Van Huyssteen J.W. (editor) Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

ECOTHEOLOGY

— 250—

shape to Christian teaching, including an impres-

sive response to issues of global poverty, so much

a part of the emergent global environmental crisis.

The Protestant theologian John Cobb also made

substantial contributions to Christian thought about

nature, especially by his explorations of the re-

sources offered to ecotheology by process thought,

associated with the work of the twentieth century

philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.

Ecotheological ethics emerged, too, as a theo-

logical field in its own right through the labors of

scholars like the Protestant theologian James Nash,

who argued that “loving nature” must be an essen-

tial theme for Christian theology. Catholic thinkers,

such as Thomas Berry and Denis Edwards, made

significant contributions to ecotheology drawing

respectively on the findings of twentieth-century

scientific cosmology and on the wisdom theology

of the Bible. In addition, a number of Christian

ecofeminists, most prominent among them Rose-

mary Radford Ruether and Sallie McFague, offered

a range of fresh theological methodologies and in-

sights, often reading between the lines of tradi-

tional texts to discern how the experience of

women and the theological appreciation of nature

had been suppressed by normative patriarchal the-

ologians. In addition, the testimony of Eastern Or-

thodox theology, voiced by thinkers such as Pau-

los Gregorios, was heard in ecumenical circles

emerging from centuries of affirmation of nature

by many Orthodox communities. Toward the end

of the twentieth century, a growing number of bib-

lical scholars moved away from the anthropocen-

tric assumptions of the previous generation to new

and often highly suggestive understandings of the

biblical theology of creation.

Vision of ecotheology

All these thinkers presented visions of nature much

more consonant with the theologies of Luther and

Calvin—although often departing from the reform-

ers’ thought in significant ways—than with later

anthropocentric trajectories of Christian thought.

Viewed as a theological movement, these late

twentieth-century ecotheologians can be said to

have shared a single vision, rooted in early mod-

ern theologies of nature. Characteristically, they

championed:

(1) the idea of divine immanence in the whole

cosmos;

(2) a relational, ecological rather than a hierar-

chical understanding of God, humans, and

the created world;

(3) a radically reinterpreted view of human do-

minion over nature in terms of partnership

with nature; and

(4) a commitment to justice for all creatures, not

just humans, highlighting the needs of the

impoverished masses and endangered

species around the globe.

Their theological labors, along with the work

of numerous other theologians, reflected theologi-

cal concerns that emerged from the grass roots in

churches around the world. These concerns came

to public expression in the second half of the

twentieth century in the form of a number of

prophetic teachings promulgated by denomina-

tional and ecumenical bodies in order to address

the global environment crisis. By the year 2002,

Christian ecotheology had emerged as a theologi-

cal movement that had begun to speak with a new

and powerful voice on behalf of the whole cre-

ation “groaning in travail” (Rom. 8:22).

See also ANIMAL RIGHTS; ANTHROPOCENTRISM; DEEP

ECOLOGY; ECOFEMINISM; ECOLOGY; ECOLOGY,

THICS OF; ECOLOGY, RELIGIOUS AND

PHILOSOPHICAL

ASPECTS; ECOLOGY, SCIENCE OF;

AIA HYPOTHESIS; FEMINISMS AND SCIENCE;

EMINIST COSMOLOGY; FEMINIST THEOLOGY;

ROCESS THOUGHT; WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH;

OMANIST THEOLOGY

Bibliography

Bakken, Peter W.; Engel, Johan Gibb; and Engel, J.

Ronald. Ecology, Justice, and Christian Faith: A Criti-

cal Guide to the Literature. Westport, Conn.: Green-

wood, 1995.

Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco:

Sierra Club, 1988.

Birch, Charles, and Cobb, John B., Jr. The Liberation of

Life: From the Cell to the Community. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Bouma-Prediger, Steven. For the Beauty of the Earth: A

Christian Vision for Creation Care. Grand Rapids,

Mich.: Erdmans, 2001.

Bouma-Prediger, Steven. The Greening of Theology: The

Ecological Models of Rosemary Radford Ruether,

Joseph Sittler, and Juergen Moltmann. Atlanta, Ga.:

Scholars Press, 1995.

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 250

EINSTEIN,ALBERT

— 251—

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559).

Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960.

Cobb, John B., Jr. Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, rev.

edition. Denten, Tex.: Environmental Ethics Books,

1995.

Edwards, Denis. Jesus and the Wisdom of God. Maryknoll,

N.Y.: Orbis, 1995.

Fowler, Robert Booth. The Greening of Protestant

Thought. London and Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 1995.

Fox, Matthew. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Heal-

ing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renais-

sance. New York: Harper, 1988.

French, William. “Subject-Centered and Creation-Centered

Paradigms in Recent Catholic Thought.” Journal of

Religion 70 (1990): 48–72.

Gregorios, Paulos Mar. The Human Presence: An Ortho-

dox View of Nature. Geneva, Switzerland: World

Council of Churches, 1978.

