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

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

PRAGMATISM

— 695—

Pragmatism in science: W. V. O. Quine

Like all pragmatists, the neo-pragmatist W. V. O.

Quine (1908–2000), one of the leading American

philosophers of the twentieth century, also rejects

the idea of reaching the balance between lan-

guage, truth, and reality once and for all as an un-

usable fiction. He develops the idea of the interac-

tivity between conceptual invention and discovery

of content in the sense that the conceptual system

as a whole has to pass the test against experience.

There is no guarantee that any kind of truth could

be excepted from a future process of revision.

Since there is no unique method of finding truth,

nor any universal language for finding the final

conceptualization of the world, there is no way of

talking about reality as such. Nevertheless, for

Quine, the danger of relativism is illusionary. What

has been obtained in scientific research through

epistemological and ontological decisions is ab-

solutely binding, although in the future it will

probably have to be modified or even given up. In

what way there will be a change, however, lies be-

yond present cognitive abilities.

Pragmatism in religion: William James

The objection of subjectivism and relativism is also

directed against nineteenth-century American

philosopher William James’s (1842–1910) concep-

tion of truth. Unlike Peirce (and to some extent

Dewey), James does not focus only on the empiri-

cally testable consequences of a belief. He rather

shifts the emphasis to what the consequences of a

person having a belief are. True beliefs work. Not

surprisingly, this conception of truth has been

taken as a straight identification of truth with utility.

James, however, distinguishes between the differ-

ent ways that different beliefs work. Concerning

empirical judgments, “true” means “verified through

observation and experiment.” Thus, the accusation

of identifying truth with utility cannot be applied to

empirical judgments. Neither does it affect a priori

truths since they are truths that one is prepared to

accept in the sense of conceptual presuppositions

by means of which one talks about reality. Only

concerning a third kind of truths—moral, aesthetic,

and religious ones—is the pragmatic identification

of truth and usefulness valid. The kind of judgment

involved here cannot be empirically verified. The

truth-value of such judgments is given by their

practical working in life. If religions shall be more

than idle talk, they have to have practical conse-

quences for the people who choose them; they

have to work psychologically satisfactorily in their

lives. James defends people’s right to have religious

beliefs if the choice between believing them and

disbelieving them is unavoidable, and if they offer

a real option, even though religious beliefs cannot

be decided on the basis of empirical evidence.

Pragmatism in science and religion

In one specific sense there is, according to prag-

matism, no difference between science and reli-

gion. Both activities have to be understood in rela-

tion to the kind of beings human are. Neither

science nor religion can address reality as inde-

pendent of human experience. However, whereas

science deals with experimental, observational ex-

perience, religion concerns existential experience.

A theory is empirically adequate if it enables peo-

ple to generate testable hypotheses and thereby

maintain what is true in the observable world. Re-

ligions and their secular counterparts are existen-

tially adequate if they provide people with con-

ceptions of life at its best so that, in the tension

between how life is and how it could be, they can

attain a feeling for good and evil, right and wrong,

and thus generate values and meaning, and ex-

press what is true in their lives.

See also CONSTRUCTIVISM; CONTEXTUALISM; IDEALISM;

EALISM

Bibliography

Dewey, John. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938). In John

Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Vol. 4, ed. Jo

Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univer-

sity Press, 1986.

Herrmann, Eberhard. “A Pragmatic Approach to Religion

and Science.” In Rethinking Theology and Science: Six

Models for the Current Dialogue, eds. Niels Henrik

Gregersen and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen. Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998.

Hookway, Christopher. Peirce. London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1985.

James, William. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old

Ways of Thinking (1907). In The Works of William

James, ed. Frederick H. Burkhardt. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1975.

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 695

PRAYER AND MEDITATION

— 696—

Murphy, John. Pragmatism: From Peirce to Davidson.

Boulder, Colo., and San Francisco: Westview Press,

1990.

Pihlström, Sami. Pragmatism and Philosophical Anthro-

pology: Understanding Our Human Life in a Human

World. New York: Peter Lang, 1998.

Putnam, Hilary. Pragmatism: An Open Question. Oxford:

Blackwell, 1995.

Putnam, Ruth Anna, ed. The Cambridge Companion to

William James. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press, 1997.

Quine, W. V. O. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.

Rorty, Richard. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1982.

