The Mystery of Visual Perception
Wolfgang Smith Lord Kelvin made a crucially important point when he declared physics to be “the science of measurement”: it is this basis in measurement that proves definitive not only of physics and the physical sciences at large, but of the resultant Weltanschauung. Obviously measurement quantifies: reduces things in principle to “centimeters, grams, and seconds” …
Vertical Causation and Wholeness
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: This article also available in Spanish language translation. Vertical causality made its appearance in the context of the measuring problem in quantum mechanics, where it could be identified by the fact that it acts “instantaneously.”1See Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality (Angelico Press, 2019), ch. 3. Whereas the …
Preface to the Persian Edition of “Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions”
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The following is a reproduction of Prof. Smith’s preface to Sa’id Tehrani-Nasab’s translation of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions: A Critique of Contemporary Scientism into Persian. It gives me great pleasure to preface this Persian edition of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions, all the more inasmuch as Persia ranks high among the …
Four Ideas of Nature and the Vindication of Aristotle
Ali Sebetci The late English philosopher R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) argues in his influential book, The Idea of Nature, that there have been three periods of constructive cosmological thinking in the history of European thought. They are the periods “when the idea of nature has come into the focus of thought, become the subject of …
To Be or Not To Be an Apple
Wolfgang Smith A Brief Response to Dr. Alec MacAndrew The title already of Dr. MacAndrew’s article — “When is an Apple Not an Apple?” — alludes to the precise point of contention in that it differentiates my interpretation of physics from the current: where the contemporary consensus affirms one “apple,” I affirm two. Let me …
Evolutionist Scientism: Darwinist, Theistic, and Einsteinian
Wolfgang Smith It may be well to begin by reminding ourselves that science is closely allied with a variety of credenda which are not “scientific” at all, and might consequently be dubbed “scientistic” by virtue of that association. But whereas the adjective may be a neologism, the corresponding substantive “scientism” has by now elicited a …
Astrology: The Science of Wholeness
Wolfgang Smith It needs first of all to be understood that the “wholeness” to which we allude is none other than the “tripartite wholeness” previously defined,1Cf. Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality (Angelico Press, 2019). conceived in light of Platonist ontology. It can be depicted iconically in the form of a circle …
From Cosmos to Multiverse: The Ominous Descent
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The Initiative wishes to express its deep gratitude to the Australian artist Betty Davies for her magnificent and profoundly expressive portrait of Dr. Smith featured in this article, which she has graciously donated to the Foundation. We have spoken at length of the “tripartite cosmos” as envisaged in the sapiential traditions …
The Tripartite Wholeness
Wolfgang Smith The universe presents itself as extended in space and changing in time, and its spatio-temporal locus can be represented mathematically in terms of three spatial coordinates and one temporal: the familiar quadruple (x1, x2, x3, t). The “container” is thereby decomposed conceptually into an infinite aggregate of punctual loci, which define a corresponding …
Pondering Bohmian Mechanics
Wolfgang Smith As if the bewilderment over quantum theory were not formidable enough in itself, the Bohmian Ansatz — which purportedly returns us almost to classical clarity — has added what may prove to be the most perplexing element of all to the mix. Let us start at the beginning: with a statement, namely, of …
Do We Perceive the Corporeal World?
Wolfgang Smith From time immemorial mankind has presumed that we do look out upon the world: that the objects we perceive are not in fact “mental,” but “real.” One understands, of course, that it is possible to err: that a rope in semi-darkness may be mistaken for a snake; yet the very circumstance that perception …
Science, Scientism, and Spirituality
Wolfgang Smith What distinguishes science from scientism, in my terminology, is the fact that scientific tenets are based upon empirical evidence — and are moreover falsifiable — whereas the claims of scientism, while pretending to be scientific, are actually founded upon ideological grounds. A textbook example would be the Darwinist claim, which proves to be …
Lost in Math: The Particle Physics Quandary
Wolfgang Smith A golden age of physics, one can see in retrospect, commenced around the year 1900: the dazzling era of quantum mechanics had begun. That golden age, however, has proved to be short-lived. It began, if you will, in the year 1897 with J. J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron, the first so-called quantum …
Does Physics Admit a Teleology?