Haught, John. The Promise of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic

Purpose. New York: Paulist Press, 1993.

Hessel, Dieter, and Rasmussen, Larry, eds. Earth Habitat:

Eco-injustice and the Church’s Response. Minneapolis,

Minn.: Fortress Press, 2001.

Hessel, Dieter T., and Ruether, Rosemary Radford, eds.

Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of

Earth and Humans. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 2000.

Hiebert, Theodore. “Reimaging Nature: Shifts in Biblical

Interpretations.” Interpretation 50 (1996): 36–46.

Linzey, Andrew. Animal Theology. Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 1995.

McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology.

Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.

Moltmann, Jürgen. God in Creation: A New Theology of

Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl.

San Francisco: Harper, 1985.

Nash, James A. Loving Nature: Ecological Integrity and

Christian Responsibility. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon

Press, 1991.

Nash, Roderick Frazier. The Rights of Nature: A History of

Environmental Ethics. Madison: University of Wiscon-

sin Press, 1989.

Rasmussen, Larry L. Earth Community, Earth Ethics. New

York: Orbis, 1996.

Rossing, Barbara R. “River of Life in God’s New

Jerusalem: An Eschatological Vision for Earth’s Fu-

ture.” In Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-

Being of Earth and Humans, eds. Dieter T. Hessel

and Rosemary Ruether. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 2000.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Gaia and God: An Ecofemi-

nist Theology of Earth Healing. San Francisco:

Harper, 1992.

Santmire, H. Paul. Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cos-

mic Promise of Christian Theology. Minneapolis,

Minn.: Fortress Press, 2000.

Santmire, H. Paul. The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous

Ecological Promise of Christian Theology. Philadel-

phia: Fortress Press, 1985.

Simkins, Ronald A. Creator and Creation: Nature in the

Worldview of Ancient Israel. Peabody, Mass.: Hen-

drickson, 1994.

Sittler, Joseph. Evocations of Grace: The Writings of Joseph

Sittler on Ecology, Theology, and Ethics, eds. Steven

Bouma-Prediger and Peter Bakken. Grand Rapids,

Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Hymn of the Universe,

trans. Simon Bartholomew. New York: Harper, 1965

Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: A History of

the Modern Sensibility. New York: Pantheon, 1983.

Tillich, Paul. “Nature and Sacrament.” In The Protestant

Era, trans. James Luther Adams. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1957.

White, Lynn, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological

Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203–1207.

H. PAUL SANTMIRE

EINSTEIN,ALBERT

Albert Einstein is generally regarded as the greatest

theoretical physicist of the twentieth century, if not

of all time. Modern physics bears his mark more

than any other physicist. His Special Theory of Rel-

ativity changed our conceptions of space, time,

motion, and matter, and his General Theory of Rel-

ativity was the first new theory of gravitation since

Isaac Newton’s. Yet his work went beyond the

boundaries of physics as he engaged himself in the

educational, cultural, and philosophical concerns

of his generation. Less known is Einstein’s interest

and personal engagement in religious matters. In

specific, he strongly opposed the proposition that

science and religion are irreconcilable.

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 251

EINSTEIN,ALBERT

— 252—

Early life and influences

Albert Einstein, whose ancestors had lived in

southern Germany for many generations, was

born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, Germany. The

fact that his parents, Hermann Einstein and

Pauline Einstein, née Koch, did not call him Abra-

ham after his deceased grandfather, as Jewish tra-

dition required, and that his sister, his only sibling,

born 1881, was called Maria, shows that his par-

ents did not observe religious rites although they

never renounced their Jewish heritage. In 1889,

the Einstein family moved to Munich, where Al-

bert at the age of six was sent to a Catholic ele-

mentary school. At home a distant relative intro-

duced him to the principles of Judaism and

evoked in him such a fervent religious sentiment,

that he observed Jewish religious prescriptions

and even chided his parents for eating pork. At

age ten he entered the interdenominational Luit-

pold Gymnasium, where he excelled in mathe-

matics and Latin.

Ironically, his religious enthusiasm ended

abruptly as the result of the only religious custom

his parents observed, the hosting of a poor Jewish

student for a weekly meal. This beneficiary was

Max Talmud, a medical student older than Albert

by ten years. He gave Albert books on science and

philosophy, amongst them Ludwig Büchner’s

(1824–1899) materialistic Force and Matter (1874).

Albert was particularly impressed by Büchner’s

survey of theriomorphic and therianthropic reli-

gions, in which animals or their combinations with

humans were apotheosized. As Einstein, in his au-

tobiographical notes, wrote, “through the reading

of these books I reached the conclusion that much

in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The

consequence was a fanatic freethinking . . . sus-

pension against every kind of authority . . . an atti-

tude which has never again left me, even though

later on, because of a better insight into the causal

connections, it lost much of its original poignancy”

(Schlipp p. 5).