EBERHARD HERRMANN

PRAYER AND MEDITATION

Prayer is the practice of communion with God and

traditionally involves components such as confes-

sion, thanksgiving, and intercession (praying for

the needs of others). Meditation is a form of spiri-

tual practice based on focused attention that is re-

strained in its use of words or images. Whereas

prayer is conceptualized in terms of a relationship

with God, meditation does not necessarily make

theistic assumptions. Prayer and meditation raise

several issues for the science-religion discussion,

including the effects of intercessory prayer for

those prayed for and the more general benefits of

prayer and meditation for those who practice

them. There are both outcome questions about the

extent of the benefits, and process questions about

how benefits are mediated.

Intercessory prayer

The efficacy of intercessory prayer is not easy to

investigate scientifically. To do so would obviously

require a control group of people who are not

prayed for. It would also be necessary to ensure

that those being prayed for do not know that they

are being prayed for; otherwise any benefits might

be considered a kind of placebo effect. Indeed, it

is often considered desirable during such a study

that the people who pray do not know the full

identities of those for whom they are praying. In a

hospital setting, the medical staff also should not

know the identifies of those being prayed for to

ensure that they do not influence clinical outcomes

by treating the prayed-for people differently.

Meeting all these methodological requirements

involves creating highly artificial conditions. For

example, it is questionable whether it is possible to

pray effectively for people whose identities have

been concealed. Even if such prayer is possible, it

may be less powerful than heartfelt prayer for a

known person. It is also arguable that knowing

that the prayer is being undertaken for the sake of

a scientific experiment undermines its effective-

ness; perhaps prayer ought only to be undertaken

out of concern for the person prayed for. There is

also the theological question of how God might re-

spond to testing the effectiveness of prayer scien-

tifically. Prayer is primarily a matter of a person’s

relationship with God, not of control of the world.

Despite these problems, a number of scientific

investigations of the efficacy of prayer have, in

fact, been undertaken. The results are mixed and

inconclusive, with some studies finding an effect,

others not. However, there is certainly more evi-

dence for the effectiveness of prayer than would

be expected by chance. In the 1980s, Randolph

Byrd carried out a study of nearly four hundred

coronary care patients. A control group was

prayed for, while an experimental group was not;

other patients and medical staff were kept blind

about who was in which group. When this exper-

iment was concluded, the patients who had been

prayed for had a better outcome. A number of

well-designed studies have been conducted since

then and have found significant effects from inter-

cessory prayer, though some experts remain un-

convinced by these studies.

Is there a way of explaining the efficacy of

prayer that is consistent with the scientific world-

view? In general, explanations are divided between

those who invoke God and those who do not.

Those who do not invoke God see the efficacy of

intercessory prayer as a form of psychokinesis or

remote mental influence. Those who invoke God

see it as a special case of divine action.

A series of well-designed experiments have

been conducted on “bio-psychokinesis” that indi-

cate that it is possible to influence a range of spe-

cific biological functions in others without any im-

mediate contact. Several of these effects have been

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 696

PRAYER AND MEDITATION

— 697—

well-replicated. It is possible that intercessory

prayer, such as prayer for physical healing, is a

specific example of bio-psychokinesis. Of course,

that does not completely explain the phenomenon

because researchers do not understand how bio-

psychokinesis itself works. It may be preferable to

look first for some not-yet-understood naturalistic

explanation of bio-psychokinesis, rather than as-

sume that a wholly non-naturalistic explanation is

required.

Alternatively, the effect of prayer can be seen

as a special case of divine action, but one in which

divine action is triggered or facilitated by prayer.

This raises the theological conundrum of why God

should act in response to prayer rather than acting

on God’s own initiative. It is theologically objec-

tionable to suppose that God is unaware of human

needs or not motivated to respond unless prayer

occurs. It is also objectionable to suppose that God

is powerless to act without human prayer, though

it is perfectly acceptable to suggest that, out of vol-

untary self-restraint, God might prefer to act in

conjunction with the prayerful initiatives of human

beings. If so, prayer could be seen as establishing

a union of wills between human beings and God.

Science provides a source of analogies for how

that could come about. For example, it may be

analogous to a nuclear resonance, or some kind of

attunement.

A divine action model would probably predict

that the prayer of people who have strong faith

and lead good lives would be the most effective. A

psychokinesis model of prayer would probably

predict that prayer would be most powerful if car-

ried out by people with psychic powers (which

would, of course, have to be assessed in some in-

dependent way, to avoid circularity). There is thus

some prospect of testing the different predictions

of the two kinds of theories empirically.

