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Thomas]. Kaiser When Darwin Theorized About How Man and Other SoMETHING FROM NoTHING THIS WAY CoMEs Thomas]. Kaiser When Darwin theorized about how man and other organisms might have evolved, he assumed the existence of the lower life forms and proposed an account ofhow others could have evolved from them. With the advent of cellular and molec­ ular biology evolutionists began to theorize how the lowest life forms might have evolved from inorganic nature. More­ over, scientists now think that the elements themselves are the products of evolution. The heavier elements came into being from lighter elements some time after the big bang about r 3. 7 billion years ago. So the theory of evolution itselfhas evolved from explaining the origin of biological species to the origin of the whole universe. The big bang theory now being widely accepted, the next question is where did the material out of which the elements evolved come from? Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their new book, The Grand Design, have answered this question by saying that the cosmos spon­ taneously generated from nothing. According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. In­ stead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the Thomas]. Kaiser is a graduate (1975) of Thomas Aquinas College. He earned his C.Phil. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1980 and completed Ph.D. in Biology in 1986. He has been a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College since 1982. I SoMETHING FROM NoTHING THIS WAY CoMBs Thomas]. Kaiser intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, Richard Lewontin,4 in his review of Carl Sagan's last book, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, ac­ 1 They are a prediction of science. knowledges the clash between scientific claims and common sense. Speaking of scientists, he says, Hence, according to these well-known physicists, the cos­ mos with its unfathomable size, order, complexity and di­ Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against versity of being came to be from nothing. One suspects that common sense is the key to an understanding of the real getting-something-from-nothing has been implicit in the evo­ struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the lutionist account all along. 2 It just becomes explicit as they side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its attempt to explain the origin of the first material principles. constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extrav­ agant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance Moreover, according to this multiverse theory, the laws of na­ of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so sto­ ture are themselves the result of chance and are different for ries, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment every universe. So our cosmos was not only generated out to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of of nothing but the primary efficient cause, to the extent to science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation which there is one, is chance. According to this view, then, of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are the universe as a whole does not have any per se causes; it has forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create no real explanation, it just happened. It is, therefore, funda­ an apparatus ofinvestigation and set ofconcepts that produce mentally unintelligible. material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no Now although biological evolution has been taught in our matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that schools since the I950s and uniformly promoted in the media materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot of popularized science, still only I 5% ofAmericans think that in the door. 5 (italics are author's) human beings evolved without God guiding the process. 3 In This candid statement makes clear that Lewontin's com­ fact the lack of a Designer has been a consistent objection to mitment to materialism is prior to what science has revealed Darwinism from the beginning. Darwin himself admits that about nature. It comes from a philosophical view regarding it is difficult to imagine how the vertebrate eye, for example, the nature of reality itsel£ It is difficult to argue with one so could have come about by the blind processes of chance and committed to his principles that he is willing to reject com­ natural selection. Common sense, it seems, is at odds with mon sense. The difficulty is compounded by modern authors the theory. on evolution, such as Stephen]. Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Stephen Hawking, so that it is even difficult to know where 1 Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. The Grand Design. (New to begin. For Lewantin ''this struggle for possession of public York: Bantam Books, 2010), p. 8. 2 If one thinks that the intelligent comes from the non-intelligent, the 4 Richard Lewontin is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology sentient from the non-sentient, the living from the non-living, it is pre­ and Professor of Biology at Harvard University specializing in popula­ dictable that when asked where matter comes from, one would say from tion genetics and evolution. the non-material, and, for some, this is the same as saying from nothing. 5 R. Lewontin. Billions and Billions of Demons. (The New York Review 3 www.cbsnews.comj2IOo-sooi60_I62-965233.html ofBooks.January 9, 1997), p. 7· 2 3 SoMETHING FROM NoTHING THIS WAY CoMES Thomas]. Kaiser consciousness between material arid mystical explanations of able to become the more complex or higher, and they exist the world is one aspect of the history of the confrontation before them; therefore, potency is prior to act. between elite culture and popular culture." 6 The elitists, of Likewise, with regard to the first question, if something course, know that they are right and the rest of us should be new comes into existence, what does it come from? Insofar willing to accept it. As Lewontin says, as a species that did not exist comes into existence, specia­ tion seems to involve a coming to be from nothing-in some ... given the immense extent, inherent complexity, and sense, from non-being a species comes to be. (This notion is counterintuitive nature of scientific knowledge, it is impos­ taken to the extreme regarding the evolution of the cosmos sible for anyone, including non-specialist scientists, to re­ trace the intellectual paths that lead to scientific conclusions when Hawking flirts with the idea that the whole cosmos about nature. In the end we must trust the expert and they, could have come to be from nothing.) in turn, exploit their authority as experts and their rhetorical Let us begin our examination by seeing how the problem of skills to secure our attention and our belief in things that change came to the first philosophers. One of the things that we do not really understand. 7 astounded me most in my first acquaintance with the Physics of Aristotle is how similar the principles arrived at by the pre­ It is my purpose, nevertheless, in this paper to address some Socratics are to those ofmodern scientists. The reason for this questions that arise from common sense, not only about the is that the ancients and the moderns are both looking at what evolution of the living and the evolution of the cosmos, but is common to all natural things, i.e., they are all subject to be­ about change in general. These questions were asked by the coming or change. Both philosophers and scientists think they first philosophers, all of whom recognized that becoming is will have reached their goal if they can explain how things prominent in the world we experience. All natural things come to be. Moderns sometimes put it this way: the goal of are subject to change in some way. In trying to understand physics is to have sufficient knowledge of the forces and laws change, all of the pre-Socratic philosophers asked the same of nature so that, given the present location of particles in the question: If beings come to be, what do they come to be universe, one can say where they were in the past and will be from? It seemed to them that there are only two possibilities; in the future. Quantum theory states the same with qualifica­ being either comes from being or from non-being. There is, tion: "Given the state of a system at some time, the laws of however, a related question: given that things come to be, nature determine the probabilities ofvarious futures and pasts they must be able to be something before they actually are, so rather than determining the future and past with certainty."8 that potency is clearly prior to act. Is it always and in every Somehow knowing where the particles are and how they got way prior? Evolutionists tend, at least implicitly, to hold that there will explain everything else. This is not essentially dif­ potency is absolutely prior to act, for evolution is a process ferent from the views of Empedocles or Democritus except that generally goes from the simple to the complex, or from that we now have a more determinate understanding of the lower to higher forms. Hence the simpler or lower must be nature of the particles and oflaws and forces in nature. Aristotle tells us that: 6 Ibid., p. 8. 7 Ibid., p. 9. 8 Grand Design, p.
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