In 1894, Albert’s parents, for commercial rea-

sons, moved to Italy. Left alone and hating the au-

thoritarian discipline at the Gymnasium, Albert

joined his parents before finishing school. At the

Swiss cantonal school in Aarau he obtained the

diploma that enabled him to enroll in the Swiss

Federal Polytechnic School (ETH) in Zurich, where

he studied physics and mathematics and graduated

in 1900. Unable to find a regular academic posi-

tion, he supported himself by tutoring and part-

time school teaching until June 1902, when he ob-

tained the appointment of technical expert third

class at the patent office in Berne. A year later he

married Mileva Maric, a Greek Orthodox Serbian,

with whom he had fallen in love when they were

classmates at the ETH. Little is known about their

daughter Lieserl, who was born in 1902 before

their marriage during Mileva’s visit to her parents.

Albert seems never to have seen her. Their first

son, Hans Albert, was born in 1904, and their sec-

ond son, Eduard, in 1910.

Theories and career

Einstein liked the job at the patent office because

it was interesting and also left him time to pursue

his own work in theoretical physics. He already

had a number of important publications, mostly on

thermodynamics, to his credit. But the year 1905

became his annus mirabilis. In March he com-

pleted his paper on the light-quantum hypothesis,

in May his paper on Brownian motion, and in June

his celebrated essay on the special theory of rela-

tivity, which was followed in September by his

derivation of the famous mass-energy relation

E = mc

, the most famous equation in science.

In 1908 Einstein became Lecturer at the Uni-

versity of Berne, in 1911 full professor in Prague,

and a year later he became a professor at the ETH.

In April 1914, less than four months before the out-

break of the First World War, he moved to Berlin

with his wife and two sons to serve as university

professor without teaching obligations and as di-

rector of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics.

Mileva disliked Berlin and returned with the

children to Zurich. In February 1919 Albert and Mil-

eva got divorced. Six months later Einstein married

his cousin, the divorced Elsa Löwenthal, mother of

two daughters, Ilse and Margot. Einstein detested

the military enthusiasm that swept Germany after

the declaration of war and courageously refused to

sign the manisfesto, in which German intellectuals

declared their solidarity with German militarism.

Einstein continued his work on the general

theory of relativity, which he had begun in 1907. In

November 1915, he derived the exact value of the

perihelion precession of the planet Mercury, which

for over sixty years had been an unresolved prob-

lem, and he predicted how much a ray of light,

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 252

EINSTEIN,ALBERT

— 253—

emitted by a star and grazing the sun, should be

deflected by the gravitation of the sun. In 1917 he

applied general relativity to the study of the struc-

ture of the universe as a whole, raising thereby the

status of cosmology, which theretofore had been a

jumble of speculations, to that of a respectable sci-

entific discipline. His prediction of the gravitational

deflection of light was confirmed in 1919 by two

British eclipse expeditions to West Africa and

Brazil. When their results were announced in Lon-

don, Einstein’s theory was hailed by the President

of the Royal Society as “perhaps the greatest

achievement in the history of human thought.”

From that day on Einstein gained unprecedented

international fame. In 1922, he was awarded the

Nobel Prize for physics. But when the Nazi terror

began in Germany, he, as a Jew and pacifist, and

his theory, became the target of brute attacks. At

Adolf Hitler’s rise to power early in 1933, Einstein

was in Belgium and, instead of returning to Ger-

many, accepted a professorship at the Institute for

Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where

he remained until his death on April 18, 1955.

Later life and influence

During the twenty-two years in Princeton he re-

sumed his work on quantum theory. Although he

was one of its founding fathers, he rejected its gen-

erally accepted probabilistic interpretation because,

influenced by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza

(1632–1677), whom he had read in his youth, he

was utterly convinced of the causal dependence of

all phenomena. Nor did he accept the prevailing

view that the concept of a physical phenomenon

includes irrevocably the specifics of the experimen-

tal conditions of its observation. For him “physics is

an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is

thought independently of its being observed”

(Schlipp, p. 81). His famous 1935 paper, written in

collaboration with physicists Nathan Rosen and

Boris Podolsky challenged the completeness of or-

thodox quantum mechanics and had far-reaching

consequences debated still today. But most of his

time, until the day of his death, he devoted to the

last great project of his life, the search for a unified

field theory, which however remained unfinished.

Apart from his scientific work Einstein, using

his prestige, engaged himself in promoting the

causes of social justice, civil liberty, tolerance, and

equity of all citizens before the law. He believed in

the ideal of international peace and in the feasibil-

ity of establishing a world government, led by the

superpowers, to which all nations should commit

all their military resources. Although having signed

in August 1939 the famous letter to President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposing the develop-

ment of an atomic bomb, he later admitted that,

had he known that the Germans would not suc-

ceed in producing an atomic bomb, he “would not

have lifted a finger.”

