Two years ago, I sat down with the late philosopher and physicist, Wolfgang Smith, to discuss his novel approach to quantum physics and the need for a return to Platonic conceptions of reality. You can watch that conversation here (there’s also a complete transcript):
Earlier today, I met with Dr. Smith’s collaborator and archivist, Richard, and his friend and dialogue partner, Adam. I wanted to share a few reflections that stemmed from our dialogue (not sure if Richard will share the full video, but my remarks below are based on excerpts from the following video).
I try to say yes to as many requests for these kinds of chats as I can. There are a lot of such requests in my inbox that I haven’t even gotten to yet, so apologies if you are still waiting, and thank you for your patience!
I live for dialogue, so hopefully I’m not overwhelming people by sharing so much on my Substack. I hope it’s nutritious. For me, knowledge is inseparable from communication: if I’m not always striving to express and digest ideas in dialogue with others, I feel like I don’t really know anything.
Richard and Adam wanted to hear my thoughts about Wolfgang Smith’s relationship with Alfred North Whitehead, and their possible differences. I mentioned Smith’s affinity for Whitehead’s critique of the bifurcation of nature. For Whitehead, there’s the quantitative approach of the empirical sciences, which develop mathematical models of so-called primary characteristics, and then there are the “psychic additions” as Whitehead calls them—all the qualitative aspects dismissed by strict materialism as “secondary” characteristics that are just in the mind, which is itself epiphenomenal to matter. Whitehead rejects this bifurcated picture, and Smith clearly rejected it, too.
However, there’s a very important difference between Wolfgang Smith’s approach—which I see as more in line with an emanationist scheme stemming from a reading of Plato, Plotinus, and the broader neoplatonic tradition—and Whitehead’s emphasis on evolution. For Whitehead, time and history are a creative unfolding of novelty, but for Smith, creative evolution is seen as mere appearance, a kind of maya, since what’s really real is an underlying eternal wholeness. Whitehead doesn’t deny unity and wholeness, but he’s a pluralist in the sense that he tries to allow for manyness and oneness to have some parity, throwing them into a creative advance. For him, eternity is fully present in each moment, yet each moment is also new, evolving, and even the divine doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. So there’s an evolutionary element Whitehead wants to preserve, but it’s very different from Darwin’s and especially neo-Darwinism’s understanding of evolution—Wolfgang was critical of the latter, and I share those criticisms. But it is clear there is a deeper sense of evolution here than just that narrower materialist paradigm.
Wolfgang and I touched on this issue briefly at the end of our conversation, and I wished we had gone a bit deeper. He was a Catholic, of course, and thus history must have been important for him—the Bible is an account of a historical process, after all, and, taken at its word, it appears to describe a series of transformative changes in both God and in humanity.
Whitehead’s scheme involves concepts like ingression, prehension, and concrescence, and there’s a lot to unpack, just as there is in Wolfgang’s work and his notion of vertical causation. Bringing formal and final causality back into the scientific picture requires a new way of speaking. Modern science has primarily allowed only efficient (horizontal) causation, which is a deterministic push-from-behind model, and was a reaction against the medieval or scholastic tradition where natural processes included formal and final causes as well. The shaping power or morphogenic drive latent in things, and all purposeful growth aiming at values, was banished from nature by the modern way of thinking. All purpose and value ended up being sequestered within the human soul, leaving nature as just naked mechanism.
Quantum physics and the complexity sciences, though, suggest we can’t fully understand nature that way. We tried to apply the mechanistic paradigm rigorously and ended up discovering nonlocal entanglement and various examples of whole-to-part causality, which is impossible to explain mechanistically. Some might rely on hidden variables, like Bohm’s holistic determinism, or we can talk about vertical causation in Wolfgang’s sense. Whitehead approaches it differently: instead of emphasizing the wholeness of the totality at a macro-scale, he stresses the wholeness of each individual “actual occasion.” The infinite isn’t separate from the finite; in Whitehead’s view, each so-called particular contains the entirety of the universe, physically prehending the whole past and conceptually prehending all that remains possible. He takes the emanationist emphasis on the One from Neoplatonism and puts it into each of the Many, so there’s a recapitulation of oneness inside each particular. This gives rise to an evolutionary cosmology that’s constantly reuniting with the macroscopic whole but in a way that adds to the growth of that whole. Instead of “vertical causation,” Whitehead talks about the ingression of eternal objects, where each unique particular occasion of experience relates to one eternal truth. And yet we participate in the eternal from a new perspective moment by moment, and Whitehead says our decisions feed back on that eternal realm so it’s not a static eternity but a living one. That might be the big difference between Wolfgang’s attempt and Whitehead’s. They share a goal, perhaps, but at least have different emphases.
