(19) Diversity and Coherence between the modes

There is a danger that modal aspects are viewed as parts that make up reality, however this is not accurate.  Reality does not split up into 15 separate sections like a cake.  Here it is important to repeat that the special sciences investigate their object through the perspective of a modal aspect, they do not investigate the modal aspect itself.  We now need to say something about how each aspect is intimately related to all the others.  This can be done by introducing the notion of analogies.  Through analogies each aspect refers to all the others.  

We can distinguish two types of analogies, those modes that are earlier than other modes can refer towards the later modes, this is called anticipations, and the later modes refer back to the earlier modes in retrociptations.

The first modal aspect is that of number whose meaning is found in discrete quantity as expressed in so called rational or natural numbers.  The spatial aspect is irreducible to that of number, nevertheless in irrational numbers we find an anticipation of spatial figures within the numeric modal aspect.  For example π.

In referring to the number of dimensions in space we find an intrinsic element of space that refers back to that of number, this is a retrocipation.  The notion of causality, which finds its origins in the physical aspect, is an analogical concept that has its place in the different modes of experience: we talk of historical causality while resisting a reduction to the physical kind of causality.  Likewise we require a notion of legal causality in order to hold a criminal legally accountable for their crime, a notion of logical ground to move from premises to conclusion and so on.

These analogies are very important when interpreting theories and concepts within the different disciplines.  The religious impulse to find the meaning and coherence of our world from within this world leads inevitably to reductionist views of the nature and character of the diversity we experience.  In their conceptual expression these reductionist views continually distort the analogical character of our concepts which leads to serious theoretical problems and paradoxes.

Examples in modern sociology

Aspects	Analogies in social aspect	One-sided emphasis
Sign Aspect	Social symbolism and interpretation	Symbolic interactionism/Post-modernism
Historical Aspect	Social power, control and authority	Historicism/Post-modernism
Logical Aspect	Social identification and distinction	Social consensus and conflict theories
Sensitive-psychical Aspect	Social sensitivity/solidarity	Psychologistic approaches
Biotical Aspect	Social differentiation and integration	Organicistic trends/ Functionalism
Physical Aspect	Social change and dynamics	Physicalistic trends
Kinematical Aspect	Social constancy/persistence	Status quo trends
Spatial Aspect	Social totality/wholes and parts	Universalism/holism – emphasis on systems and sub-systems
Arithmetical Aspect	Social unity in multiplicity	Individualism/society as a collection of individual actors

Source D.F.M. Strauss Reintegrating Social Theory p.11

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(18) Outline of the modal spheres

In this section we will give a brief outline of each of the modal aspects, however it is important to make one final point.  The modal spheres are not just abstract categories of what exists as if what exists lack any intrinsic meaning or value. Modern thought has disenchanted the world into ‘bare facts’. Calvin Seerveld has expressed well that the modal aspects are channels of God’s love and blessing towards us and call us to a loving response. All the modal aspects find their unity in love. Here it is worth quoting Dooyeweerd at length:

“Man, created in the image of God, should direct all the temporal functions and powers of his existence and those of his whole temporal world unto the service of God. This he was to accomplish in the central unity of his ego by loving God above all.  And because, in the order of creation, every human ego in this central religious sense was united with every other human ego in a central communion of the service of God, the love for the neighbour was included in the love of God.  We cannot love God without loving His image, expressed in the ego of ourselves and that of our fellow-men.  Therefore, the entire divine Law for God’s creation displays its radical unity in the central commandment of love, addressed to the heart … Just as all the aspects of our temporal experience and existence find their central reference point in the human ego, so the commandment of love represents the central unity of all God’s different ordinances for the temporal world” (Dooyeweerd Twilight, 123)

As we have said before a great danger facing Christianity is the view that this world is a passing and insignificant phase before the soul is taken to heaven.  In contrast we must affirm that we cannot live close to God if we deny God’s creation.  We serve God not alongside or apart from creation, our service is here in our everyday lives in all we do (Colossians 3:12-25 esp vv.17 & 23).  The closer we move in genuine love to all God’s creatures, the closer we come to God’s self.  And the closer to God, the more we will be concerned about his world – a world which He loved so much that his own Son died for it to be redeemed.

It is important to be reminded that human beings never act on a modal aspect as such.  Human acts are always concrete acts within relationships and institutions and upon things.  Modal aspects are always only aspects of concrete existents (things, events, and relationships).  This will be especially important later when we come to look at how to understand history and cultural development.

Here are the modal spheres identified by Dooyeweerd with the nuclear moments in brackets.

Numeric (discrete quantity): The numeric aspect is the domain of magnitude and discrete quantity. It involves more or less, and is represented by numbers. When considering number there is no need to assume anything regarding any of the later modal aspects. Once humans take number into account as part of their responsibility we can speak of too much, too little, or the right amount.

Spatial (Continuous extension): This aspect is investigated by geometry. In the number of dimensions and the measurement of them we must presuppose number. Every part of space is connected in principle to every other as part of the whole hence ‘continuous extension’. The notions of ‘whole’, ‘part’ and ‘coherence’ find their home in the spatial aspect. Anticipating human responsibility things may be “out of place” or find their niche.