Having been, during his later years in Berlin, a

victim of anti-Semitic propaganda, and being

aware of the cruel persecutions of Jews by the

Nazis, Einstein most actively supported Zionism,

which he regarded as a moral, not a political,

movement to restore his people’s dignity neces-

sary to survive in a hostile world. When once, in

this context, he declared: “I am glad to belong to

the Jewish people, although I do not regard it as

‘chosen’” (Schlipp, p. 81) he obviously referred to

his disbelief in the Bible, which he retained from

his adolescence. And when he said, as quoted

above, that he later recanted his juvenile freethink-

ing “because of a better insight into causal con-

nections,” he referred to his realization that sci-

ence, by revealing a divine harmony in the

universe expressed by the laws of nature, imbued

him with a feeling of awe and humility that made

him believe in a “God who reveals himself in the

harmony of all that exists.” He defined the relation

between science and religion in a much-quoted

phrase: “Science without religion is lame, religion

without science is blind.” But retaining his early

uncompromising rejection of anthropomorphisms,

he stated that, following Spinoza, he cannot con-

ceive of a God who rewards or punishes his crea-

tures or has a will of the kind humans experience.

In his Princeton years, Einstein wrote numerous ar-

ticles and addresses on what he called his “cosmic

religion” and protested strongly against the identi-

fication of his belief in an impersonal God with

atheism. The philosophy of religion and the quest

for religious truth had occupied his mind in those

years so much that it has been said “one might

suspect he was disguised as a theologian,” as the

Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt once said.

On December 31, 1999, the well-known

weekly newsmagazine Time proclaimed Albert

Einstein “Person of the Century” on the grounds

that he was not only the century’s greatest scientist,

who altered forever our views on matter, time,

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 253

EMBODIMENT

— 254—

space, and motion, but also a humanitarian, who

fought for the causes of justice and peace, and

“had faith in the beauty of God’s handiwork.”

See also GRAND UNIFIED THEORY; GRAVITATION;

HYSICS, QUANTUM; RELATIVITY, GENERAL THEORY

; RELATIVITY, SPECIAL THEORY OF; SPACE AND

TIME

Bibliography

Einstein, Albert. The World as I See It. New York: Covici-

Friede, 1934.

Einstein, Albert. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown,

1949.

Einstein, Albert. Out of My Later Years. New York: Philo-

sophical Library, 1950.

Fölsing, Albrecht. Albert Einstein: A Biography, trans.

Ewald Osers. New York: Viking, 1997.

Holton, Gerald, and Elkana, Yehuda, eds. Albert Einstein:

Historical and Cultural Perspectives. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1982.

Jammer, Max. Einstein and Religion. Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1999.

Pais, Abraham. Subtle is the Lord—The Science and Life of

Albert Einstein. Oxford and New York: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1982.

Schilpp, Paul Arthur, ed. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Sci-

entist. New York: Tudor, 1949.

MAX JAMMER

EMBODIMENT

What concept of embodiment—of the bodily be-

coming of life itself and of any life-form—emerges

in the interstices of religion and science? All reli-

gions minister to the vulnerabilities and passions of

the body, lending meaning to mortality through

practices of ritual, discipline, and narrative. Such

interpretive practices nestle the human body into

its cosmic environment of fellow creatures, even as

they distinguish it in its humanity. The biblical cre-

ation narratives, for example, stress the goodness

of all species in their interdependence. Christianity

offered a dramatic symbolization of God-becom-

ing-flesh, heightening the importance of the body,

whose resurrection as part of the “Body of Christ”

defined salvation itself. Presumably this radicaliza-

tion of embodiment, against the background of the

unqualified goodness of nature itself, helps to ex-

plain why it is on Christian soil that natural science

in its full modern sense arose. Yet paradoxically

the same Christian paradigm effected some of hu-

manity’s most dualistic discourses, inhibiting full-

bodied appreciation of the material world and per-

haps explaining why the rise of science took the

form of a polarizing struggle. It may also con-

versely shed light upon why Christianity has failed

to inhibit the more devastating effects of scientific

technology upon the planetary ecology.

This paradox, pulsing with ambivalence toward

the body, lies at the heart of Western history. As the

early Christian movement first struggled to translate

its gospel into the terms of Greco-Roman culture

(for which science and philosophy were insepara-

ble), there was no greater stumbling block than “the

body.” The body, in its ceaseless metamorphosis

from birth to death, signified for classical thought

the realm of change. By the same logic, God would

be incapable of change. Thus it is the source of

truth, of the unchanging ideas—or forms—that or-

ganize the changing world of nature (physis). The

categorical distinction between the eternal “One”

and the mortal “Many” accounts for the compatibil-

ity between philosophical Hellenism and the Jewish

monotheism of the Christians. But the Greek di-

chotomy between changeless “Being” and the

changing world of bodies, between Aristotle’s

(384–322

B.C.E.) unmoved “Mover” and the moving

world, did not fit the Christian proclamation of an

incarnation of the divine. The orthodox Christian

solution finally made it fit: In the form of the “two

natures” of Christ, the divine Word inhabited the

human body, but remained in itself free of change,

feeling, or flesh. The paradox was institutionalized.

