Preface 1 Foreword 3 Introduction 7 1 From Schrödinger’s Cat to Thomistic Ontology 14 2 Eddington and the Primacy of the Corporeal 29 3 The Ontology of Bell’s Theorem 55 4 Celestial Corporeality 68 5 The Extrapolated Universe 92 6 The Pitfall of Astrophysical Cosmology 118 7 The Status of Geocentrism 141 8 Esoterism and Cosmology: From Ptolemy to Dante and Cusanus 159 9 Intelligent Design and Vertical Causality 180 10 Interpreting Anthropic Coincidence 205 Index of Names 233 In Memoriam Rev. Fr. Malachi Martin † July 27, 1999 Preface This is a revised edition of a book entitled The Wisdom of Ancient Cosmology published a decade ago, containing ten of the original twelve chapters. These take the form of essays covering a broad spectrum of topics—from the seeming paradoxes of quantum theory to the staggering claims of contemporary astrophysics—each of which hinges upon an application of “Ancient Wisdom” to the topic at hand: “the rigorous application of traditional keys” to put it in Professor Borella’s words. The customary order of priority is thus reversed: instead of view-ing the sapiential traditions from the perspective of contemporary science—which amounts to “explaining away” the most profound and most sacred beliefs of mankind!—the new approach mobilizes the aforesaid Wisdom to attain a metaphysical grasp of the stipulated scientific findings. The result is twofold. First, this approach brings to light the crucial distinction between actual scientific discovery and what I have termed “scientistic myth,” which turns out to include a major part of what the general public regards as scientific fact. And secondly, having separated the grain from the chaff one arrives at the realization that the actual findings of contemporary science—its “non-mythical” component thus—so far from contradicting the traditional doctrines, can indeed be integrated into that cosmologia perennis, which is to say: can in fact be understood. Here, then, we have the answer to Feynman’s “No one understands quantum theory” and Whitehead’s lament that physics has turned into “a kind of mystic chant over an unintelligible universe.” What renders the universe intelligible proves finally to be none other than that long-neglected and long-despised Ancient Wisdom which in the final count outweighs the contingent productions of mortal endeavor. Wolfgang Smith Camarillo, December 15, 2012 Camarillo, December 15, 2012 1 Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions 2 Foreword That there are today, in our civilization, religions with followers still standing by their beliefs is, with respect to the modern world, a kind of anomaly: religious belief definitely belongs to a bygone age. A believer’s situation, whatever his religion, is not an easy one then. But what is true for all sacred forms is especially true for Christianity, because for three centuries it has been directly confronted by the negations of modernity. The day when Hinduism, Buddhism or Islam experience the omnipresence of this modernity, they will undoubtedly in their turn undergo serious crises. The blows dealt by the modern world against a people’s religious soul is in the first place concerned with the plane of immediate and daily existence. No need for ideological struggle here; merely by the strength of its presence and extraordinary material success, this world refutes the world of religion, silences it, and destroys its power. This is because religion speaks of an invisible world, while contemporary civilization renders the sensory world more and more present, the invisible more and more absent. This is, however, only the most apparent aspect of things. The omnipresence of a world ever more “worldly” is only the effect, in the practical order, of a more decisive cause that is theoretical in nature, namely the revolution of Galilean science, its technical progress being only its consequent confirmation. For the religious soul, the importance of the scientific revolution consists in the fact that it affects this soul’s own inwardness. As powerful as it might be, for the human being, society represents only an environment which it can in principle ward off. Whereas the scientific revolution, insofar as it ascribes the truth to itself, imposes itself irresistibly and from within on the intelligence that it besieges. It is a cultural and therefore a “spiritual” revolution to the extent that it makes an appeal to our mind. But whenever it is a question of a believer’s mind, it is the appeal to our mind. But whenever it is a question of a believer’s mind, it is the vision of the world and the reality implied by his faith that is 3 Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions subverted. What remains then is the option either to renounce his faith, or else— an almost desperate solution—to renounce entirely the cosmology that it entails. On the whole Christian thought has committed itself to this second way: to keep the faith (but a “purified” faith!) and abandon all the cosmological representations by which that faith has been expressed. This is a desperate solution because these cosmological representations are first scriptural presentations, the very forms by which God speaks to us about Himself. But if we disregard these forms, what remains of our faith? Scripture informs us that the apostles saw Christ raised from the earth and disappear behind a cloud, while Galilean science objects that space is infinite, that it has neither high nor low, and that this ascension, even supposing it to be possible—which it is not—is meaningless. What remains is then to see in it a symbolic fiction by which the early Christian community attempted to speak its faith in a vanished Jesus Christ: if He is no longer visible, this is because He has “gone back to heaven.” Following Rudolf Bultmann the majority of Protestant and Catholic exegetes and theologians have adopted this “solution.” Since then an immense process of demythologization of Christian scriptures has been in progress. According to Bultmann, what is mythological is a belief in the objective reality of revelation’s cosmological presentation: “descent,” “resurrection,” “ascension,” etc. To demythologize is to understand that this cosmological presentation is, in reality, only a symbolic language, in other words, a fiction. To pass from myth to symbol, this is the hermeneutic