Kinematic (Movement): It is a dimension we can understand in terms of inertia: the tendency of matter to remain at rest, or, if moving, to keep moving in the same direction, unless affected by some outside force.

Physical (Energy): This involves forces and interaction. It is familiar to us in the phenomenon of mass, force, matter, atomic and molecular structure.

Biotic (Life): The primary dynamic functions of growth, reproduction, metabolism, restoration, birth, maturation. It involves the integration of a whole where all parts work together to generate growth and so continually generates and regenerates all its parts for its own continued development and existence. If the link with human responsibility and the realities of good and evil are less clear in the earlier modes at least here it makes sense to talk of health and disease, flourishing and decay, vigorous and frail.

Psychic/Sensitive (Feeling or Emotion): this is the mode of goal directed behaviour, in animals and humans, that is primarily of a sensitive (feeling, emotional) kind, includes drives, instinct, stimulus-response, and perception. Humans can be sensitive and well disposed, or insensitive and suffering.

Analytic/Logical (Analytic Distinction): [here or after the formative given that animals create artifacts, do they distinguish?] This mode has to do with the ability to distinguish and identify differences in their context, to identify and compare things. Animals are able to distinguish prey and predators, food etc. but they are unable to develop and formulate these distinctions into concepts where formative control and language is necessary. Humans maybe thoughtful and lucid, or scatterbrained and muddled.

Formative/Historical (Mastery or Control): The mode of freely making, crafting, creating, building, producing where choice and responsibility direct the forming. As it points back to the earlier modes it involves skill and mastery over objects. As it opens up to later modes it involves culture and history as the basis for communication and interaction with others. This is the origin of the means-ends relationship. Animals too make things, but only in the restrictive sense. Within the context of human cultural development there is the essential elements of creativity and responsibility. The development of science and technology in particular allow humans to design and make new things in order to better the world in far reaching and unexpected ways. In this way humans transcend the animal kingdom and make possible the disclosure of cultural forms such as language, education, the arts, society, market relations, juridical institution and so on. Skilful or incompetent.

Aesthetic (Harmony): Dooyeweerd placed this modal sphere after the economic and emphasized harmony, however Calvin Seerveld has long argued that the aesthetic dimension is better understood in terms of suggestion-rich, allusivity and imagination. As a consequence of this and a number of other consideration Seerveld places the aesthetic modal aspect after the formative mode and before the lingual mode. Imaginative or unimaginative.

Lingual/Sign (Symbolic Signification): symbolic signification and language. Clear or vague.

Social (Intercourse): Social intercourse where the consciously practiced developed and fostering of relationships is an end in itself. Hospitality and etiquette, politeness etc. Peaceful or quarrelsome.

Economic (Frugality): The stewardship of resources. Often in the context of scarcity where frugal use must be made or in the context of a wealth of possibilities where only a few can be realized. The optimal use of resources and talents, today often requiring a network of relationships providing for the exchange of goods and services. Prosperous or deprived, generous or greedy. 

Jural (retribution): The mode of rightly weighing what is due, the call for justice. Just or unjust.

Ethical/Trothic (Love): the mode of fidelity, loyalty, intimate care and concern. Loyal or disloyal.

Pistic/Faith (Certitude): Mode of faith, trust, certitude and surrender. Faith or unbelief.

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Calvin Seerveld on the Modal Spheres

"The modal laws have authority and give good, single, multisplendored direction for every creaturely thing because modal laws are prismatic variations of God’s covenanting Word, which says, “Love me above all, respect and build up your neighbour as yourself, and take care of all the creatures I have entrusted you people with until I come back to perfect my rule of shalom."

Calvin Seerveld Normative Aesthetics

(17) Basic features of the modal spheres

To understand modal aspects it is necessary to avoid the temptation to view these modes of how existents function, with the concrete existents of which they are aspects.  For example there is no “numerical” thing such as numbers, rather there are things, such as trees, fingers, people, art works, which can be counted and “numbered”. Probably the key feature of modal aspects is that they are mutually irreducible.  This is sometimes expressed as saying they are each sovereign in their own sphere which connects the philosophical theory of the modal aspects with Abraham Kuyper’s social philosophy of “sphere sovereignty”.  Their sovereignty consists in the fact that they are spheres of law.  Dooyeweerd writes “Every modal aspect of temporal reality has its proper sphere of laws, irreducible to those of other modal aspects, and in this sense it is sovereign in its own orbit” (NC. 1:102). The sphere sovereignty of each aspect is designated by a term that indicates the core meaning of the aspect.  This core meaning is referred to as the ‘nuclear moment’ or the ‘modal kernal’.  For example the modal kernel of the physical sphere is ‘energy’, the biotic sphere is ‘life’, these will be discussed more below.

Dooyeweerd gives a detailed analysis of the internal structure of the modal spheres.  He wants to show that the modal spheres are not externally related to each other but form an intimate coherence through their internal relation.  Each mode has a core nuclear moment which governs (as in sphere sovereignty) its irreducible character.

