Materialism and the Contemporary Natural Sciences (page 4)

Robert Steigerwald

Discussions about the geometrical consequences of the general theory of relativity deal especially with the thesis of the curvature of the universe. If the universe is curved, in analogy to the curvature of the surface of a sphere, what then exists outside this curved space? Perhaps in answering this question in the future, we shall encounter the problem of the general and the specific. At the present time we can answer that the question implies an error in conception. It applies the idea of Euclidean (a so-called flat) three-dimensional space to a geometry that is not Euclidean. There is no inside or outside any more than there is an inside or outside along the circumference of a circle or an inside or an outside on the very surface of a sphere. If there were two-dimensional creatures living only on a two-dimensional surface such that of a sphere, they could not imagine an inside or outside—that is, the existence of something not entirely within their two-dimensional space. So the question is without meaning.

At the time of the explosion, the matter of the universe was squeezed into such a tiny space that relativity theory, which does not deal with infinitely small quantities, cannot be applied to yield the properties of space and time. In a certain sense, it loses its validity, and for the exploration of this state of the universe the second of the two fundamental physical theories of the twentieth century must be applied, namely, quantum theory. Quantum theory deals with the states of the microworld, so that its laws are also valid in this state of matter.

Let us consider some things about the “big bang.” Some followers of materialism proceed with the method of Palmström,[i] that what must not be, cannot be—because theologians and idealists interpret the big bang as the beginning of the world, as a creation by God, and therefore as evidence of God. Pope Pius XI, in particular, involved himself with this. Some materialists, seeing the theologians’ and idealists’ interpretation of the big bang as contradictory to materialism, simply deny that the big bang occurred and are eagerly receptive to arguments that negate it.

But looking at it philosophically, we see that if the big bang really did occur, it does not necessarily imply anything concerning the creation of world by God. It only implies that in the process of development of the universe, qualitative changes took place, and that the big bang was one of them.

Any other conception would contradict the universality of causality. Philosophers of nature who are no followers of dialectical materialism see this in the same way, Barnulf Kanitscheider, a philosopher at the University of Giessen, opposing the idea of the world’s creation out of nothing, writes:

Nothing, if we are allowed to use this monster of a term, is no real object that could be brought into any lawful connection with physical matter. No “something” can be connected with “nothing.” The ontological reason for this is simple.

Negative things do not exist, to no thing belongs an antithing, nor to the complete system an antisystem; there is no object named “nothing” opposite the universe. Since from a conceptual fiction nothing can originate, the conception of origin already has semantically changed if the new object has not originated in a former physical state. (Kanitscheider 1981, 449)[ii]

Mario Bunge calls the thesis of the reasonless origin of things pure magic (Kanitscheider 1981, 449). Again Kanitscheider: “It makes no sense to imagine that natural laws can be pulled out of the world like whalebones out of a corset, and then to watch, how the lawless matter is tumbling down” (467).

To conclude from the necessity of an origin for each single thing or phenomenon the necessity of an origin for the whole is a faulty application of causality for two reasons: First, it is true that each member of a club must have had a mother, but it is not correct to conclude from this that the club must also have had a mother. In this example the whole is perceived as a mechanical addition of its parts and is treated the same way as its parts. Second, it is not reasonable to assume that the world needs an origin (supposedly God) for its existence. but that God himself needs no origin. You cannot apply the essence of an argument, causality, and at the same time ignore it.

Notes

1. Reference to a German poem by Christian Morgensternm “Die unmögliche Tatsache” (The Impossible Fact) in which a man named Palmström is run over and killed while improperly crossing an intersection. Upon contemplating the circumstances of his death, he reasons that the car that ran him over should not have legally been there. He then concludes that he is not dead because “what must not be, cannot be.”—Ed.

2. Translation of quotations from non-English sources in the Reference List were made by the translator.

3. In the discussion that follows, I do not deal with differences in the kinds of models or the difference between material and theoretical models.

4. The author is referring here to the historically dominant variety of critical realism in Europe, which is akin to a form of neo-Thomism. See Hörz, Röseberg, et al. 1980, 165-77).

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