0001 Is the current scientific consensus on human origins at odds with core theological doctrines at the heart of the evangelical faith?
You bet it is.
0002 Well, is this a blessing in disguise?
It may well be.
How so?
0003 When science clashes with key theological doctrines, such as Augustine’s doctrine of original sin, Christians may need to strive for better theological essentials.
0004 Does the same apply to science?
Can I say, “When the theological doctrine of original sin pushes back against our current consensus on the evolutionary sciences, researchers may need to search for better scientific essentials.”?
0005 On December 11, 2019, Jeff Hardin, member of the Department of Integrative Biology at UW-Madison, publishes his essay, Biology and Theological Anthropology: Friend or Foe?, on the Biologos website.
In the introduction, he joins British neuroscientist, Donald McKay, in asking (more or less), “Does God give us Darwin, Mendel and Rawlinson in order to achieve a less improper interpretation of His Word?”
0006 At the same time, one cannot ignore a reflection.
Does God give us the Bible in order to achieve a less improper interpretation of human natural history, genetics and Near Eastern Literature?
0007 Jeff Hardin, unlike most writers on this confounding topic, does not hide the question in the mirror.
0008 In order to appreciate how science and metaphysics mirror one another, I turn to Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy (available at the smashwords website under the Empirio-schematic series).
Science is successfully born at the start of the modern age, with the formulation of the Positivist’s judgment.
What is a judgment?
A judgment is a relation between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’. When the elements are assigned to Peirce’s categories, the judgment becomes actionable. Actionable judgments unfold into category-based nested forms.
0009 Here is a diagram of the Positivist’s judgment.
0010 The positivist intellect, the relation, insists on a rule: No metaphysics. Surely, this is one reason why scientific inquiry into human evolution grates against theological anthropology.
What ought to be is an empirio-schematic judgment.
Disciplinary language (relation) brings observations and measurements (what is) into relation with mathematical and mechanical models (what ought to be).
0011 What is what is?
What is has the structure of Peirce’s secondness. The category of secondness is the realm of actuality. Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.
Here, the two real elements, a noumenon and its phenomena, belong to firstness, the realm of potential. The noumenon, the thing itself, has the potential of capturing the attention of the positivist intellect. Itsphenomena, observable and measurable facets of the thing, have the potential of activating an empirio-schematic judgment.
The contiguity is most curious. I place the contiguity in brackets. A noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena.
0012 Centuries ago, the scholastic hylomorphe, matter [substantiates] form, occupies the slot of what is for a rational intellect.
The positivist rule dissolves this hylomorphe and precipitates another dyad, a noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena.
The noumenon is the thing itself.
Phenomena are observable and measurable facets of the noumenon.
The original hylomorphe gets shuffled into the noumenon.
Why?
The positivist intellect has a rule.
0013 Here is a picture.
0014 I ask, “What is it to be a human being?”
Obviously, the relevant answer points to the noumenon.
So, I should look to metaphysics.
0015 But, the positivist intellect says, “No metaphysics is allowed.”
Scientists are only interested in the observable and measurable facets of matter [substantiates] form, as well as of body [substantiates] soul. They are not concerned about the noumenon. Their observations may be mechanically modeled. Their measurements may be mathematically construed. Their models rely on the lingo of specialized disciplines.
Scientists engage in empirio-schematic judgments, the what ought to be of the Positivist’s judgment.
0016 Okay, if this makes sense, then the dyad, expressing what is for the Positivist judgment, provides a way to appreciate the mirroring of the question raised by Jeff Hardin.
0017 The distinction between a noumenon and its phenomena is valuable because it allows scientists to study phenomena, while ignoring the metaphysics associated with their noumenon.
So, while many inquirers ask noumenal questions, “Where did we humans come from? What went wrong? What is the cure?”, the scientific answers are based on clues concerning what would be the observable and measurable facets of hominin evolution as witnessed by a disinterested observer.
0018 Here is an association between modern versions of theological & biological anthropology and what is for the Positivist’s judgment.
0019 What do scientists look for?
Evolutionary scientists look for clues. Then, they analyze those clues with specific models built by empirical scientists and geneticists. The clues turn into observable and measurable features of the evolutionary record that may be then analyzed according to models proposed by biologists and natural historians. The result is a narrative of hominin evolution.
The evolutionary record is a product of scientific inquiry. It is expressed as a narrative.
0020 This conclusion is implicit in Hardin’s treatment of human natural history. He presents a narrative.
What does this imply?
Human evolutionary sciences are forensic sciences. They rely on theories by the empirical and natural sciences. They are devoted to producing a narrative describingwhat happened, in accordance with the positivist rule.
