, this subject has been debated to death in analytic philosophy, and I can admit that I don’t know all the arguments in favour of nihilism, or all the arguments against nihilism. Yet perhaps that doesn’t matter if the position adopted in this essay is correct. How can anything conclusively establish that x is a case of particles arranged statue-wise or that x is an actual statue? As Sider has already said, sensory experience alone can’t decide this issue. Nor can physics.

Sider on Universals

To Sider, it isn’t sortals or concepts that matter when it comes to x or to anything else — it’s universals. Sider provides his own example:

“[T]hese universals are related to one another in such a way that any instances of the first two [methane and oxygen] react to produce instances of the second two [carbon dioxide and water]. In short: the universals methane and oxygen necessitate the universals carbon dioxide and water.”

This isn’t only about universals: it’s also about universals necessitating other universals.

Now take the universal electron. What do all electrons share in virtue of which they are electrons? According to Sider:

“Physics tells us that all electrons have exactly the same charge. So according to physics the electrons have this property in common.”

There is more to it than that. It’s because “all electrons have exactly the same charge” that physicists conclude that they “plays a basic role in extremely well confirmed physical explanations of much of what happens in the world”. So is it the case that Sider has been talking about the properties accepted by physics all along? If that’s the case, then it may seem to some readers that if these metaphysicians do tie their metaphysics to physics, then surely that’s a good thing. At least they can now rein themselves in.

The x which has often been referred to in this essay may involve Sider talking about, not electrons as such, but the universal electron. In fact, he comes clean about this connection to physics when he states the following:

“David Armstrong, a leading contemporary proponent of the sparse universals idea, holds that only properties used in scientific explanations are genuine universals.”

 

Thus, statue, inpiece, outpiece and even lump of clay can’t be genuine universals.