Around the core nuclear moments are ‘analogical moments’ which refer ahead to later modal aspects or back to earlier ones. These express the dynamic coherence between the modal spheres and will be discussed later (§19). They also indicate that the modal aspects exhibit an “order of succession”.  The idea is that ‘later’ aspects rest on, or are founded on, earlier aspects.  The first aspect is the numerical and this provides the foundation for the spatial aspect which could not exist without more than one dimension and involves extension which can be divided and so measured.  While spatiality is not reducible to number it is founded on number.  Another example is the biotic which rests on the physical mode.  This can be seen in that while there can be physical things which have no active biological functions it is impossible for biological phenomena to lack a physical basis.  Working through this direction we start with the numerical aspect and work our way up showing how each successive aspect presupposes those that preceded it.  This is called the foundational direction, however the cosmic ordering of the aspects can be viewed from the opposite “transcendental” direction.  From this perspective all the aspects point forward anticipating the later modal spheres and ultimately the faith aspect.  For example irrational numbers like π point forward to the spatial dimension of reality. This direction is also associated with the way each modal aspect is an expression of a deeper unity which is called the religious root of the cosmos. 

These points are not merely intricacies of Dooyeweerd’s, for example the foundational direction can help us to understand where philosophical naturalism has gone wrong.  Many today are convinced that nothing exists outside the areas studied by the natural sciences (physics, chemistry and biology).  On this view human thought and behaviour can be understood solely on the basis of what these sciences can tell us about the brain.  The claim is often made that ultimately everything can be explained in these terms.  Let it be noted that the term “ultimately” rightly reminds us of the religious character of such thinking. The theory of the modal aspects can help us see that scientific explanations are necessarily limited by the modal aspect through which they investigate reality.  This means that explanations of human thought and behaviour based on a chemical or biological analysis of the brain are always partial and circumstantial.  As indicated by the foundational direction they lay bare the basic conditions for events that occur at a higher level.  This means that it is always possible to find correlations between the higher levels of human action and the lower chemical and biological base.  However they can never lay bare the true meaning of events that occur at higher levels.  Human thinking must follow logical laws and not merely physical and biological laws.  Klapwijk has used the example of a lie detector which may help us tell if a person is lying, but it can never tell us why the suspect lies. We should be prepared to accept that neuroscience can be incredibly helpful in elucidating the complex correlations between processes of consciousness and brain activities, however no matter how much knowledge neurologists may have of the cerebral activities upon which consciousness depends, their view is always limited to the lower modal aspects.  As such they totally ignore the normative principles of consciousness, for example the logical principles of identity and contradiction, which consciousness must obey if its content is to be meaningful (See further §30).

It should be pointed out that although the theory of the modal spheres as outlined above follows Dooyeweerd’s version. His brother-in-law and co-worker in reformational philosophy, Dirk Vollenhoven, did not agree with his account of the ‘order of succession’ in terms of time with its foundational and transcendental directions. Also more recently Dirk Stafleu has commented that it is difficult to argue for the irreducibility of the modal aspects when focusing only on the term used to designate their core meaning.  Instead he suggests that it is more illuminating to focus on how existents relate to each other at the level of one modal aspect, or what are called the subject-subject relations within the modal sphere.  This is one of the reasons why has developed an approach in terms of ‘relation frames’ in the place of ‘modal aspects’.  As an example, he argues that if we recognise that all physical subject-subject relationships are expressions of energy interaction, then it becomes more obvious why physics cannot be reduced to mathematical relationships since triangles and numbers do not interact.  Again we can see that in the biotic aspect the subject-subject relation is one of genetic relationships of descent and heredity something that clearly does not exist in physical relationships.

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(16) The theory of modal spheres

We start with the theory of modal aspects.  First of all it is important to see that this is an attempt to understand reality; in other words the diversity to be investigated is a diversity that is to be found in reality and is not merely a question of what concepts we happen to choose or find useful.  The various ways reformational philosophers speak about modal aspects indicates this. Examples are: “aspects of reality”, “modes of being”, “modes of experience”.  Naturally any theory of these modal aspects necessarily involves concepts, and the diversity of concepts is both part of and reflects the diversity of reality.

A second point is it possible to refer to the diversity of reality in a very different way.  For example, the creation story in Genesis refers us to ‘the fish of the sea’, ‘the beasts of the earth’, ‘the birds of the air’ and so on.  Here we have a rich diversity of creatures, there is this creature and that creature.  Modal aspects are not a matter of ‘what’ there is, but of ‘how’ they exist, their ‘mode of existence’.  In the diagram we have indicated the reality of ‘what exists’ by the use of vertical columns.  The modes are the horizontal rows that express how these animals, entities and institutions exist.  You will notice that what exists always comes to expression through a number of modes.  In fact, we will later see how everything that exists asserts its being through all the modal aspects.

To get a better handle on some of these points, we can begin with how Herman Dooyeweerd, one of the pioneers of this theory, came to articulate his understanding of this diversity.  Dooyeweerd was trained in jurisprudence and after completing his doctoral studies he began to investigate, in the 1920’s, the main currents of the philosophy of law.  What he found was a number of theories that tried to explain law in terms of something other than law itself.  Some claimed that law was based on ethics, others that it was the result of social relations, still others that law could be explained in terms of logic.  Dooyeweerd was not satisfied with any of these solutions and instead started to develop his idea of irreducible diversity.  Each mode is distinct and cannot be reduced to another mode.