Benefits to the person who prays

Next, there is the question of whether prayer ben-

efits the person who prays. Here we are concerned

not just with intercessory prayer but with the full

range of prayer, including thanksgiving, adoration,

confession, and petition. It is almost certain that

prayer makes a valuable contribution to personal

coping. However, actual evidence for this is not

easy to collect. It would be hard to conduct a con-

trolled study in which an experimental group

prayed regularly over a sustained period, and a

control group never prayed. Most people would

not be willing to allow whether or not they prayed

to be dictated by the requirements of an experi-

mental design, certainly not for long enough to

show a broad range of effects.

That means that the evidence will only be cor-

relational in nature. There is indeed a good range

of studies showing that people who pray tend to

be better adjusted. One of the most sophisticated

of such studies is that of G. Parker and L. B. Brown

(1982), who found that prayer was one of the cop-

ing strategies that apparently helped to protect

against depression. However, the problem with all

such studies is that they are correlational, which in-

terferes with firm conclusions about causal effects,

particularly when so little is known about the cau-

sation of the phenomenon under investigation.

There is also the problem that prayer is closely re-

lated to other aspects of religion, such as religious

beliefs, experience, and public rituals. It is hard to

be sure that it is prayer that helps, rather than

those other aspects of religion.

It is nevertheless highly plausible that prayer is

helpful, and it is not difficult to suggest how it

might be so. It seems to serve as a cognitive

method of coping with stress in which events are

conceptualized in a broad framework of meaning.

The religious frame of reference does not look at

events primarily in terms of whether they are en-

joyable, but in terms of how they relate to the pur-

poses of God. It is a basic belief of many faith tra-

ditions that God can bring blessing out of

adversity, and prayer facilities the application of

that belief to particular events.

Attributional processes are important in coping

generally, and the beneficial aspects of prayer are

probably mediated in part by the attributional as-

pects of prayer. Prayer invites attributions to God,

whereas otherwise there may be little alternative to

attributions to one’s own strengths or weaknesses,

or to seeing events as the result of mere chance

processes. Thanksgiving is an aspect of prayer that

plays a particularly important role in the reformu-

lation of attributions.

Meditation

Meditation has been widely studied scientifically,

especially transcendental meditation. There is clear

evidence that transcendental meditation produces

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 697

PRIMATOLOGY

— 698—

a distinctive arousal pattern of relaxed alertness,

and there is evidence also of its therapeutic value,

not only on subjective measures such as anxiety,

but on more objective measures such as use of

drugs and alcohol. However, none of that may

have much to do with religion; it may be that tran-

scendental meditation is little more than a tech-

nique for deep relaxation.

The cognitive aspects of meditation are more

interesting from a theological point of view. A

pointer to the distinctive mode of cognition in-

duced by meditation comes from the classic labo-

ratory studies of Arthur Deikman during the 1960s

in which college students gazed at a blue vase

while refraining from thinking discursively about

the vase in any way. The unusual sensations of

vividness experienced were interpreted as arising

from a suspension of the normal “automatization”

of perception.

Though some meditation moves beyond

words and images, much of it still uses them, albeit

in an unusual way. Words and images are charac-

teristically used sparingly, but each is allowed to

resonate with maximum depth of meaning. Layers

of meaning may be uncovered that are felt to be

“ineffable.” That sense of ineffability may arise

from making use of a meaning system of the cog-

nitive architecture that is distinct from, and to an

unusual extent decoupled from, propositions that

lend themselves to articulation.

See also SPIRITUALITY

Bibliography

Braud, William. “Empirical Explorations of Prayer, Distant

Healing, and Remote Mental Influence.” Journal of

Religion and Psychical Research 17 (1994): 62–73.

Brown, Laurence B. The Human Side of Prayer: The Psy-

chology of Praying. Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Edu-

cation Press, 1993.

Byrd, Randolph “Positive Effects of Intercessory Prayer in

a Coronary Care Unit Population.” Southern Medical

Journal 81 (1988): 826–829.

Chibnall, John T.; Jeral, Joseph M.; and Cerullo, Michael A.

“Experiments on Distant Intercessory Prayer: God,

Science, and the Lesson of Massah.” Archives of Inter-

nal Medicine 161, no. 21 (2001): 2529–2536.

Deikman, Arthur. “Deautomisation and the Mystic Experi-

ence.” Psychiatry 29 (1966): 324–338.

Eysenck, Hans J., and Sargent, Carl. Explaining the Unex-

plained: Mysteries of the Paranormal. London: Prion,

1993.

Francis, L. J., and Astley, J., eds. Psychological Perspectives

on Prayer. Leominster, Mass.: Gracewing, 2001.