that enables a modern believer, living at the same time in two incompatible universes —that of the Bible and of Galilean science—to avoid cultural schizophrenia. But at what price? At the price of making unreal all biblical teachings on which faith relies and with which it is bound up. To reject this cosmological presentation, the witnesses of which the apostles, for example, vouch to have been, is this not to reject with the self-same stroke the faith attached to it? What does this parting of faith from its cosmological garment, of kerygma from myth, imply? Basically, would this not separate the Divine Word from its carnal covering and ultimately deny the Incarnation? How surprising that another way never occurred to Bultmann, a How surprising that another way never occurred to Bultmann, a 4 Foreword way which, had it been taken into consideration, might have changed many things in the course of the West’s religious history. It is this way that the distinguished mathematician Wolfgang Smith proposes to explore, and into which he now offers us insights. In the present crisis, in which Christian thought is split between an impossible fideism and its confinement to moral problems, his book discloses a liberating perspective which, in the name of science itself, restores to faith its entire truth. It would be hard to exag-gerate the importance of such a work. On the most essential points, the most burning questions concerned with biblical cosmology, heliocentrism, the nature of space and matter, the concept of a true causality, etc., Wolfgang Smith shows how the conclusions of contemporary science cease to be incompatible with the affirmations of traditional cosmology. I will only mention the admirable analyses developed in Chapter 6, “The Pitfall of Astrophysical Cosmology.” First he sets forth the criticisms certain scientists have directed at the major dogma of the new cosmology, which is “big bang” theory: these criticisms reveal its weakness and even impossibility, and thus disqualify the use theologians have made of that theory. Next he establishes that physics, when applied to celestial bodies, having de facto no operational value in that domain, has necessarily an ontological significance, which however is illegitimate. If in fact sidereal bodies, as required by quantum theory, are composed of an almost nonexistent dust of particles, these bodies themselves, as identifiable realities, vanish into space. For a body (un corps) is also a body ( un corps); a being that is not a being is no longer a being, says Leibniz. Now quantum theory has nothing to say about the existence of this unitary principle needed to account for the reality of a body: it is therefore truly incapable of accounting for the reality of any corporeal being, be it stellar or earthly (which is why some physicists have fallen into an idealism insupportable in other respects). Hence it is absolutely necessary, as Wolfgang Smith reminds us, to have recourse to what traditional philosophy calls a “substantial form,” a unitary principle that endows a material body with its own reality. This is no speculative luxury that might be dispensed with, but a rigorously scientific need, since it is the incontestable truth of quantum physics itself 5 Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions that, for want of this substantial form, the reality of bodies is rendered forever inexplicable and indeed impossible. We should be thankful to Professor Wolfgang Smith for having reminded us of these primary truths with the authority of a recognized scientist and the full resources of his broad philosophic and religious culture. I also salute his courage, for he has dared to confront, with such constancy, the dominant ideology of modern culture, which is not without risk, to say the least. This ideology has turned science (a certain kind of science!) into the official mythol- ogy of our times. Basically, Wolfgang Smith shows us, with simplic-ity and sometimes with much humor, that Bultmann has chosen the wrong object: it is not religion but the customary interpretation of science that needs to be “demythologized.” Now, only the doctrine of the philosophia perennis is able to accomplish this, and thereby to disclose the full truth of science itself. And to this end I do not think there is a more useful and efficacious work than the one by Wolfgang Smith that I have the pleasure of prefacing. Jean Borella Université de Nancy 6 Introduction Given that the tenets of “Ancient Wisdom” will prove pivotal, it behooves us to clarify that concept right from the start. The point needs first of all to be made that the “wisdom” we take to be sover-eign is so not simply by virtue of being ancient, but that its primacy derives rather from the fact that it is traditional. Yet it happens that the ancient cosmologies did tend to be traditional in varying degrees, and that we shall consequently be concerned with “ancient wisdom” after all. What renders a doctrine traditional is however the fact that it is more than “historical”: that in truth it derives from a revelation, of which it constitutes the embodiment. Yet what exactly this means remains perforce incomprehensible so long as we position ourselves within the confines of the prevailing worldview. Suffice it to say that authentically traditional doctrine transgresses the plane of mundane discourse, that the very bounds of space and time which define our world are somehow breached. Even when it refers to ordinary things, it does so from an extraordinary perspective: sub specie aeternitatis as the Scholastics say. It possesses, moreover, power to inspire: to guide step by step from “the things that are made” to the “invisible things of God”1 from which in fact they ultimately derive. Such a teaching serves thus to reconnect its votaries to the spiritual order, and is therefore “religious” in precisely the original sense of re-ligare, of “binding back.” Ancient cosmologies tended to be traditional in varying degrees, we have said; yet it may be more accurate to describe them as traditional doctrines in process of decay. There has been a progressive “falling off ” from the heights of revelation, due evidently to the collective human propensity to be forgetful of things spiritual, uncomprehending of the higher significations concealed, as it were, within 1. Rom. 1:20. 7