Dooyeweerd, and others since, have noticed similar issues arising in other sciences.  For example, in psychology the behaviourists reduced its perspective to the physical and biotic, whereas others reduced it to the social.  Mach reduced physics to observable sensations whereas Heisenberg reduced physics to mathematics.

A question naturally arises as to how reformational philosophy arrived at this list of 15 modal aspects.  The long answer would require an ongoing story that continues today involving much philosophical reflection and empirical considerations.  The list of aspects has always been treated as provisional and subject to further discussion and research.  In light of this we limit ourselves to three criteria that draw on what we have already covered.  Dooyeweerd’s assessment of legal theory suggests that a field of scientific investigation tends to take one or two modal aspects as the point of entry to the phenomena it studies.  This implies that different sciences can investigate the same entity but will do so from the perspective of different modal spheres.  Therefore, one criterion for the list of aspects is given by the diversity of scholarly disciplines. Where we have an established special science (physics, biology, psychology, economics, linguistics etc.) we can take seriously the possibility that here we meet an irreducible aspect of reality. 

A second criterion comes from the attempt of theorists to reduce reality to one or two aspects.  A reductionist project suggests the reality of the mode to which the others are to be reduced. The second diagram shows that many different reductionist projects have been attempted but the limited success of those projects is a second kind of evidence for the reality of the modes taken to be the basic denominator of reality.  Each form of reduction gets hold of a genuine aspect of reality but goes astray by trying to reduce all others aspects to it.  Such a strategy could not get off the ground if the basic reality was not genuine.

A third criterion arises out of the failures of each attempted reduction.  In trying to explain genuinely irreducible modes in terms of another mode, reality fights back leading to basic contradictions or paradoxes. We have already mentioned Zeno’s famous paradoxes concerning space and movement.

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(15) Irreducible diversity

Any philosophical perspective on reality has to account for both the apparent unity and coherence of the world while acknowledging the variegated richness of our experience of the world.  Traditionally philosophers have done this in two ways, either through an appeal to a single basic reality that provides the unity to which all diversity must be related, or by proposing two basic realities whose distinctness explains diversity and combination explains unity.

We have already had reason to consider some of the views of the great French philosopher Rene Descartes, and once again he can provide us with an instructive illustration of the issue.  His dualism has provided the starting point for a number of problems that have occupied many philosophers since.  Descartes held that the world divides into two separate substances: mind and matter.  This left the material world free to the investigation of the mathematical sciences, which tended towards a deterministic result, and it left the mind free for the church’s teachings on matters moral and spiritual.  It also set up the classical problem of epistemology: how does the non-physical thinking mind know the non-thinking physical world? And in addition the classical problem of the philosophy of mind: how does the mind relate to the brain?

Those who have come after Descartes, despite offering strong criticisms of his views, have largely accepted his model. Sometimes rejecting mind and embracing materialism, sometimes rejecting matter and embracing idealism. This, admittedly simplified, background is useful for seeing the distinctive nature of a reformational approach to philosophy which can be summed up like this: rather than search for the unity and coherence of reality within reality itself, reformational philosophy starts with the assumption that the cosmos has a coherent order by virtue of God’s act of creation.  A lot more will need to be said about this assumption later.  However, for now, let’s have a look at the different result it gives us.

Reformational philosophy gives us an account of the coherence and diversity of reality through its theory of 15 or so basic modes of reality, these are the modal laws referred to by Seerveld in the quote above.   From the diagram we can see that such an approach allows for an understanding of the world that is considerably richer than any which continues to work from within the model left by Descartes.  By releasing us from the necessity of finding the ultimate meaning and origin of reality within reality itself, reformational philosophy sets us on a path with quite a different focus.  Reformational philosophy seeks to investigate and give a provisional account of the diverse ways that things function and people act in the world.

The rich diversity of reality can be viewed from two distinct perspectives.  First we will look at this diversity from the perspective of the different ways in which people and things function.  This is the horizontal direction in the diagram above and concerns what we call modal theory.  Secondly we can look at this diversity from the perspective of the things and institutions that function in these diverse ways, the vertical direction which we will call a theory of entities. These two elements cover the broad range of what exists, we can talk of things, artefacts, institutions, people, acts and events. Rather than listing these in future we will follow Chaplin and speak of existents to cover this range.

Once these are in place it will be possible to deal with the more complex issues of human society and how to think philosophically about our own existing and acting in the world.