0021 The empirical sciences have it easy. They assume that the subject of inquiry is real, because they encounter the things themselves.
Empiricists know that the thing itself cannot be reduced to its observable and measurable facets.
0022 The forensic scientists have a more difficult time. They assume that the subject of inquiry ought to be real, but the thing itself is no longer present. They must construct a narrative about what the subject of inquirymust have been, as if it could be observed by a disinterested observer. Clues are studied in order to ascertain the phenomena that would have been observed. Then, these forensic-built phenomena are subject to an empirio-schematic judgment.
Hardin addresses this construction in a section on science and human origins.
0023 The rational mind must wonder, “Is human evolution nothing more than a narrative that scientists build from phenomena rigorously constructed from various clues?”
If that is true, then the noumenon of human evolution can be objectified by its phenomena, violating the structure of the Positivist’s what is.
0024 Is this rather disorienting?
Obviously, we cannot appreciate human evolution as a noumenon, because the thing itself is no longer present for direct examination.
So, the evolutionary sciences formulate what the phenomena of human evolution must be.
They end up providing a narrative.
Yet, this scientific narrative cannot give us an appreciation of what it is to be an evolved human, even though our sense of what is it to be human evolved.
0025 Even worse, what if humans evolved to pay attention to noumena?
Such a proposal explains why classicists and believers come up with hylomorphic descriptions of things and people in the first place.
Such a proposal accounts for why a narrative is relevant.
0026 The unsettling end to the prior blog shows where Jeff Hardin’s discussion can go.
Hardin poses one question. A second question mirrors the first. The transit from one question to the other turns everything backwards. One question reflects phenomena onto their noumenon. The other reflects a noumenon onto its phenomena.
Scientists study phenomena. Their data makes sleepiness great.
Humans pay attention to noumena. Our attentiveness is likely innate.
0027 We want to hear a narrative about the thing itself. Forget about the empirio-schematic judgments about its phenomena.
Evolution, as a forensic science, offers a data-driven narrative. But, it’s really a projection of models onto the thing itself. So, the story from phenomena inherently violates the dyad of what is in the Positivist’s judgment.
So, it will never satisfy. It will never offer me a way to appreciate who I am.
0028 I am a tarnished image of God.
The Bible offers a narrative, which many call “special revelation”. Special revelation captures our attention. Reading the words bring us into awareness of the thing itself.
0029 Hardin offers the following picture.
Hardin argues that the narratives of the evolutionary sciences provide constraints on interpretations of what it is to be human from Genesis.
0030 The following is a particularly important application.
0031 In the next blog, I will look at the same argument in the mirror within the heart of Hardin’s essay.
0042 Jeff Hardin suggests that Biblical interpretation and scientific interpretation should move in tandem.
There are three postmodern lines that bind them.
They appear in the following diagram.
0043 The three strands are the Lebenswelt that we evolved in,our current Lebenswelt, and the transition between the two.
Amazingly, this binding is already on display in three masterworks by Razie Mah… er… this commentator.
How so?
I start with the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
0044 Here is an interpretation of the Bible.
The Creation Story is a sign of the evolutionary record. Just as various Genesis days unfold and build on one another, the evolution of our planet evolves through ages. The construction of the tent of the heavens and the earth is like a stained glass window looking out onto the evolution of our world.
What does the Creation Story tell me about what it is to be human?
Only with the appearance of the intention of man does the spirit find a home in the material world. The human soul informs the human body. The human body substantiates the human soul. Our lineage comes into existence as images of God.
0045 This describes a noumenon. What about its phenomena?
This noumenon calls for a new approach to evolutionary science.
The fish have an ultimate niche: the potential of water. The birds have an ultimate niche: the potential of air. Water and air are material actualities independent of the adapting species.
0046 What about our ancestors?
Hominins have an ultimate niche: the potential of triadic relations. Triadic relations are real, yet immaterial. They are independent of the adapting species. Triadic relations cannot be reduced to material and instrumental causalities. Yet, they entangle them.
Humans adapt into the niche of triadic relations.
0047 This claim stands at the center of A Course on the Human Niche, which is available at smashwords.
The course begins with A Primer on Natural Signs, proceeds to four commentaries on recent publications on human evolution, then concludes with the masterwork, The Human Niche.
This course is a comprehensive alternative to current Positivist constructions of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Theological anthropology [cannot be objectified as] biological anthropology, but the two can move together.
0074 Jeff Hardin calls for theological interpretation of the Bible and scientific inquiry into human evolution to move in tandem.