Hood, Ralph W., Jr.; Spilka, Bernard; Hunsberger, Bruce;

and Gorsuch, Richard. The Psychology of Religion: An

Empirical Approach, 2nd edition. New York: Guilford

Press, 1996.

Parker, G., and Brown, L. B. “Coping Behaviours that Me-

diate Between Life Events and Depression.” Archives

of General Psychiatry 39 (1982): 1386–1391.

Stannard, Russell. The God Experiment: Can Science Prove

the Existence of God? London: Faber and Faber, 1999.

Watts, Fraser. “Prayer and Psychology.” In Perspectives on

Prayer, ed. Fraser Watts. London: SPCK, 2001.

Watts, Fraser. Theology and Psychology. Aldershot, UK:

Ashgate, 2002.

West, Michael A., ed. The Psychology of Meditation. Ox-

ford: Clarendon, 2002.

FRASER WATTS

PRIMATOLOGY

Primatology is the study of primates, an order that

includes prosimians, monkeys, apes, and humans.

Similarities between humans and monkeys were

noted already by Aristotle in the fourth century

B.C.E., and the Greek physician Galen even dis-

sected a monkey for comparison. In the eigh-

teenth century, Swedish botanist and taxonomist

Carl Linnaeus created the order of primates to in-

clude monkeys, apes, and humans. The similarity

between apes and humans was also noted by

Charles Darwin, who argued in The Descent of

Man (1871) that human beings evolved from an

ape-like ancestor.

Even so, relatively little was known about pri-

mates until the twentieth century. In 1917, psy-

chologist Wolfgang Kohler published work demon-

strating chimpanzees’ ability to learn and perform

problem solving. In the 1920s, Robert Yerkes es-

tablished a center for studying primates that was

eventually located at Emory University in Atlanta,

Georgia. After World War II, significant fieldwork

was spearheaded by paleontologist Louis Leakey,

who supported research by Jane Goodall with

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 698

PRIMATOLOGY

— 699—

chimpanzees, Diane Fossey with gorillas, and

Biruté Galdikas with orangutans. Of the three,

Goodall’s work has been the most significant, pro-

viding remarkable evidence of tool use, social

complexity, coordinated hunting, and meat-eating.

Modern primatology is a diverse field, involving

biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists. Pri-

mate species continue to be discovered, and

knowledge of many species is comparatively scant.

The question of human uniqueness

While there are many motivations for studying pri-

mates, the similarity between humans and other

primates has been a key factor in funding and the-

orizing. Among primates, the great apes (including

chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans)

are most similar to humans on anatomical, evolu-

tionary, and genetic grounds. Studies of genetic re-

latedness indicate that humans and chimpanzees

have 98.4 percent of their genes in common, mak-

ing chimpanzees more closely related to human

beings than to gorillas or orangutans. Partly be-

cause of this, chimpanzees have attracted far more

attention by researchers. Bonobos, a species redis-

covered in the 1970s, have also attracted consider-

able interest in recent years because of their intel-

ligence and unique social behaviors. In virtually all

cases, however, the question of the similarity of the

great apes to humans has explicitly or implicitly in-

formed research agendas and directions.

The most obvious question of philosophical

and theological import raised by primatology is the

question of human uniqueness. Since Aristotle

(384–322

B.C.E.), philosophers and theologians

have frequently claimed that human beings are

unique by virtue of their cognitive abilities, espe-

cially their abilities for reason, language, and self-

consciousness. Work with the great apes, however,

has consistently shown that the gap is not as ab-

solute as has been traditionally claimed. Claims of

uniqueness based on tool use were the first crite-

rion to go, as fieldwork by Goodall demonstrated

that chimpanzees fashioned tools out of blades of

grass, which they used to extract termites from ter-

mite mounds. Later research has also indicated that

chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire carefully select ap-

propriate rocks to crack different kinds of nuts.

In the 1970s, extensive efforts were made to

teach the great apes versions of sign language and

symbolic communication. B. T. and R. A. Gardner’s

early work with a chimp named Washoe and

Francine Patterson with a gorilla named Koko pro-

vided mixed results and generated intense contro-

versy as to whether or not apes were capable of

producing or merely mimicking language. E. Sue

Savage-Rumbaugh used improved methods in the

1980s and 1990s with chimps and bonobos, and

her work is seen by many to have established that

these apes are indeed capable of true symbolic

communication, even though their abilities seem to

stop short of full-fledged language.