It took nearly a thousand years for Christianity

to develop genuine interest in the mortal human

body. A seemingly subtle shift in the classical

sources effected a dramatic change: Appropriated

from Muslim scholars during the crusades, Aristo-

tle’s texts—and a different, scientific reading of

Aristotle—came to the fore of Christian thought.

Unlike Plato (428–347

B.C.E.) , true knowledge, ac-

cording to Aristotle, can only arise out of sense ex-

perience. Such embodied experience requires the

illumination of reason and then, in its Christian re-

ception, the completion by faith. Although the fun-

damental Greek ontological binary of unchanging

reason and bodily phenomena remained intact, the

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 254

EMBODIMENT

— 255—

epistemology changed radically. In the new West-

ern universities of the thirteenth century, that shift

gave rise to a certain autonomy of the discipline of

“philosophy” (which included what is meant today

by the sciences) from theology. The Dominican Al-

bertus Magnus (c. 1193–1280) and his pupil

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) developed sys-

tematically the implications of this new interest in

the integrity of the embodied senses and the world

of bodies. Aquinas read the human rational soul as

the form, or actualization, of its own body. The

body is the potentiality, enmeshed in a prima mat-

ter or pure potentiality comprised of contiguous

bodies of varying densities.

The Platonic dualism however soon recon-

quered theology on the whole. When in the Re-

naissance a more favorable attitude toward the

body became again apparent, it took a Platonic

form, propelled largely by the idealized body-

forms of art. Within the milieu of a Renaissance

neo-Platonic mysticism, driven by a powerful

mathematics in which the multiple infinities of the

embodied universe were articulated, Cardinal

Nicholas da Cusa (d. 1464) and his martyred disci-

ple Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) initiated a fresh,

proto-scientific theological discourse, in which

God and world fold in and out of each other. The

Protestant Reformation, by contrast, reacted against

the paganism of these new arts, as well as against

the sensuality of the sacramental system. It was, to

twist the above paradox further, the extreme form

of Platonic dualism of René Descartes (1596–1650),

boiled down to “mental substance” and “extended

substance,” that provided the initial framework for

modern science. The mechanistic rather than the

mystical approach to the spirit/world, mind/body

relation prevailed in science and theology, even as

the gap widened between the disciplines. The

body as a machine, as a closed system to which

spirit, mind, and God, if they exist, were posited as

external agents, dominated the western imagina-

tion until the twentieth century.

The dynamic unfolding of the organism

through chance in evolution, the relativity of the

physical universe, and the indeterminacy of the

quanta begin to reopen the system. The mathe-

matician and cosmologist Alfred North Whitehead

(1861–1947) first conceptualized the philosophical

and theological potentialities of this shake-up of

the old modern reductionisms. His conversion of

something like the Aristotelian passive prime mat-

ter into the activity of a primal “Creativity,” from

which God and world unfurl freely and in imma-

nent relation, has had tremendous influence on

the formation of the field of religion and science.

Process theology can thus present God as embod-

ied—not as a sum of bodies à la pantheism, but as

the spirit of the universe, partly and differently in-

carnate in all creatures. This panentheism thus re-

distributes the incarnation throughout reality: All

actualization is embodiment, including the divine

self-actualization in the world; the unique incarna-

tion of God in the symbolism of the Christ no

longer represents an exception that proves the

rule of spirit/body dualism. Feminist and ecologi-

cal theologies have been evolving in close prox-

imity to this sense of inclusive embodiment, em-

phasizing the implications for social and

environmental justice of a new profoundly spiri-

tual attention to interdependent, vulnerable

human bodies, within their systemic contexts of

socio-material interchange.

New developments in genetics, for example,

offer stunning contributions to the human sense of

embodiment. The recipe that links heredity to the

metabolism of human life is “a code, an abstract

message that can be embodied in a chemical, phys-

ical or even immaterial form” (Ridley, p. 15). The

secret of this code lies in its ability to replicate itself

in the form of proteins: and so to produce bodies

from an ancient alphabet of infinitesimal filaments.

“In the beginning was the word,” avers a science

writer with no specific interest in religion. “The

word proselytized the sea with its message, copy-

ing itself unceasingly and forever. The word dis-

covered how to rearrange chemicals so as to cap-

ture little eddies in the stream of entropy and make

them live. The word transformed the land surface

of the planet from a dusty hell to a verdant para-

dise. The word eventually blossomed and became

sufficiently ingenious to build a porridgy contrap-

tion called a human brain that could discover and

be aware of the word itself” (Ridley, p. 11). This

gospel of genetics may be put to reductionist or

commercial use. But it articulates awe in the face of

the alphabetic code of the four bases (A, C, G, and

T ) that in its four million year simplicity writes the

recipes for the endless complexity emerging with

startling order out of the chaotic potential of the

world. Nowhere has the interconnectivity and

common source of all living creatures been more

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 255

EMERGENCE

— 256—

clearly demonstrated as in this emergent genetics,

outside of religious narratives of genesis.

