The sense of the Universe: Philosophical explication of theological commitment in modern Cosmology

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleThe sense of the Universe: Philosophical explication of theological commitment in modern Cosmology
3. Language term English
4. lemma author Tampakis, Kostas
5. Publication date 24-10-2018
6. lemma work The sense of the Universe: Philosophical explication of theological commitment in modern Cosmology
7. lemma manifestations The sense of the Universe : Philosophical explication of theological commitment in modern Cosmology
8. Keywords teleology/finality - Phenomenology - Cosmological principle
9. Lemma body

   1. 'The Sense of the Universe' is Alexei Nesteruk ‘s latest book. It is a continuation of his decades-long quest to articulate a theology for modern cosmology, one which puts in a central place the importance of Orthodox anthropology. In essence, it continues Nesteruk’s project from his 'Light from the East' (2000) and 'Universe as communion' (2008). It is a big book, at 480 pages accompanied by 60 pages of bibliography. It is also a dense book, which uses technical terms from cosmology, philosophy and theology with impunity. It is organized in seven chapters and has a massive introduction of 80 pages and a conclusion of 6 pages. The introduction, titled ‘Thinking of the Universe and Theological commitment’, serves to present in short form the philosophical and theological perspectives of the book. They serve to show that cosmology is subordinated to anthropology, understood in the Orthodox way, due to the ‘existential and phenomenological explication of the sense of the universe from within communion events’. This is in a nutshell the ‘credo of the book’. The perspectives discussed are firstly, ’the Universe and the mystery of human existence’, in which the asymmetry between a fundamental asymmetry exists between cosmology and the philosophico-theological consciousness that exercises its refection upon cosmology. It shows why the book attempts to bring the universe in humanity, rather than consider humanity as existing in a vast, indifferent universe. The second perspective is titled ‘theological commitment as a different form of the dialogue between Theology and Science'. Here, the author shows how his viewpoint of the philosophico-theological consciousness differs from traditional narratives of science-and-religion dialogue. It is an existential commitment, seen as reflection, which takes into account the transcendence of the human being and the asymmetry, as seen before, that this entails. The next part of the introduction is titled ‘Theological commitment as knowledge in love’, which self-evidently discusses the importance of person as a reflective consciousness, and the subject of love, defined theologically. The next part discusses ‘theological commitment as conciliar and ecclesiastical knowledge’, which highlights what the author sees as the tragic consequences of splitting reason from faith for the former. Science is then seen as autonomous, obscuring its own telos and its own disadvantages. Thus, nature loses its sacramental and thanksgiving traits. It then discusses the conciliarity as morality and ecclesiastical knowledge as distinct from philosophical and scientific knowledge. The fifth perspective of the introduction is ‘theological commitment and critique of secular thought’, in which it is discussed why the dialogue between theology and science requires features of a phenomenological project, to remedy the turn from ecclesiology and sacrament to ratio that happened in the West, grounding modernity and thus modern science. Such a critique will differ from atheistic and materialistic critiques of science, as presented in modern philosophy of science. The sixth perspective is titled ‘theological commitment in a phenomenological modality: the centrality of person’ and discusses how theology sees the transcendence of humans vis-à-vis standard phenomenology, and how that impacts the new stance that the author has named theological commitment. The main project is how to reconcile phenomenologically the two types of experience, of theology and of science, in the same human subjectivity. The final eight consideration is titled, appropriately, ‘From the image of the Universe in the garments of skin to the image of the Universe in the Divine image’, which describes this exact change of stance in viewing the universe as a center component of theological commitment. The first chapter is titled ‘The Universe and humanity- Cosmology and Anthropology as two parts of the book of being’ and consists of four subsections, taking up a total of 32 pages. The first such section is ‘Physical Cosmology and an Input of Philosophy’, which constitutes a philosophical critique of the notion of the Universe as an object of inquiry as well as an inquiry on the general problems of such a philosophy of cosmology. The second section, ‘The special status of cosmology as a natural science: From substance to manifestation’ which argues that cosmology is unique because its subject matter is unique and cannot be posed as an outside object. That entails that is must be seen as a manifestation of humanity, a universe that ‘is always our universe’ and not an autonomous substance that can be analyzed. The following third section ‘The nature of manifestation and ontological