Other research has focused on the abilities of

apes for self and other representation. Experiments

by Gordon Gallup indicated that both chim-

panzees and orangutans (but not gorillas) are ca-

pable of recognizing their images in a mirror. Ob-

servations of chimpanzees and other primates in

the wild and in zoo settings indicate the ability to

deceive, which implies an awareness of one’s ac-

tions and the effect that they have on others. Ef-

forts to establish by experiment that apes develop

models of the thoughts of others (what is called by

researchers a “theory of mind”) are more contro-

versial and the question remains unsettled.

While research on cognitive abilities is often

understood to challenge traditional claims of

human uniqueness, research on the social behav-

ior of primates is frequently understood to reveal

the evolutionary roots of human nature, altruism,

and morality. Expectations that primate sociality

was primarily peaceful were shattered by observa-

tions made by Goodall that male chimpanzees

formed raiding parties and could engage in brutal

attacks. Since then, it has come to be recognized

that primate societies in general and ape societies

in particular are highly complex and stratified.

Chimpanzee dominance hierarchies are main-

tained by group support and mutual aid, but may

be usurped by shifting alliances. While some em-

phasize the negative aspects of this sociality, de-

scribed by Andrew Whiten and Richard Byrne as

“Machiavellian intelligence,” primatologist Frans de

Waal has emphasized that positive social behavior

and altruism are essential to primate societies and,

therefore, to human societies as well. In this re-

gard, bonobos in particular have been noted for

peaceful coexistence and conflict resolution. At the

same time, feminist primatologists and scholars

have been concerned to correct sexist bias in the

study of primate behavior. Work by Barbara Smuts

with baboons revised understandings of sex and

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 699

PROCESS THOUGHT

— 700—

courtship in primates. Historian of science Donna

Haraway wrote Primate Visions (1989) in an effort

to deconstruct the ideological bias that has been

part of the history of primatology.

Implications for theology

Despite a vigorous science-religion dialogue in the

1980s and 1990s, primatology as a field has been

almost completely ignored by theologians. A num-

ber of works, however, do cover some of the is-

sues that primatology raises, even if only indirectly.

Theologians such as Jay McDaniel and Andrew

Linzey have addressed issues of animal rights.

Broader themes of evolution and their implication

for human nature have also been addressed by a

number of theologians, including Philip Hefner,

Arthur Peacocke, and John Haught. Works by these

authors, however, only partially address the ques-

tions that primatology raises, and more theological

reflection and analysis remains to be done.

See also ALTRUISM; ANIMAL RIGHTS; ANTHROPOLOGY;

VOLUTION; LANGUAGE; EXPERIENCE, RELIGIOUS:

OGNITIVE AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

Bibliography

Byrne, Richard, and Whiten, Andrew, eds. Machiavellian

Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of In-

tellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Oxford and

New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Cheney, Dorothy L., and Seyfarth, Robert M. How Mon-

keys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man (1871). Amherst,

N.Y.: Prometheus, 1997.

De Waal, Frans. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and

Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Haraway, Donna. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Na-

ture in the World of Modern Science. New York: Rout-

ledge, 1989.

Hefner, Philip. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and

Religion. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1993.

Linzey, Andrew. Animal Theology. Champaign: University

of Illinois Press, 1995.

Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue, and Lewin, Roger. Kanzi: The

Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind. New York:

Wiley, 1994.

GREGORY R. PETERSON

PROCESS THOUGHT

Process thought emphasizes the ultimate signifi-

cance of time’s forward flow and the change of

those things that exist in time. The accent upon

time as integral to existence means that process

thought considers life to be comprised of events

or, as the philosopher William James (1842–1910)

would say, “drops” of experience whose character

is established by how each becomes. What might

appear to be solid matter is really a dance of en-

ergy events and interconnections.

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), consid-

ered by many to be process thought’s chief philoso-

pher, argued that the elucidation of meaning in-

volved in the phrase “all things flow” is one chief

task of philosophy. All actually existing “things”

change due to their temporality, but the metaphys-

ical principles, mathematic and definitional abstrac-

tions, and the essence of God do not change.

Process cosmology

The world is not made up of vacuous substances

or wholly self-contained atoms whose relationship

to others is entirely external. Rather, argue process

thinkers, all actually existing things (events) are in-

ternally related to other things. Life itself evolves

through mutual influence. Reality is social, but in-

dividual events construct the particular factual

character of social existence through moment by

moment decisions in relationship with others. The

process philosophical notion that all existence is

interrelated corresponds well with quantum and

relativity theories in physics. The interconnected-

ness of existence is supported by the observation

made by physicists that observers of a particular

phenomenon produce changes by merely observ-

ing the phenomenon.

