Abstract
Andrew M. Davis argues for the reality of intergalactic commonalty between human intuitions of objective rational, aesthetic, and moral/ethical domains and those of intelligent extraterrestrials. With the aid of key tenets of Whitehead’s philosophy, as well as those of other voices, Davis argues from human experience with the reality of Platonic-like phenomena broadly considered under rubrics of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, to the integrative reality of an all-inclusive divine mentality in whom these realities find eternal instantiation. Because all creatures, planets, and possible universes participate in the reality of “God,” Davis argues that they also participate in the Platonic phenomena constituting something of the infinite “axianoetic” depths of the divine nature. By locating such phenomena in God, the theological tradition eased serious ontological and epistemological Platonic problems and provided imaginative grounds from which to consider some manner of cosmic commonality with respect to mathematical, aesthetic, moral and perhaps even religious and philosophical domains.
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Notes
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See for example Chou et al. (2017).
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Debate of course continues to rage around whether or not our universe is one which carries an inherent biological imperative, such that the evolutionary emergence of self-conscious intelligent life is an inevitable feature of a truly convergent and biocentric (as opposed to anthropocentric) cosmos. See for example, Morris (2003) and Dick (1996).
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“The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It’s starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.”
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Steven J. Dick defines “cosmotheology” as “using our ever-growing knowledge of the universe to modify, expand, or change entirely our current theologies, whatever they may be. In short, cosmotheology takes into account what we know about the cosmos” and uses “[n]ature to inform a much broader range of theological discussion.” As such, “cosmotheology” for Dick is to be distinguished from William Derham’s and Ted Peter’s “astrotheology” by being untethered to particular religious traditions (mainly Christianity) with their distinctive doctrinal concerns. To this end, Dick is also adamant that cosmotheology be concerned with a “natural” as opposed to a “supernatural God.” While he admits that “No Thomas Aquinas for cosmotheology has yet appeared,” he nevertheless holds that “cosmotheology resonates well with Whitehead’s process theology…” (Dick, 2000, pp. 200–202; 2020, p. 207; Peters, 2014, pp. 443–457). Dick, however, has not developed this “resonance” and in fact limits its reach by virtue of his narrow understanding of what “naturalism” entails in science, philosophy and theology. Whitehead’s philosophy remains largely unexplored in terms of its detailed relevance to the scientific, philosophical and theological discussions undergirding astrobiology—especially imaginative considerations surrounding intelligent extraterrestrial life. Partial exceptions to this lacuna are found in the stimulating work of Walker and Wickramasinghe (2015); the select articles appearing in the “Astro-Theology” (2012) issue of the Journal of Cosmology, and current collaborations between Derek-Malone France and John Baross which hold promise for a stimulating forthcoming volume, tentatively titled, Astrobiology and Human Understanding: Exploring the Philosophical and Religious Implications of the Search for Extraterrestrial Life. While further work remains to be done, my own view is that the “Thomas Aquinas of cosmotheology” has in fact appeared in Whitehead. I intend to explore this claim in future publications.
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Whitehead in fact is quite clear about this claim. Consider his words about the starting point of philosophy: “Philosophic thought has to start from some limited section of experience – from epistemology, or from natural science, or from theology, or from mathematics. Also the investigation always retains the taint of its starting point. Every starting point has its merits, and its selection must depend upon the individual philosopher. My own belief is that at present the most fruitful, because the most neglected, starting point is that section of value-theory which we term aesthetics. Our enjoyment of the values of human art, or of natural beauty, our horror at the obvious vulgarities and defacements which force themselves upon us—all these modes of experience are sufficiently abstracted to be relatively obvious. And yet evidently they disclose the very meaning of things” (Whitehead, 1964, pp. 138–139).
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Robert Cummings Neville elaborates upon the beauty of a sunset in terms of a kind of harmony he calls “situation” in which “the beauty of the meteorological events exist in harmonic relation with potential viewers with the right angle to the horizon and with the visual apparatus to see colors, shapes, and movement. Interpretive cultures also affect the experience of the potential viewers. Actual persons include situations of admiring a beautiful sunset among the many other components they need to harmonize within their own individual lives; or they might actually have been in such a situation but have forgotten about it so as to trivialize it in their lives” (Neville, 2019, p. xxiv).
