Causality and Temporality: An Uneven Relation

Causality presupposes temporality---allow me to give an example: in searching for a cause of something, its arche, principle or beginning each account given includes time---same for astrophysics as biblical narratology; namely as seen in Big Bang Cosmology and in Genesis. Every quest for causality, to give an account, or reason for anything and everything; quasars, chipmunks, clouds, wars, etc...To ask  for its cause is to ask for a temporal account.

But temporality does not presuppose causality---this fine irony, this  disconnect, this uneven relation should be considered very carefully! All metaphysics and natural sciences are based upon these architectonic principles---and yet what has been left unthought is the unevenness for their relation. Causal accounts (logoi based upon archai and aitia (beginnings, principles and origins---all sense of the term cause---to give a reason is a to give a type of cause). Moreover, what is commonly known as reason and reasonability presupposes causality and in doing so  all the more presupposes temporality but temporality does not presuppose or "precede" causality.

One begins with temporality tout court, it is the ground.

The temporal sense of the Big Bang Cosmology enters when one reaches the idea of the Big Bang itself as an originator of temporal phenomenality in the cosmos. One naturally seeks an account of the cause of this purported 'first cause' but to no avail. Would you like Father George Le Maitre, physicist, philosopher, priest, and professor at Louvain University in Belgium conceive the Big Bang theory to give an account for God's creative fiat act: Let there be light.

Hence we must next consider the Genesis narrative. Big Bang Theory at least in Le Maitre's conception, presupposes God's Creative act. He is merely giving a physical, scientific account for what Genesis describes.

Notice the absurdity (groundlessness) of asking well what happened before the Big Bang, which yet presupposes a causal regress in search of a cause for the origin of temporality itself.  St. Augustine has presented this precise dilemma in a charming story in his Confessions: he comes upon a boy playing on the beach and he observes this little boy fetching and taking a cup of water and pouring this into a hole in the sand on the beach. Naturally the philosopher and phenomenologist asks: what are you doing little boy? "I am putting the ocean in to this hole in the sand!" Augustine said, "That's absurd!"

"No more absurd than you attempting to ask: What was God doing before he created the universe?"

Augustine tells this charming story in order to highlight the absurdity of asking for a temporal or causal account for the origin of time itself.

Well, we have been lead to a number of impasses (aporiai) here: time accounts for cause but cause cannot account for time. This is the uneven relation.

The Big Bang theory ends up being derivative from the Genesis account or at least we can say that the account given (this theory, this logos) ends up in a fundamental impasse---just as one can not pry beneath or before the first instant of time, and this is the case in both the Big Bang and Genesis accounts. One may ask which account is more adequate to the truth---the answer is as follows---for whatever account is given as the account of the origin of the universe, no matter how effectively the Big Bang theory accounts for subsequent temporality and spatial dimensionality, the scientific account resolves into a fatal, causal regress---it reveals a fundamental impasse for thinking the quest for cause ends with time as the ultimate logos of phenomenality, but no causal account can be given for time's coming-to-pass since all that cames-to-pass comes to pass temporally. It is therefore absurd and contradictory to attempt to describe "preconditions" of the Big Bang event--it is as absurd as Augustine's charming story of the little boy who would put the sea into a hole in the sand. So at least in this account---there is a principle to account for the coming-to-pass of the universe but one meets here the end of reason. and Not in a trivial way but the absolute limit of reason, reason being the giving of an account for the being of things as cause. Yes, both God's 'Fiat lux' as well as the Big Bang event give quasi-reasonable accounts for grounding the true account of the beginning of the universe in a first cause. Both accounts possess merit and yet, the Genesis account succeeds more both in terms of adequacy and in terms of economy (Occam's Razor: do not multiply entities without necessity))  because a narrative account offers an account of the creation of the universe without presupposing a causal regression into infinity. It does so thanks to a transcendence that Augustine identifies---One does not ask what God was doing before He Created the universe because the very notion of God is a a dynamic, living being, who is fully Person, and who speaks the universe into being.And this brings us back exactly to where we begin our inquiry today.

"Todayness is a point that punctuates infinity, " writes Robert Archer Smith. God's hic et nunc, God's presence is eternal, that is not temporal---George Le Maitre's Big Bang Theory reminds us that all causality can be provided for the universe save for the unique preconditions to the origin itself. One might say the universe is just there without any cause, But since reason is evidently the same as giving a cause for the coming-to-be of anything---its seems counterproductive to guarantee the coming into being of the entire material universe with a principle that in itself is not reasonable or susceptible to the use of reason as giving cause which science presupposes. Nonetheless this is precisely the absurd impasse that Big Bang Cosmology brings us to---the Big Bang event just happened and no further account can be given, no additional why. One may assert: Well that's the way it is with Genesis as well---its narrative presupposes God.