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Further Reading

At the beginning of reformational philosophy many contemporary thinkers were quite certain that the nature of philosophy excluded an explicitly religious starting point. Heidegger described “Christian philosophy” as on the level of a “square circle”. This meant that reformational philosophers have had to give sustained reflection to the nature of philosophy. The key presentation is Herman Dooyeweerd “Prolegomena” in A New Critique of Theoretical Thought Volume I Translated by David H. Freeman and William S. Young, (Paideia Press / Reformational Publishing Project, 2016) pp.3-165. The centre piece of Dooyeweerd’s position was a “transcendental critique of theoretical thought”. His presentation was from the start controversial and not easy reading and he returned to the same themes many times, for example in the more accessible In the Twilight of Western Thought (Craig Press, 1972). Vollenhoven sets out his ideas on the task of philosophy in “The place of Philosophy in the Cosmos and its Task” pp.9-18 in Introduction to Philosophy Translated by J. H. Kok (Dordt College Press, 2005). Most introduction to reformational philosophy start with a chapter on the nature of philosophy. For example L. Kalsbeek “What is philosophy?” pp. 35-43 in Contours of a Christian philosophy: An introduction to Herman Dooyeweerd’s thought, (Wedge Publishing, 1975), Andrée Troost “What is philosophy?” pp.1-21 in What is Reformational Philosophy? An Introduction to the Cosmonomic Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd translated by Anthony Runia, (Paideia Press, 2012), and the more challenging J.P.A. Mekkes “Introduction, The limits of philosophy” pp.1-16 in Creation, Revelation and Philosophy (Dordt College Press, 2010). One should add to this the important reflections in Gerrit Glas (2011) ‘What is Christian philosophy?’ Pro Rege 40:1 pp.1-17, and S.U. Zuidema “Philosophy as Point of Departure” pp. 124-128 in Communication and Confrontation (J.H.Kok, 1971).

Noticing and accounting for the role of abstraction in theoretical thought is a key insight of Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique of theoretical thought. The best book length introduction and update of this element of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is Roy Clouser’s The Myth of Religious Neutrality: An essay on the hidden role of religious belief in theories (Notre Dame Press 2005). Vincent Brummer gives a good exposition of Dooyeweerd’s presentation in Transcendental Criticism and Christian Philosophy (T. Wever, 1961). Danie Strauss’ Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines (Paideia Press, 2009) should be considered one of the most important contemporary developments of Dooyeweerd’s transcendental approach. His arguments in chapter 2 of Strauss 2009 were drawn on for my discussion, also useful were Renato Coletto (2011) “The elaboration of a demarcation criterion in reformational philosophy” in Acta Academica, 43(2):41-65, and Martin Rice (2000) “What is Science?” pp.239-269 in Contemporary Reflections on the Philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd Edited by D.F.M. Strauss & Michelle Botting.

As already mentioned Dooyeweerd’s transcendental critique has been both influential and controversial among reformational philosophers. To get a good sense of the issues the reader should consult DMF Strauss “An Analysis of the Structure of Analysis” Philosophia Reformata 1983 pp.35-56, Henk G Geertsema (2000) “Dooyeweerd’s Transcendental Critique: Transforming it Hermeneutically” in Strauss & Botting ed. (2000)  pp.83-108, Lambert Zuidervaart (2004), “The Great Turning Point: Religion and Rationality in Dooyeweerd’s Transcendental Critique,” Faith and Philosophy 21, 65-89, Roy Clouser “The Transcendental Critique Revisited and Revised” Philosophia Reformata 74:1 pp.21-47

Descartes’ quote on the Archimedean point is from Descartes Selected Philosophical Writings Translated by John Cottingham Cambridge University Press 1988, 80. The contrasting quotes from Descartes and Hume in §12 are from Strauss 2009:56. The argument concerning psychology (§13) borrows from Martin Rice’s account of these issues in ethics from an unpublished paper (2011) “Ethics as a religious activity”. The definition of philosophy given in §13 is adapted from Calvin Seerveld “Reformational Philosophy and Christian College Education” in Cultural Education and History Writing.

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(14) Philosophy not neutral

Philosophy claims to be neutral and to be conducted on a purely rational basis. Yet, as we look through the vast diversity of philosophical systems and insights, we are forced to account for this diversity through appeal to more than rational factors.  Philosophical concepts themselves require that we dig deeper.

In modern philosophy there is the basic motivation of personality/freedom and science/control which needs to be understood if we are to grasp the way concepts and arguments function.  These two are in constant tension.  Through science, humans come to understand the world. This delivers us from the fear of the mystery of nature. Further, our scientific knowledge gives us power over nature.  This power means that we can free ourselves from the capricious power of nature; we can even use the power of nature for our own benefit.  So science creates huge potential for human freedom.  Seen from a humanistic view point this freedom is created by humans. It is our power of reason that creates it, and through reason this freedom can become total.  Nature is an object that we can know completely and over which we can have complete power. We can become gods.

How do we gain complete control over nature?  We do this through strict adherence to the power of reason to analyse everything and to see the interconnections of everything.  This includes humans and human society if we are to have complete control over them.  It is not too hard to see that, along this path, what appeared to guarantee and to be irrefutable evidence for human freedom turns out to destroy human freedom, either through a deterministic science or social engineering.  This kind of problem has gone through many permutation over the last four centuries, the point to note is that underneath it we have a basic religious conviction of a humanistic kind.

Despite the fact that the history of philosophy requires us to take pre-rational factors seriously, it can still be held that neutrality is an ideal not yet attained. A second line of argument seeks to show that philosophy is not possible without a religious starting point; there is an inner point of contact between religious belief and theory.  This point of contact is to be found in certain basic ideas that make philosophy possible.  They are the ideas of (1) origin, (2) unity, and (3) diversity in coherence.