As science begins to outgrow its modern

model of bodies as closed systems, as increasingly

bodies are inscribed in cosmological and ecologi-

cal contexts of such irreducible complexity as to

solicit awe rather than certainty, religion may find

the resources for healing the split between its

words of spirit and its bodies of shared flesh.

See also ARISTOTLE; CHRISTOLOGY; DESCARTES, RENÉ;

COTHEOLOGY; FEMINIST THEOLOGY; GENETICS;

OD; HUMAN NATURE, PHYSICAL ASPECTS; HUMAN

NATURE, RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS;

NCARNATION; ISLAM; PANENTHEISM; PHYSICS,

UANTUM; PLATO; SOUL; THOMAS AQUINAS;

HITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH

Bibliography

Ashley, Benedict. Theologies of the Body: Humanist and

Christian. Braintree, Mass.: National Catholic

Bioethics Center, 1985.

McFague, Sallie. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology.

Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers, Isabelle. Order Out of

Chaos. New York: Bantam, 1984.

Ridley, Matt. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in

23 Chapters. New York: Harper Collins, 1999.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World.

New York: Free Press, 1967.

CATHERINE KELLER

EMERGENCE

The term emergence refers to the appearance of a

new property in an evolving system or entity. As

the system changes over time, a new property that

was not present before comes to be associated

with it, often through an increase in complexity.

Emergent phenomena are not fully reducible (in a

causal, explanatory, or ontological sense) to the

lower-level phenomena from which they arise.

Emergence thus represents the hypothesis that the

whole story (in science, and perhaps in religion)

can only be told by multiple causal stories at mul-

tiple levels.

In the religion-science discussion, uses of the

term emergence fall roughly into three broad cate-

gories: (1) Scientific emergence concentrates on in-

dividual instances and patterns of emergence in

the natural world. Many emergent phenomena can

be categorized and analyzed in a purely scientific

manner without needing to raise broader questions

about their philosophical or theological signifi-

cance. (2) Philosophical emergence theories look

for broader patterns or similarities between emer-

gent phenomena and attempt to formulate general

criteria for classifying a phenomenon as emergent.

(3) Metaphysical or theological emergence theories

presuppose that the natural world is hierarchically

structured and that it is a fundamental feature of

reality that new emergent levels are produced in

the course of cosmic history. At the metaphysical

level, emergence theories attempt to describe and

account for the broad pattern of emergence over

time. In theological theories, the ladder of emer-

gence is associated with the nature and action of

God. Both presuppose the fundamental nature of

change or development and emphasize creativity

or novelty as a basic feature of ultimate reality.

Critics of emergence complain that it is either

trivial, untestable, or false. Trivial because it seems

obvious that, as systems increase in complexity,

they will express new properties not manifest at

earlier stages. Thus the critic might complain that

emergence just restates the concept of complex-

ity—and in a less clear, more obscure fashion.

Untestable because how could one ever test

whether there is a broad pattern of emergence in

natural history? And false if emergentists are claim-

ing that mysterious new things emerge in cosmic

history that cannot be understood at all in terms of

more basic levels. After all, critics complain, the

success that physics has enjoyed is simply success

at explaining “new things” in terms of more funda-

mental laws.

Some classical theists have criticized emer-

gence theories by responding that the basic nature

of the world was set by the last day of creation.

Humanity may move toward or away from God,

but human nature as such does not change—and

certainly God does not change or emerge over

time, as both Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) maintained. Proc-

ess thinkers have argued that emergence is not as

metaphysically satisfactory as, for example, Alfred

North Whitehead’s (1861–1947) thought, since in

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 256

EMERGENCE

— 257—

place of the unified framework of actual occasions

(panexperientialism), emergence offers only a con-

fusing variety of fundamental entities arising within

natural history.

Instances of emergence in the natural world

The first cases of emergence arise already in quan-

tum mechanics. (Indeed, one could speculate that

spontaneous symmetry breaking constitutes the

earliest instance of emergence.) In the fractional

quantum Hall effect, electrons act together in strong

magnetic fields to form new types of “particles.”

Likewise, atomic structures and the properties of

bulk matter are the emergent and relatively stable

results of increasing complexity in physical systems.

Thermodynamics is inherently concerned with

emergence, since it relates exchanges of heat to

macroscopic phenomena such as temperature,

pressure, and volume. Ilya Prigogine studied the

thermodynamics of irreversible processes, devel-

oping laws for the emergence of order (anentropy)

in specified systems (“order through fluctuations”).