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For a fascinating meditation on whether the universe “embodies beautiful ideas,” see Wilczek (2016).
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One should not restrict this statement to human beings alone, but rather extend it (in some deep sense) to all of nature. For example, it is unknown to many that Charles Hartshorne was a skilled ornithologist and wrote a truly impressive book called Born to Sing in which he comprehensively analyzed, among other things, the aesthetic domains of bird song, arguing that bird song is not only pleasing for human listeners but also, to some profound degree, for the birds themselves. See Hartshorne (1992). For a shorter discussion refer to Hartshorne (1987, ch. 8).
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Refer also to Whitehead’s Symbolism (1985), a short book which Colin Wilson rightly insists is “not only one of Whitehead’s most important books, but one of the most important books of the century” (Wilson, 1981, p 119). Elsewhere, Wilson describes Whitehead’s two modes of perception as “immediacy perception” (presentational immediacy) and “meaning perception” (causal efficacy) both of which operate like two eyes producing “depth perception.” For Wilson, “Meaning perception shows us what is important; immediacy perception shows us what is trivial. One is a telescope; the other a microscope” (Wilson, 1972, p. 56).
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See for example Craig (2016).
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For more on this theological tradition refer to Boland (1996).
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Despite the longstanding lineage of Hartshorne and Griffin with respect to Whitehead’s “panentheism,” it is important to note that not all Whiteheadians are satisfied with this label for his position on the God-world relationship. Peter Hamilton, William A. Christian, and Roland Faber have all pushed back against Hartshorne, insisting that “panentheism” is in fact a misleading label for Whitehead’s vision. In doing so they have wanted to emphasize not simply the mutual immanence of God and the world for Whitehead, but also their mutual transcendence which is often underplayed or absent in some panentheistic visions. For Faber, Whitehead’s position is better termed “transpantheism” to suggest that the world always also transcends God. Refer to Hamilton (1967, 165); Christian (1967, p. 407); Faber (2017, p. 158).
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Donald Crosby and Justus Buchler have insisted that Whitehead’s ontological principle, that “apart from things that are actual, there is nothing—nothing either in fact or in efficacy,” unjustly prioritizes actuality over and against possibility. In this current volume, Philip Rose makes a similar claim, arguing instead for the metaphysical primacy of the possible as a curative shift away from a long and problematic tradition upholding the ultimacy of actuality. It is important to remember, however, that Whitehead has multiple formulations of the ontological principle, not all of which privilege actuality. Whitehead also insists, for example, that “the things which are temporal arise by their participation in the things which are eternal.” Indeed, the other side of the ontological principle, we might say, is precisely the indispensability of possibility for actuality. Derek Malone-France has expressed these points and speaks rightly of Whitehead being “perfectly cognizant of the equally fundamental status of possibilities” such that he “could have consistently endorsed a possibility-centric formulation of the ontological principle as representing the logical and metaphysical flip-side of the actuality centric formulation” (Malone-France, 2007, p. 166n15). Whitehead in fact holds that neither actuality or possibility is fundamentally more ultimate. As I have recently argued, one can legitimately prioritize one or the other as longs as it is realized that this is abstraction from what its truly ultimate in Whitehead’s universe: relationality conceived in terms of the “mutual immanence” of both abstract and actual ultimates. Refer Davis (2020).
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Charles Hartshorne’s thus comments that “the most general principles of harmony and intensity are more ultimate than the laws of physics and are the reasons for there being natural laws” (Hartshorne, 1991, p. 590). For a superb analysis of harmony in relation to goodness and beauty, see Neville (2019).
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Davis, A.M. (2022). Whiteheadian Cosmotheology: Platonic Entities, Divine Realities and Shared Extraterrestrial Values. In: Davis, A.M., Teixeira, MT., Schwartz, W.A. (eds) Process Cosmology. Palgrave Perspectives on Process Philosophy . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81396-3_19
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