From Math-Physics to Metaphysics (By Cristian Horgos)
From Math-Physics to Metaphysics
(Disclaimer: The guest posts do not necessarily align with Philosocom's manager, Mr. Tomasio Rubinshtein's beliefs, thoughts, or feelings. The point of guest posts is to allow a wide range of narratives from a wide range of people. To apply for a guest post of your own, please send your request to mrtomasio@philosocom.com)
According to Google’s Artificial Intelligence, the most notable philosophical ideas include Kant’s transcendental idealism, Descartes’ "Cogito ergo sum," Sartre’s existentialism, and Plato’s Theory of Ideas (or Forms).
As an aside, Arthur Schopenhauer’s view on human insignificance is not considered among the most relevant philosophical ideas by Google AI—and, naturally, there is no mention of Marxism, which envisioned the human being as a mere bee in a hive.
Yet, it is understandable if some do not find secular philosophy—often reducible to matters of ethics and morality—particularly spectacular.
Things, however, have the potential to become far more interesting if we bring metaphysics into the picture.
For instance, the philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was so enthralled by his discovery of the "Cogito ergo sum" principle that he used it to construct a kind of proof for the existence of God. Indeed, one could point to a whole series of mathematicians whose ambitions reached toward the highest spheres.
The logician Kurt Gödel formulated an ontological proof for the existence of God using modal logic—a branch of logic dealing with concepts such as "possible" and "necessary"—by adapting the classical ideas of Anselm of Canterbury and Gottfried Leibniz. Even Leonhard Euler—the mathematician who discovered the transcendental number "e"—is associated with an anecdotal proof for the existence of God, said to have taken place at the court of the Tsarina of Russia.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, co-inventor of differential and integral calculus, refined René Descartes’ ontological argument. He employed the principle of sufficient reason, asserting that for any existing fact, there must be a sufficient explanation as to why things are the way they are rather than otherwise. Consequently, the universe requires a primary, necessary, and perfect cause—which he identifies as God.
Blaise Pascal’s Wager, while not a direct proof of God’s existence, applies game theory and probability to demonstrate that believing in God is more rational than not believing. Pascal’s argument posits that, mathematically speaking, the potential gain from faith (eternal life) is infinite, while the risk of loss is minimal. "Mathematics is the language of God," remarked the astronomer, Galileo Galilei. Furthermore, the physicist Paul Dirac (1902–1984), a Nobel laureate, often stated that "God used beautiful mathematics to create the world"; in an article published in Scientific American, he observed that "God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe".
The image accompanying this article is a painting by William Blake, depicting a personification of the Divine wielding a pair of compasses.
Naturally, for those who resonate with theology, it serves as an inherently and instinctively inspiring subject.
Even for skeptics, a theologian like Karl Heim—regarded by some as being on the same intellectual plane as Max Planck and Einstein—sought to offer hope or a vision by proposing a more depersonalized divinity that exists parallel to our own world, all while remaining mindful of the intellect of those with more freethinking leanings. He envisioned a supreme ideal toward which we strive, one to which we can relate and which might provide a higher meaning to life. Karl Heim’s perspective, therefore, is certainly worth noting.
This is especially relevant given that a parallel between psychology and fundamental physics has been posited by several prominent physicists—most notably Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli, as well as Niels Bohr (who drew inspiration from the psychologist William James) and Gustav Fechner, the founder of psychophysics.
A stark commonality between purely atheistic psychology or philosophy and an atheistic approach to physics is that both fail to answer fundamental, primordial questions.
Secular philosophy, for instance, cannot provide a universal meaning for life—a point echoed by thinkers such as Albert Camus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others.
Similarly, for over half a century, fundamental physics has been in pursuit of a "Theory of Everything" (TOE)—a framework intended to resolve the sharp conflict between the major branches of physics: relativistic physics and quantum mechanics. The expectations surrounding a TOE are so significant that some suggest it could potentially strengthen the shared foundations of various religions, revealing a common denominator among the world's major faiths.
Perhaps a TOE will be achieved within a few decades, or even years. But until then, we can only wonder whether a Theory of Everything (TOE) has the potential to reveal the metaphysical—and what such a revelation might look like.
We might, for instance, attempt to glimpse a philosophical projection of it by working backward: assuming it has already been solved, we can try to reconstruct it based on the premise that it holds relevance for philosophy.
In this context, the hypothesis proposed by theologian Karl Heim—suggesting the existence of both a linear, terrestrial dimension of time and a sacred dimension (possibly spiral-shaped, thereby linking the microcosm to the macrocosm) — could prove useful.
When asking Google AI about the connection between Mircea Eliade’s vision of immortality and the eternity represented by Neolithic spirals, the response is as follows: "Yes, the idea that Mircea Eliade’s concept of immortality finds support in the spirals of Neolithic cultures is both plausible and accurate. The spiral symbolism found in Cucuteni pottery—which Eliade viewed as an archetypal model of eternal renewal and cyclical time—is central to his understanding of myth and sacred experience, and, by extension, of transcending historical time to reach immortality. In Eliade’s view, the 'modern' (secular) individual and the 'religious' individual relate to time in fundamentally different ways. Through rituals and myths, the religious individual manages to escape historical time—perceived as flawed and distorted—and enter mythical time: a sacred, eternal, and beginningless realm. By virtue of its cyclical nature, the spiral becomes a symbol of this return to the origins—to a state of immortal time." In other words, a fitting and honorable alignment with Karl Heim’s vision of time.
And I take some pride in noting that, a year after the publication in English of the article based on Eliade’s vision of time and the spirals of the Neolithic cultures, this piece remains the top Google search result globally for the keywords "immortality spirals." Furthermore, another version of the same article ranks as the number one result worldwide on Google for the keywords "afterlife spirals."
And it is about the Philosocom article "From Neolithic Spirals to an Idea of Immortality on Darwinian 'Rite'"
thank you for your attention
Cristian Horgos
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