In doing so, he unknowingly struggles with the Positivist judgment and offers us a post-Positivist alternative.
Here is a picture.
0075 If Hardin’s appeal prevails, then the metaphysics of the Bible offers a noumenon that supports phenomena studied in the human sciences.
Clearly, phenomena alone are insufficient to reveal our particular noumenon. How can changes in settlement patterns, innovation, and all the other little clues to the potentiation of unconstrained social complexity, produce a revelation that humanity is a recent creation by the divine?
Once the thing itself is intimated by the written origin stories of the ancient Near East, particularly the Biblical stories in Genesis,the human imagination may find a path to the hypothesis of the first singularity.
The noumenon, the thing itself, is necessary in order for there to be phenomena, observable and measurable facets. Yet, the noumenon cannot be objectified by its phenomena.
For centuries, empirical scientists ignore the noumenon and treat it as an impediment to their struggle for scientific results. That attitude continues to pervade the modern disciplines of anthropology, psychology and sociology. But, it cannot hold.
0076 Why?
Humans innately recognize noumena as sources of signification.
Our lineage adapts into the niche of triadic relations, which includes signs, mediations, judgments and category-based nested forms.
0077 Then, our Lebenswelt changes. We forget who we were. We fashion fairy tales of who we are. These fairy tales include public mythologies of the ancient Near East, written in cuneiform on clay tablets that are preserved in burnt ruins of long forgotten capitals. These public mythologies agree with the stories of Adam and Eve in the Bible. Humans are recently manufactured by the spiritual realm.
Here is a noumenon that cannot be objectified by its phenomena.
Yet, phenomena exist only because of their noumenon.
The noumenon and its phenomena both point to a recent prehistoric change from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.
0078 The rule of the positivist intellect cannot contain the human sciences.
Theology and the human sciences must move in tandem.
0079 Jeff Harden follows his appeal with summaries of faithful Christian approaches to human origins. These approaches include models of existential recapitulation, of protohistory, of representative ancient ancestors, of recently, elected representatives and of genealogies, as opposed to genetics.
None of these are adequate.
0080 Why?
They do not fit the fairy tales about Adam and Eve.
0076 In this look at Hardin’s article, another option appears. It appears as a mirror image of his opening question. It asks, “Why doesn’t evolutionary science recognize a twist in human evolution?”
The answer wonders, “Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?“
The hypothesis of the first singularity is a scientific mechanism that works as an adjunct to theological formulations.
Indeed, we come to a new age of understanding, which the late John Deely, calls “The Age of Triadic Relations”.
0077 Here is a picture of three masterworks and their corresponding periods in human evolution.
0078 My thanks to Jeff Hardin, Chair, Biologos Board of Directors, for his mind-opening essay.
0001 Daniel Turbon, hailing from the University of Barcelona, publishes an article in the journal, Scientia et Fides(8(2)/2020, pages 65-94). The essay is available online. The full title is “The Distinctive Character of the Human Being in Evolution”. I place only the second focus in the header of my comments, while noting that the first character cannot be ignored.
0002 When I look at this essay, what do I see?
Does the title translate into a category-based nested form?
Here is a diagram, following the script in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.
Figure 1
0003 Each of the above terms constitute an empty slot.
So, I ask, “How would words in the entire title correspond to the above empty slots?”
My answer is necessarily both speculative and synthetic.
The normal context3 is evolution3.
The actuality2 is (the origin of) human beings2.
The potential1 is a distinctive character1.
0004 The resulting application looks like this.
Figure 2
0005 The category-based nested form contains four statements. The fourth is paradigmatic: The normal context of evolution3 brings the actuality of the origin of the human being2 into relation with the potential of a distinctive character1.
When I read the title of Daniel Turbon’s article, this is what I see.
0006 From the prior blog, I know that evolution3 is the normal context for Turbon’s article. The logics of the normal context include exclusion, complement and alignment. One normal context will tend to exclude, complement or align with another.
Turbon’s abstract ends with a plea that is not re-iterated in the body of the article. As scientists labor to “cook up” human natural history, they must strive to ensure that the essence of human evolution does not become “indigestible”.
0007 What on earth does this mean?
Do humans evolve to grasp metaphors?
Or, do humans adapt into the niche of grasping essentials?
0008 Does scientific inquiry into our natural history3 exclude human intuition3?
Of course it3 does.
A simple substitution shows as much, as shown below.
Figure 3
0008 To me, the crux of Daniel Turbon’s entire article is captured by the last sentence of the abstract.The normal context of human intuition3 (guided by philosophy) ought to be able to digest what the normal context of evolution3 (guided by science) provides.