Comprehending what process thinkers reject

may also be helpful when identifying this move-

ment. Process thought rejects the notion that exis-

tence is fundamentally comprised of mechanistic,

lifeless matter. Instead, process thinkers affirm that

existence is organismic, enchanted, and interre-

lated. The organismic nature of process thought

fits well with general evolutionary hypotheses per-

taining to the gradual emergence of new and com-

plex species through natural selection, random-

ness, and adaptation. Process thought affirms that

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 700

PROCESS THOUGHT

— 701—

the emergence of highly developed life forms typ-

ically entails genealogical connection and descent

with modification.

Process thought rejects the claim that creatures

are entirely determined or predestined either by

the laws of nature, their genes, the environment, or

God. Instead, freedom, creativity, novelty, and in-

dividual purpose are affirmed because each event

is partly self-creative as it responds to the influence

of others. Process categories affirm both that indi-

viduals are partly self-organized and partly fash-

ioned by others.

Process thinkers typically reject mind-body du-

alism whereby one’s mind or soul is entirely men-

tal and one’s bodily members are entirely physical.

Process thinkers also typically reject materialistic

physicalism, which ultimately denies that mentality

and mind exist at all. Instead, many process

thinkers speak of mind in nature when adhering to

the panexperientialist (or panpsychist) hypothesis

proposed by Whitehead and others. The panexpe-

rientialist solution to the mind-body problem en-

tails the nondualist hypothesis that all events, in-

cluding mind events and those events that

comprise one’s body, have both mental and phys-

ical aspects. Events of the same kind can be mutu-

ally influencing.

Process views of God

Although most process thinkers are theists, they

typically reject theistic doctrines influenced by tra-

ditional metaphysical philosophies. The process

theologies emerging from the thought of White-

head and Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) exert

the greatest influence. These two process scholars

call God dipolar to signify two different dualities:

God is influenced by others and influences others,

and God is changing and unchanging.

The first dipolarity, God’s influence upon the

world and the world’s influence back on God, is

more pronounced in Whitehead’s thought. White-

head speculates that God adds Godself to that

from which every creative act emerges. Creatures

respond to this divine action, and their response

subsequently exerts influence back upon God.

The second dipolarity, God as both unchang-

ing and changing, is more pronounced

in Hartshorne’s thought. By this dipolarity,

Hartshorne means that God’s abstract essence is

absolute, necessary, and eternal, while God’s con-

crete actuality is everlastingly relative or contin-

gent. The unchanging pole of the divine essence

includes attributes that classical philosophical the-

ologies often ascribe to divinity (e.g., necessity, im-

passibility, infallibility, eternality, and immutabil-

ity). The changing aspect of God is expressed in

God’s experience (e.g., suffering, rejoicing, sympa-

thy, and contingency) as deity interacts, moment-

by-moment, with creation.

Process thinkers often speculate that God re-

lates essentially with the world, and Hartshorne

calls this God-world model panentheism (all things

are in God). Panentheism is illustrated by the rela-

tionship the members of one’s body have with

one’s soul (or mind) because this relationship is

analogous to the way the world is in God. Just as

the mind naturally interacts with the brain and

other members of the body without being onto-

logically different, so God naturally interacts with

the world without being ontologically different.

Just as the mind is an actuality distinct from other

actualities in the body, so God is an actuality dis-

tinct from other actualities in the world.

Process panentheism agrees with classical pan-

theism by affirming that God is essentially related

to the finite order, without agreeing that God’s

essence requires this particular finite order. It

agrees with traditional theism by affirming that

God is distinct from and not fully governed by fi-

nite relations, without agreeing that God could

have chosen not to be in relation with the world.

God is essentially immanent in the world because

God necessarily influences all. God is essentially

transcendent because God’s decision about how

to react to such influences is not fully determined

by them. This divine decision becomes God’s in-

fluence upon subsequent individuals.

It should also be noted that process thought

escapes the “God of the gaps” charge because the-

istic process thinkers deny that the causal

processes of the universe are occasionally filled by

divine acts. Instead, process theism supposes that

God is always active in the causal processes, al-

though deity never unilaterally determines any par-

ticular causal process or the causal processes of the

whole. Whitehead expresses these concepts when

he claims that God is not an exception to the meta-

physical principles designed to save the scheme

from theoretical collapse.

LetterP.qxd 3/18/03 1:06 PM Page 701

PROGRESS

— 702—