Wolfgang Smith Our question — “Does physics admit a teleology?” — proves, first of all, to be incurably philosophical inasmuch as it has no meaning whatsoever for the physicist as such. By its very modus operandi, physics has eyes for quantity alone, which entails that teleology is distinctly beyond its ken. This rather obvious fact …
Surveying the Integral Cosmos: A Review of Physics & Vertical Causation
John Trevor Berger According to the experts of standard cosmology, we live in a universe which is uniformly egalitarian — a meaningless homogeneous mass of subatomic particles — and this so-called “cosmological principle,” we are told, holds true from the furthest observable reaches of the universe to the ordinary moment of lived experience. For over …
Do We Know the Electron?
Wolfgang Smith In August of last year, Eahab Ibrahim — a friend of the Initiative — posted a fascinating question, to which I would like to respond. It asks what an electron might be in its own right, apart from its mathematical descriptions as conceived by the physicist: “Does the physicist know the electron without residue” he …
“Progress” in Retrospect: Part III
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The final installment of a three-part critique of modernity, the following was originally published in Cosmos & Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief in 1984. While it is sociologically certain that science begets technology, it also cannot be denied that in its purest form science is simply the pursuit of …
“Progress” in Retrospect: Part II
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The second installment of a three-part critique of modernity, the following was originally published in Cosmos & Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief in 1984. Some reflections on the subject of art may not be inappropriate at this point. The first thing to be noted is that the very conception …
“Progress” in Retrospect: Part I
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The first installment of a three-part critique of modernity, the following was originally published in Cosmos & Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief in 1984. Every age, every civilization, has a spirit of its own. It is this that determines the habitual outlook, the typical way of looking at things, …
Ontological Dimensions of Causation
Ali Sebetci It is well known that the modern conception of science is fundamentally different from the traditional. What makes science modern, moreover, is its naturalistic methodology: “The philosophical doctrine of methodological naturalism,” writes Alvin Plantinga, “holds that, for any study to qualify as ‘scientific,’ it cannot refer to God’s creative activity or any sort …
Vertical Causation (III): Vertical Causality and the “Limit Theorems”
Raphael De Paola According to Wolfgang Smith, modern physics has discovered a unique, hitherto unknown ontological plane, namely the aforementioned “physical” universe. But in his researches he has also resolved a decades-old controversy concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics. What quantum mechanics studies is akin, if not identical, to what the Scholastics called materia signata …
Vertical Causation (II): Corporeal Strata and The Distinction
Raphael De Paola All corporeal beings can be classified in one of four levels of the following hierarchical order: mineral, vegetable, animal, and human (i.e., “rational animal”). Following the Scholastic adage that the operation of a being follows upon its nature (operari sequitur esse), it is not difficult to understand these levels in terms of their …
Vertical Causation (I): Matter and Form
Raphael De Paola The subject of change and motion has always baffled the human mind, arousing many seemingly unanswerable questions. Depending on the answers given, one may wind up faced with insurmountable aporias. Aristotle was well aware of the dangers posed to Greek thinking before him and strove to address them, appropriating the discoveries of …
On the Scientific Implications of Vertical Causality
Wolfgang Smith Following Galileo, Descartes and Newton, Western civilization succumbed to the spell of what I have termed horizontal causation. From the publication of Newton’s Principia, in 1687, to the discovery of quantum physics in the early twentieth century, scientists assumed without question that, at bottom, the universe constitutes but a gigantic “clockwork,” in which …
What is a “Proof” of God?
