Systems Metaphysics: a Bridge from Science to Religion

‘Systems theory’ is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These ‘systems’ theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are thus relevant to both the natural and social sciences and even to the humanities and the arts. Concerned more with the complex than the very small or very large, they constitute a metaphysics that is centered in biology, and thus near rather than far from the human scale. Systems metaphysics forges a unity of science based on what is general instead of what is fundamental; it is thus genuinely about everything. It counters the nihilism of narrow interpretations of science by affirming the link between fact and value and the reality of purpose and freedom in the natural world. It offers scientific knowledge that is individually useful as a source of insight, not merely societally useful as a source of technology. With the new world view that it brings, systems metaphysics contributes to the recovery of cultural coherence. It builds a philosophical bridge between science and religion that is informed by our understanding of living systems. It suggests a secular theodicy in which imperfection is lawful yet perfecting is always possible, and uses this perspective to analyze religions as systems. It provides scientific insights into traditional religious concepts, including those ideas that guide spiritual practice. Abstract 1 1. Systems Metaphysics 2 1.1 The systems project 2 1.2 Understanding what we know 3 1.3 Fact and value 6 1.4 Personal knowledge 10 2. A Bridge from Science to Religion 13 2.1 Secular theodicy 13 2.2 Sacred isomorphisms 16 2.3 Inner science 19 2.4 Summary 22 References 221 1. Systems Metaphysics 2 1.1 The systems project 2 1.2 Understanding what we know 3 1.3 Fact and value 6 1.4 Personal knowledge 10 2. A Bridge from Science to Religion 13 2.1 Secular theodicy 13 2.2 Sacred isomorphisms 16 2.3 Inner science 19 2.4 Summary 22 References 22 Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion 2 1. Systems Metaphysics 1.1 The systems project The systems project crystallized in the post-World War II period around theories about automata, information, feedback control, open systems, decision-making, games, learning, and other subjects. It consisted of general systems theory, cybernetics, and operations research. Contemporary studies of complexity – of chaos, networks, adaptive systems, etc. – are a ‘renaissance’ of this project. For brevity, the label ‘systems theory’ is used here to refer to the achievements of this entire scientific enterprise. Although, to be precise, one should really speak of systems theories, in the plural, these theories have a common character and reflect a common perspective. They are transdisciplinary, being more abstract and general than specific scientific theories but less abstract and general than mathematics and philosophy. They are components for an ‘exact and scientific metaphysics’ (Bunge, 1973) that is currently being developed but still awaits a full articulation. ‘Metaphysics’ here means an account of the most general features of the world (i.e., it does not refer to an inquiry about God, free will, or the soul). An ‘exact metaphysics’ is one that is mathematical. A ‘scientific metaphysics’ is one that is grounded in, i.e., draws upon and contributes to, the sciences. An exact and scientific metaphysics thus seeks a two-fold truth: it attempts to satisfy both the rational standard of coherence and the empirical standard of correspondence, while being also meaningful and generative. Concerned more with the middle scale than the very small or very large, this metaphysics privileges biology over physics. It reflects the radical (though once traditional) view that it is the general and not the fundamental that is ‘about everything.’ While the current fragmentation of science cannot be remedied by promissory notes – never redeemable – of the in-principle reduction of other sciences to physics, it can be remedied by a systems metaphysics that brings new understanding of scientific knowledge. Unity of science based on systems metaphysics is only a possibility, not yet an actuality, but the systems project is already the interdisciplinary movement in the sciences. While integration by reduction can be achieved locally between vertically adjacent fields of science – this is what ‘consilience’ (Wilson, 1998) is about – a truly unitary view of the world requires a different approach, one that accords full ontological status to systems at all scales. Graph theory, information theory, nonlinear dynamics, feedback control, game theory, and the like are the lingua franca of theory in all the sciences. Familiarity with these theories is widespread, but what is still missing is the recognition of their underlying commonality: they organize knowledge around form rather than matter (they are in the tradition of Pythagoras rather than Democritus) and around isomorphism and emergence rather than reduction. They are thus relevant not only to the natural and social sciences but to the humanities and the arts as well. The potential role of systems theory should not be exaggerated. The systems program is an auxiliary enterprise that complements mainstream science. Universities will never be reorganized along Pythagorean lines and systems categories – order, dynamics, information-processing, morphogenesis, agency, adaptation, etc. – will never supplant the conventional materiality-based organization of scientific knowledge. Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion 3 Systems theory is too abstract to be more than supplementation. But this supplementation is needed for the continued development of science and for its successful application to human needs. Science now encounters major difficulties arising from the exponential growth of knowledge. Even within the same field scientists often cannot understand one another. There is little integration across scientific disciplines, and virtually none between science and other aspects of culture. Technology steadily advances in power and its applications are uncontrolled. A systems metaphysics cannot solve these problems but it can contribute to their amelioration: (a) it provides a new way to integrate and understand scientific knowledge; (b) it reveals the deep connection between fact and value; (c) it formulates scientific knowledge that can be personally appropriated. These potential contributions to science and our relation to science open up a new basis for the science-religion dialog. 1.2 Understanding what we know Systems theory offers a view of the world that is more encompassing than any view provided by physics. From a physics-based ‘theory of everything,’ one would get only a theory about things that physicists study. To our understanding of life and human society and our natural environment, such a TOE would add nothing. Unity of science cannot be gained by learning the fundamentals of physical reality; it can only be based on general principles that apply to all types of systems. By unifying science in this way, systems metaphysics gives us a new understanding of what we already know. One does not need to descend to the quantum level to see the world differently, and the distinctive features of quantum mechanics are largely irrelevant to the middle-scale domain in which we live. Consider instead the implications of simply understanding the world in terms of the categories of (a) matter, energy, information, and utility, (b) structure, function, and history, and (c) the actual and potential. These notions are central to systems thinking (Gerard 1958; Miller 1978; Kauffman 2000). Truly assimilating them would transform our sense of the world. If matter is viewed in the light of its informational and functional aspects, our conception of materiality is radically altered. To give only one illustration: oxytocin is a hormone having a particular chemical structure. Functionally it is relevant to maternal emotion and possibly other bonding experiences, but its material structure reveals nothing about this significance. What is salient about oxytocin is its external function, not its internal structure, and its function is informational. If one had a notion of materiality that encompassed its functional and informational aspects, one might speak of oxytocin as exemplifying, as it were, a ‘higher type’ of materiality. This kind of thinking is illustrated in anthropology by the idea of Levi-Strauss (1966) that the distinction between ‘the raw’ and ‘the cooked’ parallels the distinction between nature and culture. What is cooked undergoes material transformations whose cultural significance confers a social function on cooked food. Of course, cooking also has a biological function; what is uncooked may be inedible. Functional considerations are usually considered in philosophical analysis to be inessential because they are external, but why should the essential only be internal; why should it not also involve the interactions of an entity with its environment? In the systems view, what something is involves both structure and function, and also history. While ‘being a food’ depends on the presence of an organism Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion 4 of an appropriate species, why should this dependence make ‘being a food’ a nonessential property? What is the difference, after all, between ‘potential food’ versus ‘actual food’ and ‘potential energy’ versus ‘actual (kinetic) energy’? In both cases, the transition from potential to actual is contingent on external factors. At issue here is the distinction, articulated by Galileo and Locke and now central to the reductionist paradigm, between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities. This distinction has validity, but it needs to be supplemented by its complementary opposite. If something is defined not only by structure but also by function, and not only by matter-energy, but also by information, hormones are not merely molecules and cooking is not merely molecular reorganization. The systems view also challenges other scientific orthodoxies. For example, just as it is possible to over-emphasize structure and take the interactions of an entity with its external environment as irrelevant to its being, or over-emphasize function and regard the internal nature of an entity as infinitely plastic, it is also possible to have a “single vision” – to borrow Blake’s (1802) criticism of Newton – that overemphasizes history, and the ideographic (contingent) character of history at the expense of its nomothetic (lawful) character. (One can also have a narrow vision by underemphasizing history.) An overemphasis on history is illustrated by the insistence of Gould (1995), Margulis (1998), and other evolutionary theorists that biological evolution exhibits no progress and nothing justifying any vertical (higher vs. lower) ordering of species or other taxons. In the words of Margulis, “All beings alive today are equally evolved. All have survived over three thousand million years of evolution from common bacterial ancestors. There are no ‘higher’ beings, no ‘lower animals’... Even the ‘higher’ primates are not higher. We Homo sapiens sapiens and our primate relations are not special, just recent; we are newcomers on the evolutionary stage. Human similarities to other life-forms are far more striking than the