commitment’, carries that idea further by discussing how the need for coherence in cosmological thought leads to epistemic justification of interferences and to a commitment to realism. This however, the author argues, leads by necessity to a realization by cosmology of its own transcendence, and thus to the construction of the universe as a phenomenological concept in communion with humanity. The final fourth section of the first chapter is titled ‘phenomenological insight in cosmology as explication of the human’ and argues for a shift in seeing cosmology as a stemming from human subjectivity. Cosmological discourse reveals itself as form of consciousness that humanity as community has of itself. This is a result of the phenomenological critique of cosmology. The second chapter is titled ‘Cosmology and existential phenomenology- study of the universe at the crossroads of the natural and human sciences’ and is 80 pages long. It is also partitioned in seven sections, of which the first, the introduction, places cosmology in rubrics of embodiment and historicity. It challenges the idea that cosmology as it is, and cosmologists, can deal with the totality of the Universe, since human condition may not be equipped to do such studies. Human being must be taken into account. The second section is labeled ‘subjectivity and incarnate existence’ and attempts to use hermeneutical philosophy to argue that ‘matter’ and ‘nature’ are actually transcendental concepts which are expressions of what the author calls ‘the consubstantiality of the flesh of the Universe’, and thus incarnation. The third section is titled ‘Humanity’s position in the Universe and the paradox of human subjectivity'. Here, it is argued that humanity is in the universe, then it also holds the universe within it. To resolve the paradox, it must be understood that humanity, through its intellect, is qualitatively distant from the word, since it is can apprehend it. This train of thought continues in the fourth section, titled ‘ the paradox of human subjectivity and personhood’, in which further explications of the importance, and paradox, of human subjectivity within the Universe, with respect to the ontology of being, are given. The author argues that, when studying physical nature through mathematics and the natural sciences, we also study our relationship with nature. Cosmology, the author proposes, is exactly the discipline in which the natural and human sciences intersect. The next section ‘The dilemma of the object-noematic and act-noetic: The paradox of subjectivity and cosmology untestability’ works towards elucidating such thesis. It starts by arguing that cosmology must, by its very nature, lift itself by its own hair in order to study the universe. A solution to this problem is to see cosmology as having an intrinsic teleological sense as the sense of goals of humanity itself. In ‘cosmology and human will’ the argument is pushed forward, by discussing how the universe ‘as an intentional correlate of the cosmological consciousness’ represent a cultural achievemebt exhibiting characteristics of human affairs. Finally, the section ‘the explication of the interplay between the dimensions of the natural and human sciences in cosmology’ serves as the end of the chapter, by articulating further the interplay between elements of the human and natural sciences in cosmology. Chapter three, ‘Constituting the Universe- Transcendental delimeters and Apophaticism in cosmology’is fifty-five pages long and has only three sections. Its aim is to analyze the general epistemological conditions for knowability and explicability of the universe. The first, introductory, section tackles the cosmological principle as a result of commitment to the knowability of the Universe and shows why it represents a manifestation of a teleology that ordains a mechanistic explanation. The second section, titled ‘From cosmological principle as a transcendental delimiter in knowledge of the universe to apophatic cosmology’ continues to tackle the cosmological principle in philosophical and historical context, and ends by proposing that the constitution of the universe as an outward object with its own phenomenality, is in fact a hidden expression of the existential anxiety of the human. The third and last section is ‘Constitution of the notion of the universe- a general analysis’ and discusses exactly what its name implies. The basic epistemological question of the chapter ends up being, how and why the physically and biologically local position of humanity in the universe makes it at the same time fundamentally nonlocal in its grasp of the universe. The fourth chapter is again fifty pages long and is titled ‘The Universe as a construct- epistemic beliefs and coherence of explanation’. It has three sections. The first is ‘From the cosmological principle to the origin of the universe’ and its main purpose is to provide a concise and symbolic graphical description of the universe as a whole in order to explicate an epistemological meaning of such a description. It does so by discussing major methodological assumptions and tools of cosmology. The second section is ‘The Universe as a construct: its rationality in rubrics of faith’ which continues to explicate cosmological ideas in the light of their rational coherence and heuristic qualities. The third section, ‘Coherence