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: In response to Richard Carrier’s recent review of Edward Feser’s Five Proofs for the Existence of God, Dr. Smith presents his own observations on this question, which represents an ongoing discussion of issues — first addressed last month by Professor Bruno Bérard in the context of artificial intelligence — in light of the …
Unmasking “AI”
Bruno Bérard A (perhaps non-accidental) failure to distinguish linguistically between reason (dianoia, ratio) and intelligence (noûs, intellectus) has given rise to the term “artificial intelligence” which consequently engenders misunderstanding if not indeed fear. In keeping with the original meaning of the words in question, the term “artificial intelligence” should de jure be denominated “artificial reason,” …
The Distinction and the Priority of Philosophy
John Trevor Berger A key element of Wolfgang Smith’s thought is his ontological distinction between the physical and the corporeal domains. This distinction proceeds from the observation that there are two ways of knowing the external world. The first and more manifest way is sense perception, by which we know the world in direct experience; …
From Schrödinger’s Cat to Thomistic Ontology
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: Originally presented as the Templeton Lecture on Christianity and the Natural Sciences at Gonzaga University in 1998, and subsequently published in Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions, the following sets forth in concise terms the basics of Dr. Smith’s ontological resolution to the quantum reality problem, the full treatment of which was first presented …
The Mystery of Visual Perception
Wolfgang Smith Lord Kelvin made a crucially important point when he declared physics to be “the science of measurement”: it is this basis in measurement that proves definitive not only of physics and the physical sciences at large, but of the resultant Weltanschauung. Obviously measurement quantifies: reduces things in principle to “centimeters, grams, and seconds” …
Vertical Causation and Wholeness
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: This article also available in Spanish language translation. Vertical causality made its appearance in the context of the measuring problem in quantum mechanics, where it could be identified by the fact that it acts “instantaneously.”1See Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality (Angelico Press, 2019), ch. 3. Whereas the …
Preface to the Persian Edition of “Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions”
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The following is a reproduction of Prof. Smith’s preface to Sa’id Tehrani-Nasab’s translation of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions: A Critique of Contemporary Scientism into Persian. It gives me great pleasure to preface this Persian edition of Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions, all the more inasmuch as Persia ranks high among the …
Four Ideas of Nature and the Vindication of Aristotle
Ali Sebetci The late English philosopher R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) argues in his influential book, The Idea of Nature, that there have been three periods of constructive cosmological thinking in the history of European thought. They are the periods “when the idea of nature has come into the focus of thought, become the subject of …
To Be or Not To Be an Apple
Wolfgang Smith A Brief Response to Dr. Alec MacAndrew The title already of Dr. MacAndrew’s article — “When is an Apple Not an Apple?” — alludes to the precise point of contention in that it differentiates my interpretation of physics from the current: where the contemporary consensus affirms one “apple,” I affirm two. Let me …
Evolutionist Scientism: Darwinist, Theistic, and Einsteinian
Wolfgang Smith It may be well to begin by reminding ourselves that science is closely allied with a variety of credenda which are not “scientific” at all, and might consequently be dubbed “scientistic” by virtue of that association. But whereas the adjective may be a neologism, the corresponding substantive “scientism” has by now elicited a …
Astrology: The Science of Wholeness
Wolfgang Smith It needs first of all to be understood that the “wholeness” to which we allude is none other than the “tripartite wholeness” previously defined,1Cf. Physics and Vertical Causation: The End of Quantum Reality (Angelico Press, 2019). conceived in light of Platonist ontology. It can be depicted iconically in the form of a circle …
From Cosmos to Multiverse: The Ominous Descent
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The Initiative wishes to express its deep gratitude to the Australian artist Betty Davies for her magnificent and profoundly expressive portrait of Dr. Smith featured in this article, which she has graciously donated to the Foundation. We have spoken at length of the “tripartite cosmos” as envisaged in the sapiential traditions …
The Tripartite Wholeness
Wolfgang Smith The universe presents itself as extended in space and changing in time, and its spatio-temporal locus can be represented mathematically in terms of three spatial coordinates and one temporal: the familiar quadruple (x1, x2, x3, t). The “container” is thereby decomposed conceptually into an infinite aggregate of punctual loci, which define a corresponding …
Pondering Bohmian Mechanics
Wolfgang Smith As if the bewilderment over quantum theory were not formidable enough in itself, the Bohmian Ansatz — which purportedly returns us almost to classical clarity — has added what may prove to be the most perplexing element of all to the mix. Let us start at the beginning: with a statement, namely, of …
Do We Perceive the Corporeal World?
Wolfgang Smith From time immemorial mankind has presumed that we do look out upon the world: that the objects we perceive are not in fact “mental,” but “real.” One understands, of course, that it is possible to err: that a rope in semi-darkness may be mistaken for a snake; yet the very circumstance that perception …
Science, Scientism, and Spirituality
Wolfgang Smith What distinguishes science from scientism, in my terminology, is the fact that scientific tenets are based upon empirical evidence — and are moreover falsifiable — whereas the claims of scientism, while pretending to be scientific, are actually founded upon ideological grounds. A textbook example would be the Darwinist claim, which proves to be …
Lost in Math: The Particle Physics Quandary
Wolfgang Smith A golden age of physics, one can see in retrospect, commenced around the year 1900: the dazzling era of quantum mechanics had begun. That golden age, however, has proved to be short-lived. It began, if you will, in the year 1897 with J. J. Thomson’s discovery of the electron, the first so-called quantum …
Does Physics Admit a Teleology?
