Hi James, On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 12:04 PM, James Newton wrote: > 2. Why do I get the feeling that Russell enjoys this for more than > scientific reasons? Is QM the current best friend of the theologian? * > It's funny you mention that because there are some theologians who try to bolster certain theological and philosophical ideas using recent theories in QM, string theory, etc. Unfortunately, since none of them know much more about it than can be learned from popularist books and articles, some aspects of what they say fall totally flat. For example, medieval philosophy had a strong thread of "moderate realism" in it. This was basically the ideas of Aristotle re-worked into a Christian framework. Moderate realism basically says this: there is a world out there which you do not create and which you connect with through your senses. Each object is a composite of potential and form. Potential being roughly the "stuff" the thing is made of and form being whatever it is which makes the object what it is. St. Thomas Aquinas is the main figure behind this thought. Eventually, between the 1600s and the 1800s, a strong thread of "idealism" developed wherein philosophers claimed that we create the world or at least that we do not connect directly with it but only with a model of it which we construct from sensory data. Immanuel Kant was the main proponent of these ideas - which became the modern philosophical underpinning of the scientific method, although the basic idea of the scientific method had been around for much longer on a different (God-centered) rational. By the late 19th century, scholasticism (the medieval thought) had dropped way out of favor. Most philosophers were either nihilists or some flavor of idealists or empiricists. During the 20th century, some philosophers/theologians noticed that science was apparently dropping its emphasis on a subject-object distinction. They saw this as a confirmation that idealism is more true and tried to find ways to "marry" it with Christian thinking. So, I'd argue that traditional Christian thinking (say from at least 800 AD until 1600 AD) would jive more with your "real, physical reason" for things than with idealism or some of the interpretations of QM. By the way, IMHO, some of the older philosophical ideas get tossed out by many people NOT because of their lack of merit but rather because of the inapplicability of their particular language to today's worldview. For example, Aquinas's "proofs for God's existence" sound like a "God of the gaps" type "proof" at first reading. They talk about God being the explanation for "motion", for example. Most people would probably dismiss this as totally obsolete since Newton came on the scene. However, you have to realize that the fundamental idea behind the proof is causation (in all of its senses, not just efficient causality), and that "motion" in medieval language meant any kind of change. Moving from one place to another was called "local motion". Sean -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist