(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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