To take an example from fluid turbulence, heating

a fluid from below results in the Bénard phenom-

enon, in which the convecting fluid spontaneously

forms complex hexagonal “cells.” Using similar

physical principles, meteorologists study emergent

patterns in the weather, which demonstrate very

sensitive dependence on small changes in initial

conditions (e.g., Edward Lorenz’s Butterfly Effect).

In such systems “matter displays its potential to be

self-organizing and thereby to bring into existence

new forms . . . under the constraints and with the

potentialities afforded by their being incorporated

into systems the properties of which, as a whole,

now have to be taken into account” (Peacocke,

1986, p. 53).

The emergence of life depends on emergent

properties in chemistry, such as the folding prop-

erties of proteins, which in turn are products of

their underlying physical structure. Likewise, auto-

catalytic (self-catalyzed) processes in chemistry

play a key role in increasing complexity to the

level required for life. Such processes allow for the

role of feedback mechanisms, which can foster an

iterative, self-correcting process that leads to the

formation of new structures.

Eventually, ordered dissipative structures

emerged. Life requires only that they have the

potential to replicate and to incorporate environ-

ment-induced changes into their physical structure.

At this point biological evolution begins, in which

differential survival rates depend on reproductive

success in a given environment. Emergence con-

notes both the unbroken chain of development

backward through time and the continual emer-

gence of new forms: bio-molecules, cells (includ-

ing neurons), organelles, organs, and “autonomous

agents,” which Stuart Kauffman defines as systems

that are able to reproduce and also able to carry

out at least one thermodynamic work cycle.

Emergence may involve the evolution of new

structures according to as many as six metrics:

(1) evolution temporally or spatially;

(2) evolution in the progression from simple to

complex;

(3) evolution in levels of inner organization,

feedback loops, and self-catalyzing au-

topoiesis (Niels Gregersen);

(4) evolution in increasing levels of information-

processing;

(5) evolution in the development of “subjectiv-

ity” (e.g., perception, awareness, self-aware-

ness, self-consciousness, spiritual intuition);

(6) evolution in the ladder of emergence of new

properties (e.g., physiological, psychological,

sociological; or physical, biological, psycho-

logical, spiritual).

Philosophical analysis and implications

Understood as a philosophical position, emer-

gence theory is derived from the details of cosmic

evolution as revealed through the various natural

and social sciences. Philosophical emergence gen-

erally includes some combination of the following

eight theses:

(1) Emergentist monism: There is one natural

world composed of matter and energy (Pea-

cocke and Clayton in Russell, 2000).

(2) Hierarchy: This world is hierarchically struc-

tured; more complex units are formed out of

more simple parts, and they in turn become

the “parts” out of which yet more complex

entities are formed.

(3) Temporal ontology: This process of hierar-

chical structuring takes place over time; cos-

mic evolution moves from the simple to the

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 257

EMERGENCE

— 258—

more complex, and new structures and enti-

ties emerge in the process.

(4) Emergentist pluralism: The manner of the

emergence of one level from another, the

qualities of the emergent level, the degree to

which the “lower” controls the “higher,” and

many other features vary depending on

which instance of emergence is being stud-

ied (e.g., the biophysicist Harold Morowitz

has identified at least twenty-eight different

levels). Emergence should thus be viewed as

a family resemblance term.

(5) Logical features: The various instances of

emergence in natural history do tend to

share certain features. For any two levels, L

and L

, where L

emerges from L

,(a)L

prior in natural history; (b) L

depends on L

such that if the states in L

did not exist, the

qualities in L

would not exist; (c) L

is the re-

sult of a sufficient degree of complexity in L

;

(d) one might be able to predict the emer-

gence of some new or emergent qualities on

the basis of what one knew about L

. But

one would not be able to predict the precise

nature of these qualities, the rules that gov-

ern their interaction (or their phenomeno-

logical patterns), or the sorts of emergent

levels that they may in due course give rise

to; (e) L

is not reducible to L

in any of the

standard senses of “reduction” in the philos-

ophy of science literature (causal, explana-

tory, metaphysical, or ontological reduction).

(6) Downward causation: In some cases, phe-

nomena at L

exercise a causal effect on L

which is not reducible to an L

causal history.

This causal nonreducibility is not just epis-

temic, in the sense that humans cannot tell

the L

causal story but an omnipotent being

could. It is ontological: The world is such

that it produces systems whose emergent

properties exercise their own distinct causal

forces among each other and on (at least)

the next lower level in the hierarchy.

(7) Against dualism: Although the emergence of

consciousness in the brain is significant to

humans, it is not the defining moment of

emergence. Emergence theory refers to the

process of emergence as a whole, not merely

to a single instance of emergence.

(8) Against dual aspect monism: Traditionally, as

in Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), dual aspect

monism implies that there is no causal

interaction between mental and physical

properties, whereas emergence theories

maintain that there is a dependence of the

mental upon the physical and two-way

causal influence between them.

