The Writings of Charles De Koninck

Volume 1

Charles De Koninck, Ralph McInerny

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780268015039, 9780268025953
• eBook ISBN: 9780268077914
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

The Writings of Charles De Koninck, volumes 1 and 2, present the first English editions of collected works of the Catholic Thomist philosopher Charles De Koninck (1906–1965). Ralph McInerny (1929–2010) was the project editor and prepared the excellent translations. Volume 1 contains writings ranging from De Koninck's 1934 dissertation at the University of Louvain on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington, to two remarkable early essays on indeterminism and the unpublished book The Cosmos. The short essay "Are the Experimental Sciences Distinct from the Philosophy of Nature?" demonstrates for the first time De Koninck's distinctive view on the relation between philosophy of nature and the experimental sciences. Volume 1 also includes a comprehensive introductory essay by Leslie Armour outlining the structure and themes of De Koninck's philosophy, and a biographical essay by De Koninck's son, Thomas.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON

Thesis presented to the Cardinal Mercier Institute of Louvain for the obtention of the doctorate in philosophy

Charles De Koninck
1934

THE COSMOS

1936

ONE

From a Scientific Point of View

Aestimabat abyssum quasi senescentem.

—Job 42:21

1. The Universe in Expansion

Einstein, in his celebrated theory of relativity, shows an entire universe in profile: a universe closed on itself, its total volume finite, but without limits like the surface of an egg. We thus rid our minds of the vague diffused infinite that obsessed the imagination of our fathers, and which has exercised such a profound influence on romantic literature. In the new physical theory of Einstein, we make a tour of space.

The genial theory of the expansion of the universe of the young abbé Georges Lemaître, a theory explanatory of the constant evolution of the astronomical world, not only describes for us a universe bent into itself in space and time, it leads us to the beginning of time.

The principal experimental basis for this theory is given us by the recession of nebulous spirals, some of which move away from us with a speed many thousands of miles per second.1 This flight of the nebulae will be an indication of an evolution of the universe by expansion. They will depart proportionally from one another like points on the surface of an inflated rubber balloon. Lemaître estimates at only a dozen billion years the entire duration of this evolution of the universe such as we know it today.

The traditional cosmogonies of Laplace and Kant posed, as point of departure for this evolution, a diffuse nebula filling space and progressively condensing into partial nebula, then into stars. To this evolution of the diffuse to the condensed, Lemaître opposes an inverse evolution of the diffuse by brusque and prodigious explosions.

At the beginning, the entire universe finds itself condensed into a sort of giant primitive atom, containing in a state of extreme concentration all the matter now diffused. The primitive nebula would be formed from fragments of that primitive atom which exploded. “The rapid expansion of the primitive nebula resembles rather the smoke produced by some colossal explosion, by a sort of gigantic artificial firework having dispersed, at the same time as space, the matter primitively condensed.”2

Two forces3 rule the evolution of the universe: the gravity by which bodies attract one another and the cosmic repulsion (its measure is designated by the symbol λ, and is called a cosmological constant), which tends to distance bodies proportionally from one another. Gravity tends to maintain or diminish the radius of the universe; cosmic repulsion tends to increase it. When the two forces are neutralized, the universe is in a state of equilibrium.4

The phenomenon of the recessions of nebulae allows us to affirm that cosmic repulsion has gained the upper hand. But once it has taken the upper hand it will maintain it, since the attraction of gravity lessens by reason of the growing distance which separates the bodies dispersed by repulsion.

We can conceive that space began with the primitive atom and the beginning of space marked the beginning of time. The radius of space began from zero; the first stages of expansion consisted in a rapid expansion determined by the mass of the initial atom, equal to just about the actual mass of the universe. If this mass is sufficient, and the estimate that we have been able to make suggests that it is indeed such, the initial expansion was sufficient to permit the radius to surpass the value of the radius of the equiliberate.5

Nonetheless, it is the braking exercised by the force of gravity that explains the formation of nebulae from the matter left in a homogenous fashion by a first explosion.

But this homogeneity can only be global. Indeed, both the density and the speed of expansion will vary a little from one region to another. It is easy to take into account that these local fluctuations will have little importance as long as the speed of expansion is great.

