Is the Universe on Our Side?

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-125
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Ultimate Question ◽  
Cultural Entity ◽  
The Universe

America cannot go on this way without risking the end of constitutional democracy. We have already entered post-liberalism. But there is something to be done. We can launch a new story, and thus begin to recover normal public life, by asking the ultimate question bequeathed to us by Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? Asking an ultimate question restores faith in questioning itself. That kind of questioning ends the Age of Evasion. We ask Lonergan’s question through a loose cultural entity he called “cosmopolis.” As long as we agree to live by our answer to this question, even a no can contribute to the healing of American public life.

The Universe Is on Our Side

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
The Universe

There has been a breakdown in American public life that no election can fix. Americans cannot even converse about politics. All the usual explanations for our condition have failed to make things better. Bruce Ledewitz shows that America is living with the consequences of the Death of God, which Friedrich Nietzsche knew would be momentous and irreversible. God was this culture’s story of the meaning of our lives. Even atheists had substitutes for God, like inevitable progress. Now we have no story and do not even think about the nature of reality. That is why we are angry and despairing. America’s future requires that we begin a new story by each of us asking a question posed by theologian Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? When we commit to live honestly and fully by our answer to that question, even if our immediate answer is no, America will begin to heal. Beyond that, pondering the question of the universe will allow us to see that there is more to the universe than blind forces and dead matter. Guided by the naturalism of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, and the historical faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we can learn to trust that the universe bends toward justice and our welfare. That conclusion will complete our healing and restore faith in American public life. We can live without God, but not without thinking about holiness in the universe.

Restored Public Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-180
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
The Common ◽  
Cultural Entity ◽  
The University ◽  
The Universe

When we live in the yes, public life in America will be rescued from despair. We know from the Hispanic community’s example that religious knowledge of our place in the universe is healthy. The yes functions similarly. At the personal level, the reader who answers Lonergan’s question with a yes will encounter celebration, gratitude, and, because we have not lived up to the direction of the universe, confession. The universe now offers correction that must be taken seriously, though not coercively or institutionally. The yes spreads through the cultural entity of cosmopolis, which will confront our nihilism. The disciplines and the university will be renewed by a new understanding of the unity of all subject matters. Each course of study, though different, is always of a universe that is on our side. Policy debates will consider the common good. Politics will be filled with meaning and be more generous.

Does This Bring Us Back to God?

2021 ◽  
pp. 181-192
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Causal Structure ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Process Thought ◽  
Traditional Theism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
The Universe

The book returns to the question of God within the world of the yes. The reader is given tools to continue the investigation, but no final conclusion is reached on the question of God. David Griffin’s process thought is naturalistic and panentheistic. This view of God shares attributes of traditional theism. But in process thought, God does not create ex nihilo, does not coerce, and remains within the causal structure of nature. Griffin argues that God is a necessary feature of process thought and its endorsement of enduring meaning. Donald Sherburne offers a different view, called “Whitehead Without God.” The book concludes that process thought without God can still renew public life. It remains for us in the future to investigate the mystery of holiness in the universe.

Objective Chance: Lonergan and Peirce on Scientific Generalization

1996 ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Vincent G. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Objective Chance ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Universe

This chapter delves into the important issues of substantial unity and the foundations of knowledge. It argues that the views of Bernard Lonergan and Charles Sanders Peirce concerning world process are strikingly similar. Both outline an evolutionary cosmology that pays attention to both the law-like and the chance elements required to think of the universe as developing. Both reject the notion that the universe is mechanistically determined even if it is ordered. Both look upon “chance” as an objective component of the universe, not merely as a cloak for ignorance. The remarkable convergence of ideas of two thinkers separated by almost a century not only illuminates their place in intellectual history but, more importantly, adds an extrinsic confirmation of a cosmological view that takes motion and change seriously.

No, the Universe Is Not on Our Side

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
The Earth ◽  
John Gray ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Entropy Of The Universe ◽  
The Way

In the 1990 “pale blue dot” photograph that Carl Sagan asked NASA to take, we see the potential of a negative answer to Bernard Lonergan’s question to renew American public life. For Sagan, the isolation of the Earth in the cosmic vastness “underscores our responsibility to deal kindly with each other” and preserve our planet. The conclusion that the universe is not on our side is supported by numerous features of reality: lifeless matter, knowledge limited to the senses, death, decline, the vagaries of history, entropy of the universe, and more. We can accept living in this no. The universe is not hostile, merely neutral. Several thinkers show the way forward, especially John Gray. We can practice Simon Critchley’s faith of the faithless. The instrumental thought of Randy Barnett demonstrates how to construct healthy institutions. Anthony Kronman reminds us that our lives are meaningful only because of our mortality.

Faithless American Public Life

2021 ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Universe

The crisis in American public life is our own doing. The underlying power of truth is unaffected. The manifestations of the crisis are that Americans now lack faith in everything. We feel the universe does not care about our purposes, so we lose confidence in purpose itself. We cannot justify being good without God. We do not trust expertise. We lack faith in the future. We lack faith in the disciplines. In law, Arthur Leff’s writing shows the depth of our lack of faith. Even religion and science are undermined. Our lack of faith is both internal—participants in these endeavors have lost faith in them—and external—the public has lost faith in these endeavors.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Bruce Ledewitz
Keyword(s):  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Universe

In 1972, the Canadian Jesuit theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan asked a question, in two parts, that he thought every human being must ultimately answer: Is the universe on our side, or are we just gamblers and, if we are gamblers, are we not perhaps fools, individually struggling for authenticity and collectively endeavoring to snatch progress from the ever-mounting welter of decline? . . . Does there or does there not necessarily exist a transcendent, intelligent ground of the universe?...

Decoding Reality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlatko Vedral
Keyword(s):  
Modern Science ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Quantum Computers ◽  
The World ◽  
Big Ideas ◽  
Nature Of Information ◽  
Action At A Distance ◽  
Ultimate Question ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
The Universe

For a physicist, all the world is information. The Universe and its workings are the ebb and flow of information. We are all transient patterns of information, passing on the recipe for our basic forms to future generations using a four-letter digital code called DNA. In this engaging and mind-stretching account, Vlatko Vedral considers some of the deepest questions about the Universe and considers the implications of interpreting it in terms of information. He explains the nature of information, the idea of entropy, and the roots of this thinking in thermodynamics. He describes the bizarre effects of quantum behaviour -- effects such as 'entanglement', which Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance', and explores cutting edge work on harnessing quantum effects in hyperfast quantum computers, and how recent evidence suggests that the weirdness of the quantum world, once thought limited to the tiniest scales, may reach into the macro world. Vedral finishes by considering the answer to the ultimate question: where did all of the information in the Universe come from? The answers he considers are exhilarating, drawing upon the work of distinguished physicist John Wheeler. The ideas challenge our concept of the nature of particles, of time, of determinism, and of reality itself. This edition includes a new foreword from the author, reflecting on changes in the world of quantum information since first publication. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

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