…
Richard kindly asked me to share how I began down the philosophical path. It only began consciously in high school. I was a quiet, reflective kid who, before my senior year, was pretty convinced I would be a professional hockey player, but I stopped growing at around five-foot-five and luckily got interested in reading instead. I started realizing there was an entire history behind the philosophical and psychological ideas I was discovering, and I got addicted to understanding that infinite context. Reading is something I love even more now, especially since the human attention span seems like an endangered species. We who value reading have a duty to preserve it and convince others that it’s worth preserving. It’s not just me on my couch reading a book—it feels like an act of cognitive resistance.
For graduate school, I went to the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. I studied in a program called Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, which was started by Richard Tarnas (philosopher, cultural historian, archetypal cosmologist), Brian Swimme (evolutionary cosmologist), and Robert McDermott (scholar of esotericism, Sri Aurobindo, Rudolf Steiner), who have each recently retired. I also got to take a short course there as a graduate student with Professor Jacob Needleman focused on Milarepa and Meister Eckhart, which was a special experience. I now teach in the program.
Richard mentioned his Catholic conversion and what Catholicism means to him. It seems Adam’s more of a metamodernist and Richard more traditionalist. I’m often in dialogue with metamodernists and with traditionalists, and I’m not sure where I place myself. I teach at an integral institute, so I engage with integral theory, which is bigger than just Ken Wilber. Metamodernism is making a name for itself now, and there’s a lot going on at the intersections of all these ideas as we struggle to birth a new world view—it’s very exciting, and rather urgent work.
…
The trouble is that modern intellectuals have inhabited a toy-model version of the universe, imagining it’s purely mechanistic. Quantum physics shows it’s not just particles banging together, so we’ve rediscovered that the universe is relational and participatory. Whitehead’s cosmology helps us see that quantum physics is not absurd because, if we look again at our concrete experiential encounter with the universe, we realize that it is infused with possibility moment by moment and that we overlap with and bleed together with everything happening around us. The universe is a seamless process. Whitehead’s distinction between “coordinate analysis” (what physics does—turning events into data streams and removing ourselves as observers) and “genetic analysis” (the inner process of concrescence by which novelty arises) is crucial. Genetic analysis deals with the living process by which each moment becomes actual, while coordinate analysis is always just an approximate account of what has already been actualized. Whitehead’s ontology recognizes that observers are part of the universe. Because of concrescence, genuine novelty arises moment by moment, which means even physical laws aren’t final; everything can continue to evolve.
Richard’s point about natural science’s attempt at observer independence, and view of religion as more participatory, intersects with the way medieval Catholic scholastic theology influenced modern science. Thomas Aquinas integrated Aristotelian science and Christian theology, offering a rich participatory epistemology. But over time, that background was forgotten, leaving a seemingly absurd onto-epistemic foundation in science where nature is assumed to be intelligible, yet the reason why remains unexplained. If we want a more participatory view of science, we need a participatory theology, which is where the Incarnation is critical. One can see God as the author of the cosmic novel, and we humans as characters. Maybe theologians, philosophers, and scientists are striving to become readers: we want to step back a little bit out of our self-interest as characters within the story and glimpse the story as a whole. That doesn’t make us the author of the story, but we’re at least a reader and not just a character in it. But then with the Incarnation, the author has decided to become a character in the story. All of a sudden a character is born into the story and is talking to the other characters, like, “Hey, I—I am one with the author of all this. And I am in you, I am you.” That’s a fundamental transformation in the nature of the divine and of creation—God is no longer just a creator, but becomes a creature, too; and the human being becomes more than just a creature, as a result
…
I appreciate modern values like individual freedom and the emphasis on democracy, yet it can and has lead to a certain deification of the human ego. The Catholic Church is massive (over a billion people), spanning diverse cultures. There’s real potential there, though there’s also much diversity outside Catholicism, like the Islamic world and various non-theistic paths. I see Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy as an attempt to preserve communal bonds in a divine body while also allowing for many forms of spiritual communion. When it comes to politics, I think the founders of the United States were wise to separate church and state so we could have a diverse society. But then we end up with capitalism as our moral compass, which is problematic, obviously. Catholic social teaching is vital source of resistance and provides a viable alternative for addressing that. Pope Francis—particularly in Laudato Si’—has done a lot to extend that social teaching into ecology. There’s the notorious “dominion clause” in Genesis, where humans are told to have dominion over creation, and Francis helps us see it really means stewardship, not exploitation.
I’ve been seeking an institutional home, but haven’t found one. I ran from church life as a teenager, explored Buddhism for a bit, and then had an experience of Christ that changed me. It didn’t lead me to a particular church, but to Christ within myself and others. I’ve tried Catholic, Episcopal, Unitarian, anthroposophy—nothing quite fits. I went to the Goetheanum in Switzerland, hoping for something there, but it felt too dogmatic. Right now, the closest thing I have to church is a group that meets on Zoom every Friday morning to discuss Steiner’s work, the human condition, and our relationship to the divine. I love beautiful cathedrals and sacred architecture, yet I also feel church can be in a living room over tea, sharing how our personal struggles relate to deeper spiritual sources. Of course, it’s easier to be a spiritual window-shopper than to make a commitment.