Wolfgang Smith Our question — “Does physics admit a teleology?” — proves, first of all, to be incurably philosophical inasmuch as it has no meaning whatsoever for the physicist as such. By its very modus operandi, physics has eyes for quantity alone, which entails that teleology is distinctly beyond its ken. This rather obvious fact …
Surveying the Integral Cosmos: A Review of Physics & Vertical Causation
John Trevor Berger According to the experts of standard cosmology, we live in a universe which is uniformly egalitarian — a meaningless homogeneous mass of subatomic particles — and this so-called “cosmological principle,” we are told, holds true from the furthest observable reaches of the universe to the ordinary moment of lived experience. For over …
Do We Know the Electron?
Wolfgang Smith In August of last year, Eahab Ibrahim — a friend of the Initiative — posted a fascinating question, to which I would like to respond. It asks what an electron might be in its own right, apart from its mathematical descriptions as conceived by the physicist: “Does the physicist know the electron without residue” he …
“Progress” in Retrospect: Part III
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The final installment of a three-part critique of modernity, the following was originally published in Cosmos & Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief in 1984. While it is sociologically certain that science begets technology, it also cannot be denied that in its purest form science is simply the pursuit of …
“Progress” in Retrospect: Part II
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The second installment of a three-part critique of modernity, the following was originally published in Cosmos & Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief in 1984. Some reflections on the subject of art may not be inappropriate at this point. The first thing to be noted is that the very conception …
“Progress” in Retrospect: Part I
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: The first installment of a three-part critique of modernity, the following was originally published in Cosmos & Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief in 1984. Every age, every civilization, has a spirit of its own. It is this that determines the habitual outlook, the typical way of looking at things, …
Ontological Dimensions of Causation
Ali Sebetci It is well known that the modern conception of science is fundamentally different from the traditional. What makes science modern, moreover, is its naturalistic methodology: “The philosophical doctrine of methodological naturalism,” writes Alvin Plantinga, “holds that, for any study to qualify as ‘scientific,’ it cannot refer to God’s creative activity or any sort …
Vertical Causation (III): Vertical Causality and the “Limit Theorems”
Raphael De Paola According to Wolfgang Smith, modern physics has discovered a unique, hitherto unknown ontological plane, namely the aforementioned “physical” universe. But in his researches he has also resolved a decades-old controversy concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics. What quantum mechanics studies is akin, if not identical, to what the Scholastics called materia signata …
Vertical Causation (II): Corporeal Strata and The Distinction
Raphael De Paola All corporeal beings can be classified in one of four levels of the following hierarchical order: mineral, vegetable, animal, and human (i.e., “rational animal”). Following the Scholastic adage that the operation of a being follows upon its nature (operari sequitur esse), it is not difficult to understand these levels in terms of their …
Vertical Causation (I): Matter and Form
Raphael De Paola The subject of change and motion has always baffled the human mind, arousing many seemingly unanswerable questions. Depending on the answers given, one may wind up faced with insurmountable aporias. Aristotle was well aware of the dangers posed to Greek thinking before him and strove to address them, appropriating the discoveries of …
On the Scientific Implications of Vertical Causality
Wolfgang Smith Following Galileo, Descartes and Newton, Western civilization succumbed to the spell of what I have termed horizontal causation. From the publication of Newton’s Principia, in 1687, to the discovery of quantum physics in the early twentieth century, scientists assumed without question that, at bottom, the universe constitutes but a gigantic “clockwork,” in which …
What is a “Proof” of God?
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: In response to Richard Carrier’s recent review of Edward Feser’s Five Proofs for the Existence of God, Dr. Smith presents his own observations on this question, which represents an ongoing discussion of issues — first addressed last month by Professor Bruno Bérard in the context of artificial intelligence — in light of the …
Unmasking “AI”
Bruno Bérard A (perhaps non-accidental) failure to distinguish linguistically between reason (dianoia, ratio) and intelligence (noûs, intellectus) has given rise to the term “artificial intelligence” which consequently engenders misunderstanding if not indeed fear. In keeping with the original meaning of the words in question, the term “artificial intelligence” should de jure be denominated “artificial reason,” …
The Distinction and the Priority of Philosophy
John Trevor Berger A key element of Wolfgang Smith’s thought is his ontological distinction between the physical and the corporeal domains. This distinction proceeds from the observation that there are two ways of knowing the external world. The first and more manifest way is sense perception, by which we know the world in direct experience; …
From Schrödinger’s Cat to Thomistic Ontology
Wolfgang Smith Editor’s Note: Originally presented as the Templeton Lecture on Christianity and the Natural Sciences at Gonzaga University in 1998, and subsequently published in Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions, the following sets forth in concise terms the basics of Dr. Smith’s ontological resolution to the quantum reality problem, the full treatment of which was first presented …