The Sufficient Reason of an Evolving Universe

Not only is our universe evolving, but it had a beginning in time. Indeed -- or so they say -- even time itself is one of the things that supposedly began with the beginning. On this, both science and theology are in accord.

To even say "beginning" is a temporal concept, so there is no beginning in time, only of time. Which seems impossible to me, but there it is. 

Why impossible?

Because time is such a primitive concept that it's impossible to imagine how anything can happen without it. In this regard it's like experience: how would it be possible to experience non-experience? Or being -- anything that falls outside being is nothing.   

In any event, the cosmos is a shockingly different place than it was 13.8 billion years ago. Given where it was then and where it is today, it looks as if it has a "from-to" structure, except that the scientific revolution tossed out the "to," which renders the "from" unintelligible. As a result, "creation from nothing" is complemented by creation to nothing. And here we are.

To put it another way, scientism has jettisoned formal and final causation, leaving us with only a material and efficient causation that can tell us all about the How? but literally nothing about the Why? To even ask Why? assumes a telos that doesn't exist, so truly truly, existence is a bridge from and to nowhere. 

Unacceptable.

Agreed. If you're going to chuck the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), you had better have a sufficient reason for doing so. But what is their reason? Anybody? Gemini?

Quantum Mechanics: This is the most significant challenge. Certain interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that some events at the subatomic level are inherently probabilistic and lack a deterministic cause. For example, the exact moment of radioactive decay of an individual atom is considered unpredictable and without a prior determining factor in standard quantum theory. This apparent fundamental randomness seems to contradict the PSR.   

But that's just a limit on our ability to know, not a disproof of causation. Just because we can't determine the cause, this hardly means that things aren't caused or can be uncaused. The PSR it metaphysical, not empirical. It's an a priori truth, denial of which renders science itself impossible.

Fundamental Laws: Some argue that the fundamental laws of physics themselves might be brute facts, meaning they exist without a further reason or explanation. If the very rules governing the universe have no "why," it challenges the universality of the PSR.

Again, to say that things have no causes is to give to matter what can only obtain in God. In other words, they still have an Uncaused Cause, but it is arbitrarily displaced from God to the laws of physics. That's not cool.

You are correct. Science fundamentally relies on the idea that the universe is intelligible and that phenomena can be explained through laws and principles. The pursuit of scientific knowledge is driven by the desire to find reasons and causes for what we observe. Abandoning the PSR entirely could undermine this very pursuit. Many scientists still operate under the implicit assumption that there are reasons for things, even if we haven't yet discovered them.

Of course they do. Hypocrites.

Causality Remains Central: While quantum mechanics introduces probabilities, the concept of causality is still crucial in most areas of science. Scientists seek to understand how causes lead to effects, build models based on causal relationships, and use these relationships for prediction and intervention. 

Correct. Also correct:

The PSR is fundamentally a metaphysical principle. Science, as a methodological endeavor, focuses on building empirically supported models of how the universe works. While scientific findings can inform our philosophical views on the PSR, they don't necessarily "eliminate" a principle that operates at a different level of inquiry. 

So, don't let anybody steal your Why?, because it they do, they've rendered you absurd and imprisoned you in an unintelligible universe. But why? Again, what is the sufficient reason for denying the principle of sufficient reason?

Hatred of God?

Maybe at the beginning, but now it's just a bad habit. Or laziness. It's an inherited paradigm that people imagine is self-sufficient. In fact, like any ideology it ends up enclosing the intellect in a pseudo-intellectual matrix. But how can we even have an intellect without a sufficient reason? The intellect is only the most astonishing thing in all of existence, and you're telling me that it has no reason? Or that matter can be it's sufficient reason?

A little skepticism, please.

These thoughts were provoked by chapter twelve of The One and the Many, on The Extrinsic Causes of Being and Becoming. Here is some metaphysical common sense:

Every being must have the sufficient reason (i.e., the adequate grounding of its intelligibility) for its own existence, either (1) in itself, or (2) in another. Otherwise it would be totally unintelligible...

In other words, any effect "needs such and such a cause to explain it. The cause must be adequate to produce it, be able to explain it once it's there." 

If something exists, it was caused by another, for nothing can give existence to itself: "to do so it would have to pre-exist its own self, which is absurd" -- like saying that being comes from non-being, which is equally absurd and unintelligible. 

It's fine to posit a self-sufficient and necessary being, an uncaused cause, an unmoved mover, and all the rest. Just don't pretend it can be a contingent being located in the chain of causes and effects. 

Back to our evolving cosmos, Clarke highlights the same inexplicable (on their own level) ontological discontinuities I did in the book, so I'm glad someone else is on the case. Regarding the problem of evolution, he asks how it can possibly explain

the undeniable fact that often in the course of time the higher does emerge after, and in one sense from, the lower, as is clearly evident in the whole process of the evolution of life on our planet, with its slow, groping, but persistent movement upwards: from inanimate to plant life, from plant to animal, and finally from animal to human, with its rational intelligence, one following the other in time?

It happened, but how -- especially if we rule out formal and final causation, and limit ourselves to material and efficient? Living things are clearly teleological, but how does teleology enter a cosmos that is otherwise devoid of final causes? Clarke suggests -- and why not? -- that 

The intervention of higher-level causes on the immaterial level is needed here to supply an adequate sufficient reason. 

In particular, a reason for "the passage from the inanimate, from large molecules, to living cells, with their extremely complex ordering of many parts to a common end," then "the passage from plant life to conscious sense knowledge in animals," and "above all"

the transition from sense knowing in animals to rational self-conscious knowing in human beings, with its ability to transcend the whole order of spatially extended material properties by its powers of abstraction from space, time, and particular material conditions to form abstract universal concepts... that are not specifiable in any sense images or spatio-temporal terms at all...

Is it asking too much to expect a sufficient reason for these shocking developments? For an explanation that is proportionate to the phenomena? When we see "a major leap to something intrinsically higher on a qualitative level," aren't they just a little curious as to how this came about? Or are the discontinuous leaps really just continuous baby steps? 

If our world is full of open systems, why can't the cosmos itself be an open system? Who said it has to be closed and self-sufficient? What if creation is not a "one shot deal at the beginning of the universe" but an

open-ended operation unfolding constantly in the world, both supporting the active potentialities initially infused into nature and infusing new higher ones at crucial points along the way..., an intrinsic though hidden factor -- at once transcendent and immanent -- in the whole vast unfolding drama of what we call "Nature"...

Like a Great Attractor or something? Gemini, please summarize the argument while we pause and regroup:

In essence, the text is a passionate defense of the Principle of Sufficient Reason against what the author perceives as its unwarranted dismissal by certain scientific and philosophical viewpoints. It argues that the PSR is not merely a matter of intellectual preference but a fundamental requirement for intelligibility and that abandoning it leads to an absurd and ultimately unsatisfying understanding of the universe and our place within it. 

The author sees the qualitative leaps in cosmic and biological evolution as particularly strong evidence for the need to invoke more than just material and efficient causes, hinting at a deeper, perhaps even transcendent, reality at play.