It will not be the same during a period of slowing. If in a particular region matter is a little more dense than usual, the attraction of gravity will be greater and it could happen that the expansion would be arrested a little sooner or that attraction again takes the upper hand from cosmic repulsion.

During the second period of expansion, matter will be agglomerated in places; it is the system of conglomerations that will stretch itself out; the conglomerations will separate themselves from one another. We will obtain a state of things that very much resembles the real universe where matter is agglomerated into dispersing nebulae.

We are thus led to identify these agglomerations with the nebulae. Hubble has been able to estimate that the mass of the average nebula is in the neighborhood of a billion suns.6

These agglomerations, increasing their relative distances by their concentration, at the same time create conditions advantageous for the cosmic repulsion which speeds it up, thus giving birth to the third stage of the evolution of the universe which has so accelerated as to attain its actual value—the first stage being constituted by the rapid expansion from the primitive atom, and separated from the third by a period of slowing down during which the nebulae are formed.

A word more on the formation of suns in the interior of the nebula. Suppose that the matter of the nebula existed

under the form of meteorites of dust, or gas in free circulation of sufficiently small average, one can see that shocks will be inevitable. These things would have absorbed the kinetic energy and progressively impede the nebulae from rebounding.

At the same time these shocks will have agglomerated matter into considerable and warm masses, that is, the stars.

The nebula will be the crucible in which the stars are agglomerated.7

2. The Formation of Planetary Systems8

The existence of double stars is a perfectly normal phenomenon. A star gives birth to a double star when, by its rotation or by the exaggerated pressure of its heat, it breaks into two spheres which remain coupled.

The distances that separate the two million suns circulating in our galaxy are so vast that one can compare them to the dimensions of our terrestrial globe inside which fly about four tennis balls. The risk of a collision is so low that normally a star can count on traveling without danger throughout its whole existence. However, if the risk of an accident is negligible for any given star individually, it is far from being nil.

Our sun must have been victim of one of those rare celestial catastrophes: it is to such a collision that we owe the formation of the little planet we inhabit. A more massive star came too close to our sun, bringing to its surface an enormous flood of matter. (Think of the tides caused by the moon.) This shaft of matter extracted from the sun circled around it and as it cooled it was cut into small globes, one of them ours.

It is thanks to such accidents that life is possible in the universe. As long as matter remained agglomerated in enormous masses, as in the stars, it is maintained at a temperature of ten million degrees and more. The lower temperature and the atmosphere which are the conditions of life exist only on a few rare planets. The existence of life on other planets actually has no scientific proof in its favor.9

3. Chemical Elements and Preparation for Life

Lately come in the universe, we find the 92 chemical elements already constructed. But no doubt they resulted from an evolution whose history remains almost unknown. We know that their differences are pronounced in the relatively cooled regions of the universe, and in this regard we on earth are especially privileged.

All are constructed on the basis of simpler elements forming structures which from the point of view of the elements differ only numerically. Thus, the chemical properties of the 79th body (gold) arise from its capacity to group around itself 79 negative electrons, whereas the 82nd (lead) has 82.

From a biological point of view, it is the number 6 that is the privileged number: carbon, which gathers around its nucleus 6 negative electrons. While the other atoms form small chains of 2 to 10 members, the carbon atoms assemble by the millions. It is these complex edifices which furnish us the matter necessary for life.

4. The Degradation of the Physical Universe10

The pre-astronomic state of the universe can be considered a state of extreme concentration and physical organization. When it is said that no energy in the universe can be lost, a most important distinction must be made. A liter of water at 0 degrees and a liter of water of 100 degrees when mixed will level to a temperature of 50 degrees. However, although the sum of the calories of the mixture is preserved (first law of thermodynamics: the conservation of energy), it is impossible to reestablish the initial disymmetry of 0 degrees and 100 degrees by means of the calories of the mixture. (Second principle of thermodynamics: the irreversibility of utilized energy). As Eddington says, “When Humpty Dumpty had a great fall ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.’”

Without the numerical value of the total energy of the universe being lessened, its utilization changes in an irreparable fashion. Whatever happens in the universe is done at the expense of energy: the fall of a stone, the flight of a fly, the flow of rivers, the movement of the stars. Energy is not annihilated, it is disorganized. This degradation of energy introduces into the physical world a growing disorder which at the same time is an impoverishing equilibrium.