…
The evolution of media and technology is central to the question of how we relate to this moment in history, whether it calls for a retreat via traditionalism or a forward movement into metamodernism (or some entirely non-modern future). Marshall McLuhan, a Catholic, was very insightful. Think of how the printing press challenged the Catholic Church’s power, enabling the Protestant Reformation. Radio and television likewise reshaped politics, as with Hitler’s use of radio during the rise of Nazism in Germany, or the antiwar movement in the 60s being inspired by images beamed back from Vietnam. Then there’s the Internet and social media, which continues to disrupt politics and culture in ways we are only barely beginning to catch up with. Even the Bible itself relied on the invention of the alphabet, and each leap—from alphabet, to printing press, to telegraph, to radio, TV, and the Internet—shapes and reshapes consciousness. McLuhan, Steiner, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (another Catholic whom Wolfgang disliked) all saw technological evolution as a kind of gradual incarnation of the Logos, transforming the physical world into a medium for spirit. It gets esoteric, but the Garden of Eden story and the serpent can be read as an analogy for the role of technology in human life. An all-powerful, all-loving God must have foreseen we’d eat the apple, so we can’t just reject technology. It’s part of the sacred history we’re in, though we must resist letting it distract us from our sacred task.
…
I see Wolfgang as having too narrow a conception of evolution, rejecting it too fully, while Teilhard’s view of creative evolution or someone like Thomas Berry’s approach integrates evolutionary science with a deeply participatory and spiritually enlivened view of religion. Instead of choosing between creationism and evolution, we can conceive a creative evolution. I want a participatory science that acknowledges human personhood as its basis. Instead of science and religion being in conflict, we must integrate them. I found it disappointing that Wolfgang would claim Teilhard was “possessed by evil,” because for me, it’s precisely thinkers like Teilhard or Thomas Berry who make the Catholic vision relevant again. Thomas Aquinas, after all, was once on the index of prohibited ideas, and Church Fathers Origen had theories like apokatastasis (everyone is saved, even Satan) and reincarnation that didn’t become Catholic doctrine, but are still very important ideas. A process-relational worldview values novelty, but novelty is always renovation, drawing on what is inherited. I expect the Catholic Church, and Christianity in general, to keep evolving for thousands of years hence. Steiner said we’re only just beginning to see the impact of the Christ event—which is an epic transformation not only for the human community, but for the entire spiritual world, as well.
The Catholic Church is anti-fragile, so it may endure and continue to change, but other relationships to the Christ impulse might emerge that don’t even use the same name. “Know them by their fruits,” as the saying goes. I want to be open enough to recognize the same spiritual reality even if another community calls it something else. That’s why I’m committed to interreligious dialogue, maintaining a specific faith while also staying open to others. I can’t or at least refuse to escape the tension of pluralism.
…
I often see Christ as mediating between order and chaos. In his historical context, he upset the Pharisees’ sense of law and order, so he isn’t just imposing order on chaos. Often the Biblical tradition codes chaos as evil, but it can also be understood as the feminine dimension of divinity—Sophia, the all-nourishing abyss, the womb out of which the divine creates. Rather than calling chaos evil, we can see it as an inevitable aspect of creativity. Creation is ongoing, not a one-time event. The term “cosmogenesis” comes from Teilhard in French, and I combine it with James Joyce’s “chaosmos” to form “chaosmogenesis.” It’s about a new relationship with chaos as a divine consort, balancing order and novelty while suffering with what’s lost as new forms replace old ones. The Christ impulse is a way of relating lovingly to that creative task.
There’s a line in Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances that in the future, you won’t be able to write a scientific textbook without mentioning the Incarnation of the Logos. Barfield, Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis were exploring how the “Christ event” might integrate with our scientific understanding. That’s the task for the twenty-first century, I believe, to not retreat to a premodern worldview but to form a new integration of personal, participatory religion with a form of science that involves us in what we describe, rather than separating observer and observed.
We need more trustworthy institutions, too. I see why some people convert to Catholicism, but in my opinion there is a lot of work to be done internal to that institution to restore trust. The university has become impersonal, whereas the Church, at its best, is trying to embody a “super-personal” institution with a Person at its center. The emphasis on the value of human personhood is crucial.
If there’s any silver lining to the rush to implement all this generative AI technology, I think many people will realize what truly matters and connect with deeper impulses—maybe that includes more conversions, maybe not just to Catholicism, but to something that provides a real sense of value and wisdom beyond what algorithms can produce.