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(13) The Character of philosophy

Let us back-track a little because the above discussion of science, theory and abstraction leads us to an important argument.  The kind of sciences we have so far been talking about are specialized sciences because they investigate reality through the lens of one distinguishable sphere of properties and laws that acts as a unified principle of explanation. But notice this: we can only identify such a principle of explanation by simultaneously seeing how it is different from other possible principles of explanation.  We can focus on number as number only if we are able to distinguish it from other types of property such as motion, energy, life etc.  If reality contained only one kind of property then these special sciences would be impossible.  This undermines all claims to reduce reality to one type of thing.  The reductionist approach is inherently circular since the choice of principle for explaining everything else already presupposes a given diversity from which it makes it choice.  For example: materialism claims that all of reality can be reduced to matter. However, we can only understand this claim if we can identify matter as a distinctive kind of property in the world set off from other properties.  This in turn can only be accomplished if other properties distinct from matter really exist, and so strict materialism cannot possible be true.  

There is another conclusion to be drawn from this line of thought.  Since any special science is limited to the angle of approach of one dimension of reality, a view of how that dimension relates to the whole of reality (or to other dimensions or aspects) must require a more-than-special-scientific viewpoint.  This means that any definition of a special science must take a view outside of its specific modal viewpoint.  For example, to claim that “mathematics is the discipline encompassing algebra and topology” is to give a definition that is not mathematical in character since it is not itself an axiom, theorem or deduction either in algebra or topology.  It is a claim about mathematics and not a claim of mathematics.  This suggests that specialised sciences can only account for what they are doing by moving beyond their natural domain and so it points us towards the need for theoretical reflection that has as its focus such boundary-transcending issues.  Theoretical thinking requires a discipline that deals with the interrelation between different facets of our world.    Since every science and human task has set limits, philosophy must give itself to the service of others by listening to and learning from these disciplines and making conceptually clear the nature, limits, inter-relational meaning and potential for blessing/curse of things, events and human activities.  

It may help to develop an example (borrowed and adapted from Martin Rice).  If you are developing a psychological theory, then you will presume the existence of psychological phenomena, including certain psychological laws and properties which characterise psychological functioning.  Here we meet with a very basic kind of philosophical question which asks what is the nature of these phenomena and how they relate to other acknowledged realities.  It is true that some may wish to deny the existence of such realities and may advocate that we eliminate all talk of psychological laws and properties in a mature science.  Such a view would not even want to offer an explanation of psychological phenomena, but will instead propose an explanation of why we are mistaken in our belief that there are such. Either way, whether we accept or deny their existence we will be advancing a philosophical position.

Let us suppose that psychological properties and laws do constitute a genuine sphere of functioning in the reality we meet with in our experience of events and objects. The question now arises how these properties relate, connect with, or depend upon other, non-psychological phenomena. Here we have a choice: either psychological phenomena have independent existence with the other aspects of reality dependent on them, or they do not. Let’s take the first option where psychological properties exist independently of the remaining aspects.  We see a version of this in the (radical) empiricist position in philosophy where our sensory experience, sometimes called sense data, is seen as having a distinct existence and providing our only guide to true reality.  This is clearly a philosophical view.  To the extent that our sensory experience is taken as basic and independent it is also a religious view since psychological properties are given the role of a divinity.

In the second case, we assume there is a relationship of some sort between the psychological aspect of reality and the remaining aspects. How can this be conceived, or explained? That is, what kind of relationship are we dealing with? It could be that one of the remaining aspects explains or accounts for the relationship between the psychological aspect of reality and the remaining aspects to which it is related. This would have to be done by either a non-eliminative reduction to the relating aspect, or by a supervenience relation upon the aspect that does the relating. In either case we are involved in a substantive philosophical theory, since we are making a theory that comments, in whole or in part, on the number of, and interrelations between, the basic aspects of reality.

Of course, the kind of connection that exists between the psychological aspect and the remaining aspects of reality may not be characterized by one of the aspects at all. We may have a non-reductive relationship between the psychological aspect and the remainder. It is precisely such a philosophical view that is developed by reformational philosophy.

The point of the above example is that, as a special science develops, it is forced to take a philosophical stance on the limits of its field and how its conceptual results relate to other universes of discourse and knowledge.

An authentic Christian philosophy should seek to combat the tendency to reduce reality to one or two basic realities on which all else depends or through which all else can be explained.  It also has the task of exploring the richness of God’s world as uncovered by the many fields of scholarship by giving a theoretical overview that remains open to further surprises, and as with all cultural tasks this should be done in obedience to the two great commandments: to love God and serve one’s neighbour with the expectation of the redemption of the whole of creation.

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(12) No Archimedean point

Now we recall that theoretical thought, often under the name “reason”, was linked to the divine and seen as capable of revealing the whole meaning of reality to us.  Here, many a philosopher has thought, is our true Archimedean point, a watch tower we can ascend and overcome the limitations of our body and senses to survey reality from a “Gods-eye-view”.  Rene Descartes, considered the father of modern philosophy, put it like this: “Archimedes used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakeable.”.  Famously he proposed the cogito, the self as a thinking thing, to be his Archimedean point.  Reason then becomes a form of pseudo-revelation; it takes upon itself the role of revealing to us what is divine.