It is the irreversible direction taken by this progressive denouement which gives time its arrow, its unique direction. The measure of the disorder of the growing chance which leads to the utilization of energy is called entropy. It is entropy that allows us to discern the flow of the universe.

Time bears the universe toward a state of complete exhaustion: thermodynamic equilibrium whose image resembles that provided by the partisans of the primitive nebula, diffused, homogeneous, and uniformly distributed in space.

5. The Degradation of Energy and the Expansion of the Universe

A constant relation exists between the law of degradation and the expansion of the universe: the entropy of the universe is proportional to its volume. The scattering of energy permits the growth of the universe: more and more space is needed for the increasing disorder. A building toy cannot be put into its box unless all its parts have been put in order. “The increase of entropy which characterizes the direction of evolution is the progressive fragmentation of the energy which existed at the beginning in a single package.”11

While the expansion of a given gentleman can only come about thanks to borrowing from his milieu, the expansion of the universe, since it is not in a milieu—it is its own place—cannot come about at the expense of a milieu. There are for it no reserves of space and time: it cannot borrow volume from some volume. It cannot make a snowball. It must inflate from its own substance like a soap bubble.

The tumbling down of the universe ought to bring something new, but a ‘new’ that must be drawn from the interior of the universe. (Still, the idea of the future is not only a logical dilution of the present.) This ‘new’ cannot be spatio-temporally determined in the present world unless the new were always present and time did not advance. The new of the future can only be true in the present possibility of a future disorder. The denouement of the present order is a condition of the new. But all that involves a certain dose of indetermination in the present with respect to the future. It is this indetermination that makes the physical world malleable to life.12

6. Physical Disorganization and Biological Organization

Just as a building toy is not made in order to remain in a box, but to make little houses, the physical universe, too, serves for a higher end that it approaches by losing its initial state of organization. (See 3 above.) The universe unpacks its matter with a view to a higher construction.

While the physicist observes in the physical world a greater and greater disorganization and diffusion, the biologist encounters living islands heading toward a more and more elevated organization, toward a more intense concentration. Life seems to progress against the grain and at the expense of the current of degradation that carries the physical world toward extinction, like trout or salmon which climb the current of the rapids.

Its ascending impulse vegetates on the physical universe and consumes it. Nutrition, assimilative and enriching from the biological point of view, is combustion from the physical point of view. One might say that the inorganic universe is assumed into life by sacrificing itself to it. It disappears before life.

In a general fashion, these two opposed currents can serve as an experimental basis for distinguishing biology from experimental physics.

The vegetal borrows directly from air, water, and earth the elements necessary for its maintenance under their mineral form. The animal, on the contrary, can nourish itself from these elements only if they have been fixed for it in organic substances by plants or animals.13 The forms of higher lives vegetate on the lower forms. Lower living things feed the higher. Life is organized by disorganizing that which is lower than the level attained.

7. The Physical World and the Biological World

All the beings we encounter on earth are composed of atoms: rocks, potatoes, dogs, prime ministers, etc. But atoms are physical entities. Therefore all living beings are composed of purely physical elements.

Yes. But, while covering all the beings of our universe from the physical point of view, that does not mean to say that the physical point of view covers the whole of beings—that it is an exclusive and exhaustive point of view.

Nothing of the living goes counter to the principle of the conservation of energy. The atoms of a gentleman are as truly physical atoms as those of a rock. But the atoms are not parts of beings as bricks are of a house. The physical world is a metric and extrinsic aspect of the world. Atoms exist in the way a smile does.14

How to distinguish the biological world from the physical world? Life is not inserted into the physical world like a wedge. They are not distinct like two juxtaposed or superposed things. A living being is not opposed to a physical being, but to a non-living being. A physical being can be either living or non-living.

Most authors always confuse the physical world with the inorganic world. But this confusion can be explained. Although from the experimental point of view physical laws sufficiently explain inorganic phenomena, these same laws, while being verified in the living being, do not suffice to expl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• The Philosophy of Charles De Koninck
• Charles De Koninck: A Biographical Sketch
• Works by Charles De Koninck