of epistemic justifications in cosmology ’deals with why epistemic coherence is a desideratum in cosmological theories, and what is meant by the concept in general. Chapter five is ‘The origin of the Universe and event of birth – phenomenological parallels’ and has six sections over forty-three pages. The first section discusses the origin of the Universe as seen in modern cosmology, with the corollary that the author of the cosmological theories is himself hidden. The second section ‘The originary foundation of the Universe’s temporality and consciousness’ , which deals with meaning of the origin of temporality in the Universe, and the role of consciousness in it. The third, short, section is titled ‘Phenomenology of birth’ and discusses how birth gives something to itself as an object with phenomenality. It gives both a future and a telos. The fourth section, with the name ‘An example from Christian literature’ attempts to elucidate the previous sections’ results by dealing with the sense of birth assigned to Jesus Christ, considered an archetype for all humanity. The fifth section is ‘From phenomenology of birth to the Big bang as a Telos of Cosmological explanation’ and it attempts to bring together all previously discussed ideas and show that ‘the past of the universe becomes the future of cosmological explanation, so that the Big bang as the ultimate goal of explanation becomes the telos of this explanation’. The final section is ‘Conclusion: Phenomenological parallelism between birth an origin of the Universe versus Genetic Similarity' in which phenomenological differences and similarities between an event of birth and the Big Bang are discussed. The next chapter is titled ‘Cosmology and teleology’ and it spans fifty-five pages and six sections. Its aim is to investigate how the purposiveness of human action cascaded toward the purposiveness of cosmological research, acting as a delimiter. The first introductory section discusses the notion of teleology in the Natural Sciences. The second, ‘Cosmological principle and explicability of the Universe’ tries to show how the explicability of the Universe hints at a teleogical principle that makes it so, and links it to human life. The third section is titled ‘Purposiveness in scientific research and cosmology’ and argues that since the understanding of the whole from within requires ideas and thus purpose, then the telos of the universe becomes its explicability, without tossing mechanistic explanations aside. The next section, which is ‘The Universe as a whole as Telos of cosmological explanations’ investigates the philosophical nature of such a telos, with special emphasis on the Big Bang. The fifth section is ‘The explicability of the Universe as its telos’ further explores the idea, and contrasts the maxims of teleology and mechanism as possible teloi of cosmology, finding them intertwined. The final sixth section has as its title ‘The concept of the Big Bang as an example of formal purposiveness in cosmology’ brings together all the above themes to argue that the investigation of the delimiters of cosmological research is its purposiveness, which can be grounded in its explicability as its telos. The final seventh chapter is titled ‘The Universe as a saturated phenomenon - Christian concept of Creation in view of modern cosmology and philosophy’ and has a length of seventy pages, It encompasses seven sections. The first section is an introduction, which focuses on the creation of the world vis a vis the creation of humanity, tackling the problem of the transcendentality of such a question. The second section is ‘Creation of the natural attitude or how not to speak of Creation’. It presents the problematics of Creation as a restoration of the divinely-ordained Image, which means to see creation as a saturating givenness of existence which constantly forms all states of human life and consciousness. The third section is titled ‘The created and the sense of infinity’, which tackles the question of the inconsumerability of humanity with the infinite that the universe and its problematic implies. The fourth section is ‘The Universe as a saturated phenomenon: the explication of the sense of the private absolute’. It discusses the finitude of humanity and its experience, not only through sense impressions, but also through the sense of belonging to the Universe as a fact of existence. The fifth section is ‘The created Universe in the phenomenality of events’ and starts with the desideratum that the universe as creation cannot be subjected to relational analysis because it is unique and cannot be examined as an experimental event. The author then moves to discuss what such a treatment in a phenomenality horizon entails. The sixth section is titled ‘The Universe as a saturated phenomenon: from analogies of experience to plurality of horizons’ aims to explore the identity of the universe as a saturated phenomenon, which is neither visible according to quantity, nor bearable according to quantity. However, the contexts and horizons pertaining to empirical experience is created by the intellectual posing of self-identity of the universe. The final seventh section, with the title ‘ Creation and consciousness’ deals with the question of how the universe as a saturated phenomenon relates to thought in general. The book concludes with a six pages long endnote.