Right from the beginning of philosophy there was a faith in theoretical thought that it would lead us to the true picture of reality, a picture that sets itself against the changing diversity (and richness) of everyday experience.  This meant that the result of theoretical thinking was identified with true reality.  Put in another way, the fallible and limited outcome of human thinking became the standard for what is truly real and important.  Given that theoretical thinking involves isolating and focusing on a specific feature of the world, the identification of the result of our theoretical thinking with true reality has led philosophers to take what they had isolated in thought to be the independent and fundamental basis of all reality.  This shows a kind of forgetfulness because what is isolated in thought is isolated only as a result of our activity of separating it from its everyday context and not because it really is isolated and independent. We forget, at our peril, that what our thinking gives us is just a small focused part of reality and not its true, underlying nature: what philosophers often call essence or substance.

Now, to take something in reality as the independent and fundamental basis of all reality, is to take that part of creation and give it a divine like status.  By seeking the answer to the boundary question of unity and diversity within the confines of what reason reveals to us leads to a form of intellectual idolatry.  Not only that, it also fails to solve the problem.  Let’s see why that is.  Philosophers have tended to identity one or two features as basic to reality. If just one feature (monism), then there remains the problem of how we can get from this one feature all the diversity we experience.  For example, how from matter we can get life, consciousness, morality and so on.  If two features are made fundamental then the unity of what we experience, and the way things in God’s world seem to fit together become problematic because we are now required work out how these two very different features can interact with each other.  For example, in addition to matter Rene Descartes added mind, but then had great difficulty in explaining how the mind can affect the body and how the body can affect the mind.

A further problem is that since created reality is not absolute, and since the feature that our thinking has isolated for investigation is not truly isolated and independent but in actual fact intertwined with the rest of reality, then taking it to be the key to reality leads to irresolvable problems.  These can be seen in the various paradoxes and antinomies that crop up throughout the history of philosophy, perhaps none as famous as those identified by Zeno of Elea.  He developed a number of arguments to support his view that motion was not real.  The most famous is known as the Achilles paradox (after the famous Greek hero), or sometimes as the ‘tortoise and the hare’.  Here we are to imagine a race between a tortoise and Achilles (or a hare).  Achilles being a good sport allows the tortoise a head-start but doesn’t realise that in order to overtake the tortoise he must first reach the place where the tortoise started from, by which point the tortoise has moved on.  Now Achilles must cross an admittedly short distance to arrive at the position the tortoise has now got to.  Unfortunately, by the time Achilles has got there the wily tortoise has kept going on to a further point and so it seems the same will happen ad infinitum (to infinity) meaning that Achilles will never be able to overtake the tortoise!  This paradoxical conclusion, that Achilles will never overtake the tortoise when we know that in reality he will, is a result of Zeno’s attempt to explain everything in terms of space.  Since motion is different from space, it cannot be explained on its basis and so a consistent reduction of all of reality to space will end up denying the reality of motion.

One more problem we mention now is that due to the great diversity exhibited in creation there are many modes of reality that can be isolated and made into the fundamental starting point of our explanations.  This variety means that it becomes quite arbitrary what choice is made as regards what is taken to be ultimately real.  This is revealed in the changing fashions of -isms that one encounters in the different fields of scholarship, such as rationalism, behaviourism, psychologism, organicism, historicism, economism, physicalism etc.  Each of these has been equally successful (and unsuccessful) at organising its explanation of all reality around just one dimension of reality.  Later we shall see why reductionism can meet with a certain degree of success.  For now, to give a sense of how arbitrary the choice is, compare the following positions of Rene Descartes and David Hume.  First Descartes:

Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed.  This cannot be false; what is called ‘having a sensory perception’ is strictly just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking.  (Descartes Meditations II)

Now compare with Hume:

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive. (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part II, sec. vi)

Descartes reduces all the phenomena of human experience to thinking, while Hume reduces the same realities to perception.  While the consequences are significant, it is difficult to know why one form of reduction should be favoured over the other.  Both in their own way are expressions of faith. Both reductions rely on the abstractive and isolating activities of thought. Now, since theory focuses on elements and cannot comprehend the whole, it is itself one element of the whole.  This means that the answer to the problem of unity and diversity must be found prior to theory, including philosophical theory.  A vision of the whole, as a vision of ‘life, the universe and everything’, is a vision of faith whether one is “religious” or not.  The conclusion is that philosophy cannot give us an Archimedean point.

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(11) Theory and abstraction

Based on our first approximation in defining philosophy (§9) we should look for what makes theoretical thought a distinctive part of our cultivation of God’s creation.  If we go back to the earliest philosophers we notice that theoretical thinking helped them to take ordinary features of our world such as water, fire and air, or certain pervasive realities such as change and constancy and turn them into fundamental ordering principles of the whole cosmos.  By claiming that the whole of reality could be explained by, or reduced to certain basic elements, these elements are given godlike status as being the independent basis of all the rest of reality.