Metaphysical or theological emergence

Emergentist theologies take several different forms,

some focusing on emergence within the world,

and some on emergence and the nature of God.

Regarding the former, three forms are possible,

here listed in order of increasing strength of divine

involvement.

(1) The process of emergence might represent a

basic feature of the natural world. Funda-

mental laws and constants and the nature of

matter and energy are such that increasingly

complex entities and states of affairs are

formed, and more complex systems naturally

give rise to new emergent properties. The

emphasis is on the lawlike nature of the

process: Once such basic features are set,

emergence will occur naturally. It may have

no broader significance outside itself.

(2) The same view of emergence being presup-

posed, a teleological dimension might be

added. God established these features with

the intention that the world would produce

ever more complex entities and properties,

such as complex biochemical molecules, liv-

ing organisms, and the brains of the higher

primates, as well as culture, art, philosophy,

and perhaps religious understanding. In all

cases, the pattern of complexification, once

the preconditions are given, requires no di-

vine intervention to be carried out.

(3) God might be more directly involved in

bringing about emergent levels of reality.

This might involve a general “lure,” a con-

stant introduction of creativity into the natu-

ral process, as argued by Whitehead and

most process thinkers; it might involve the

claim that in nature emergent levels (life, ex-

perience, self-consciousness) would not

have occurred except for the role of God; or,

the theist may assert, the entire process re-

flects God’s providential role in history,

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 258

EMPIRICISM

— 259—

working the divine will in to mold reality to

God’s image, for example, bringing about

humankind in the image of God (imago Dei)

through God’s constant creative or redemp-

tive activity.

It is important to note that one can advocate an

emergence theory of the natural world without

maintaining any emergence within God. Thus one

might hold an Augustinian view of God, such that

God is completely immutable and dwells in a time-

less eternal realm, yet through an act or series of

acts preordained before creation God brings about

its emergent history (its levels of emergence). On

this view, emergence is divinely caused and entails

a temporal process in the world, but it does not en-

tail any change in God (Ernan McMullin).

Various forms of dipolar theism allow emer-

gence within God, without asserting that “God

comes into being” along with the process of emer-

gence of the cosmos. So, for example, the essential

or “antecedent” nature of God might be eternal and

unchanging through the cosmic process, whereas

the “consequent” nature of God—the side of God

that interacts with and responds to the world—

grows, develops, and even changes over the course

of cosmic history. There is emergence within God

at least in the sense that the divine experience be-

comes richer, containing experiences and re-

sponses that were not there ab initio, even though

the essential nature of God remains constant.

Finally, the strongest forms of “emergentist the-

ism” maintain that God comes to be along with the

process of history. The world and the divine are in-

extricably wed: Where there is no world, there is

no God. The world and God then come into being

together, and perhaps the process will culminate in

a deification of the world through this identity or

association.

See also AUTOPOIESIS; COMPLEXITY; SUPERVENIENCE

Bibliography

Holland, John. Emergence: From Chaos to Order. Reading,

Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1998.

Kauffman, Stuart. Investigations. New York: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 2000.

Peacocke, Arthur. God and the New Biology. London:

Dent; San Francisco: Harper, 1986.

Peacocke, Arthur. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and

Becoming—Natural, Divine, and Human. Minneapo-

lis, Minn.: Fortress, 1993.

Prigogine, Ilya. From Being to Becoming: Time and Com-

plexity in the Physical Sciences. San Francisco: W. H.

Freeman, 1980.

Russell, Robert John; Murphy, Nancey; and Meyering,

Theo C., eds. Neuroscience and the Person: Scientific

Perspectives on Divine Action. Vatican City State: Vati-

can Observatory; Berkeley, Calif.: Center for Theol-

ogy and the Natural Sciences, 1999.

PHILIP CLAYTON

EMERGENCE OF

CONSCIOUSNESS

See COGNITIVE FLUIDITY; COMPLEXITY; EMERGENCE

EMERGENCE OF

LIFE

See EMERGENCE; LIFE, ORIGINS OF

EMPIRICISM

The term empiricism describes a philosophical po-

sition emphasizing that all concepts and knowl-

edge are derived from and justified by experience.

Empiricists disagree on the nature of experience,

including whether it is individual or social and

whether sense experience is to be emphasized.

Empiricism often is associated with other positions,

including nominalism, naturalism, materialism,

atheism, secularism, humanism, behaviorism, and

emotivism.

Empiricism usually contrasts with views that

truths can be derived from tradition, Scripture, rev-

elation, intuition, or reason. Empiricists often have

a special attitude toward mathematics, acknowl-

edging its role in understanding the world yet

denying that it gives direct truths about the world

apart from experience. In the last third of the twen-

tieth century, Anglo-American discussion has

tended to contrast empiricism with holism or

coherentism.

LetterE.qxd 3/18/03 1:05 PM Page 259