Of the two----nothingness (abyss) and God, the latter is a more adequate account for the coming-into-being of the material universe. And indeed, as was Father LeMaitre's intention, it is to conflate both accounts. Thus the ideal account may include aspects of Big Bang Cosmology but only insofar as this cosmology rests with a transcendent, living and personal Creator, whose evidence is still present even now as I say "I am writing," and my reader says "I am reading this." To say 'I am' is evidence of the presence of the living, personal God whose creative act grounds reason and causal accounts of the coming to be of the universe. It grounds the causal regress of reason in a transcendent personal 'I am"---thus what survives the Big Bang as it were is not only the physical universal process, is eternity. The hic et nunc of the Creator remains---my personal act of coming to awareness of this presence is the substance and evidence of unchanging eternity. But the universe always arrives to a somebody in todayness. Dear reader, it is the same with our today. This present moment spearheads todayness, the same today in which God speaks the universe: I am aware of this God's day! I give thanks for this awareness. Giving thanks is the adequate response to this gift of today which stretches all the way back, hic et nunc, to the Divine 'Fiat lux'. 15 billion Light Years ago, or five seconds ago. All of these times are held together and contained in one time this is todayness!

The Relation of Level of Soul and human understanding

This idea came to me today---I do not know how to express it---at risk of being confused I will just try to write the idea---sketch it.

Pardon me if I make preliminary remark:
The background I expect of my reader: a basic knowledge of Aristotle's book on the soul (De Anima)---and in particular, the insight that souls are purely figurative and allegorical---it is the best approximation or adequation of human knowing to the actual state of affairs under inquiry. The actual essence and truth concerning the soul can never be stated simply because it is the soul that is doing the thinking in the first place. The correct order of the investigation is hence, "I am I find myself first of in thinking---this act of thinking is evidence  of a truth that may be expressed verbally but I am not under the illusion that my account is the substantive truth of the actual phenomenal evidence --- the truth is the source and beginning of my investigation---it is the awakening of this question which begins the move of thinking toward understanding.

Be this as it may: it is soul that gives understanding to human beings---this phenomenal act is is not a thing, we must not hypostasize it---it is not somehow imbedded in algorithms, quanta, or neural connectivity or any materialistic reduction of the act of understanding which dear reader may I remind you that you too are engaged hic et nunc in the act of understanding that is, reading with understanding!

Understanding rises as it were from the level of the mineral through the vegetative and into the animal or mammal soul. It is also evident that in the material world---certain animals possess capacities that are not shared equally amongst all levels of soul---for example the worm has a far greater capacity to move than does a mineral, though there may be 'movement' even at the level of the mineral---think of the crystal's glacially slow movement---if soul means the cause of motion within a particular kind of being---the human being moves toward the store because he or she has decided to get a 6 pack of beer----the worm moves as it were blindly wriggling its way toward ??? the amoebic protoplasm moves away from a toxic chemical injected into its environs. The 'principle of motion' is what Aristotle calls 'psukhe' which is rendered in latin as 'anima'----motion starts, has a cause, begins---but how? It is different in each case and each case must be considered carefully and individually in order to be understood properly. (The proper method for the study of nature is analog observations using eyes and ears---the method is phenomenological---one describes the coming to be of that which is coming to be and passing away.

You read this essay and you can take my word as evidence of my honesty but at the end of the day you know and understand the truth not because you read it in this essay, it is true because you may obtain evidence of the same phenomenal truth by conducting the same method of investigation where all substantives are held at bay, methodically---Husserl called this 'bracketing'---when I mentioned above that I am using the term 'soul' and yet I am not hypostasizing this soul as a thing---it is not a thing! It is the soul that first of is thinking, that is conducting this investigation. The act of thinking is immediately present from the very beginning of any inquiry I dare to make in to whatever realm of understanding nature, the soul is coextensive with any investigation whatsoever. This is what Thomas Aquinas means by saying "the soul is in some sense all things." All of this by way of introduction.


Now here is the insight that I had this morning: the meaning of human existence is not to be found on "higher" levels of the soul. Meaning arises as understanding does---from below. It begins in the nascent cosmos be it 15 billion light years or right now in the eye's next blink. Understanding in a simple way manifests itself as order in a crystalline formation, evidence of a "mineral soul"?
But charting the "ascent" of higher levels of reasoning through primitive mineral levels, up through the vegetative soul and up to the mammal soul, finally to the level of the human soul.One familiar with Teilhard de Chardin's book called the Phenomenon of Man can grasp this easily. The insight of this morning is that understanding and meaning arises from the "lower" souls' (mammal, vegetable, mineral, and as many more as there may be. It is not necessary to seek a transcendent source of thinking---the earth thinks man through and through!