Theoretical thinking is a feature of science and there are today many sciences.  At school we typically study physics, chemistry and biology; then there are also subjects such as psychology and mathematics.  Each of them investigates its own irreducible terrain of reality in which certain properties and laws that form a basic kind of functioning of the objects and events in our experience are grouped together.  Mathematicians, for example, focus on numbers themselves, not on counting particular objects, but investigating numerical properties as they can be understood in isolation from the objects of ordinary experience.  In biology we investigate generative (living) systems that reproduce and go through cycles of development.  In physics the focus is on the interactions of energy that are presupposed in living organisms, but also on physical forces such as gravity and electromagnetism. We can see that theory works by isolating aspects of the world in order to produce explanations [add examples]. This characterises science and cuts across the division of so-called ‘natural’ and ‘social’ sciences.[1]  We can also see that the explanations produced give us a model of the world that is different from what we directly perceive.  From this we conclude that theoretical thinking has the character of analysis, of identifying and distinguishing things, of taking things apart in thought.  In theory we view reality from an abstract perspective such as that of physics; we may start with the fullness of our experience of reality but we find a point of entry that directs us to certain features that are of specific interest.  So we might have a flower in front of us and our point of interest is in the psychological benefits of having flowers in a hospital environment, or our point of interest may be in its economic value and role in a particular economy, or we may be interested in the flower from a more strictly biological perspective its processes of growth, maturation, reproduction etc.  In each approach there is a human busy in the activity of selecting particular features of an object for further investigation.  In this act of thought we leave behind, though only in our thinking and explaining, the fullness of reality as we usually experience it and investigate an isolated part of it.

It takes considerable training to achieve this ability to select a relevant viewpoint to guide our investigation into some matter or other, and yet as a learnt human skill it becomes part of the scientist’s second nature and so easily passes unnoticed.  However, if we step back from this activity and ask ourselves how the resulting analysis and explanation relates to the results of other sciences with their different points of interest, and how these in turn relate to the original fullness of reality that we confront in our everyday experience then we face a perplexing philosophical problem of unity and diversity. We can unpack this by asking two distinct questions: How do all these perspectives relate to each other? And then: Can they all be united into a single understanding of reality?  But these questions cannot be answered by theoretical thought alone even though it is awakened by them. They are questions that sit on the very boundary of theoretical thought, or we could say at its limits.  Here it is appropriate to say that philosophy should proceed with a sense of wonder.

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[1]I say so-called ‘natural’ because social sciences such as sociology, economics, history and so on can hardly be said to investigate non-natural aspects of reality.  These sciences investigate properties and processes that are just as much part of our world as those studied by the ‘natural’ sciences.  It is only a certain kind of philosophical prejudice that elevates the ‘natural’ sciences to a level of ‘real’ or ‘hard’ science as opposed to ‘soft’ sciences.  This is another result of reductionist thinking.

(10) Rational thinking

The nature and status of human rational thinking is a central theme of philosophy, and we can certainly agree with the claim that philosophy has to do with thinking and a special kind of thinking at that.  It is correct to see in the birth and development of philosophy the beginning of science also since we find here the discovery of the power of theoretical thinking for exploring and explaining the world around us.  Anaximander, for example, attributed thunder storms to the compression of wind within a dense cloud rather than to the activity of the gods.  If our human task is to develop and cultivate the potential God laid in creation then the discovery and development of theoretical thinking was a great achievement.  Unfortunately, two less-than-positive developments are found together with the discovery of theoretical thought.  Firstly, the positive ability of theoretical thought to give us new perspectives on the world by mentally splitting up reality to permit a focused analysis of specific isolated elements was uncritically taken to give us a truer picture of the world than that given in our everyday experience.  This signalled the beginning of a reductionist spirit in which theory becomes the correct way to make the world comprehensible as it reduces the rich, multifaceted character of reality to only one or two basic elements.  In consequence, the number and nature of the factors used to explain reality was severely limited even while there appeared to be a number of options available; some chose water, some air, some fire etc.  While this may not have been so serious at an early stage of the development of theoretical thought, the prejudice, very much alive today, that science is necessarily reductive and that physics will soon give us a single true unified picture of the world, is a serious misconception.

The second negative development set philosophy more immediately off-track.  In the absence of a proper recognition of the Creator, this gift of theoretical thought was soon elevated to divine status.  Xenophanes (c.570-475 BC), admiring what he took to be pure and universal in us, projected consciousness (life, sensitivity and thought) on to his idea of the One god, supreme above the others.  Something that God had made for our good got turned into an idol (Romans 1:25).  This god is conceived as pure consciousness, “complete he sees, complete he thinks, complete he hears”.  The notion of “completeness” that Xenophanes uses would set off a powerful tradition that sees god as a motionless thinking, as a simple (as in not being made up of parts) spiritual being.  This idea of “divine simplicity” was unfortunately adopted by some early Christian intellectuals and has since caused havoc in Christian theology, putting a road block in the way of understanding the reality of the covenanting God who meets us in the Bible.

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Two links worth checking out

The Faith-in-scholarship blog often has great pieces. A recent one explains the excellent Church Scientific project. It's called could a Christian worldview enhance science?

Jonathan Chaplin has a great piece at the Center for Public Justice

Before justice acquired a reactive, corrective inflection due to the fall, it was what Nicholas Wolterstorff calls “primary justice”–a rich relational lattice enabling the development of flourishing human societies in tune with God. It still is. Humans need just familial, neighborly, cultural, geographical, economic, and political relationships if they are to fulfill their original calling to be images of God tending and unfolding creation’s gifts. Justice is constitutive of the Gospel because it is constitutive of being human. Human history testifies to our necessary, stumbling, occasionally impressive, and often oppressive, attempts to build institutions that facilitate the doing of justice in each of these areas.